Headhunter

'Oh God, I sold it! Please, not again!'

He let her go abruptly and she crumpled to the floor. For several long moments she lay there, sobbing to catch her breath. Then she heard a dull click that brought a knot to her stomach, and she jerked her head up sharply to find that he had switched a blade on her. She could see the light from the ceiling fixture dancing along its steel edge.

'Okay, baby.' His eyes were tense, as though his head were hurting. 'It's time for you and me to have a little talk. I really hate to do this.'

8:21 p.m.

'Sparky.'

'Shut up! Go away! Fuckin' leave me alone!'

'Sparky, now really, is that the way you talk to your mother?'

'You're dead and buried! Get lost! You can't be here!'

'Oh, but I am. I'm down here waiting. Come and stroke my hair.'' ''No!'

'Soft, soft, so soft — and how long and black it is. Black, black, black, child. Black as your heart.'

'No! I'm not bad. It's you who torments me and makes me do awful things. Oh God, Mommy, why did you make me look?'

'Because I love you, Sparky. And because you needed the lesson. How can you have pleasure — unless you have pain?'

'But what you did to that man, and to Crystal. It was so mean. So very cruel.'

'Oh, come now. And what about the hippie? What about what you did to that girl in Ecuador?'

'That wasn't me! That was you!'

'Sparky, please. I wasn't even there.'

'Yes you were.'

'No, not really. Only in your head.'

'Well you can just fuck off! I won't do what you say!'

'Yes, you will. You'll do anything I ask.'

'No!'

'Yes.'

'No!'

'Yes.'

'No! No! N… AUUGGHHHH!'

Silence.

'Yes.'

'Oh, please, Mommy, don't do that again! Please! Please! Please!'

'Come, come, Sparky. Dry those tears. Now let's hear your footsteps on the stairs. Come to me, child. Come and stroke my hair.'

'I'm coming. I'm coming, Mommy. Oh God! Why'd you make me look!'

10:19 p.m.

The rain had begun at last.

Since morning dark clouds had hovered all along the western horizon far out at sea, kept at bay by a high pressure ridge along the spine of the mountains. But now the battle had been lost. First a light drizzle, then a shower, then a full downpour had taken over. The nun was soaked to the skin before she was ten feet from the bus stop.

It didn't bother her, this rain — to her it was Heaven's touch.

She came slowly down the slope of the path that wound through the convent gardens, past the reflecting pool now pockmarked by the raindrops, past the alcoves in the Garden of Christ where she often sat in thought. She was deep in thought now. Above her the moon, one day from full, was hidden behind the storm clouds.

The nun had spent the evening with an old woman who was living out her final days in a decaying house in the East End of Vancouver. Her hands gnarled with arthritis and her eyes clouded by cataracts, she could barely take care of herself yet she steadfastly refused to be warehoused in a hospital or a rest home. That tenacity had reminded the nun of when she herself was a child, when this strong woman, her surrogate mother, had helped convince her to take the Holy

Vows. It had hurt her tonight to sit in that room in that house in East Vancouver, and listen to the one whom she loved so now shake her fist at God.

So tonight especially the nun was looking forward to Mass.

It was with utter surprise that she felt the arm circle around her throat. Suddenly her breath was cut off and so was any scream. A hand seized her roughly, throwing her to the ground. The motions were swift; the person was strong; the force applied was brutal. The attacker abruptly let her go, then fell down upon her. Now a gloved hand was instantly clamped over her mouth.

The eyes of the nun opened wide when she heard the material ripping. Above her she saw a flash of blood- red color at the neck of the nylon jacket worn by her violator. The face was hidden behind a black nylon mask, the eyes leered out of two small incisions, and a third hole revealed lips pulled back in a snarl over bared white teeth. Then in utter horror she felt the hardness stab between her legs. The pressure. The entry. And realized. Oh My Lord, this is rape!

In that instant she thought of the Sister who had been attacked in New York City. The other Sisters raped and killed in El Salvador. How in the name of Mercy,she thought, can God let this happen!

Then there was a glint of light on steel.

And the knife slammed through her throat.

The Jack-o'-Lantern

Monday, November 1st, 1:03 a.m.

Robert DeClercq had seen more of death than was healthy for any man — no matter how professionally anesthetized his human sensibilities.

As with all men and women who deal daily with homicide, the Superintendent had been forced to take it in his stride and discover his own way to objectify this most subjective of human fears — the knowledge you're going to die. DeClercq had found it impossible to eschew all emotion. Nor was he able to develop a sense of gallows humor. In the end his mind reached a compromise with itself: reason was left to do its job hindered only by an accumulating overtone of sadness. Sadness about the loss.

For thirty years that technique had worked.

But it didn't work tonight.

It was the total outrage of what DeClercq saw that made the anger well up inside him.

The body of the nun lay on the ground bathed in arc light about thirty feet from the garden path. Around her the men who made murder their business went about their work, the Ident. crew flashing their photographs and sweeping the ground with humming metal detectors, the dog masters leading the German shepherds out from where the nun lay sprawled in the mud. Joseph Avacomovitch was crouched on his heels about a foot and a half from the victim, flanked on his left by Inspector MacDougall and on his right by the Superintendent. It was what had been done to the Sister that enraged Robert DeClercq.

'Same MO,' Avacomovitch said, 'in the pattern of the killing.' He pointed toward the flesh of the neck where the head had been severed. 'You can see the perpendicular stab just below the horizontal cut of decapitation. I'll want the top vertebra, Jack, once the autopsy's over.'

Inspector MacDougall nodded. He too was angry for this was the second body found within North Van