Ripper

RIPPER

Michael Slade
A SIGNET BOOK

SIGNET

Published by the Penguin Group

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First published by Signet, an imprint of Dutton Signet, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc.

First Printing, June, 1994 10 987654321

Copyright © Black River Inc., 1994 All rights reserved

REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REG1STRADA

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for
Ted and Roger

Prologue
Demoniacs

And thorns shall come up in [Babylon's] palaces, nettles and brambles in the fortresses thereof; and it shall be a habitation of dragons and a court for owls.

—
Isaiah 34:13

Witches' Sabbath

Deadman's Island, British Columbia
     Samhain, October 31, 1925.

Wherever else hell may be, it's in the human mind.

Their bodies naked and their faces hidden by masks, some fornicating right and left of the ballroom floor, others whirling about the room to the beat of pagan drums, the Demoniacs prepared for the Ritual. His back to the receiving hall of Castle Crag, camera mounted on his shoulder point-of-view, the German Expressionist filmed the drunken orgy in black and white. As he moved toward the Satanic idol at the far end, the windows beyond lightning-lit by the savage Pacific storm, he dropped to his knees, then to the floor, tilting the lens at bizarre angles to catch the morbid shadows thrown by the electric flashes. Around him thighs and genitals pumped to the pounding sexual beat, while above, gripped by throes of Dionysian ecstasy, the demons with half-gnawed faces paid homage to their Lord.

Now one by one the revelers approached the Black Goat, the camera beside them tracking toward the head of the line, its focus on the idol and the witch who faced the crowd. The witch was draped in robes like those of the Ku Klux Klan, except his were dark and the hood was marked with a pentagram. The staff in his hand was phallus-shaped while the cross on his chest hung upside down.

The graven image of Satan was twelve feet tall. Clawlike, its cloven hooves were screwed to the floor. Rump to the room, its hindquarters were those of a goat, hairy with a puckered anus and bestial balls. Ever-erect, the wooden penis was pointed like a sword. Above the stubby tail and scale-covered spine, leather wings soared toward the ballroom's galleries, the roof supported by columns that arched to form a vault, the pillars painted with mythic Indian totem art. A vivid flash of lightning lit the Devil's face, craned over one shoulder to survey the crowd. Crowned by goat's horns, the smirking mouth curled in a rapist's leer, the sunken eyes glaring opaquely like those on a fishmonger's slab.

The camera closed in on the Devil's anus. Single file, each reveler approached in turn, raising his or her mask to nuzzle reverential lips between the wooden buttocks, bestowing the posterior kiss, the
osculum obscenum.
As each stepped back, the cowled witch pointed to an open trapdoor in the floor behind Satan's hooves. Down steps, feet, body, and head disappeared.

After the last kiss was bestowed, the witch trailed the disciples. Behind him, the cameraman descended the stairs, his film ink black until torchlit stalactites came into view. The steps were chipped from the wall of a massive limestone cave burrowed in the cliff beneath Castle Crag. Shadows licked up the stairs like hellfire from the pit, half the floor of the cavern below a black lagoon, beyond which a blowhole led to lightning-lit sand. A crack of thunder drowned the dull roar of pounding waves, filling the hollow already filled with the whine of whistling wind. Down, down, down, the nude procession snaked, past stalactites and stalagmites skull-joined like Siamese twins, into the bowels of the grotto where the Whalers' Washing House lurked.

The shrine huddled near the shore of the onyx lagoon, rotting from the damp, dripping clamminess of the crypt. Twenty human-shaped idols with large cedar heads—some frowning, some laughing, some openmouthed in song—and two wooden whales formed the temple's core. These were flanked left and right by forty human skulls, a dozen more mounted on sticks standing guard. A black trunk sat behind the mounted skulls, faced by seven mummified owls perched on the carvings. Beside the trunk was an iron-barred cage, around which, faces gnawed and bodies goosefleshed, the stoned masquers gathered in the shrine. Something dark and furtive moved within the cage.

The hooded witch, like cowled Death, stepped into the shrine. His footfalls echoed through the dank catacombs. Black robes fluttering in the chill sea wind, he shed the garment to expose ghostly flesh beneath, pale fat sagging his breasts and drooping his belly. His face was masked by the beak and feathers of an owl. His penis—like the Goat upstairs—poked from his flabby groin.

The Nootka idols creaked like gibbets in the wind as the he-witch unlocked the cage. Snorting coke or squirting wine from a communal goatskin, the Demoniacs watched him drag the prisoner out. She, too, was as naked as the day she was born, for in the occult, entrance to and exit from the Astral Plane are the same door.

Kicking and struggling, the woman was pulled toward the open trunk, which contained a surgeon's knife and five bloodstained ties. The blood encrusted on the ties was thirty-seven years old. Grasping the knife and closing the lid, the fat man bent the woman facedown over the trunk, holding her while others lashed her arms and legs to rings screwed into the rock. The rings tipped the four lower points of a blood-trough pentagram.

