Primal Scream (19 page)

"Sean O'Connor's the name of the guy cuffed to the tree, then buggered. He's the son of a big-gun engineer at Hydro. Those who kept their virginity but lost their heads are the sons of a judge, surgeon, and Reform M.P. Christ, Kath, these guys were the Great White Hope of the future, and topping them's the biggest squeal I'll ever catch."

"A
huge
crime, eh, Rick? Not like women raped and killed every day?"

"Every day, Kath. That's the point. The public is accustomed to women snatched off the streets to ravage and destroy. But these were men ambushed to cornhole and cut in the bushes."

"I thought you said they were
'boys
out for puss’. Perhaps it's time you
boys
knew the fear you induce in us?"

"Cut the feminist crap with me, Kath. This case is; my ticket up the ranks. You and I both know you're an inspector because you got a cunt, and I'm a corporal because I don't. Filling the brass with women oh so P.C., and we know exactly what'll happen here. You got a murder up north with a raped and topped guy spiked to a tree. I got a murder here with a raped and topped guy cuffed to a tree. Special X has a shrunken head. You're Special X and I'm dinky detachment, so how long till
my
case is yours, and I'm back giving tickets to chinks in BMWs rushing to class?"

Blood pressure rising, his face turned pink.

"I was your
partner
once upon a time. Watch
Lethal Weapon
and see what a
partner
is. Watch
The X Files
and see it, too.
Partners
look out for each other.
Partners
don't let
partners
drown. Gimme a break, Kath. Keep me in the case."

Spann grabbed him by one well-developed pec. The corporal flinched with surprise. He had never been manhandled by a woman.

"Remember Seattle, Rick? Did I squeal on you? Your nuts are still in uniform thanks to me. A quiet word to DeClercq and you'd have been tubed. I owe you nothing. You owe me."

Snow crunched behind them.

"You called for a dog? Where do you want him applied, Rick?"

"Ask her," Scarlett said with venom in his glare. "She's the boss."

A Mountie and his dog. The essential stereotype of the Force. Sergeant Preston of the Yukon with his dog King. All of the crooks ran for cover 'cause he always got his man. He say, "On, King, on you great husky," and the great husky say, "Bow-wow, Bow-wow," Ray Stevens sang . . .

Well, Dirty Dan, a sneaky villain

Robbed the trading post one day

Killed off four or five Eskimos

And made his get-away

"He won't get far," say Sergeant Preston

"I've got my trusty dog

"I'll track him down and bring him back

"He'll have to pay the cost. ..."

Well, they brought that villain to justice He didn't even put up a fight

When he saw that big dog charging at him

He almost died of fright

And Sergeant Preston of the Yukon

Was proud 'cause he had done it again

He'd got his man and you could hear him say,

"Who needs Rin Tin Tin?"

He say, "King, this case is closed"

And King say, "Bow-wow."

A Mountie and his dog.

Fact into myth.

From 1908 on Members took their own dogs along I to help manhunt. When the RCMP Dog Section was formed in 1935, a German shepherd, Dale of Cawsalta, became the first official canine. So outstanding a tracker was he that Dale was soon joined by Black Lux and Sultan. The dog training school was established at Calgary in 1937, and three years later the RCMP won its first case on dog search evidence.
In-Rex v. Stokes
(1947), an appeal court upheld the ruling, and dogs have been witnesses ever since. "Members without badges" now graduate from the Police Dog Service Training Center at Innisfail, Alberta. Purebred German shepherds and Belgian Malinois are trained for seventeen weeks in fugitive tracking, crowd control, hostage standoffs, and how to search for drugs, explosives, avalanche victims, and crime-scene evidence.

Brock, the shepherd at this scene, had topped his class.

The scent of a human will linger for up to twelve hours on a dry or slightly humid day with little wind. Last night had been anything but dry, with gales of wind, so this killer's scent was long gone. But since there was a slim chance the severed heads were hidden under snow, Brock was released to "search large" with his forensic sense of smell.

The dog fanned out from the path of contamination, then suddenly blitzed away to signal his handler from deeper in the woods.

"Bingo," said the handler.

Another excavation.

Another headless body.

Buried in a shallow grave under a snowy fir.

Clothes on the torso.

Buttocks bare.

Like the body cuffed to the tree.

Decomposition.

Belly tattooed.

Flames of hell licking up the gut from the groin.

Putrefaction begins about forty-eight hours after death. Bacteria from the intestines migrate throughout the body by way of its blood vessels. Tiny bubbles of gas form in the blood, reddening the veins of the neck, shoulders, and thighs with "marbling." The skin of the abdomen takes on a greenish tinge, and depending on the weather, such signs indicate the body is two or three days into rot.

