Ripper Page 2

  A shadow moved behind the driver’s rain-snaked window.

  Another moved in back of the 300ZX.

  The driver’s window lowered automatically, showing the thousand-dollar bill in his hand.

  Vamping, the twins climbed in and the car sped away.

  The hooker up the street thought, Some girls have all the luck.

  TATTOO

  North Vancouver

  5:14 A.M.

  The last thing Nick Craven thought he’d ever be was a cop. But maybe it was destined from the day he was born.

  His mother had gone into labor on a winter night when all the snow in Canada was dumped on Medicine Hat. The pregnancy had been difficult—the doctor said it was twins—so his mom was staying with her sister-in-law, a midwife, for support. His father, a Mountie in Lethbridge, joined her on his days off.

  The winter of 1956 was one of Alberta’s worst. Storm after storm had followed the Rockies down from the Arctic, lashing the prairies all the way to Kansas south of the line. The night Nick was born, the house was besieged by a blizzard, choking the streets, blocking the driveway, blinding both doors. Nick began life prematurely on a cold bathroom floor.

  Present for his first breath were his mom, his dad, and his aunt. No twin joined him, according to the women. That night, alone with Johnnie Walker, his father shot himself. BANG! A bullet in the brain from his service revolver. Not an auspicious beginning for a kid’s life quest.

  Nick was raised in Port Coquitlam near Colony Farm, Vancouver’s warehouse for the criminally insane. His mother worked in the laundry of Riverview up the hill, known as Essondale in the Bedlam days of lobotomy. To make ends meet she sewed consignment dresses at home, and was always warning Nick about some “nut on the run.” At night he’d hear the escapee in the bushes outside his room.

  The year Nick got his driver’s license, his mom was badly injured, hospitalized comatose from a head-on collision. Until then he had walked the straight and narrow, avoiding teenage pitfalls for her sake. But alone in the house and on his own, with a drug-trafficker next door, Nick’s repressed guilt from his father’s death blew like a volcano.

  From pot, to booze, to LSD, the next year was a blur. With money earned from selling lids of Maui Wowee, Nick purchased his undoing: a Harley-Davidson Low Rider, 1200 cc. Cruising a personal highway to hell, he soon fell afoul of the cops. Nothing serious, but it was a start.

  The tattoo on Nick’s biceps dated from his school daze. Being stoned and drunk he remembered little of the procedure, except the artist was topless with piercings through her nipples. The tattoo depicted an hourglass almost out of sand, with the words here comes above and the night below. Foolish now, it must have seemed deep at the time.

  Two months before graduation, the Harley got him expelled. Mr. Clayton, the vice principal, looked like Spiro Agnew but was less liberal in thought. Clayton viewed Nick as a long-haired punk to be knocked down a notch. Nick viewed Clayton as a blockhead and fascist old fart. Both itched like dogs with fleas to take the other on. The girls’ track team placed them in the ring.

  It was a warm April day and the team was running the track. Clayton stood outside the school enjoying a little voyeuristic T&A. As he ogled the bouncing boobs and creamy sprinting thighs, the roar of the motorcycle deafened the field. Like an Indy pace car, Nick fell in behind the team. “Get off the track, bum!” Clayton bellowed.

  Reining the hog in a wheelie, Nick gunned by his nemesis. He flipped the bird at Clayton as the v.p. ate his dust, then shot up the loading ramp used to stock the woodwork room. Thundering down the main hall of the industrial wing, the Harley exited airborne out the opposite door. Evel Knievel might have approved … but Clayton gave him the boot.

  As luck would have it, the principal was a levelheaded woman, so she softened the expulsion with a fighting chance. Craven was suspended from classes for the rest of the year, but he could write the government exams at the end. Pass them through independent study and he would graduate.

  The thought of Clayton’s balls for bookends made Nick hit the books. By burning the midnight oil he scored 84 percent.

  Graduation day saw Nick absent from school. Absent until his name was called over the PA. “Nicholas Craven,” the voice repeated, pausing for ten seconds, then about to move on when the Harley lacked in and Nick wheeled into the hall. Hair in a ponytail and dressed in bike leathers, he climbed to the stage, boot chains ajangle, to accept his certificate from Clayton’s shaking hand. As you’d expect, the school gave him a standing ovation.

