Headhunter

ritual.

12:45 a.m.

Every great city, no matter what size, has by definition at least one major park. For there must be some place where its citizens can escape from the hustle. London has Hyde Park. New York has Central Park. Paris has the Bois de Boulogne. Vancouver has Stanley Park.

Scarlett was beginning to open up for the final stretch. He was running the Seawall clockwise around the perimeter of the park, with seven miles behind him and less than a mile to go. Pumping his arms and breathing hard he came around Hallelujah Point, passing the Brockton Point totem poles on the right and closing the distance between him and Dead-man's Island ahead.

The moon was now at Scarlett's back and as he jogged, his moonshadow stretched out longer and longer on the ground in front of him. Suddenly a second shadow split off from it like some weak Gemini twin, this sub-shadow caused by the moon's reflection off the waters of the harbor. To his right the Douglas firs were swaying. Leaves the color of dried blood were slipping their hold on the maple branches and tumbling like falling acrobats to be crushed under his feet. The tide was out and the mud at the base of the Seawall was glistening like a quicksilver flow. Then, without warning, a veil of cloud slipped across the face of the moon. The wind turned cold. All light was gone. And the rain came once more.

By the time Rick Scarlett returned to his apartment in the West End he was soaked to the skin.

Shucking his clothes off on the bathroom floor he turned on the shower. Once under the piping hot spray he let himself relax. He found that the run had cleared his mind and he brought his thoughts once more around to the investigation in progress. Theories came into focus.

The way Scarlett saw things at the moment there were mainly three active and pregnant possibilities.

The first of these was the theory that the Headhunter was a psychopathic killer acting on his own. The strength of this theory was in the fact that it was the simplest explanation. It gained credence from the number of similar cases that had surfaced in so many other cities over recent years, Clifford Olson's rampage being merely a local example. Also, Vancouver is one weird town. Most seaports are: ask any cop or criminal lawyer. Here, however, there were not only the usual drifters and perverts who float in each day with the tide, but this town is also the foremost North American gateway for the import and traffic of heroin. And that means a lot of burnt-out freakos come here to tap the source.

The second theory — more subtle-arose out of Superintendent DeClercq's tape on psychology. For it had struck Scarlett while listening to Dr. Ruryk's examples, that if these crimes arose from psychosis, from some madman with a hole in his brain, then the Headhunter quite literally could be any man in this city. He could be a homicidal rapist, living a life of surface normalcy, going about his legitimate daily business and all the while keeping a watch for his next female victim. In fact if you accept what Ruryk said about the Imposter, the killer might not even know that he himself was the Head-hunter. Taken to its extreme that could even mean that one of the other guys on the Headhunter Squad could be the killer for whom all of them were searching. A madman hunting himself and not even knowing it.

The final theory was the one that he and Kathy now seemed to be onto. This theory was that the Headhunter was actually a cult. A voodoo cult? A cannibal cult? A cult of North American Indians? Perhaps it was an active form of mass psychosis. For Scarlett had read earlier today about a psychiatric concept known as folie a deux. That was where insanity starts with one person and then by close association passes from that individual to another. The 'Reverend' Jim Jones' Guyana cult might be explained in this way. Perhaps there was a voodoo cult active in Vancouver, with Hardy a lone psychopath using it as a blind. Anything was possible. The history of murder showed that.

As Rick Scarlett stepped out of the shower he put these thoughts aside. He wiped off the steamed-up mirror and stood examining his body. This was one of his favorite pastimes. He was proud of the fact that he could not find the slightest sign of fat, just a firm sheath of tight muscles, his shoulders strong, his stomach and pectorals flat, his thighs well-developed. And he was well-hung.

Yep, Scarlett thought smiling. If I were a woman I'd cream myself over a man like that.

He did a few muscle flexes, watching himself in the mirror, and then an image of Kathy without her clothes intruded into his mind.

Damn her,Scarlett thought. I must take back control.

And with that concern in his mind, he dismissed his several theories about the Headhunter investigation.

And that was too bad.

If only he'd taken them further.

He would never know just how close he had come to touching on the truth.

And yet how very far away.

It was as Rick Scarlett walked out of the bathroom that a light came on in the windows of the apartment across the street. His heart jumped. Swiftly he killed his own lights. Then he went into the bedroom to retrieve his binoculars.

A few years ago when Scarlett had first rented this apartment he had a view of Stanley Park. But that view had not lasted long. Within the year a developer had built on the land next door and this new structure contained residences stacked up as tall as his own building. Scarlett had been thoroughly pissed off until Miss Torso moved in.

Scarlett had never met her. But he had called her Miss Torso since last seeing Jimmy Stewart in Hitchcock's movie Rear Window. Miss Torso was a dancer who practiced regularly late at night. She was blond. She was young. She had a stunning figure. And lately she had taken to dancing in the nude.

It had not always been that way. When she first moved in, the lady used to pirouette about in a rainbow of different-colored Danskins. During that first summer she had switched to a bikini. And then one very hot August night she had shed that too. The next day Scarlett had gone out and bought his binoculars.

Of late it had occurred to him that perhaps Miss Torso knew that he was watching. Perhaps she's a show-off, he thought. Aren't we all. Scarlett was not a modest individual within his own home: and if he could see her, surely she could see him. Why else would she dance naked within the full view of all those other apartments? Mind you, it was true that she danced very late at night.

Scarlett wanted to wander over and ask her the reason why. But that might kill the golden goose and make her pull the curtains.

So, as always, tonight he sat down behind his darkened window and peered across the road. He adjusted the binoculars to get the proper focus. Then he held them in his left hand, keeping his other hand free.

If you want to show it, woman, he thought, I'll oblige you and look.

Miss Torso appeared on stage.

Looking for Jack the Lad

12:55 a.m.

Monica Macdonald had seen more than enough.

For the past two days she and Rusty Lewis had been moving from one strip club to another across the map of the city. She found the trip a bore. There had once been a time when Macdonald had seriously considered a career in art, and to that end she had studied Fine Arts in college. Even today she was still proficient at the charcoal sketching of nudes. But that was the human body in its classic form. This was something different.

It was almost 1:00 a.m. but Phantoms was going strong.

Macdonald and Lewis were both dressed in civilian clothes and they were sitting at a small table ten feet from the raised dance floor. Both were sipping beers. The woman up on the stage in front of them was not wearing civilian clothes. She was maybe eighteen years of age and had long black hair. All she had on were satin-covered,