Headhunter (2 page)

It had been like that this morning, but now the sea was calm.

Dan Heller turned around and waved to the man in the wheelhouse. Glen Simpson gave him a thumbs up back.

Now the boat had crossed the harbor mouth and the city lights slipped away. Looming up before him were the sandstone cliffs of Point Grey. Down near the water Heller could see the tower gun emplacements which had waited for the Japanese during the Second World War. High on the cliff were the buildings of the University of British Columbia, the glass walls of the Museum of Anthropology ablaze with the setting sun. Behind Point Grey lay the Fraser River.

Ten minutes later, as the boat turned into the North Arm of the Fraser, Heller saw a heron lift off from Wreck Beach. A log in the water thumped along the hull. Then they were home and the boat bumped the dock.

Glen cut the engines and left the wheelhouse once Heller had secured the lines. They were moored to the Government Wharf of the Provincial Ministry of Lands and Forests. A helicopter was landing on the helipad, its rotors flashing and throwing off rays of blood-red sunlight. Glen joined Heller at the rail.

"Like a cup of coffee?" the wheelman asked.

"Thanks," Heller said, taking the mug. The brandy warmed his stomach.

The two men were silent for several minutes as they watched the hustle and bustle in the estuary. Log booms lined the river and boats were everywhere. Jets came and went from the International Airport on Sea Island, across the water.

"How many boats you think'll be gone by this time next year?"

"Who knows?" Heller replied. "Maybe twenty percent."

"That high? Man, oh man. What a change in the weather. Want another coffee? There's some left in the pot."

"Why not?" Heller said. "But you better hurry. Less than a minute till the sun sinks in the sea."

"I'll make it," Glen said, heading for the wheelhouse.

But he didn't make it—and both men missed the sunset. For as Glen Simpson grabbed the rail that ran up to the pilot's station, he happened to glance at the water and his eyes caught something floating.

"Hey, Dan! Come here! And bring that gaff behind you."

"What's wrong?" Heller asked, joining him at the boat rail.

"You see what I see?" Glen pointed at the water.

And there, half submerged and bumping the hull, was the body of a woman. Naked. Bloated. Just a body ending at the neck. The corpse was missing a head.

11:31 p.m.

Commercial Crime Section (Special "I")

Target: Steve Rackstraw (aka "The Fox")

Tape installed: October 25th. 0900 hours. (Tipple)

Tape removed: October 25th. 1130 hours. (Tipple)

u/m only known as "The Weasel."

Outgoing local call.

Weasel: Hey.

Fox: Hey. Hey.

Weasel: Sorry I forgot to call ya . . . forgot all about it.

Fox: Ya did, huh?

Weasel: Sorry.

Fox: Well ya better grab your ride and get your black ass over here. Now.

Weasel: I can't, not now. Later maybe.

Fox: Is that our lady, Ms. Billie Holiday, I hear behind you, man?

Weasel: Yeh, you know how pussy reacts to that. I need time man, time to get this horse in the stable.

Fox: Yeh?

Weasel: Time to get this here filly broken, ya know, broken, so I don't need no rope, ya know, to keep the bitch from leaving.

Fox: So? So what?

Weasel: Stay cool . . . Hey, just a moment (Shouting: Turn that music down. U/f: Come on. Baby. Make me fe-e-el good. 

Weasel: In a bit, just git your selfishness ready.) Ya still there, man?

Fox: Okay. Okay, a bit more time. But I'm warning you, cousin, get your priorities straight. Important things are beginning to break and you had better be ready.

Weasel: Yeh, yeh, I be ready.

Fox: When the Wolf calls, you had better have your shit together, man. Don't use your dick, use Sister M.

Weasel: What, what the . . . (inaudible) . . . zombi walks.

Fox: By the by, man, where is H.G.? She been missing for a week.

Weasel: Yeh, I know, like that's cold, real cold.

Fox: You better find her, man, before the Wolf finds out, or you'll be cold, stone dead cold if there's a leak.

Weasel: No, no worry. I can do . . . Fox: We will be waitin' on you all. 

Weasel: Bye. 

Fox: Huh. Huh. (end of call)

Tuesday, October 26th, 8:15 a.m.

Winter had arrived early within the four walls of the room. It was that cold. The air had a chill, brittle quality to it and there was a light condensation on the stainless steel surface. The pathologist wore gloves.

