Primal Scream (24 page)

Bushwhacked

The North

The dogs ate snow while running.

Every bush and every tree was dressed in a coat of white. Huge flakes of hoarfrost crumbled under toboggan slats as the sleds slipped silently across the crusted drifts. Huskies pulled the Mad Dog, and malamutes pulled George. Both breeds had thick fur to withstand extreme cold, but short hair so ice didn't cling and weigh them down. Both sweated only through the; pads of their feet, now wrapped in dog shoes to protect them against ice cuts, small boots of leather and canvas pouched on all fours. Huskies are Eskimo dogs of unstandardized breed. Malamutes are Alaskan dogs with a wolf strain. The best sled dogs there are, deep-chested, long-limbed, strong, and stout, with ears pointed forward and tails curled like knights' plumes, they pulled these Mounties single file through the throbbing stillness of a cold Canadian night.

"Haw!" turned them left.

"Gee!" turned them right.

This was how it was when the Force became myth, a fact confirmed by the smiles on both men's faces. With each mile they established deeper rapport, sharing the lead to equalize trail breaking between the teams. Only when dogs passed each other was the whip used, a quick flick in the air to keep them apart. The most powerful dogs were hitched next to the sled to handle "the wheel" on sharp curves when the rest of the team was pulling at an angle. The tug ropes of this pair were tied to the sled bridle ring, not the tow rope proper. Experienced, they knew how to avoid being run over.

The fastest dogs were hi the lead. The importance of a leader sprang from there being no rein. The leader responded to verbal command, and his actions controlled the team. All dogs knew "Whoa" was the command to halt, but they kept pulling until the leader stopped. When he lay down during halts, the other dogs did, too. His job was to "hold out" the towline, keeping the other six in place, and when, like here, there was no trail, to cut one according to the driver's command.

The Mad Dog's leader was Sitka.

Ghost Keeper's was Wrangler.

So through this wooded white waste came the night patrols, breath trailing behind them like jet streams, surrounded by unbroken solitude and pines blobbed with cream, a long, icy run of rime, frost, powder, and pack, the cold and the darkness, the darkness and the cold, a dreamscape where snow faded into phantoms like Big Foot and other myths.

The dogs chose their own gait and speed.

If one slowed, it was urged on by name.

A two-minute halt every mile was enough to recuperate the teams.

During a break the solitude was broken, too.

A howl of unbridled terror.

From a human throat.

Shhhhewwww . . .

Weird and wan, the Northern Lights shimmered above the frozen river as Vern and Bo hauled toboggans across the ice and through the shadows near the bank. Whatever scars might mar the land after thaw, they were smoothed over and hidden behind the white mask of winter. Winter was the season of the infinite here, the longest season of the year. This was a land hushed to its inner depths by merciless cold, the forest dark against the spectral dance of the aurora, the night so still and motionless that the streamers overhead seemed to whisper to Bo and Vern. .

Shhhhewwww . . .

But it was just an arrow from the bush.

The razor-head sliced through Bo and carried on, a stealth cruise missile hugging the land. Spews of black blood pumped from his throat as Bo dropped to his knees in prayer, gargling something to the Lord as he pitched forward to kowtow the ice.

Vern heard the thud behind and turned to see, just before another
Shhhhewwww
. . . whispered near his ear. The spike end of an arrow poked out the front of his chest, the feathers back there.

His lung collapsed.

It sounded like a lone wolf, this "
Owwwwwww
!" torn from Vern, a pitiful howl that echoed off surrounding peaks, but any bushman who heard the wail of pain would understand—some poor fuck was staring down the jaws of death.

Vern was flopping about on the ice like a fish out of water. His hand that gripped the razor-head was black with blood, for, except for the hues above, this was a black-and-white world. From the woods along the bank a ghost emerged, all white except for the RealTree camo on his bow and yellow fletching on the arrows in a quiver behind his shoulder.

The wounded man got to his knees, but collapsed on his chest, howling as the arrow rammed back through his lung.

Snowshoes passed him, heading for Bo, and Vern saw a white glove tear off his buddy's toque to grip him by the hair, the bow placed on the ice to switch it for a knife. Then whack! the ghost swung the blade and hacked off Bo's head.

Bushwhacked.

As a trophy.

Snowshoes passed Vern again, Bo's head dropping in front of his terrified eyes as the ghost vanished back there. It wasn't a friendly gesture that helped Vern to his knees, the hand that gripped his belt humping him off the snow, the other hand slitting the knife down the crack of his ass, and suddenly—
riiip!
—it was breezy back there.

