Michael Slade - Headhunter

"So," Ruryk began again, "where does all this leave us?

"I believe back at the question which to my way of thinking is at the center of this case: 'Why have the heads gone missing?' That is our real mystery — and the key to the Head-hunter's illness. Answer that question and you will be well along the road to revealing his identity. For you see everything else in this case revolves around those heads. Not only the fact that the heads have gone missing, but also the fact that in the later crimes the killer has gone to great risk to leave a head-substitute.

"This attention seeking is typical for a psychopath. Such a person believes himself superior to and better than everybody else. He doesn't make mistakes, and if he does he blames it on another. In effect this killer is saying: 'I can do no wrong. You have not caught me on four occasions. See what you can do now.'

"So believe me. Superintendent, center on the heads."

For a moment Ruryk turned away from the microphone and looked out over the ocean beyond the glass of the greenhouse. With a swoop a cormorant took a dive at the water. Ruryk watched the bird a while, then brought his attention back.

"I believe," the psychiatrist said, "that we are now able to return to your original question. You asked me for my general impression of the killer whom you seek.

"Most likely he is a sexual psychopath with one of those three perversions concerning his victims' heads — cannibalism, trophy hunting or hair fetishism.

"Less likely he is a psychotic with one of the same three perversions.

"And then there is one more very rare possibility."

"What's that?" DeClercq asked with a bare trace of a frown.

Ruryk met his eyes and said: "There's the off-chance, Superintendent, that what we have here is the most dangerous of men. For it is possible that the Headhunter is a psychiatric crossover. He may just be a psychopathic sadist with psychotic overtones."

That afternoon when Genevieve DeClercq arrived home she found her husband sitting by himself down by the edge of the sea. Across the water clouds were boiling above the city of Vancouver.

"A penny for your thoughts," she said, crouching down beside him.

For several long seconds Robert DeClercq was silent. Then he said: "I was just thinking how life affects the very young. And how those young grow up to become an effect on life."

Out on the water a cormorant was swimming with a fish clamped in its bill.

11:50 a.m.

That morning as Dr. George Ruryk was driving out Chancellor Boulevard from the University of British Columbia on his way to meet Robert DeClercq, Spann and Scarlett were driving in. Earlier they had tried to contact Corporal William Tipple at Commercial Crime in order to get a lead on John Lincoln Hardy but it was Tipple's day off. The member who answered the phone told Spann that the Corporal had gone hiking in the North Shore mountains and wouldn't be back till tomorrow.

They had decided late last night to follow the trail of DeClercq. What was the use of a manhunt if you didn't know your quarry? Therefore, they had spent the morning reading psychology texts.

"Okay," Katherine Spann said. "I've read enough. I think I'll recognize this guy if we bump into him in the dark. Let's sweep the pubs again."

"Why not wait for Tipple? It'll save us some time."

"Why give the collar away? Besides what else do we have to do?"

"All right," Scarlett said, "but give me another minute. I'm at a juicy part." The book he was reading was Wilson: The Origins of the Sexual Impulse.

"I'll meet you upstairs by the card catalogue. I need some air."

Spann left Scarlett buried several stories underground. Climbing the stairs to the stacks she passed row upon row of old texts housed in sunken levels; the only sound was that of the compressors and convectors pumping oxygen into the subterranean space.

Ten minutes later when Scarlett emerged he found Spann standing at the catalogue studying a card. "You'd better look at this," she said as he came up beside her. She pointed to the card. It read: HOODOO. See VOODOO.

Two minutes later they were back in the stacks searching out a volume called Voodoo and Hoodoo: Their Practice Today. Scatlett only had to scan a few paragraphs before he began to feel like a fool:

Detectives smashed a grave-robbing ring early today as they rounded up the last of five suspects accused of stealing the skulls of long-dead women. The macabre loot was worth an estimated $1000 on the occult market, and was headed for voodoo rites, detectives said. There was no connection made between the grave robbery and a grisly discovery in a Bronx apartment yesterday. Maintenance men who entered an empty apartment found an altar, a human skull, a goat's skull, dried blood and feathers apparently used in voodoo rites. An investigation was ordered.

New York Post, November 18, 1977.

Spann looked up and said: "I think we now know 'what's happenin' with that 'nigger hoodoo man.' "

"Yeah," Scarlett said sheepishly. "And it sure the hell isn't limestone pillars between the Rocky Mountains and the prairies."

9:00 p.m.

That night they sat together at the water's edge, huddled against the chill of the dark, combining the heat of their bodies as the world slowly turned toward winter. Waves lapped against the shore and to the east a Hunter's Moon hung in the sky like a moist overripe piece of fruit, half its surface shining in purple twilight, the other half obscured by clouds. Occasionally a dead leaf would flutter down to the ground.

Later they built a fire in the living room and both took off their clothes, but when they tried to make love DeClercq couldn't get an erection. When they finally gave up he noticed once again that both his hands were shaking. Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath and whispered, "Oh my God."

Genevieve sat up. "Roll over on your stomach," she softly said to him. She began to deep rub his back. As her fingers moved she could sense the stress built up in him. "Relax, just relax," she said.

She moved down to massage his feet, the most important part of the human structure when it comes to relaxation.

"Will you listen to me, Robert, or have you shut me out? I won't let you close up on me, not without a fight. Hey, relax, relax, I can feel that foot tensing up. Can you hear me, Robert? Is anyone home in there?"

"I hear you, Genny," he said, his voice buried in a sigh.

"Good, then let's talk it out." She began to work on his legs. "Robert DeClercq, I've told you before — you hold yourself too tight. You cling to the values of a time that has gone forever. Then you wonder why life never seems to work. The value of a man's word as the currency of friendship: help your neighbor; the compact of love. I think at long last you're beginning to doubt that your values have any place. You're a throwback to another time and you're beginning to feel very old."

"And it's starting to show, isn't it Genny?"

"Starting to…? Oh, you mean our missing erection, and you'll note I said 'our.' So what am I to do? Is this such a major problem that I should run naked from the house to find some young buck stud who'll do sexual service? You're only fifty-five, man. Believe me, I'll squeeze a lot more fun out of you yet."

Her hands massaged his lower back.

"Just because you're under a monumental amount of tension, and just because you're burning the candle at both ends to try and catch this killer — and, love, we did drink wine with dinner — then if suddenly we find on this occasion that a hard-on is not instantly forthcoming, don't sell me short and think that I think that you have a problem. You're the only man I ever met who honestly holds my sexual satisfaction as more important than his own. Cheri, I'm with you to the end."