Headhunter

'So what,' Genevieve said, almost spitting out her words. 'None of those killers ever went up against the RCMP.'

The force of her exclamation stopped him in midsentence.

'Steele. Walsh. McIllree. Blake. Get it through your head. I've read your book. I know where you're coming from and so does most of the world. Men who wore the tunic: it's time to believe the myth. For all your doubts about modern times they still produce some wisdom.' Then she softened. 'Don't you think it's time you took a lesson from Obee Wan Kenobe?'

'And what's that?' DeClercq asked frowning, for he rarely went to the movies.

'Let the Force be with you,' she said — and DeClercq actually laughed.

For even he understood. Such is the grapevine of culture.

She waited until he was asleep, knowing that she had soothed him and made him forget his work for a while, then she curled herself in against the warmth of his body and let the void take her too. She fell asleep smiling.

At 3:00 a.m. Robert DeClercq woke up in a sweat. For the dream had come again.

He lay on his back for several minutes listening to his wife's even breathing. Then he slipped out of bed and out of the room and dressed to go down to the sea.

Next morning Genevieve DeClercq found her husband in the greenhouse with a pistol in his hand. The revolver was almost one hundred years old, a six shot Enfield Caliber.476.

The Superintendent didn't tell his wife about the nightmare.

Voodoo

9:15 p.m.

That evening Katherine Spann arrived home to find a cockroach in her kitchen.

Actually three cockroaches.

After she and Scarlett had left the University library late that afternoon they had driven downtown once again to look for the Indian and John Lincoln Hardy. When they had found neither one by 9:00 p.m. they had agreed to call it a day. With Scarlett at the wheel of the unmarked Ford the two Constables had driven along Fir Street under a half-hidden moon, the dull silver glow of the moonlight shimmering on the pavement, then had crossed 16th to enter Shaughnessy where the car slowly picked its way among the shadows of the trees. A wind was coming up from the direction of the sea so the light-ghosts were moving. Scarlett pulled the cruiser into the curb and Katherine Spann climbed out.

'Pleasant reading,' he said as she closed the door. Then the car drove away.

For a moment Spann stood on the curb listening to the autumn wind moan in the boulevard trees, then removing a ring of keys from her pocket, she unlocked the gate at the servants' entrance and entered the yard of the mansion. Tonight the grounds were aromatic with the smell of decaying autumn leaves, and as she walked toward the groundkeeper's house those same leaves crunched beneath her feet like cellophane candy wrappers. Having closed the gate on squeaking hinges she had locked the city outside.

The groundkeeper's house stood in the shadows this side of Sussex Manor. As she approached it, her hands shoved deep in her pockets, both library books on voodoo clamped firmly under one arm, Spann could hear the chill November wind skating under the eaves of the mansion. The sound was like a thin scream escaping from an aged mouth lost somewhere in the darkness. Mixed with that noise she could also feel the gathering storm as it rattled through the old gutters and downspouts, scraping with it the rusty leaves that clawed at the metal.

Altogether it was a night fit to follow Halloween. The type of autumn night that Katherine Spann enjoyed. Eerie. Weird. Mysterious. A night to curl up at home.

With her windbreaker still zipped up under her chin to keep out the creeping cold, she came in through the back door of the groundkeeper's house and switched on the overhead light. And that was when she saw it, smack- dab in the middle of her kitchen floor.

Like all cockroaches this bug had a flat shiny body, six hairy legs, and a pair of long feelers that waved above a head hidden beneath a plate of armor. The insect was nibbling at a spot of goo caked to the linoleum floor. But the moment the light lit up the room it began to move. And though the roach moved quickly, Katherine Spann was quicker. She caught the ugly insect over near the sink.

Crunchhh! With a heavy stomp the woman squashed both the external skeleton and internal pulp underneath the heel of her boot.

It was as she was cleaning the mess from her foot that she saw the other two insects. There were two more shiny roaches in front of the garbage container. With two successive stomps she managed to get them also. Ughh, she thought.

At first Spann's reaction was to blame the age of the building: When you live in Edwardian premises, kiddo, what do you expect?

Katherine Spann had made up her mind to go out and buy some Raid, in fact she had opened the back door to venture forth with that purpose, when a realization slipped in and tugged at her brain. She stopped in her tracks, turned, and looked about the kitchen. The problem was not, it would appear, the advancing age of the building. The problem was her.

It's strange,Spann thought,the way that blindness can strike you in degree. It can shut out all the lights at once or just put blinders on. For there was not a clean plate or coffee cup in the entire kitchen. The sink was overflowing with dirty dishes, most still caked with the remnants of meals she could not remember eating. How long had it been since she had scrubbed the floor? One month? Two months? No, it was probably half a year. Suddenly she could smell the stink of garbage in the room: why had she not noticed it on entering this evening?

Spann closed the back door and walked from the kitchen into the living room. It was in no better shape.

The closet was just to the right inside the front door of the building. On entering the room she could see that it was empty, just a metal rod hung with skeletal wire hangers. The clothes that once had hung there were scattered about the place. Every stick of furniture was now buried beneath her discarded clothing. There were turtleneck sweaters and parts of her uniforms strewn about the floor. In one corner lay a pile of high-heeled pumps, loafers and running shoes. There were dressing gowns and socks and skirts and underpants here and there. There were blouses and T-shirts and overcoats hither, thither, and yon. One of her bras was hanging limply off a table surface; it reminded her of those Dali clocks, surreal and warped and melting. Not one picture upon the walls hung on the horizontal.

Sure you hate housework, kiddo, but this is ridiculous!

It occurred to her now as she stood in the room letting the mild shock sink in, that perhaps this mess was no more than the external manifestation of just how hard she had been working. While training in Regina on how to go underground, Spann had had an instructor who put the art like this: 'And you women, you gotta pretend that you're nothin' but scummy sluts. No combin' your hair. No washin' your bods. No ironin' your clothes. When your pits are gettin' high as a kite, you're ready for the jungle. That's the way of survival.'

This was sound advice, Spann had learned her first day on the skids. She had followed it and had survived among those who hated narcs. Perhaps she'd followed it too well.

The problem, as she now saw it, was that she had not come all the way back: she had jumped from her undercover posting right to the Headhunter Squad, donning her uniform without also taking the time to clean up and change her act. There had not been time for mundane affairs like housework and doing the laundry, And come on, girl, be honest, that's the way you like it. Housekeeping is the shits!

Tonight it took Katherine Spann almost two hours to get her home in order. Finally at 11:30 p.m. she put on her jacket and opened the door to take out the garbage. All six bags of it.

Outside the wind was howling like a banshee on a drunk. Across the pockmarked face of the moon, now high and full and yellow, rafts of cloud were sweeping by on the river of the storm. Suddenly Spann felt a chill worm its way down her spine, like a freezing finger that slowly touched each vertebra. She turned on instinct and looked back at the windows of Sussex Manor. For lately the eldest of the sisters who lived there — the one without hair or teeth — had taken to sitting up late at night behind the upper left-hand window. Several times Spann had seen her there in ghostly silhouette. Tonight, however, all she could see of the two-storied house were the three high-pointed