Dog-style was Vern's favorite position for sex, as long as he was on top.

Which he wasn't tonight.

Cresting the ridge, the Mounties gazed down on the Shegunia River, near one bank of which a figure climbed off another, gripping the underdog by the lianas wails of dread gibbered. His shriek was cut off as cleanly as his head.

By the light of the Arctic moon they skidded downhill, applying brake chains to keep sleds from running into dogs. Then they were mushing up the frozen flow of the river as Winterman Snow, heads in one hand and bow in the other, snowshoed up the bank to vanish into the snow-choked woods.

There was movement across the Shegunia.

The party of rebels from Totem Lake coming to haul in the weapons.

Four of them.

With AK-47s.

As the Mounties braked to a halt near the headless bodies, they heard the whistle of Winterman Snow streak from the trees.

Shhhhewwww
. . .

Hellhole

Richmond

From the Coliseum of the downtown library DeClercq drove south across the root of the tongue of Point Grey and over Oak Street Bridge to Lulu Island. Miss Lulu Sweet had been the star of the Potter Troupe when it played Victoria, the capital of the new colony, in 1860.
Miss Lulu's dancing was most chaste and beautiful, gushed the Colonist. She was fairly smothered with bouquets and loudly encored
. When the troupe later played New Westminster on the Fraser River, Miss Lulu asked, "What is that island over there?", and Colonel Moody of the Royal Engineers gallantly replied, "Lulu Island, Miss Sweet."

That's how hokey names come to be.

Lulu Island is the delta of the Fraser River, and is sandwiched between the North and South Arms. Around it are twenty smaller islands, but—except for the airport—they're just scenery. The city of Richmond blankets Lulu Island. It got its name, the story goes, when Mrs. Mary Boyd, wife of the initial reeve, opened her dining room for the first council meeting in 1879, and was allowed the privilege of naming the island town for her hospitality. She was born in Richmond, England. Until recently the delta had been largely farms, and one of the most fertile cornucopias around, but little minds dreaming of big bucks rapidly blighted that, and today Richmond is the most godawful sprawl you'll ever see, an instant home to rich refugees jetting out of Hong Kong, while food to feed the people has to come from California.

Except the South Arm.

A hold-out, throwback, rural enclave.

The drive to the South Arm was treacherous. Snowdrifts from last night had been plowed from the highway and banked on the shoulders. Exposed wet tarmac overpowered salt and sand to freeze to black ice. The black dome above was pinpricked by stars, more and more punching through as the city retreated. Just before Massey Tunnel under the South Arm, DeClercq turned west off Highway 99 to the States onto the Steveston Highway, dividing rural and urban Richmond. The fake Dutch windmill of Fantasy Gardens slowly whirled in the ticky-tacky theme park to his right. Up the Steveston Highway in the Africa case, madman Gunter Schreck had led Zinc Chandler on a deadly car chase.

At Number 5 Road, DeClercq turned south to enter the farming belt. Less light, more dark, the deeper he penetrated. As he neared the river, mist belched toward him from the polluted water. Angling west on Dyke Road, he drove the crest of the levee parallel to the flow of the stream. The Benz fishtailed on the icy, snow-covered hump. Slip left and he'd drown in the river; slip right and he'd flip in the ditch. The headlamps shone like a lighthouse on a foggy sea. The wind whined upstream off the Pacific ahead. It swirled the mist into ghosts that drifted by the windows.

Foghorns groaned.

Skeletal trees passed.

Cottonwoods.

Poplars.

Maples . . .

The Mountie braked to a halt.

The maple trees grew wild in the overgrown garden beyond the wire-mesh fence. The fence was a checkered barrier that ran across the front of the lot and back down both sides to a muddy slough. A newer gate in the fence was padlocked and chained. Mr. Albert Stone was a paranoid man, or perhaps he just goi tired of Pacific Planter readers scampering through his garden, for the spikes atop the fence would rip genitals to shreds. Not that anyone would wish to enter now. The only structure visible on the miasmic slough was a rusting Quonset hut of corrugated iron, the roof dribbling orange streaks down the sides.

By the glow of the headlamps, the roof ran blood.

According to the map he used as a guide, Dyke Road dead-ended past the slough. DeClercq drove on to a gate across the road—from here on the dyke was for those on foot—and parked his car in the shelter of a riverbank woods.

He switched off the engine.

He sat in the dark.

Contemplating whether or not to get a telewarrant.

No, he decided.