  Ironically, it was the Harley that saved Nick’s soul.

  That summer of graduation, his favorite thrill was racing the CPR through Maple Ridge, hell-bent to beat the train to Fool’s Crossing. Armed with warning lights but no barrier, the crossing had claimed lives over the years. Hair streaming behind him free from any helmet, pavement zipping beneath him in a tarmac-blur, muffler rapping like a full-throated werewolf’s growl, Nick would veer the bike uphill and descend toward the tracks. Crosscutting the nose of the train, he’d split-second cheat death. Nothing like it to jolt an adrenaline high.

  Then came the tyke.

  The tyke was on a trike totally out of control. She had escaped from a hillside yard where her mother stood screaming at the gate. The sidewalk slope was too steep for the muscles of her legs, gravity spinning the pedals so fast her feet were thrown off. The tricycle had jumped the curb from sidewalk to road, hurling the child toward the flashing railway lights below.

  As Craven swerved up the loop above Fool’s Crossing, he spied the train and trike on a collision course. Gearing down, he wrenched the fuel handle full-throttle, and like a bat out of hell plunged down the grade. The Harley shot by traffic stopped at the crossing as an Idaho tourist snapped a photograph. Five feet from the train tracks, Craven passed the trike, which was crushed a moment later beneath the engine’s wheels. It was no big thing, really; he was going that way; but as the hog zoomed by Nick’s arm hooked the child, tearing her from the seat and leaving one shoe behind. Once the train passed, tyke on his hip, he rode back up the hill as the tourist snapped a triumphant shot.

  “I’m proud of you,” his mom said, when she was released from the hospital. At home she pinned the newspaper clipping by her bed: the two photos side by side, one of the rescue, the other its aftermath. Encircling the kid like a boa was Nick’s tattooed arm, bare to where his jean jacket frayed at the shoulder. Nick’s hair was tangled like the roots of a tree, and bugs were squashed on his stubbled cheeks and jaw. The caption under the photos read Here comes the fright. Nick wondered if that referred to the incident or him?

  A week later his mom left a pamphlet in his room. With it was an RCMP recruitment form, and a note: I can get you in.

  What the hell, Nick thought. Fame is better than notoriety.

  Each RCMP detachment provides first-response policing, for they are the Force’s thin red line against crime. Initially, murder is handled by the General Investigation Section of a detachment, behind which is the most colorful and sophisticated police force in the world.

  The Canadian Police Information Centre—CPIC (“see-pick”) to cops—is a computer database at RCMP Headquarters in Ottawa. Operational since 1972, it provides tactical information on crimes and criminals to 4,000 electronic terminals scattered coast to coast. Several hundred detachments tap the CPIC system, one of which includes North Van GIS. The computer responds within a matter of seconds.

  The Ottawa database subdivides into nine categories: Vehicle, Persons, Property, Marine, Criminal Record Synopsis, Dental Characteristics, Criminal Records, Major Crimes, and Inmate File. “Persons” stores information on those wanted by the police, parolees, and missing persons. Recently a “Body” file was created. In it, scars, marks, clothing, dental and disaster records are cross-referenced. It also lists body parts, amnesia and comatose victims.

  Craven sat alone in the GIS office on the second floor of North Van Detachment, punching CPIC codes into the compute
r. Beyond the tall, thin windows to the west, the lights of “Grade’s necklace” lined Lions Gate Bridge. The clock above the bulletin board tossed seconds across the room, time depleting the steam that rose from his coffee cup.

  The “skinner file”—subcategory: known sex offenders— didn’t score a hit when he queried it about the faceless victim’s wounds. The killers were either new to their trade or had switched MO.

  Using the “body marks” command, Nick punched in a description of the woman’s tattoo. CPIC’s response was this:

  QUERY POSSIBLE HITS FOR TATTOO (LEFT SHOULDER) 611892

  >>>QUERY REMARKS: CRAVEN, GIS N.V.