Doctor Kahil Singh was an elderly man with close-cropped silver hair. His face was long and angular and he wore rimless glasses. Dr. Singh was one of three pathologists at the Richmond General Hospital. Today he had drawn duty in the hospital morgue.

He had arrived for work at 7:30 this morning to find three accident victims waiting for him in their drawers. Two of the bodies had come from a motor vehicle collision last night on Highway 99, the police report stating that a bottle of Cuervo Tequila was found smashed on the road. The third corpse was a floater fished out of the Fraser River.

Dr. Singh did not like floaters. So he took that one first.

This had been Singh's practice ever since medical school, for as one of his professors way back then had so wisely put it: "If you take the ugly ones first, the worst is over." And this one was certainly ugly. Bloated and immense, the girl's body was partly decomposed and here and there fibrous strands of muscle clung to exposed bone.

Singh assumed at first that the skull had been sliced away when it met with a boat propeller.
A drowning suicide, 
he thought, 
with a subsequent clean cut.
So the doctor peeled back the waterlogged flesh that had closed around the neck, and using a strong magnifying glass examined the top vertebra.

Two minutes later, Singh called the RCMP.

Corporal James Rodale was not pleased with the telephone call. It was not that he was a lazy man neglectful of his duty. It was just that Rodale was one of those men with a weak breakfast stomach. He did not need the scales of nausea tipped by a morning autopsy. Luckily, Singh was a perceptive man. When the doctor noticed the look on the Corporal's face as he entered the autopsy room, he suggested that Rodale wait for exhibits on the far side of the morgue. Rodale was grateful.

"There's a phone on the table," the doctor said. "Use it if you want."

Corporal James Rodale was slim and his movements precise. He wore the brown serge working uniform of the RCMP. His hairline was receding so he always wore his hat, and the regimental badge sat square in the center of his forehead. Rodale had since birth had different colored irises: the left eye was reddish brown, the right one green. At school the other students nicknamed him "Stoplight."

As the autopsy was performed, Rodale sat at the table with his back to Dr. Singh. Though he kept his eyes averted he knew what was going on. The pathologist was recording his findings by means of an overhead microphone. Between the calls that Rodale made on his other investigations, some of the comments got through.

"The body is that of a white female in her early twenties. Needle marks cover the interior aspect of both arms . . .

"There is a 4.5 cm. incision on both the left and right sides of the neck close to vertical plane. There is a horizontal cut from the anterior to posterior aspect of the neck 6 cm. superior to the suprasternal notch . . .

"The heart weighs 280 grams. The coronary arteries show minimal atherosclerotic streaking and are widely patent. On sectioning, the myocardium is of a uniform tan brown color. The aorta is intact . . .

"The labia are bruised. There are a few adhesions of the fallopian tubes ..."

Almost an hour later. Dr. Singh was finished. He wiped his gloves on a clean cloth and walked over to where Rodale waited. As yet the RCMP exhibit jars on the table were empty.

"May I have a print sheet?" the pathologist asked.

Rodale found the requested form and handed it to the doctor. Singh then crossed back to the stainless steel table that held the cut-up remains of the woman. He injected glycerine into all ten wrinkled fingertips and then one by one he rolled each fingertip across a pad of ink. He fingerprinted the form and returned it to Rodale. The officer put it on file.

"Well?" the Corporal asked finally, meeting the doctor's eyes.

"She didn't drown," Singh said. "The lungs are free of water. That means she was already dead before she entered the river. There's a perpendicular slit on both sides of the neck, consistent with a stab wound sideways through the throat. The weapon has a thick blade. A second horizontal cut removed the head from the body."

"A sex attack?" Rodale asked, writing in his notebook.

"I can't tell from the genitals though there's bruising in the area. We'll do a smear for sperm, but she spent at least a week in the water. The only other injury is a slash across both breasts. It cuts right to the sternum that joins the ribs together. It bisects both nipples."

Rodale nodded. "Is the cut that took the head away from a motorboat propeller?"

"No," Singh said, removing a jar from the table. He walked back to the body.

The Corporal averted his eyes as the pathologist picked up a scalpel from a tray of shiny instruments to his left. Rodale felt bile rise to his mouth as Singh returned to the table. Fighting it down, angry with himself, he forced his reluctant eyes to focus on what the doctor held in one blood-streaked hand. The glove contained a single human vertebra.

"See these marks?" Singh said, indicating the upper surface.

Rodale stared at several lines scraped into the bone.

