Headhunter

'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.'

Her hands moved up to his shoulders.

She then said: 'Tell me what's bothering you.'

'He's laughing at me, Genny — and perhaps he has reason to be.'

'Robert, it's common knowledge that the insane laugh without reason. This is so unlike you. I thought you were the one who believed that order and precision could always meet the match of chaos.'

'Maybe once, but not now.'

'Believe me, Robert, if you still weren't Number One they'd never have brought you back. In fact, what with your reading in tactics you're more equipped for this investigation than you were in the past. Just trust your knowledge and use it. Put it into practice and I'll bet it sees you through.'

From out of nowhere DeClercq said: 'Genny, I'm having nightmares. Actually one nightmare, over and over again.'

'So tell me,' she said.

The dream is all in silver.

He can see a silver room beyond the door, a room of silver walls with silver windows and a mist of silver vapor rising up from the floor. Even the sound of the sobbing has a metallic tone about it. And the silver blade of the silver knife is silver-cold in his stomach.

A tree beyond the window is stripped and bare of leaves.

Now his hands are closing about a neck and his fingers are pushing in, crushing the muscles and the veins and the pipes that feed life to this man's brain. The man's silver eyes seem to bulge out of their sockets. Suddenly with a pop they fall out on the floor. But it doesn't stop him squeezing. Now the tongue of the man is slithering out of his silver mouth like an eel dropping down from a hole in a rock five feet up from the ocean floor.

Silver, all is silver. Silver sobbing electric in the air.

Then abruptly there is color in this monochromatic dream, for the face of the man whom he holds in his hands has now turned livid blue. He opens his grip to let the dead man drop to the floor.

Janie, he whispers. Janie. For it is her sobbing in this room.

Turning toward the sound he sees a silver figure shrouded in mist lying on a bed. He crosses the floor; he opens his arms; he holds her against his chest. Then he screams in anguish at the source of the sobbing sound. For the surface of the cut that has taken her head is fiat and silver-smooth. The sobs are coming from an open tube sticking out of her throat.

Screaming, he tears the room apart.

But he doesn't find her head.

'Robert,' Genevieve asked, 'what does the dream mean to you?''

He thought for a moment, then said: 'That I'll never find those heads.'

'You're wrong. It means that you are afraid that you'll never find those heads. Not that you'll never find them. You see the difference, don't you?'

DeClercq forced a smile. 'Genny, they never caught Jack the Ripper. Nor Zodiac in San Francisco. Nor the Axe Man of New Orleans. The Thames Nude Killer was never found. Nor the murderer of the Black Dahlia. Nor the…'