" *—and he screamed and screamed with his face all twisted in agony. He made this unimaginable sound, he screamed so horribly, and those screams could be heard around the camp. The doctor dissected him alive to see what the disease did to his insides. He made the double watch the procedure, then vivisected him, too, to compare TP's.' "
Miiller closed his notebook.
"When Germany split West and East after the war, the Werewolf s family was trapped in the Russian Zone.
They lived about two kilometers east of the Brandenburg Gate, where Giinter Schreck grew up in the heart of our new darkness. Schliemannstrasse in the Prenz-lauer district has barely changed since the Soviets fought their way from door to door in 1945. The Schreck tenement was in near ruins, its facade half shot away, with heaps of war rubble still piled in the courtyard. There's a saying in German: 'We don't fry up extra sausages,' which means: 'We don't encourage not identifying with a group of some kind.' Schreck identifies with Hitlerites, and as you know, in East Germany before the Wall came down, antifascism was a central article of Soviet faith. The department that dealt with neo-Nazis was the Communist Ministry of State Security. In 1989, People's Police searched Schreck's home."
Mliller faced DeClercq. 'The Werewolf's collection. You know about it?"
"Wolfgang Schreck harvested tattoos."
Muller turned to Chandler. "It all began with Use Koch, the Bitch of Buchenwald. Her husband was commandant of that camp. She discovered human skin made an excellent lamp shade, so inmates were killed to decorate their home. Prisoners with tattooing were culled for Schreck, who flayed their skin, treated it, and had the image framed. His favorite was a masterpiece of Hansel and Gretel. When the People's Police searched Gunter's home, they found his grandfather's horde of tattoos in an alcove shrine to the ftihrer. Hitler's portrait was pinned to the wall, along with a swastika and anti-Semitic slogans: 'The chosen people of Satan killed Jesus Christ, Martin Luther, and Adolf Hitler. America is the long arm of world Jewry. Germany is becoming the crown colony of Judas.' The upshot of the search was Schreck was sent to Ravenscrag."
"Brainwashed?" said DeClercq.
"Electroshock. The works. The jolts they gave were thirty times normal therapy. Because the two electrodes zapped the sides of his head, Schreck thinks the shocks wrenched his brain sideways in his skull, so his front-to-back brain waves could align with the current. Skull width shorter than skull length, his brain is now vised to cause him constant mental pain. Just before the Wall
came down in November eighty-nine, Schreck was back on Schliemannstrasse in the Prenzlauer."
"A time bomb/' said Chandler.
"Who's gone off several times."
'"You paint a vivid picture. Your English is better than mine!"
"Muller grinned. "I have two girls in their teens. In Europe, MTV is broadcast in English. I told you we competed for the perk of flying here. He who best spoke English won."
'The Bone Police," DeClercq said. "How'd that come about?"
"You grasp the nightmare we inherited with German reunificafion? War-related angst is the most important question in our political culture. It creeps into every debate on major policy issues, much the same way racial questions lurk within U.S. discussions. Ours is the sum of all guilts. There are verboten words like Endlosung and Sonderbehandlung missing from our language— 'final solution' and 'special treatment 7 respectively—and we often replace 'Jewish" with Mosaisch, as in 'the people of Moses.' I took my girls to a rock concert. The band from Britain tried to rouse the fans by telling them to punch the air with right hands to yells of Boom, boom, boom!' The crowd wouldn't do it. Why? Because a mass of raised right hands would look too much like newsreel footage of a Nazi rally.
"In 1990—the year we reunified—workers found a buried section of the fiihrer bunker intact in central Berlin, complete with murals of black-booted SS troops and happy Aryan families. That was an omen for Schreck and his ilk. Since then, 26 have been killed and 1,738 injured in 4,800 neo-Nazi attacks on 4 un-Germans.' With 41,900 members in far-right groups, not counting 25,000 in the Republican Party, our department has tripled in size to keep them under v/atch. For some it's simply nihilism, they destroy because they like it, while others are caught in the void between the frigid austerity of the Communist past and binges of new capitalist excess. But Schreck T s the real thing.