The cameraman was on his back shooting upside down. Rolling over to gain his knees, he zoomed in on the mouth, catching the woman's silent scream for posterity. Pale light jumped across her contorting face, while the owl-man carved a flesh pentagram into her back.

Withered and wrinkled, with genitals shaved, a she-witch lit black candles off the nearest torch, dripping human tallow on the shrieking woman's rump, using the wax to stick the tapers to the buttocks of the human altar.

Knife in hand, the owl-man grabbed the woman by the hair.

The crowd fell silent as he yanked back her head.

The camera focused on her taut exposed throat, catching a blur of steel before the lens was sprayed with blood.

The Ritual had begun.

Part I
Lice

When the moon is on the wave, And the glow-worm in the grass, And the meteor on the grave, And the wisp on the morass, When the falling stars are shooting, And the answer'd owls are hooting, And the silent leaves are still In the shadow of the hill.

                                                                                                                                                                                                       —
Byron,
Manfred

Skinner

North Vancouver, British Columbia 

Wednesday, December 2, 1992, 3:02
A.M.

Her face was skinned to the bone.

Those who made murder their business stood in the teeming rain, shoulders hunched, collars up, hands stuffed in their pockets. The victim hung naked from the bridge fifty feet away, dangling by a hooked chain spiked into the base of her skull. A hundred and forty feet beneath her swaying toes, Lynn Creek churned into the canyon from Ninety Foot Pool, the white water rapids hissing white noise. From the lowest lookout on the opposite bank, an Ident tech shone a portable arc up at an angle, the beam crossing swords with the light shone from the cliff. The arcs drew vapor off the slanted rain, akin to the breath that billowed from the cops on the bridge. The Mounties behind the chain link fence, which clung to the cliffside fifty feet upstream, could not make out the symbol on the hanged woman's chest, painted so streaks ran down between, around, and over her breasts. A black cord was knotted around the victim's neck.

"Easy does it," Craven shouted to the cops on the bridge. "Raise her slowly, a foot at a time."

Access to the canyon was cordoned off with yellow tape, the words CAUTION POLICE DO NOT CROSS 
repeated in black. Ident had meticulously searched the "path of contamination" before giving GIS the okay to investigate. Dressed in white coveralls with boots and hood attached, their hands double-gloved to avoid leaving prints through the thin plastic, the forensic team had then worked down the chasm trails. Thwarted by the rain and mud in their search for evidence— shoe impressions, hairs and fibers, tire marks, tools and weapons, etc.—they'd regrouped on the wobbly bridge to fashion a plastic sling. As the cops prepared to raise the corpse, the techs traversed the wavering span to slip the sling looped below under the hooked body. Hopefully the sheet would catch any trace evidence shed by the lifting operation, in the same way it caught the rain to sag with a pool of water.

Craven left the cliffside fence and trudged up to the bridge. The Douglas firs overhead groaned in the wind, showering the lower hemlocks, red cedars, and him with wet needles. A Steller's jay flew from one branch to the next.

Black against the silver rain sheened by the arc lights, Lynn Canyon Suspension Bridge dipped from cliff to cliff. A three-foot-wide washboard strung from thick steel cables, it humped and shimmied with each human step. The bridge looked as if it might snap and plummet at any second, though it has withstood mountain storms and hikers since 1912. Slanted planks ran from a cedar platform up to the span.

The planks were supported by angled timbers. As Craven hiked up their slope toward the span, he glanced through the cracks between the boards beneath his shoes. A derelict's bed was nestled between the planks and the top of the cliff, fashioned from cardboard cartons half sheltered from the rain. An open can of dog food was last night's meal.

"Bag her hands and lay her out on the sheet," Craven cautioned, approaching the men who were hoisting the corpse over the jumpy cables. Here the thunder of the creek surging through the chasm below was almost deafening.

Craven shone his flashlight on the milky-white skin.

The first thing he noted was the crossbones painted on her chest. Beneath the bare skull exposed by the skinned face, the skeletal combination reminded him of a pirates' flag. He'd flown one from his tree house when he was a kid.

The black cord circling her neck dug into the muscles beneath. Out of place because there was no flesh left around her mouth, the woman's tongue protruded between her lip-less teeth. Craven pegged strangulation as the probable cause of death.

Challenging his assumption were twenty abdominal wounds. Grouped between the victim's navel and pubic thatch, the slits were stabbed in a frenzy judging by the overlapped pattern. Gravity had bulged intestinal flesh out through some of the punctures.

The storm was worsening, rocking and rolling the bridge. Craven felt like a landlubber shanghaied out to sea. The beam of his flashlight jerked, catching the tattoo. "Snap a Polaroid of that," he said to the camera tech.