"They move in a zigzag pattern like you get from a sawing cut. There are two of them, a quarter centimeter apart. Perhaps a nick in the blade. I don't know a propeller that moves with that sort of motion."

The pathologist dropped the neck bone into the jar he held and passed it to the Corporal. Rodale sealed the bottle, labeled it, and marked the paper square with time, date, place, and his regimental number.

Singh said, "You'll have the autopsy report before the day is over."

"Thank you, Doctor," Rodale said, picking up his briefcase and exhibit and turning to leave.

"One moment," Singh said, peeling off his gloves. He scrubbed his hands in a nearby sink, then pulled the table drawer open. "Here," he said, removing a packet of Alka-Seltzer and giving it to the Corporal. "For the next time I call you."

Rodale took the lift down one floor. He found a men's washroom and prized the package open. Popping a lozenge in his mouth, he glanced at the cop in the mirror. "Forget next time," he said to the reflected image. "Worry about now." Then he left the building.

12:15 p.m.

To: Richmond Detachment, RCM Police, 6900 Minora Blvd., Richmond, BC.

Attn. Cpl. James G. Rodale.

From: Vancouver Police Dept., 312 Main Street, Vancouver, BC.

Repl. Det. Bernie Zebroff, Drug Squad.

Re: Fingerprint Enquiry/Floater (Fraser River). ID confirmed.

Helen Ann Grabowski aka Patricia Ann Palitti. Outstanding charges: NIP (heroin). Vancouver. DOB June 12, 1961 Topeka, Kansas. Check with FBI. Picture to follow.

Description from booking sheet: white female, height (175 cm) weight (50 kg), slim build, large breasts unusually firm (believe me, that's what it says here), black hair to collar, brown eyes, needle tracks both arms, long scar down center of spine (skin search by nurse).

B. Zebroff (Det.)

3:45 p.m.

"E" Division, RCM Police, Richmond Detachment.

Attn: J. G. Rodale (Cpl.)

From: "N" Division, RCM Police, Ottawa, Ontario.

Re: 4722067.

FBI confirmation print record: Helen Ann Grabowski aka

Patricia Ann Palitti.

New Orleans Police Department.

Fraud with Intent (April 12, 1980) Suspended Sentence.

Known prostitute. Pimp: John Lincoln Hardy aka "The Weasel."

No Record. Pictures to follow.

5:30 p.m.

It hit you as soon as you came through the door. Nothing definite, nothing concrete, just a vague amorphous atmosphere that hung in the air like opium smoke. You knew at once without being told that this place was junk city. That Hink time ruled here, with reality suspended. There were fifty patrons in the Moonlight Arms making the noise of twenty. Most of them just sat around, nursing a beer, hanging out, watching each other furtively through tombstone eyes. The only animation in the pub came from a fat, slovenly woman who leaned on the jukebox and drunkenly pounded its top. Loverboy was playing. You knew also that likely as not, upstairs in the rooms, a dozen hypes were sprawled on beds, nodding in and out of life, outfits clinging to their arms like a dozen glassy leeches.

Then perhaps, having sensed this, you backed out through the door.

The woman slouched against the wall off to the left of the bar. In looks she would have been striking if she had taken care of herself. She was just short of six feet tall with a full and muscular figure. Her features hinted at Ursula Andress in' the movie 
Doctor No
—
same high cheekbones, same honey-colored hair, same almond eyes. But there the likeness ended. For this woman was dressed in a set of filthy clothes. Her fingernails were cheap and fake and painted with chipped red lacquer. It had been a full two weeks since her hair had felt a brush. Her makeup was sloppy. And there were circles under her eyes.

Today, this woman was nervous and jumpy.

Her blue-gray eyes were piercing as they jerked about the room, telling all and sundry what she was looking for.
I need junk,
they pleaded.

"Are you lookin', baby?" It was a whispered voice to her left.

"You got?" she asked, flicking a glance at the man.

The Indian rolled his own eyes toward the pub's back door. He was a short, stout man with thick biceps circled by copper armbands. His arms were naked from the shoulder to the fingertips. The frayed jean jacket was open at his chest exposing a leather thong with a whale's tooth at its end. His soiled jeans were suspended from a thick black belt with a Harley-Davidson buckle. His face was pockmarked and his eyes, which peered out from under the brim of a Stetson, were cold with the meanness of the streets. When he smiled, as he was doing now, his lips opened over stained and rotting teeth.