"He thinks Untermenschen —or subhumans—betrayed him to the People's Police, which electroshock revealed as skeletal zombies intent on torturing him. The arson
attack that killed five Turkish women in Solingen, the gasoline bombs in Duisburg, the baseball bats in Olden-dorf, the human swastika on Alexanderplatz, the assault on the U.S. luge team in Oberhof—those monkey noises and shouts of 'Nigger out'—they all have the earmarks of Schreck's handiwork. But we want him extradicted for murder. His paranoid delusion Bone Police are after him— Knochenpolizei born from electroshock—has grown to encompass all police in conspiracy. Before his trek to Canada, he crushed the skulls of three cops who got in his way."
"Why's Schreck here?" Chandler asked. "What brings him to Canada?"
"The magnetic North Pole," replied Muller.
"Of course," said DeClercq. "Depolarization. Stand on the North Pole, and hopefully that will counter the polarization that twisted his brain. Which explains the break-in at the sporting goods outlet." He directed the German to the New West Police report on the wall. "His loot contained a thermal coat, a polar tent, and other Arctic gear. We wondered if the Canadian Arctic somehow fed into Schreck's psychosis. The magnetic North Pole's off Cape Columbia, Canada's northernmost tip. Get there and he could cross the ice to it."
"We know Schreck killed these two deputies," said Zinc, indicating the photos of Bert and Ernie dead. "He stomped their heads to crush their skulls. But since he sees only cops as skeletons, why crush the skull of a civilian nearby?"
The three men moved to the Dora Craven section of the wall.
"That's how he kills," suggested Muller. "The Bone Police must be killed that way, and with others it's an easy method."
DeClercq moved to the photos of Jack MacDougall's body. "If Schreck crushed this skull as one of the Bone Police, why then disembowel a fleshless skeleton? Or is the gutting somehow tied to the Werewolf s vivisection? And if so, why gut a dead man?"
"Perhaps you seek too much logic from a madman. If Schreck slips in and out of lunacy, as my sources among the neo-Nazis say, his delusion may adopt both past and present insanities."
EVIL EYE
Chandler turned to face the windows where blackened th out there somev won-
der what Schreck's up to
MORTUARY
In t s line of work. very
important, so that's why Tales from the Crypt pi
the old black-and-white set on a new VCR, the ideal medium to match this atmosphere, as on our
show followed another. The scene m at the mo-
ment was of a screaming man beating frantically on the lid of a buried coffin, having realized his nine mer-
ited from a cat were actually eight since the cat had used a life up when it died. As Hai into Mr. Saddlebags 1 groin, a e sharp ;
half-inch-diameter metal tube to puncture col-
lapsing them so they didn*t bl
play. Open Casket read the tag tied t Love
Handles' toe, the Crypt Keeper puppet a on-
screen to wrap up the episode.
Harvey yukked along with the Crypt Ke ish cack
Gallows humor.
Mortuary puns.
Davis, Craig, and Ingels was B.C/s old home, a gray stone Gothic mansion past Main, its muilioned windows driiiej branches scratched the roof. Tornorr Craig—fourth generation—would lay on a d
:et walk-by for Mr. Saddlebags* bereaved, so Dingwall had to do the yeoman's work ton;, an autopsy apron similar to Macbeth's. an with roving hands when beauties graced his slac need for Playboy with a sexy job like ': reality behind the day fantasy oi dark su
its han-
kies in the chapel out front, Harvey worked cramped, humid mortuary masked by the somber facade.
two "patients"—neither a beauty—on the slanted slabs in the poorly lit charnel room, hemmed in by cruel machines, ugly instruments in dirty cupboards, and foul-smelling embalming fluids and powders. On a stool was the makeup kit.
Having perforated the pecs and abs of his patient, like a baked potato skin or crust for apple pie, Harvey switched the trochar for a suction pump. The same sound as a vacuum cleaner, it slurped Mr. Saddlebags clean of stagnant blood, so his vascular system could be infused with mummy juice. The head was the focus in open casket sales, so the mortician jabbed catheters into a carotid artery and jugular vein. The face flushed pale, makeup came next.
Nothing thrilled Harvey more than tickling a beauty's fancy while he painted her face, the paint box on the stool worthy of Van Gogh, enough makeup for Phantom of the Opera here, but this guy was butt, so Harvey put him off.