Gross disfiguration is apparent after three weeks, unless the corpse is "pickled" from too much booze or the surrounding temperature is cold. By then internal organs have begun to decay, bloating the body with gas and distorting the features. This produces oozing from every orifice, a horror known as "bloody purge." Organs decompose in stages. The brain, stomach, and intestines putrefy quickly. The heart, lungs, and kidneys hold out longer. A general rule of thumb is a body decomposes in air twice as fast as in water, and eight times as fast as in earth. Eventually, nothing remains but slime and bones.

Then just bones.

Then dust

to

dust.

"How long's he been dead?" Spann asked Macbeth.

"A week or so. Since he breached parole."

"You know the stiff?" Scarlett said.

"The flames from the groin tattoo was listed with the teardrop in the ViCLAS
Scars and/or Mark
s hit'? used to ID the shrunken head. The kids he assaulted recalled the flames, too. Now we have both the head and body of Bron Wren."

Killing Team

By the time DeClercq parked his car in the seaside lot near the barricade, Gill Macbeth had finished work at the crime scene. She was unlocking the driver's door as he pulled in beside her BMW. What had slowed his commute across Lions Gate Bridge, through Stanley Park, around English Bay, and out to the point was Lotusland yahoos slipping and sliding about. They were the jerks on last week's news crowing their cars still had summer tires on the wheels while the East dug out from yet another storm. The most obnoxious yahoo had pranged DeClercq's Benz, denting the far door of the old-fogey mobile, to hear Katt, and then had the gall to try to blame the collision on him. Maybe the yahoo would learn a lesson from the repair bill for the overpriced car—Katt was right, his were the wheels of Yuppie swine, and this had convinced him to sell the import for a car in line with common sense, free of anxiety, like escaping from a shop filled with Ming vases—but meanwhile he had to drive around in a concave wreck with a rattle to drive him mad.

"Uh-oh," Gill said. "That looks expensive. Perhaps you should leave the high-speed chases to government-funded cars."

"It hurts, so pardon me if I don't smile."

The smile she flashed him was big enough for them both.

"Want a coffee? To warm you up?"

He almost said,
Your radiance is all the warmth I need
, but caught himself in time to reply, "Your Beemer comes with a cappuccino machine?"

"Just a thermos. But it's hot. And we can discuss what I found."

"Black. No sugar."

"My taste, too. Seems we have more in common than books and music."

"Katt has me reading Dean Koontz and listening to Nine Inch Nails."

"If you need a port in the storm, my house is down the road. We could sip port and explore what else we have in common."

"I'll keep that in mind."

"Do," she said, fetching the thermos to fill the lid with coffee. "One cup. Are you adverse to sharing fluids with me?"

"No," he said, and wondered if he was agreeing to something he wasn't.

Or was he?

Sexual politics.

So long had he been celibate that he worried his mind was reading erotic subliminal messages into purely innocent words flowing from her luscious mouth. Science had recently theorized sexual attraction results from chemical processes in the brain, which, combined with the fact the testes are always whipping up sperm, went a long way to explain why Catholic priests are behind bars, and why Robert could think of no more agreeable way to pass a storm than anchored in any port Gill was offering.

If
she was offering.

Because Apollo, not Dionysus, was the god he hoped ruled the ethics of his mind, reason in him vanquishing passion to win their Darwinian struggle for the nature of man, why did he feel compelled to bed
both
Anda and Gill? If love was Apollonian and sex Dionysian, did he love
both
women or was he succumbing to loveless sex from sexual poisoning?

You think too much
, he thought.

"The tragedy of it," Gill said, "is the snuffing of four young lives. Who knows how civilization might have advanced had the students in the car exerted their potential. I forgot to ask where they were headed when the killer struck. Bron Wren undoubtedly we're better off without. For all I care, he can nourish the worms in the—"

"Wren?" said DeClercq.

"He's here, too. His body was buried a week or so before last night's attack."

"Was Wren raped?"

"Viciously. His wrists were lashed with ropes and his lower body stripped; then he was sodomized until he bled inside. After that his buttocks were slashed to ribbons."

"While alive?"

"Yes, a crime of hate."

"Semen in his rectum?"

"Only tests will tell. But I suspect decomposition is too advanced."

"Are his genitals pierced?"

"You mean torture?"

"I mean rings."

"Rings like a frenum? Hafada? Prince Albert? No, I saw no pierce holes around the groin. The only genital adornment is a tattoo. Tongues of flame licking up his abdomen, as if his sex organs burned with the fires of hell."