  ** MARK ** TATTOO REFNO: 22478 LEFT SHOULDER ROSE BLEEDING MIRROR OF VENUS

  CIRCLE WITH CROSS BELOW AND FIST WITHIN

  MISSING PERSON BRIGID MARSH AMERICAN

  FEMINIST CASE: 5565624

  ADDED BY VANCOUVER PD MC ON 92-12-1

  CONFIRM ALL HITS WITH ORIGINATING AGENCIES

  * * *

  “Major Crimes. Howlett.”

  “Craven. RCMP.”

  “Hold a moment, will ya? I’m the sole catcher.” The receiver at the other end was muffled by a hand. Nick heard faint voices in the VPD bull pen. Soon Howlett came back on the line. “Sorry. A madhouse. We got a prickly one.”

  “Brigid Marsh?”

  “You got it.”

  “That’s why I’m calling.”

  “Have somethin’ for me?”

  “We have her.”

  “Where’d she turn up? Some lesbo tryst?”

  “No, hanging under Lynn Canyon Bridge.”

  “Christ,” Howlett said. A Robert Mitchum voice. “Better you than us when the shit hits the fan. Fems love nothing more than a cause célèbre.”

  “Give me the rundown.”

  “Marsh’s a New Yorker, in town to give a speech. She’s a literary light in wimmins’ lib. Book called Mannequin’s her claim to fame, and she’s made a living off the backlash ever since. When she failed to show at Monday’s symposium, the conference organizers called us in. Marsh was last seen Sunday night when she left her hotel Where she went, no one knows.

  “Since then we’ve had every Betty, Kate, and Gloria nosin’ around. I do believe fems can smell printers’ ink a mile away. We get a dozen heartbreakers out of skid row a day—battered women, raped women, who desperately need support. But unless it’s some judge talkin’ dirty or the latest silver spoon trying to dip his wick, the uptown fems can’t be bothered. Has it got money and clothes? That’s their creed.”

  “I detect a hint of cynicism,” Nick said.

  “I’m too old a leopard to change his spots. Hypocrite’s a hypocrite, no matter how politically correct. Fems advance the right of women to go barebreasted in public. Why can they flash their tits and not be judged as harassing us, but if we pin up a picture of some broad in skimpy clothes we’re harassing them?”

  “You’re that against naked breasts?”

  “Fanatics, Craven, are what pick my ass. Self-righteous, dogmatic, witch-huntin’ harpies. All of whom you’re welcome to when I send over the file.”

  The body being found in North Vancouver made it Craven’s case. But Marsh being American changed the usual rules.

  Nick’s second call was to Special X.

  Vancouver

  5:22 A.M.

  At first, Zoe thought she was blind, then she smelled the lacquer. A sickening stench of death and decoupage. Coming from the sticky mask covering her face. The mask was smothering.

  As the dulling effect of the chloroform wore off, she heard her sister shrieking and the screeching of a bird. Fwoom … fwoom … fwoom … Surrounded by flapping wings. Naked, with her wrists and ankles tied spread-eagled to rings.

  An unseen hand was painting an X on her chest.

  SCARECROW

  Rosetown, Saskatchewan

  8:45 A.M.

  This morning God’s country was 360 degrees of white infinity. The stubbled, harvested fields had grown a crop of snow. Here and there a haystack humped surrounded by horses or cows, their breath condensing in the chilly air. The prairies should be seen anytime but now, preferably in late August when golden fields of wheat bend under the richness of their grain. Waxing and waning like ripples across a smooth burnished sea, the undulating stalks change shade with each puff of wind. The guillotine falls in autumn, beheading every crop, flattening an already flat countryside. The monochrome of winter adds numb monotony, and anything built off the ground seems monumentally tall. The prairies have no obstacles and few landmarks, so the slightest deviation from horizontal whiteness invites inspection. The eye lingers on a barn …

  … a man …

  … a scarecrow in a field.

  God is a concept by which we measure pain. Or so said John Lennon.

  Robert DeClercq had not been to church since Genevieve’s murder, and even then it was a concession to his mother-in-law. The time before that was the joint funeral of his first wife Kate and their daughter Jane, both killed by terrorists during Quebec’s October Crisis of 1970. Pain was the reality by which he measured God, and god—found wanting—rated a small g.