He turned to the other slab.
A lovable, cute, rotting zombie out of the grave, the Crypt Keeper cackled as he wound up another tale. In it, a mortuary fed a subterranean banquet hall for gourmet ghouls. " 'Rah, ree, reen! Sis, boom, bean! Stick 'im in the ash can! His bones are picked clean!' Hee, hee! That's the organization's cheer, creeps! No choking!"
Harvey yukked along with the Crypt Keeper's grisly mirth.
Ms. Smash Head was the other patient tonight. She lay naked on the twin slab, released earlier today from Royal Columbian Hospital morgue. The toe tag called for embalming and cremation. Why the extra treatment Harvey could never understand, jacking up the price for redundancy, no need to mummify what would soon be ash. "But do both this time," Mr. Craig had warned. "No shortcuts when the sale's a cop."
Harvey checked his watch.
Almost time.
Cremations were done under cover of night. Didn't want smoke belching out during chapel mourning service, human smoke spreading human ash by day far and wide, do it at night when all community-responsible industries do their polluting.
Out of sight, out of mind.
The mortician's creed.
The arms of the Y-stitch down Ms. Autopsy's torso V'd from her shoulders to halfway down her sternum. the handle of the incision then dropping to her pubic bone. No need to use the trochar on organs the postmortem had emptied from her, just open the stitches to reveal the plastic bag of guts repacked inside, to fill the cavity with a perfumed mix of sawdust, alcohol, and formaldehyde. While open, he'd suction-pump the blood to infuse mummy juice, then sew her up with the same overlapping stitch to prevent leakage. No need to do the head, which looked like Frankenstein's Bride, a brain incision over the crown from behind both ears: who was going to see her?
Had she been younger, he might have done her face anyway.
Then pizza time.
The crematorium was along the hall because it rose to temperatures of almost 1800 degrees Fahrenheit. Heat was the last comfort you wanted in a mortuary. The huge brick gas-fired oven was walk-in size, for bodies cooking gave off combustible gases. Harvey would encasket Ms. Smash Head—another waste—then roll her in. fire the jets, and burn, baby, burn. Later, he'd collect the ashes and pieces of charred bone, removing coffin nails to dump the cremains in a tumbler, so rocks could grind the fragments to dust. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust would then be packed in a funeral urn for sale to the cop tomorrow.
Harvey was about to cut the autopsy stitches.
What was that?
Breaking glass?
In the buffer room between the chapel and the mortuar
Had one of the branches scratching the roof broken a window?
Harvey left to investigate.
From the door he could see the smashed-in pane, as his hand fumbled for the light switch m the dark. Wind moaned mournfully in through the breach, but no branch intruded that he could see. Stepping into the darkness, he recoiled to one side when he glimpsed a
black figure at the corner of his eye, which remained black even as white light lit up the room, then whap! Harvey's lights went out instead, the force of the blow bludgeoning his skull blackening everything in sight.
When Harvey eventually came to, the first thing he did was dial 911.
Guy who breaks into a mortuary must be a pervert, right?
God knows what he might do to the patients.
The last thing Harvey wanted was face-to-face battle with a sick fuck.
Then he remembered the Crypt Keeper on TV.
The very last thing he wanted was cops thinking he was a sick fuck.
So Harvey shambled back to switch off Tales from the Crypt.
Except for two details, the mortuary was unchanged from how the mortician had left it. But now the ghostly glow came solely from the TV, casting a black-and-white flicker about this halfway house for the dead, an ether from the other side where mystery lurks, RIP to sinners who squandered the entrance fee, the zombies who return because there's nowhere else to go. And by this hellish pallor from beyond, the black one had slashed Ms. Smash Head's belly with a blade, leaving the autopsy stitches still sewn, but slitting the plastic bag containing her guts, so the coils of her repacked intestines were disemboweled down the slab.
On-screen, the Crypt Keeper cackled to wrap up his final tale.
Hee, hee, hee.
But this time Harvey didn't yuk along.
RETURN FROM THE GRAVE
West Vancouver
Robert DeClercq took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Would the troubles of this depressing day never end? "Katt," he called to the kitchen after hanging up the phone. "Got to go out. I may be late. So don't wait up."
