Michael Slade - Headhunter

"I say take every sex offender — maybe every male while you're at it — and cut his fucking nuts off. Amen, sister."

12:02 p.m.

Matthew Paul Pitt had a pathological hatred of his mother. She had committed suicide when he was four. Pitt's father had then placed both his sons in a foster home. Sometime later he had returned to retrieve one of the boys, leaving Pitt behind. And ever since that day Pitt had loathed his mother, for-the way he saw it — if she had not killed herself the family would not have fractured.

As a child Matthew Paul Pitt had been misdiagnosed as "retarded but without psychosis." The result was that of the twenty-eight years the Australian had lived, twenty-four had been spent in mental institutions. In actual fact Matthew Paul Pitt had an IQ of 128. That is in the above-average to superior range.

The actual psychological problem afflicting the man was dyslexia — a learning disorder in which the affected person sees everything backwards resulting in an inability to read or write or count. The original misdiagnosis of a disorientated and angry child had never been corrected, and therefore, trapped for twenty-four years of his life in mental institutions for the retarded, surrounded daily by persons with whom he could not communicate, Matthew Paul Pitt like an ingrown toenail had slowly turned in on himself. Ultimately, as a result of this misdiagnosis and his subsequent institutionalization, Pitt had developed a real psychiatric disorder. Pitt was now a classic borderline personalityﾀ??and it had been almost two years since Matthew Paul Pitt had escaped from a Queensland mental hospital.

By noon that Monday Monica Macdonald and Rusty Lewis knew a great deal about this man. They also had at least a rudimentary knowledge about a borderline state. The knowledge they had looked promising. Promising indeed.

Early yesterday afternoon, following DeClercq's briefing and their coffee together, the two constables had driven the 150 miles south on Highway 99 connecting at the border with

Interstate 5 to take them into Seattle, Washington. In Seattle they had found the FBI building and had talked to Monica's friend. The FBI agent remembered her very well (a little too well, Lewis thought, judging from the grin on the American's face), and he had told them: "From the word go you can make yourselves at home. Anything you need, just let me know."

"Thanks, Daryl," Macdonald said with a grin every bit as wide as his.

Uh huh, Lewis thought.

The two RCMP officers had spent that afternoon and a good portion of Halloween night rummaging through the FBI files on known and suspected US sex offenders. There was a great deal of information. Both Bundy and part of the alleged Hillside Strangler team — not to mention the recent Green River Killer — were alleged to have murdered repeatedly in the State of Washington. Thus a detailed and thorough profile of sex crimes had recently been compiled by the FBI. By midnight, with the aid of a computer technician, the two Canadians had composed an American skin list of sixty-seven possible cross-border sex suspects who might just fit the Head-hunter's MO.

The man who sat at the top of this list was the Australian Matthew Paul Pitt.

Pitt was wanted by the FBI for questioning in a number of interstate rape/murders over the previous year and a half. In each of the killings the throat of the victim had been cut, and in two of them the head severed completely from the body. There had been one murder outside Los Angeles, California; one seven miles from Tucson, Arizona; two on the Stockton Plateau in Texas; one at a road junction near Wichita, Kansas; three twelve miles from Cheyenne, Wyoming, and two murders between Spokane and Everett, Washington. The FBI had concluded that all the murders were related.

Each crime scene was located just off the US Interstate Highway system. Each victim had had a Phillips screwdriver rammed through her nipples. One of the victims' vehicles had been pushed over a plateau, and both inside the car and among the push marks on the rear of the trunk a number of usable fingerprints had been found. Though these prints had come up negative for the" United States the FBI had routinely passed them on to Interpol where a match had been obtained. The prints, the International Criminal Police Organization told the Federal Bureau of Investigation, were a match for those of a mental institution escapee from Queensland, Australia, named Matthew Paul Pitt who coincidentally had been on the loose for the duration of the US murder spree. In consequence, the FBI wanted very much to have a little talk with Mr. Pitt.

"I think this guy is definitely our best bet," Monica Macdonald said as she placed a Xerox copy of the 752-page FBI summary down on her kitchen table, beside her sleeping cat.

"So do I," mumbled Lewis through a mouthful of bologna sandwich. As he talked a blob of French's mustard slipped out from between the pieces of whole-wheat bread to drip onto one of the Xeroxed FBI reports. He wiped it off leaving a yellow smear.

"Will you pass me that picture again?" Rusty Lewis asked, wiping his hands on a paper napkin. Macdonald rummaged through the papers spread out over the table in front of her and retrieved the photograph. She handed it to him.

Pitt, as depicted in the wire-graph, looked almost ten years older than he really was. He had jet black hair, obviously uncombed for weeks or maybe months, and a scruffy growth of beard. He was dressed in a sloppy shirt, dirty and open at the throat to reveal at least twenty slash marks along either side of his neck. Though it didn't show in the photograph Lewis was certain that the man's shirttail was hanging out of his pants. The Australian's face was bony and angular, with the gaunt stretched look of a concentration camp victim. His face had Charlie Manson eyes.

"Gives me the creeps," Lewis said tapping the photo lightly.

"Yeah?" Macdonald replied. "Well magnify your feelings a hundred times and you'll begin to have some grasp of his effect upon a woman."

She was now reading from the Australian hospital records that had been forwarded to the FBI. Judging from several psychiatric documents Matthew Paul Pitt was a very confused young man.

In addition to the neck slashings that could be seen in the photo that Rusty Lewis held, Pitt had over one hundred horizontal cuts along the inner aspect of each arm, over fifty cuts on each leg. Four years ago, one of the doctors had noticed that while watching a western on television in the hospital common room Matthew Paul Pitt had obtained an erection. Asked why, he had answered: "I like seeing blood on TV but I like my own blood better. Is it true that women have the reddest blood of all?"

Macdonald turned to several handwritten sheets found in Pitt's room after his escape and began to read:

My drems are very weerd. I hope I can remember my drem to night cause I want a gril with tits. Maybe why I can't remember my drems is because someone is maken me forget them, so I can't write them down, or its something to do with me. I got to get out of hear. It is almost like I am be in Brain Washed everytime I wake-up. I just keep on sayin to myself, I am going to meet a gril with tits in my Drem or Drems tonight. I will tell you about the drem to-morrow when I wake-up. thats if I Remember it. never know I mite meet you.

Good night, Sleep tite, and don't Let the Bed Bugs bite.

Good night.

Tits! titstitstitstitstitstitstitstits! tits! tits! TITS!

Women are just like screen doors, once they get banged a few times they loosen up.

When Monica Macdonald was finished reading she looked up at Rusty Lewis and said: "Did you get a look at these writings by Pitt?" "Uh huh."

"Well, I'd have diagnosed him as retarded too." "Yeah, but those notes mean very little. Pitt's got a learning disability. So he's a case of stunted growth. His mind's got a natural intelligence even though he can't express it. No doubt that's what the shrink means about his being a complicated case."