He reached for his question pad. This is what he wrote:
1. Sexual psychotic or sexual psychopath?
2. Is each victim's gender their only connection?
3. Does the killer get sexual release from ending the lives of women?
4. Does immotile sperm = sterility?
5. Is it the memory of the crimes which enables the killer to maintain a normal relationship with his wife or girlfriend? Is his subsequent arousal secretly based on the thought of what he did before?
6. Does he pathologically hate all women?
7. Or is it all a smokescreen for some personal reason connected to one of his victims?
8. Will we ever know? he thought, but didn't write it down.
That left the totem pole.
During the winter of 1973 to 1974 the city of San Francisco was stunned by the so-called Zebra killings. Zebra was the investigative name for a cult of Black Muslims who systematically attacked twenty white victims, killing four of them. Several years earlier in Los Angeles, Charles Manson's Family cult of "creepy crawlies" had butchered seven "straights" in the hope of bringing down "Helter Skelter." Then there was the "Reverend" Jim Jones. And of course there had always been the Ku Klux Klan.
These days there were cults everywhere, at least one for every motive.
The totem pole bothered DeClercq.
It bothered him partly because the Portman murder marked a change in the pattern. The killer had taken a great risk to make some form of statement. Perhaps that statement was nothing more than a sudden demand for attention, the totem being nothing more than a random method to get it. Or perhaps the totem pole was a part of the statement itself.
What bothered DeClercq even more, however, was the positioning of the body. Just nailing the woman to the totem pole was attention-getting enough. Yet in this case the Head-hunter had hoisted her up almost fifteen feet and then hammered her hands to the crosspiece so that the carving on it provided a substitute for her head. That was too much work and risk unless there was a reason.
And finally it bothered him because of the totem itself.
It is difficult to live in the Pacific Northwest without picking up at least a rudimentary knowledge about the myth of the Indian totem. In the case of the Superintendent, he knew more than most.
Joanna Portman had been nailed to a mortuary pole. The Dogfish carving on it was a form of Pacific shark.
DeClercq was too experienced a policeman to overlook any possible motive, no matter how remote. Over the years he had learned the hard way that often the most stunning insight in any investigation will come from some small, almost insignificant detail that rises from the subconscious like a piece of driftwood floating up from a sunken wreck on the ocean floor. Any cop will tell you that the psychology of murder is a bizarre wasteland indeed. Had David Berkowitz not been ordered to kill by his neighbors talking dog?
There had never been to DeClercq's knowledge an Indian cult like Zebra. The basis, however, — was there. Recently British Columbia had been the focus of an awakening Indian movement.
Was it not fact. DeClercq now thought,that during the civil rights movement in the United States, most black leaders consciously sought out the roots of their people's past? Did some like the Black Panthers and Black Muslims not seek out the most violent traditions? And did the women's liberation movement not react the same? In this city, had the Wimmin's Fire Brigade not torched pornographic outlets? And what about the Indian? Did he not also look to the roots of his past? And would some not eventually seek the more violent traditions?Was that not the psychology of the frustrated everywhere?
DeClercq looked back at the corkboard wall, at the photo of Joanna Portman nailed to the Burial Pole.
All right,he thought to himself. Freefloat for a while.
You've got a mortuary pole. Of what significance?
It was the practice of many Northwest tribes to erect a mortuary pole near the burial place of the dead.
Give me another tradition.
Among the Kwakiutl, it was the rule to have people unrelated to the dead cut the hair of the mourners.
Is that why the head is missing? A symbolic cut of the hair?
No. it doesn't fit the ritual. She's dead, not a mourner.
Then give me a ritual which does fit in.
I can't. I think we're off base. This totem pole connection is just coincidence. There is no Indian ritual making use of a severed he…
Unless…
Unless it's not the head as a head that the killer is after. Then it fits Hamatsa and the Cannibal Cult.
DeClercq looked back at the picture.
Then several seconds later he picked up the phone.
9:36 a.m.
The telephone was answered on its tenth ring.
"Allo."
"Good morning. Did I get you out of bed?"
"Non, je suis tout juste de la douche. Attends un moment."
DeClercq waited. In his mind he pictured his wife naked, her auburn hair and lithe body dripping water all over the floor. In the background he could hear classical music, a concerto for flute and harp. Genevieve always played Mozart in the morning.
"Okay,"she said, retrieving the phone."Je suis decente."
"The reason I called you, Genny, I've got a rather wild theory I'd like your opinion on."
"Shoot. I'm listening."
Once he had finished, there was silence from the other end of the phone. Then after a few moments' thought his wife slowly said: "Has there ever been an Indian Death Cult before?"
"Not that I know of."
"So your theory's based on Zebra?"
"Yes, that case and some others."
"Run the Zebra theory by me again."
"Okay, in April of 1975 there was evidence given at the trial of four Black Muslims in San Francisco that they were members of a group called the 'Death Angels.' The purpose of this cult was to start a race war by the random killing of whites. According to the chief witness for the prosecution, he had been approached in San Quentin prison by two men who asked him to teach them martial arts so they could murder Caucasians. According to a theory outlined by Mayor Alioto before the trial began, the Death Angels' organization had titles and offices to which advancement was awarded on the basis of criminal acts performed. The pattern of killing was by random street shooting or by hacking the victims to death with a machete, cleaver or knife. Decapitation and other forms of mutilation brought special credit to the killers from the organization. In the first Zebra killing, a woman was beheaded."