The Rocky Mountains stand sentinel over the plains of North America. The mist had now burned away, and stretched before him lay an expanse so vast that every hill and lake and wood seemed dwarfed into one continuous level. Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba had all ceased to exist. What remained was one surface of lakelets glittering in the bright sunshine and spread out in sheets of dazzling white and blue.
Suddenly Blake thought of Jenny, her blue eyes laughing underneath that large, lace-bordered cap.
Aye, he thought to himself, she's a bonnie lass. Admit it, man, the prettiest in all of the Northwest.
Her image made him smile.
And as for him, Blake thought, a child is a serious matter at any point in a man's life.
Then he walked back to the sled and climbed onto the runners. A moment later, with a flick of the whip, Cerf-vola began to lead the slow and long descent down the mountain side.
God willing, Blake thought, I might be home for Christmas.
The Burial Pole
Vancouver, British Columbia, 1982
Wednesday, October 27th, 10:45 a.m.
The first Headhunter Squad was not a squad at all — it was a coordinating center. In fact were it not for Clifford Olson and his murder rampage in the summer of 1981 there would have been no squad at all. But the RCMP had learned a bitter lesson about lack of coordination in that previous case, and so the squad was formed. The first Headhunter Squad consisted of Sergeant Jack MacDougall and Corporal James Rodale. They met in the Headquarters building at 1200 West 73rd.
"That was Dr. Kahil Singh," MacDougall said as he replaced the phone. "He's at Lion's Gate Hospital where we sent the bones. The marks on the skeleton's vertebra are a match with those on the floater. That means we've got a killer."
Rodale nodded. "Where to from here?"
"I think the concentration will have to be on Grabowski. So far our soil sift has turned up nothing. We can't expect very much if we don't know when she died. I'm having Vancouver Harbor Patrol check their back records to see if something was noticed from the water. And I've got a helicopter on order to infrared the slope. So far the only bit we've got is the tent manufacture. It's Swiss, from Zurich — we're checking all the outlets. Also Interpol."
"You think she's a foreign national, camping in those woods?"
"Perhaps," MacDougall said. "Now how about you?"
"A? far as we can tell, this Grabowski woman was here
only three or four days. New Orleans wired pictures and they're checking things that end. We don't know what she's doing here and neither do they. We're looking for her pimp. Our best guess at the moment is a john who likes to snuff. One like that knocked off a girl late last week. We're keeping an ear to the street."
"That it?" MacDougall asked. It was hardly worth a note.
"I'm afraid so," Rodale answered, shrugging his shoulders. "A pile of unidentified bones and a transient American hooker — that's not very much to go on."
MacDougall had to agree.
Thursday, October 28th, 5:15 a.m.
What a day! she thought. Isn't it amazing that any of us survive?
The man with the red hair and freckles had brought his wife into St. Paul's Hospital at 7:05 that morning. The woman's water had broken forty minutes before, so the man was apprehensive, this being their first child. One of the nurses had taken him aside and had tried to calm him down.
"Now, I want this natural," the man had said, reaching for a Kool cigarette and fumbling in his pocket for matches. "I don't want drugs. Or forceps. Or trauma. Do you understand? Who's your obstetrician and where was he trained?"
The nurse had asked him calmly not to smoke in the Admitting Hall.
Snapping the cigarette in two and tossing it into a trash can, the man had watched his waddling, bloated wife disappear into an elevator.
"I don't trust hospitals," he said. "I want that clear from the start. Isn't this the place where they left a sponge in some guy?" Again removing his pack of Kools he had shaken a cigarette loose.
The nurse had asked him calmly not to smoke in the Admitting Hall.
The complications had started at 5:21 p.m., not long after Joanna Portman's shift began.
Joanna had found the next five hours draining. She enjoyed working as a nurse in the Maternity Ward, for although a hospital by definition was a place of sickness and death, here she was located at the wellspring of life. She thrived on the feeling of her own rebirth that each delivery gave her. And besides, she liked the mothers. She felt needed, the way they depended on her to see each one of them through.
Mrs. Walker, however, had been a tough one.
For hours the poor woman had been tortured by labor pain, awaiting each coming contraction with terror in her eyes. Joanna had held her in her arms. She had soothed her and calmed her with quiet words of encouragement, and toward the end she had even quoted from the Bible. It had never ceased to surprise her how even with agnostics and atheists that seemed to do the trick.
That night Joanna's nursing shift had ended at midnight. The Walker baby, however, had waited till 4:19. So as usual Joanna had remained and seen the delivery through: when a mother had come to rely on her she just couldn't desert in the crunch.
Never bail out,she told herself,until the bomb is dropped. What a day! Isn't it amazing that any of us survive?
It was now 5:15 in the morning. Joanna was sitting on a bench waiting for the Macdonald bus. There was a smile on her face.
Joanna Portman was a petite woman, twenty-two years of age. On shift she wore her hair in a bun, but now she had released it and let it tumble free. A breeze down Burrard Street blew black strands across her face so she turned part way around on the bench back toward the hospital. Founded by the Sisters of Providence in 1894, St. Paul's was a rambling red brick building right in the heart of town. Over the years as the city had grown, additions had been added. Now the plan was to tear it down and build another in its place. Joanna looked up at St. Paul's statue in its alcove below the roof. Will you still look down and protect me, she thought, once the new hospital's built?
The Macdonald bus arrived and Joanna climbed on board.
Ten minutes later when she alighted at Macdonald and Point Grey Road, a cold wind from off the water slapped her across the face. She pulled her collar up and thought. It almost feels like snow! But that, of course, was ridiculous. After all, this was Vancouver. Lotusland. And it was only October. Still, it feels mighty cold. Joanna started walking.
The shortest route to her upstairs suite in a house three blocks away was through Tatlow Park. Normally, she would skirt the side of the tennis courts and cut across the grass until she reached Bayswater Street. From there it was but a quick walk up to the corner of Third.
This morning, however, that route was unthinkable.
For one thing, it was still pitch dark, and what with the newspapers screaming about this Headhunter being on the loose… well, she'd just have to resign herself to taking the long way around.
Joanna Portman was less than two blocks from her home when she heard the car, in low gear, coming up behind her.
With it came apprehension.
Easy, girl, she told herself, let's not get too jumpy. (Jumpy! That's a laugh. I'm scared shitless!)