Michael Slade - Headhunter

Rusty Lewis blinked. "You're just like one of the guys," he said, then added, "I'm only kidding." "How would you like to find out?" The man blinked again.

"Are you hungry?" Monica asked. "I'm offering to buy you dinner. Ply you with a little wine — not too much — and let you think it over. We'll go somewhere ritzy." "I'm hungry," Lewis said.

"Good, let's go," the woman said, rising from the table. "But understand one thing, my man. I'm going to spend some money on you, so you'd better come across later."

And then she gave him a wink and added: "Ever since I've been dating, that's been a rule of the game."

7:05 p.m.

"Okay, let's make a decision," Bill Tipple said. "Should we call in Special O?"

"My vote's no," Rick Scarlett said. "Me too," Spann agreed. "Why?" the Corporal asked.

"In a nutshell," Scarlett said, "because I want to be promoted. I think we're on to something big, 'cause I think Hardy's the Headhunter. Whoever makes the collar, his career is laughing."

"Or her career," Spann added.

"Look, Bill," Scarletfsaid. "You know as well as I do that this Force has got too many chiefs and not enough Indians. Quite frankly, I have no wish to remain a Constable for the next ten years. I want up the ranks. This case is the best crack I've had at making a quantum leap. I'm sure Rackstraw is going to lead us to Hardy. Why should Special O get the credit for our investigation? I say let's do the round-the-clock ourselves."

"Here, here," Tipple said laughing. "My sentiments exactly. Just testing you out. A future Sergeant should do that, before an issue's settled."

"Yes, sir," Spann said — and then all three of them laughed.

They were sitting in a windowless black van parked on the street half a block away from Rackstraw's recording studio. Although the telephone bugs from the building were channeled into West 73rd Headquarters, the listening devices in the walls had been channeled into this van. In the rear of the truck behind them, several Uher machines stood idle and waiting. As they sipped their lukewarm coffee out of styrofoam cups, one of the tape recorders cut in by voice activation and its reels began to revolve.

They all three picked up headphones and listened to what was being said.

7:31 p.m.

Tonight Genevieve had a faculty dinner, so Robert DeClercq arrived home to an empty, lonely house. The first thing he did was pour himself a straight, stiff drink of Scotch. It was the first hard liquor that he had had for eight and a half years. It seared his throat going down, but it calmed him and that's what he wanted. He took the drink through the greenhouse and walked down to the sea.

Tonight storm clouds were blowing in quickly, surging and exploding like nuclear bombs across the Straits of Georgia. He sat down in the driftwood chair and took another belt of Black Label.

You're all washed up, he thought.

For a while he slouched there wondering how Genevieve would enjoy living with a failure. A man who had no future and who was twenty years older than she was. It hurt him to think of all the effort that she had put into trying to patch this Humpty Dumpty together again, only to find it worthless. And then he thought of Jane.

Oh why did you have to die, Janie? he asked. Then took another drink.

It was more than an hour before DeClercq climbed back up to the house. He walked through the greenhouse — still cluttered with all his dying plants and the multitude of papers and reports on the Headhunter case — then he went into the living room and turned the stereo on. He poured another drink.

With the glass in one hand he searched among their albums until he found the recording of Wilhelm Kempff playing Beethoven's Fifth Piano Concerto. He placed the disc on the turntable and cranked the volume up loud, then he crossed to the center of the room and stood directly between the speakers. As he slammed back another hit of Scotch the first chords of "The Emperor" shook the walls of the room. An involuntary shiver wormed its way down his spine. Then he closed his eyes and let the music take him away.

When the first movement was finished, DeClercq came to himself to find that he had one of his fists clenched and that his lips were repeating again and again: "This is not going to break me!"

For a moment he was embarrassed. Then as the slow second movement began, he unclenched his fist, took the record off, and walked back out to the greenhouse.

Robert DeClercq sat down at his desk and surrounded by darkness beyond the glass went back to work.

10:25 p.m.

Genevieve DeClercq was very concerned and had no idea what to do. She was afraid for her husband, afraid for herself, afraid she was going to lose him. The easiest task in the world for her was to make men fall in love, yet she knew in her heart that Robert was not someone she could replace. Where would she find another man to give her the freedom that he did? Where would she find someone to love her the same way he had — unselfishly, gently, roughly, thinking only of her? Before him her life had been a litany of men who said the same dull things as they maneuvered her into bed, each one eventually smothering her with that pillow called possession.

And besides, Robert had values. These days a man with values was very hard to find. Unless the value was him.

Early that afternoon she had made up her mind to shock her husband. Genevieve could not recall who had first made the statement "a woman's greatest weapon is man's imagination," but she did know that the human body is programed so that at the moment of orgasm each and every problem haunting the mind is transcended. It may not be much but Robert needed every escape he could get. So Genevieve had dyed her hair black and tonight, with a little of that knowledge that separates the English from the French, she was determined that Robert DeClercq would take another woman to bed.

This evening Genevieve planned to set her husband's fantasies free.

It was with that in mind that she slipped the key in the lock and opened the front door. It was still in her mind up to the moment that she found the Superintendent in the greenhouse passed out over his desk. He had knocked over a glass of Scotch and it had smashed all over the floor.

"Oh, Robert," she said in a whisper, and then she saw the tears. They were running down her husband's face, secretly escaping while his body was asleep.

It took Genevieve ten minutes to get Robert into bed. He was too exhausted to wake up, and he was too big a man for her to carry to the bedroom. In the end she went into the guest room and brought out a roll-away cot. This she wheeled into the greenhouse, made up beside the desk, and then pulled her husband across it. Soon he was sound asleep on the other side of the room.

Finished, the woman went out to the kitchen and put on the kettle to boil. Once she had dripped a strong pot of coffee she poured a steaming cup of it and walked back into the greenhouse. There she sat down at the desk.

Genevieve was not a woman to give up without a fight.

At 10:56 she looked at her watch, then she picked up the nearest Headhunter file and flipped open its cover.

And that's where she started to read.

Saturday, November 13th, dawn.

The sun came up next morning at exactly 5:57 a.m.

As it broke the horizon and day burst forth, the greenhouse light was still burning.

9:30 a.m.

Silver. All in silver.

His legs feel heavy, so very heavy as if they are forged from lead, while he tries to move fast, has to move fast to close the gap, to find Jane, to wrench his frightened daughter free from the kidnappers' grasp. It is with mounting anxiety that he looks down to find out what is slowing his progress, with shock that he discovers that both his feet seem to have taken root in the ground. ' 'No!'' DeClercq cries out. Then a panic grips him and he drops the crossbow and he grabs one leg in an attempt to tear it free from the forest floor. His leg refuses to budge. He tries the other one, tugging at it with both hands and using all his strength. It begins to break free. The earth lets go of the roots, lets go of his foot, lets go with a groan as each tiny filament clings for life to the soil of the —