The cooking smells of steak frites hung heavy in the hall. The teenager poked her head through the door, dish towel in hand. Theirs was the war of meat eaters everywhere: do you eat the tenderloin first or last? "First/' she'd said at dinner, "so you get the best part hot." "Last," he'd responded, "to savor the better part after."
"You'll miss the new CD by Nine Inch Nails," Katt said now.
"Keep it down," Robert warned. "Windowpanes are expensive."
"No louder than The Who Live at Leeds,' " Katt said, the retort once used on her mom, the now-dead Luna Darke.
Snugged in his parka and beaver-skin hat (the headgear of Arctic Mounties with flaps tied on top), Robert locked the front door and braved the foggy frost. Here where he'd survived attacks by Cutthroat's Alley Demons and later Garret Corke, Napoleon (spleen gone but knife wound healed) stood guard. "Take care of her, boy," the Horseman said, nuzzling his dog.
The path climbing to Marine Drive was slippery and treacherous, black ice moonshadowed by hoary firs along both sides. Behind him, from the miasmic bay beyond his waterfront home, foghorns on phantom freighters groaned and mourned.
Recently, DeClercq had purchased a new "preowned" car, the term for those who find "used" a dirty word.
For years he'd driven French imports—a Citroen before the Peugeot—till Katt advised him, "Bob, it's time to shed the dorky wheels. You don't shark chicks in Flints tone-mobiles."
The chariot in the carport off Marine Drive was a BMW M5 four-door with a racing engine and wide-oval low profile tires. Discovery of Blake's headless corpse on Windigo Mountain had propelled Bagpipes, Blood, and Glory onto bestseller lists here and in Britain. Even the Americans—cautious with books set outside their realm—had put aside the umpteenth retread of Lewis & Clark to buy enough copies to fatten his bank account. Combined with royalties from a rewrite of Men Who Wore the Tunic, retitled Those Who Wore the Tunic to bring it up to date, his sideline scribblings had financed the cool car.
"Oh, Bob," Katt moaned, face buried in her hands. "The vehicle of old fogeys and yuppie swine. And white, no less."
"Study hard, my culture guru, and you'll have your pink Ferrari."
"A Honda Civic DX Hatchback, aztec green, with a CD player will do," she said, producing a glossy brochure from her room.
Tonight, t
he old foge-mobile (Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony playing inside, no less) snaked its way northwest from Lighthouse Park, slipping here, sliding there on black ice rinking the road, Eagle Harbor, Fisherman's Cove, and Whytecliff Point invisible on the foggy ocean side, the hump of Hollyburn Mountain looming blackly to the right, until he reached the ferry dock at Horseshoe Bay.
Parking the BMW, he boarded The Queen of Capilano as a foot passenger for the twenty-minute crossing. The Mounted's Marine Services would bring him back.
Three to four miles wide and seven to eight miles long, Bowen Island clogs the entrance to Howe Sound. In 1860, British surveyor Captain George Richards named it for Rear Admiral James Bowen, hero of a sea battle with the new French Republic in 1794. Squamish natives had already given it names like Kwumch-Naw ("Noise as When Stamping Heels") but that didn't count. The first white settlement was a lumber camp
back when logs were hauled down skid roads to the sea. The skids were greased with dogfish oil, so the man who greased them had a cabin to himself. No one could stand to live with him because of the smell. Twenty square miles of rain forest walled in by rocky bluffs were soon dotted with stump ranches among the firs and salal. Robert's destination was one of the pioneer sites.
Though west of West Vancouver, Bowen is policed by North Vancouver RCMP. The Queen of Capilano docked at Snug Cove, where one of the island's two constables met the chief superintendent. She filled him in while they drove down island to the grave above Queen Charlotte Channel.
'The Asian who bought the property is building his dream home. Yesterday, workmen tore down the ramshackle pioneer house. Afraid the ground would freeze with this chill in the weather, today they began to back-hoe the foundation. A few feet down, they uncovered a skeleton wrapped in plastic. We checked the previous owner, Luna Darke, and found you sold the property as trustee for her daughter. So the call."
"How old's the corpse?" DeClercq asked.
"Pathologist says a year. That jibes with a notebook found on the body."
Evil Eye Page 14