The tattoo, brightened by the flash, was on the victim's shoulder.

The Polaroid caught a red rose bleeding a feminist sign.

The sign was a circle above a cross, surrounding a clenched fist.

The vagrant slouched at the foot of a small totem pole, his Salvation Army peacoat caked with ferns and mud, the thunderbird above him backed by the North Shore peaks. As he sipped a cup of coffee with both scabbed hands, the steam swirling about his gaunt, bony face, a dog team and frogman passed on their way to Baden Powell Trail. The parking lot up the road beyond the concession stand was now a circus of red and blue lights on the roofs of twenty cars. The vagrant stared in bewilderment at the response he had caused.

Eventually two men crested the path from the suspension bridge. The shorter was Vietnamese like himself, dressed in a yellow rain slicker and rubber boots. The taller wore a black leather bomber jacket and blue jeans, with RCMP identification pinned to one lapel. His hair was blond, his eyes were blue, and he had a mustache. The cop carried a flashlight in one hand.

"Hello. My name is Mr. Trinh," the Vietnamese said in their tongue. "This is Corporal Craven of the Mounted Police. He wishes to speak with you. I will translate."

The vagrant eyed the ghost with habitual suspicion. The ghost smiled and offered him a cigarette. When the vagrant took it, the ghost struck a match and handed him the pack.

"Tell him he's a good citizen," Craven said. "Tell him no harm will come to him from anything he tells me. Ask him his name and where he lives."

Trinh's translation prompted a vague reply: two words, "Phan Ngoc," and a sweep of one arm.

"Is that his home under the bridge?"

"Yes," Trinh interpreted. "When it rains."

"And when it doesn't?"

"Then he sleeps where he can see the stars."

"Why Lynn Canyon?"

"He likes the water's roar."

"How did he find the body?"

"He saw it come over the bridge."

"Did he see who hung it?"

"No, but there were two. He heard their footsteps approach from this end."

"Both male?"

"He doesn't know. He didn't hear them speak."

"Where was he at the time?"

"Under the far end. The footsteps on the bridge awoke him."

"Why didn't he look to see who they were?"

"He was afraid. Youth gangs often drink in the canyon after dark. They don't like us. They've beaten him before."

"By "us" does he mean vagrants?"

"Asians," Trinh said.

The Body Removal Service arrived, parking the meat wagon near the totem pole. The attendants opened the back for a stretcher and body bag, then vanished down the path to the bridge.

"After the corpse came over the side, then what happened?"

"At first Phan didn't know what it was. The canyon was too dark. Then someone shone a flashlight briefly over the edge, probably checking to see if the body was still on the hook. That's when he saw the skull and paint. He waited until the pair were gone, then crawled out from under the planks. He tried to get help from the houses beyond the parking lot, but no one would open the door. Finally he used the concession stand phone to dial 911."

Craven was truly amazed the vagrant had called it in. As a rule Asians avoided the cops like Chinese do the number four.

"Anything else he can tell me?"

The refugee shook his head.

Remembering the dog food, Craven withdrew a twenty from his wallet. "Do me a favor, Mr. Trinh?" he asked the interpreter. "See that helpful Mr. Phan gets a decent meal."

Craven returned to the gallows bridge as the Body Removal team maneuvered the stretcher up the path. A North Vancouver Detachment cop was close behind, ensuring evidence continuity for the trip across the harbor to VGH morgue.

The arcs knifed down twenty stories to the lime-green rapids below where the frogman searched downstream from Ninety Foot Pool, fruitlessly hunting for anything dropped from the span. The dog team combed Centennial Trail south to Twin Falls Bridge.

"Any luck?" Craven asked the senior Ident tech.

The Forensic Section member pushed back his hood, unable to hear through fabric and the wall of noise.

"Find anything?" Nick said, raising his voice.

"Fuck all," Identification grumbled. "Too much rain and muck. The stiff and CPIC are your best bet. Maybe the wounds'll score a hit in the skinner file?"

Vancouver 

3:33
A.M.

Chloe and Zoe were dropped off where the john had picked them up, the corner of Richards and Helmcken, their nightly haunt. Zoe blew the john a kiss as she stepped out into the rain, Chloe popping an umbrella over their bleached-blond heads. Their coats, like the umbrella, were made of see-through plastic, beneath which the buxom twins wore hot pants and skintight sweaters. Chloe's clothes were red over black; Zoe's black over red. Both wore smoky eye shadow above crimson lips. Stud that he was from having the twins screw him two-on-one, the john squealed away from the curb in a virile display of rubber.

No sooner had the car disappeared down Richards than a second vehicle stopped beside the twins. Plucking her nipples, Zoe bent down and sucked her middle finger. Chloe stood legs apart to flaunt the merchandise. Her crotch-taut pants left little to the imagination.

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.