The proper way to do this was by the book. If he had probable grounds to believe evidence of murder hid behind the fence, a formal search under warrant was the legal route. But all he suspected was evidence had been here a decade ago, when it had been seized by Al Flood and ended up in a burning tin and a garbage can. He had no reason to believe there was more evidence here, and if he got a warrant and the killer found out—a possibility if his hunch was right— a fruitless search tonight might motivate the Head-hunter to destroy evidence at a new lair.

He was fishing, pure and simple.

DeClercq checked his .38, then stepped out of the car. The clammy night smelled of brine and rotten fish. The fog caressed him like a widow's veil. He fetched a flashlight and tire iron from the trunk, then crunched along the crest of the dyke back the way he'd driven in, sweeping the eerie mist with the light until he saw a rowboat beached at the mouth of the slough. Commandeering it, he stepped in and pushed off.

A fishing village for more than a hundred years, Finn Slough is one of the last tidal communities on the West Coast. This sleepy little backwater on the Fraser River was founded by immigrant Finns in the 1880s and hasn't changed since. Bounded on the Richmond side by the dyke, bounded on the Fraser side by Gilmour Island, the murky, grassy, oily brown waters of the narrow slough rise and fall with the shifting tide. Like Charon, the mythical ferryman who transports the souls of the dead across the River Styx, DeClercq paddled up the stagnant bilge toward the underworld. The rising moon illuminated the vapor with deadlight. Like visions in a nightmare, grim gray images drifted by. Wonky pilings jutted like crooked teeth. Decrepit gangways on both flanks creaked and moaned. Ropes whipped the barnacles of a keelhauled hull. Deadheads thumped the boat and rocked DeClercq. A mangy dog on Gilmour Island growled at the moon. Shacks on stilts leaned to and fro, all ship-lap gray weathered by years, some old scow houses built by the Finns, some net sheds strung with gillnet webs. Beneath a wooden drawbridge the boat slipped on, removable planks above dripping on the Mountie. From a houseboat half sunk in mud, smoke curled from the chimney as someone cried out in pleasure or pain.

Ahead, the turbid pall parted to reveal a concrete bunker under the Quonset hut. The hut sat atop the bomb shelter like an undertaker's hat. Rickety wooden stairs descended the back of the bunker to a plank-and-piling pier on the slough. Serpents of mist climbed the stairs like a game of Snakes and Ladders in reverse. From the dyke and maple garden above, the shore sloped down to a sandbar choking the waterway. Beyond the bomb shelter, a grassy marsh of snowy mud joined dyke to island where the slough disappeared.

Robert shivered.

He had the creeps.

He shone the flashlight on the sandbar and saw where big leaf and sycamore maple leaves had wafted down from the garden on the wind. Had this been where the Headhunter scooped the bucket of sand in the Wilkes taunt? Mooring the boat to the dock, he pulled himself up on the pier. The stairs wobbled under his feet as he climbed to the Quonset hut. The hut was smaller than the bunker upon which it perched, so a concrete path angled around to a door in back.

The door was double-locked.

The hut had no windows.

The Mountie caught a whiff of something foul. His years as a homicide hotshot had acquainted him with the stench. Sniffing like a police dog tracking a fugitive, he descended the slimy steps to sweep the light behind. Between the bunker and the stairs was a three-foot gap. Set into the concrete wall was a wooden hatch. Decades of exposure to salty air had rusted the lock and rotted the wood.

The stink seeped from within.

Cooked human flesh.

Robert paused a moment to form a battle plan. What if the killer was on the hunt tonight? Stopping to get a warrant might cost more lives. Sycamore maple leaves mixed with sand and the horrid stench gave him probable grounds. This wasn't a dwelling house, and the owner was absent. No judge would deny exigent circumstances for a warrantless search. He decided it was safe to go in and justify himself later. Or do the search, get a warrant, then search "for the first time."

Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

This takedown is revenge.

Bracing himself against the cold, he jumped into the water and sank knee-deep in sludge. He waded around to the hatch in the wall and wedged the tire iron in to pry it open. The lock tore through the rotten wood. The gaping square was above the high-tide mark, forcing him to monkey up the back of the stairs. He shone the flashlight down the throat of the hellhole, from the rancid bowels of which exuded the gagging smell. The concrete opening was three feet square. The passage sloped down before it straightened out. He couldn't see the far end of the subterranean tunnel. Ignoring claustrophobia, he sucked in a deep breath, then bridged the gap to wriggle headfirst into the hole. The mouth to hell swallowed him up like a fish does a worm.