"What's a Prince Albert?"

"A dressing ring. Used by Victorian men to secure the penis to the leg when crotch-binding trousers were in vogue. Prince Albert had one inserted to retract his foreskin to keep the royal penis sweet-smelling for the queen."

DeClercq blinked.

"You'd be surprised, Chief Superintendent, what my job teaches me about the male body and how its secrets work."

"I'm sure I would."

"You would," she repeated.

Gill held the coffee cup up to Robert's lips. His hands touched hers to tilt it so warmth flowed down his throat.

"When it comes to sex, we all live secret lives. li know a front-line feminist who publicly berates men to sell books, yet she has this macho boyfriend with i lots of gold on his hairy chest, and I suspect she privately prances around in garter belts to heat him up for bed. For all you know,
I
might have piercings elsewhere than my ears."

"It's a wicked world," said DeClercq.

The sexual tension between them was palpable now. It had been over a decade since he had flirted with a woman, and he was enjoying himself flirting with Gill. All three parts of his triune brain were involved. The oldest part, the reptile brain at the top of his spine, matched her body language move for move and touch for touch. His middle brain, the limbic system, irrational and instinctive, was focused on the last of the Four Fs it controlled: feeding, fighting, fleeing, and fucking. It was the Dionysian part of man, and why there would always be sexual predators afoot, for some men control it, and it controls some men. His rational brain, the cerebral cortex, was the last to evolve, and this outer part engaged Gill in the civilized Apollonian game of sexual repartee.

Apollo and Dionysus.

A car drove into the lot.

Jekyll and Hyde.

The car pulled in beside them.

"Do you?" he asked.

Gill steadied the cup in both their hands.

"My secret," she said as Nick Craven opened the door and got out.

Had he been caught running away from her home with his pants around his ankles, a definite possibility i the way this was going, Robert could not have felt guiltier than he did now. Whoever said "All is fair in love and war" was wrong, for here was Nick confronted with Gill and Robert holding hands, the latter the boss who could ruin his career if he didn't back off, which was about as fair as soldiers raping civilian women from Sa-bine times till now, or British grunts buggering Argentine boys captured in the Falklands. The pain in Nick's eyes gave testimony to the betrayal he felt. Had Gill led him to believe her interest in Robert was platonic? Had Nick been dealt with squarely but refused to let go? Whatever the situation, the ethics involved were clear. Until Gill and Nick settled their relationship, Robert would be the one to back off.

A cock may have no conscience.

But he did.

And if a cop learned only one lesson from the job, it was sexual ping-pong ends in tragedy.

Robert and Nick.

Anda and Gill.

Anda it is
, he decided.

"Nick," said DeClercq. "Join the powwow. Coffee?" he asked, holding out the communal cup as if passing a bottle among friends.

Craven eyed the cup as if the other man had spit in it. He shook his head.

DeClercq handed the cup to Macbeth.

"Gill tells me Bron Wren is buried in the woods. Same M.O. and location as last night's attack, except he was buried a week ago and his buttocks are ripped to shreds. What's your take on that?"

The bags under Craven's eyes told DeClercq he was walking the floor at night over Gill. Unrequited love was the nemesis of sleep, and the constant companion of trouble in mind. Out of empathy for Nick, DeClercq felt a sudden compassion for Al Flood.

The cop who loved Genevieve . . .

Unrequited love . . .

His mental ouija was back in play.

"Kathy called me," Craven said, "after Wren turned up. Now that he's one victim among many, odds are Wren was a random kill. If so, tracking the kids he abused is a waste of time."

"Is that your reaction?"

"I'm torn," Craven said. "Kathy thinks the killer overlapped his burial and hunting grounds so we'd find Wren and raise the body count. Logic says she's right. He's upping the taunt. My gut says little things don't add up."

"Like?" said DeClercq.

"Why choose a prison-hardened con as first victim? A pedophile puts next to no pressure on police. If the killer is into taunts, Wren was the last sort of victim to choose. But if Wren turned his killer into a killer, then killing him first makes sense. His buttocks were ripped apart because it's a crime of hate motivated bw sodomizing the killer as a kid. Beheading the students last night masks the motive, thrills the killer, and ups the taunt at us."

"Where do you hide a tree?"

"In a forest," said Craven.

"Woodsman, spare this tree."

"No," Craven replied.

"My reaction exactly," said DeClercq.

While Macbeth drove to work at the VGH morgue, Craven and DeClercq analyzed the scenes of crime with Scarlett and Spann. Then Nick left for ViCLAS?; at Headquarters to generate a pin map of Wren's hunting ground twenty-five years ago. To take advantage of having the two members of the flying patrol that had cornered John Lincoln Hardy—the Head-hunter?—together, DeClercq asked them back to his Benz. The Ident van had coffee. Sipping Java, they sat in his car and talked.

