Headhunter

October. Still, it feels mighty cold. Joanna started walking.

The shortest route to her upstairs suite in a house three blocks away was through Tatlow Park. Normally, she would skirt the side of the tennis courts and cut across the grass until she reached Bayswater Street. From there it was but a quick walk up to the corner of Third.

This morning, however, that route was unthinkable.

For one thing, it was still pitch dark, and what with the newspapers screaming about this Headhunter being on the loose… well, she'd just have to resign herself to taking the long way around.

Joanna Portman was less than two blocks from her home when she heard the car, in low gear, coming up behind her.

With it came apprehension.

Easy, girl, she told herself, let's not get too jumpy. (Jumpy! That's a laugh. I'm scared shitless!)

There was not a single light burning in any one of the old houses that lined the tree-shadowed street.

Well, go on and take a look. You can scream and run if you have to.

So she took a glance, a quick one, over her left shoulder. And then, relaxing, she sighed with relief as the car pulled up beside her.

Friday, October 29th, 2:03 a.m.

The sweet pungent smell of marijuana began to fill the car. The windows fogged. As the young man puffed on the joint, drawing rapidly in order to fill his lungs to capacity, the burning tip of the cigarette pulsed orange in the dark. Then he blew out a stream of gray smoke that swirled around Val's face.

'I think I'm off,' he said, his voice vague and far away.

'You know what's wrong with you, Chris? You're never serious.'

'About you,I'm serious,' he said, moving over on the seat and giving her breast a squeeze.

'Get serious,' Val muttered. Then she closed her arms tightly across her ample chest.

The young man laughed and retreated. He took another long drag off the smoldering joint. 'This is good shit, Valerie. You don't know what you're missing.'

An hour ago they had parked the car at the Simon Fraser Lookout, a pulloff on the University cliff road that marked the spot where the explorer had first sighted the Pacific Ocean. A few minutes later the RCMP had checked them and shone a light into the Volkswagen, so Chris had moved on, muttering something about Trudeau having promised to keep the State out of the bedrooms of the Nation.

Now they were parked on an access road near the Museum of Anthropology. Normally they would have been able to see the building in the distance with its great glass walls sixty feet high, a modern showcase for the totem art of the Pacific Coast Indian tribes. They would have looked out through the windshield on several carved poles that stood in front of the Museum. But tonight a fog rose from the ground and they could see nothing at all.

Chris reached for Val's breast again.

'Hey, listen, Chris. Really, we've got to talk. I do not want to fail.'

'Fail?' he said, laughing at her. 'You're not going to fail. This is only October. Exams aren't till December.'

Chris Seaton was a blond-haired youth, eighteen years old. Val Pritchard had met him at a freshman dance four weeks ago. She had liked his mirthful eyes, his strong, square chin, and the fact he was always laughing. Now she was beginning to realize that he laughed a little too much.

'You know your problem?' she said. 'You got laughter anxiety.'

'Great. The chick enrolls in first year psychology, attends four or five classes, and she's got me analyzed. Did it ever occur to you that maybe I'm just horny?'

'You're horny cause you're anxious. You got a buried neurosis.'

'And you? What's your cop-out for fucking like a mink?'

'You pig! I do not fuck like a mink.'

'Oh, yeah. You should hear my tapes. I keep a little recorder hidden in the back seat.'

'You don't!' Val said, though she wouldn't put it past him.

'How much money you got? Buy 'em back right now or I send them to your mother.'

'You asshole,' Val said, and both of them laughed.

It was beginning to get cold in the car so Chris cranked over the engine and kicked in the heater. The defrosters started blowing. The windshield began to clear. And that was how they noticed that it had begun to snow. Large but scattered fluffy flakes were landing on the glass, melting, and slowly slipping down to the hood of the Volkswagen.

'Will you look at that?' Chris said, and he blew out a low whistle.

'I thought it rarely snowed down here on the coast.'

'It doesn't. I've lived here all of my life and… I mean this is mid-October. It's not supposed to snow.'

'Well it is.'

'Yeah, I can see that, silly. Come on. Let's fuck.'

'Not tonight,' Val said. 'Let's go back to the dorms.'

'Jesus, Val. We always fuck when we park.'

'Not tonight, I said.'

'Why?' Chris asked.

'Why? Because I want to get some sleep and it's already two a.m., that's why. Because I want to pass my exams, that's why. Because my mother works her ass to the bone up in Quesnel cooking in a restaurant so I can go to university, that's why. I get a little freedom and what do I do? Smoke my bloody brains out and hump each night away. Well I'm not going to fail. Come on, let's go to the dorms.'

Chris slipped his hand up between Val Pritchard's thighs.

'JESUS!' the girl shouted, and she pushed him away. 'Don't I have any say around here?'

Before the youth could answer, she swung the car door open and jumped out into the night.

'Get your shit together, man. And get off my self-esteem!' Val slammed the door shut and stomped off through the curtain of snow.

'Women,' Chris muttered.

For several seconds he just sat in the driver's seat, rubbing mist from the inside of the windshield, trying to catch a glimpse of the girl through the tumbling snow. She was heading toward the totem poles, of that he was certain. From there Val would pick up one of the paths that led back to the campus. That is unless she lost her way, walked off the cliff, and fell over one hundred feet to Wreck Beach below. So he opened the door, climbed out, and started after her.

Now it was really coming down. He couldn't see her for the wall of flakes that pressed in around him.Snow in October. Man, oh man. What a freak,he thought.

He broke into a light jog so as to catch up to Val.

Cherchez la femme, Chris old boy. Cherchez la big-boobed fe-

He was twenty-five feet from the car when Val screamed. It was not the cry of a woman falling; it was a shriek of raw terror. The scream seemed almost to ricochet among the crystals of snow.

Chris decided to turn and run: Val could take care of herself.

But just then he slipped in the snow, skidded crashing into

Val, and the force of the collision knocked both of them to the ground.

Now the girl threw back her head and let out a second scream. Chris almost pissed himself. He took one look at the lines of horror etched into her face and that was enough. The youth scrambled around, clawed the snow, tried to gain his feet. He looked up, himself terrified — and that was when he saw what was hanging in the air.

There was a light at the foot of the totem pole ten feet off to his left. This light shone up to illuminate two vertical support struts that held an ornate crosspiece suspended above the ground. The totem — a Dogfish Burial Pole — was fifteen feet high. The crosspiece was carved with a figurehead from an Indian myth. Hanging between the struts was the body of a woman. Her hands had been nailed to the crosspiece and her head had been cut off.