Tire iron stuck up his sleeve and light gripped in his teeth, the Mountie, head arched back, pulled with his outstretched arms and pushed with his feet to inch down into the underworld. Green gunk sliming the walls turned glistening black where the light faded. Red eyes glared in the dark as rat shit squished under him. This side of the upturn where the passage leveled out, the shaft narrowed to constrict him even more. Get stuck in this dank, dark, cold, smelly squeeze, arms confined so they couldn't move, blood rushing to his head from the slope that thwarted backing out, and his ghastly death from starvation and terror would rival the mind snap of being buried alive.

Push it aside . . .

Keep moving . . .

Inch by inch . . .

Until the beam of the flashlight winked off a pin under his nose.

A pin from the jacket of someone who had burrowed in before.

A pin the Mountie had seen on many a lapel. A fifteen-year service pin from the VPD.

Flood
, he thought.

The Vancouver cop had been heavier-set than him. Photos in the shoot-out file revealed that. Did Flood get stuck in these narrows and thrash about to smear his clothes with gunk and shit to grease the way out? Did squirming tear the pin from his lapel?

Robert wormed through the narrows and up the bend beyond.

Secured with a padlock, the end of the tunnel was blocked by crosshatched bars. Rust gave way to the tire iron, springing the barrier. So not to break the flashlight in his tumble, DeClercq extinguished and pocketed it before hauling himself out of the hellhole into hell itself.

He hit the floor six feet down to roll in a sticky goo. Slipping twice, he gained his feet and yanked the flashlight from his pocket. When he switched it on, seasoned cop though he was, he gasped in shock.

For here he stood face-to-face with a severed male head suspended by a hooked chain tangled in its hair. A head he recognized as hacked from one of the frat boys ambushed at UBC. Utter horror was frozen in the rictus of the mouth, the tongue bitten through at the instant of decapitation so it hung from the lower lip by just a thread of flesh. The gaze stared blankly from bloodshot whites. Blood ran from both nostrils down the chin. It still dripped from the neck as the blood-engorged brain drained.

Slung below in macrame and shielded from the drip, a candle pot could be lit to highlight the grisly trophy for atmosphere.

The sticky goo in which he'd slipped was the blood pool under the neck.

Footprints in the clotting pool led the Mountie to two more heads. Dangling at eye level with candle pots below, they, too, gazed directly at him, if eyes rolled back in their sockets can be said to gaze. Two trophies also hacked from the waylaid drunks, but where was the head harvested from the raped Engineer? Robert's mind's eye saw the killer roaming from one illuminated dead head to another, erotically stimulated from full-blown necrophilia.

He shone the light around.

The beam snatched details from the dark. Stacks of canned goods stored by Albert Stone. Tins ruptured from rust, spilling contents on the floor. Shelves of thirty-five-cent paperbacks, science fiction to eat time while the fallout settled. Hundreds of bottles of water gone murky over years. Rounds of concrete to roll across the tunnel down which he'd come as a radiation block, and across the stairwell climbing to the hut. The door atop the stairwell was steel with many locks. The paranoia bunker probably would withstand atomic attack, but what sort of survivor would emerge from it?

A mad mutant
, he thought.

The sweep of the flashlight caught a breach in the wall to a back room. Stepping gingerly to keep from slipping in the blood, he crossed to the threshold and shone in the beam. Concrete floor, concrete walls, and concrete ceiling. The light reflected off an old-fashioned full-length mirror to one side, in front of which stood a mannequin draped in Red Serge. Tattered, spattered, and half a century old, the uniform was that of a corporal in the Mounted Police. Wrist and leg irons were bolted to the floor, and DeClercq had no doubt this was where Bron Wren had met his fate, sodomized repeatedly facing the mirror. A camcorder left of the threshold had taped his shrieking demise. Raised from the floor was a concrete slab that looked like an altar. The surface of the slab ran rivulets of red. In a semicircle beyond were seven sharpened stakes, rammed on which so the poles stuck up through the tops of the craniums was an arc of grinning skulls. The skulls were ivory with age and all stolen from women.

Greiner, Grabowski, Portman, the nun, Wilkes, and others
, he thought.

In front of them a new arc was underway, with two fresh male skulls at one end.

Bron Wren and the raped Engineer.

Adorning the altar was a single candlestick and a large tarnished box. A brazier supporting a pot of sand stood nearby. A cushion on the concrete made the altar a workbench for headshrinker's art. A scalpel to remove the skin from the skull. A needle and thread to sew the skin into a pouch. A scoop to fill the pouch with sand from the hot pot. And thongs and rings to stitch shut the mouth and eyes. The shrunken head of Sean O'Connor slept in a box identical to the one that sent DeClercq the Wren taunt. Unwrapped, the paper under it was also addressed to him.