  Hell, however, deserved a capital H. Hell was anarchy in the streets and a crack house on every corner. Hell was child abuse and the psychos it spawned: stalkers, sadists, thrill killers, rapists, and nihilist youth gangs. Hell was today’s Biblical chaos of urban monsters, social torture, and Satanic demons. Containing Hell was DeClercq’s job.

  The Chief Superintendent was in his late fifties: a wiry man, tall and lean, with dark wavy hair graying at the temples, dark thoughtful eyes that had seen it all, an aquiline nose and a finely chiseled jaw. His features hinted at arrogance, belying who he was, but honest humility came through in his voice. In many ways he was a throwback to a bygone age, in that his word was his bond and he kept his friendship in constant repair.

  The latter obligation had brought him here.

  DeClercq was the commander of Special X, the elite Special External Section of the Mounted Police. Every crime in Canada with a foreign link was referred to his unit staffed by those who’d once spied for the now-defunct Security Service. Though Special X was based at HQ in Vancouver, DeClercq had spent the past week at Regina’s “Depot” Division overseeing recruitment from the Training Academy. The Chief took care in selecting, then stood behind his cops. This commitment had earned him respect in the ranks. It also meant—before heading home—he had a stop to make.

  The CD playing in the car as he turned off the icy rural road was Mahalia Jackson, Gospels, Spirituals, and Hymns. DeClercq had borrowed the Ford from a cop in Regina, driving west on Highway 1 then north from Swift Current. He’d found the disc in the glove compartment while searching for a map, playing it several times until he reached the farm. Now as he passed the man beside the scarecrow in the field, approaching the pioneer farmhouse at the end of the slippery drive, Jackson’s heaven-sent voice wailed “Elijah Rock”:

  “Satan is a liar and conjuror, too,

  If you don’t mind out, he’ll conjure you.”

  * * *

  The scarecrow was tattered and falling apart. The stovepipe crowning its straw-filled head had sprung like the top hat in Red Skelton’s act. One triangular eye was missing from its hopsack face, creating the impression of a lopsided wink. All but the lowest coat button had popped, baring its rake-handle spine and hay-bale chest. The bird perched on one shoulder obviously thought it a joke.

  The man beside the scarecrow was tattered, too. Five and a half years ago he’d been shot in the head, and his subsequent convalescence had been a bumpy road. The one-inch-square piece of bone cut from his brow had left a shallow indent where surgeons had patched his brain. The scars on his forehead from the operation matched the old knife scar along his jaw. Rugged and sharp-featured, his face was weathered and gaunt, the years of pain subtracting from his former good looks. His natural steel-gray hair was the color of his eyes, the metallic tint responsible for his given name. Six-f
oot-two and 190 pounds, his physique was muscled from working the farm. When the car parked and DeClercq got out, he lowered the binoculars and turned from the barn.

  The owls slept on.

  Watching his former boss trudge through the snow, a light breeze ruffling the fur of DeClercq’s beaver hat, the Chief’s parka navy blue against the horizon’s enamel blue sky, flashes from the past sparked through Zinc Chandler’s mind …

  … when a cloud masks the face of the moon, Zinc crosses the bridge.

  The windows of the Teahouse are lattice screens, intricately patterned with chrysanthemums. Back to the door, Lotus Kwan watches ripples play across the lake. Gun in one hand, knife in the other, Zinc is a shadow in the moon gate.

  Lotus turns.

  “Where’s Evan?” Zinc asks, scanning the pavilion.

  “Behind you,” Lotus says, East confronting West.

  The look that passes between them speaks a thousand words.

  To imperial China, the Middle Kingdom was the center of the world. Everyone not Chinese was a barbarian. The “Red Beards “—Englishmen—were hated most of all. Lotus is heir to that reality.

  To imperial Britain, everyman’s land was theirs to seize. Colonists had a right to go where they had no right to be. God, Queen, Country, and the White Man’s Burden sent armies and corporations forth to “civilize” the world. Zinc is heir to that reality.

  “White monkey,” Lotus says, pulling a gun.

  Zinc hears running behind him, coming across the bridge.

  Shots ring out.

  The pain explodes with such force that for an instant he believes his head has disintegrated. The cause isn’t external, so there is no escape. The pain is internal, blasting his puddinglike brain. Tissue tears, blood flows, and everything goes black …