Headhunter

the record off, and walked back out to the greenhouse.

Robert DeClercq sat down at his desk and surrounded by darkness beyond the glass went back to work.

10:25 p.m.

Genevieve DeClercq was very concerned and had no idea what to do. She was afraid for her husband, afraid for herself, afraid she was going to lose him. The easiest task in the world for her was to make men fall in love, yet she knew in her heart that Robert was not someone she could replace. Where would she find another man to give her the freedom that he did? Where would she find someone to love her the same way he had — unselfishly, gently, roughly, thinking only of her? Before him her life had been a litany of men who said the same dull things as they maneuvered her into bed, each one eventually smothering her with that pillow called possession.

And besides, Robert had values. These days a man with values was very hard to find. Unless the value was him.

Early that afternoon she had made up her mind to shock her husband. Genevieve could not recall who had first made the statement 'a woman's greatest weapon is man's imagination,' but she did know that the human body is programed so that at the moment of orgasm each and every problem haunting the mind is transcended. It may not be much but Robert needed every escape he could get. So Genevieve had dyed her hair black and tonight, with a little of that knowledge that separates the English from the French, she was determined that Robert DeClercq would take another woman to bed.

This evening Genevieve planned to set her husband's fantasies free.

It was with that in mind that she slipped the key in the lock and opened the front door. It was still in her mind up to the moment that she found the Superintendent in the greenhouse passed out over his desk. He had knocked over a glass of Scotch and it had smashed all over the floor.

'Oh, Robert,' she said in a whisper, and then she saw the tears. They were running down her husband's face, secretly escaping while his body was asleep.

It took Genevieve ten minutes to get Robert into bed. He was too exhausted to wake up, and he was too big a man for her to carry to the bedroom. In the end she went into the guest room and brought out a roll-away cot. This she wheeled into the greenhouse, made up beside the desk, and then pulled her husband across it. Soon he was sound asleep on the other side of the room.

Finished, the woman went out to the kitchen and put on the kettle to boil. Once she had dripped a strong pot of coffee she poured a steaming cup of it and walked back into the greenhouse. There she sat down at the desk.

Genevieve was not a woman to give up without a fight.

At 10:56 she looked at her watch, then she picked up the nearest Headhunter file and flipped open its cover.

And that's where she started to read.

Saturday, November 13th, dawn.

The sun came up next morning at exactly 5:57 a.m.

As it broke the horizon and day burst forth, the greenhouse light was still burning.

Red Serge

9:30 a.m.

Silver. All in silver.

His legs feel heavy, so very heavy as if they are forged from lead, while he tries to move fast, has to move fast to close the gap, to find Jane, to wrench his frightened daughter free from the kidnappers' grasp. It is with mounting anxiety that he looks down to find out what is slowing his progress, with shock that he discovers that both his feet seem to have taken root in the ground. ' 'No!'' DeClercq cries out. Then a panic grips him and he drops the crossbow and he grabs one leg in an attempt to tear it free from the forest floor. His leg refuses to budge. He tries the other one, tugging at it with both hands and using all his strength. It begins to break free. The earth lets go of the roots, lets go of his foot, lets go with a groan as each tiny filament clings for life to the soil of the —

'Daddyyyy!' A stark shrill scream shatters the autumn air.

'Let go of me!' DeClercq cries out to the silver trees around him.

Frantic now he tries to run, tries to free his other leg, tries to reach the silver cabin from which that scream is coming. His heart is now straining in his chest and pains from overexertion are running up and down his left arm. He can feel the tension in his temples and in the cords of his neck.

'Daddyyyy!' This time it's longer, the scream suspended in the air.

'Don't leave me, Princess,' DeClercq cries out. 'I'm coming! For God's sake I'm coming!'

Then his legs are free and he is moving forward, dragging half the forest floor with him, closing the gap, the door before him, the clods of earth breaking away from his feet as the roots rustle like snakes in the autumn leaves around him, past the body with the crossbow bolt jutting out of its eye, up the steps and across the porch and swinging the door open wide, the knife now piercing his stomach, the blood now flowing down his abdomen and legs, his hands now closing tightly around the throat of this man in his path as the eyes, the tongue, the killing fades and the body drops to the floor.

'I'm over here, Daddy,' Janie cries. 'I'm hiding in the corner.''

So he whirls about in the silver room, searching the monochromatic space, desperately trying to find her.

'Princess! Janie! Where are you?' he cries, and at that very moment he sees her eyes in shadow in the corner.

'Oh thank God!' he says aloud, running to her and taking her small body in his arms, a body that now shrinks, getting thinner and thinner until it becomes a pole.

In utter horror DeClercq steps back and looks at those innocent eyes. For Janie's head is stuck on the end of a stake.

'I knew you'd come, Daddy,' she says, and then she begins to cry.

He awoke in a sweat to find himself on a roll-away cot in the greenhouse. For a moment he was disoriented, then he sat up with a start. He looked at his watch and saw that it was 9:30 in the morning.

'Genevieve,' he said aloud as he climbed out of bed.

He searched the entire house for his wife.

But Genevieve was gone.

9:45 a.m.

The value of fiber forensics stems from a theory that is known as Locard's Exchange Principle. Postulated by a French criminologist half a century ago, this theory states that a person passing through a room will unknowingly deposit something there and take something away. British researchers have subsequently found that most of the hundreds of loose fibers on a person's clothing are shed and replaced every four hours.

Until recently chemists could look at a fiber with seven different types of microscope and bombard it with neutrons, X-rays and fluorescent light. They could measure its density, weight, melting point, solubility and patterns of refracting light. When they finished they could tell whether or not it was permanent-press and the shape of its molecules — but they could not state that the fiber came positively from a particular piece of material.

Avacomovitch had changed that.

For his theory was based on identifying a fiber according to how it ages. Under the scientist's technique, a laser light scattering was used to study the molecular changes in a fiber as it becomes worn. Though two men may buy a similar shirt made from identical fabric, after those shirts are worn a while they will be very different. Body oils, perspiration salts, exposure to sunlight, whether laundered in hot or cold water: all