DeClercq and Spann in front.

Scarlett in back.

Obviously pleased to be Included, Scarlett hunched forward between the bucket seats to intrude himself as DeClercq spoke:

"Except for being male, these headless corpses are like the Headhunter's victims. Waylaid, raped, slashed, beheaded, and dumped. The heads of the women were never recovered, but this killer sent Wren's shrunken head to me. My gut tells me Shrink is somehow connected to the Headhunter case. I found this photo in the closed file on Al Flood."

He passed around the picture of the rings in the burning tin.

"Ident took it in the alley behind Flood's apartment on the night you and he shot it out, Kathy. The rings match those through the lips of Wren's shrunken head."

"Jeez," said Scarlett. "How does that make sense?"

"That's what we're here to discuss."

"Hardy was killed six weeks
before
Flood and I shot it out," said Spann. "If Hardy shrank the heads missing from the Headhunter victims, who burned them in the tin behind Flood's home?"

"Flood?" said Scarlett.

"Perhaps," said DeClercq. "The coke stashed in the hubcap of his car was the exact same purity as the coke you found in Hardy's mountain shack. Did they come from the same supply?"

DeClercq turned to Spann. "Any idea who tipped you to Flood?"

"Anonymous call. Woman's voice. I'd bet money on Charlotte Clarke. She became the main pro Hardy pimped after the Headhunter hacked Grabowski. I questioned her in the aftermath of Hardy's death, so she knew I was a cop. Before I could confront her about the tip, she had OD'd on smack."

"Clarke?" said Scarlett, tapping his head. "Wasn't she the whore Flood ranted about?"

DeClercq turned sharply. "Ranted when?"

"When was it, Kath? That day in the caf at court? All of us were yakking—you, me, Mad Dog, Lewis, and who else?"

"Tipple and Macdonald."

"Yeah, that's right. When Flood walks up and says he thinks we got the wrong guy. Says he spoke to Clarke and she claimed Johnnie was a stud. Hardy! liked to bang his stable on the side, every day, every girl, liked to fuck, our John, and it was rocks off every time. So why did the Headhunter leave no come if it was Hardy doing the dog?"

"Good question," said DeClercq. "Begs an answer. I suspect the Headhunter was a killing team. Remember the hunt for the Hillside Strangler? Turned out two cousins were with him. Hillside Stranglers, actually What if that's what happened here? Hardy being ham of a killing team. Now the other half is back on the hunt, going after men instead of women."

"A switch hitter?"

"Who kills from rage. Couldn't come with women and can't come with men."

"Hardy's dead. So is Flood. Is Steve Rackstraw the other half?" said Spann.

"Is he out?"

"Paroled recently. Did a lot of time for importing coke. Jailed at the end of the Headhunter case. He was sprung about the same time Bron Wren got released. Does that explain why the killings resumed? And why Wren was the first victim?"

"Jail vendetta?"

"Why else choose such lowlife scum? Jail explains the sex switch, too."

"You're on the ball, Kathy."

Not to be outshone again, Rick Scarlett scooped up the ball and ran:

"Voodoo cult in New Orleans was the start. Haitian matriarch, two sons, and their cousin. Cult worked out of Louisiana slums. It sold tricks, spells, dolls, and drugs. Fanatics paid for heavy stuff out on the bayou, like that ritual Kath and me saw, with dancing, masks, slaughter, and a snake in the crone's puss. One son was the zobop who ran the cult. Other son was Rackstraw, living here. Hardy, the cousin, was a fuck-up. So Aunt sent him north to learn from Fox.

"Wolf, Fox, Weasel. Remember, Kath?

"Foxy Rackstraw was hip to scams. Corporate fraud, land deceit, music kickbacks, dealing in cocaine. Drugs came north in voodoo masks. The masks were for his rock act, Voodoo Chile.

"Rackstraw was here when Greiner got snuffed. That accounts for the first Headhunter victim. We never knew if Hardy was here. We know he came later with Grabowski in tow, as right away she got busted on the Stroll. The last thing Fox needed was heat, so maybe he and Weasel iced her as a team. They liked the thrill so much, they launched a doubleheader."

"And the shrinking?" said DeClercq.

"Voodoo, Chief. You don't get shit weirder than we saw in New Orleans. The skulls on the bayou? Remember, Kath? Rackstraw rapes 'em. Hardy shrinks 'em. Skulls go down south."