Headhunter by Michael Slade

them by the two girls' father—plus the statements later taken from the three of them—indicated that before the disturbance the remains had been hidden from sight. The creekbed was clogged with autumn leaves and broken branches, several of which appeared to have been cut and placed over the grave. One of the other two Ident. shots was of the cut ends of several of these branches. On later examination, the police lab had found striation marks identical to those discovered by Dr. Singh on the neck bones of the river floater and of the skeleton in question. The fourth photograph was a blowup of the marks on the upper neck of the unidentified corpse where the head had been cut from the body.
    Put together,  DeClercq thought, these pictures raise a number of questions. They offer very few answers.
    He removed a sheet of paper from the drawer of the library table that formed the bottom of the horseshoe and began to write:
    1. Was the woman killed at the location of the tent? Or was she carried there after her death by the Headhunter? If the latter, then a strong person indeed! It's very rugged terrain.
    2. If deposited there after death, was the corpse carried down from the road up above? Or up from a boat on the sea? Or along the shore? It was probably done at dusk or in the early morning—dark enough for cover, but light enough to see.
    3. Was the body meant to be found? Cut branches indicate that it was purposely hidden. Was the stream running at the time that it was left? Was it buried mainly by the act of nature?
    Looking over the questions, DeClercq's gut reaction was that the woman was killed at the tent site, that she was probably camping there, and that the killer had then cut off her head and buried the body and in a frenzy ripped the tent to pieces. His reasoning was that up in the North Shore mountains there are a thousand sites more deserted than this one where a body would never be found. Here the risk of being seen was just too great. But the corpse was left at this location—so that indicated that either the Headhunter had stumbled upon her in the wood, or they had met at some other location and returned to the murder scene. If the Headhunter was camping here, one of the people in the houses nearby might have seen him coming and going. And that could lead to a description. No, the chances were the victim was the one who pitched the tent. But even that was conjecture. It might have been there before.
    What concerned him most and tugged at his mind was not, however, the answer to these questions. It was the question that arose from these questions in the light of subsequent facts. For if this corpse was meant to be hidden, why had the Headhunter changed his style?
    Look at the case of Joanna Portman.
    Tacked to the corkboard wall in the section for the North Vancouver crime there were many other sheets of paper: lab and autopsy reports, police memos, witness statements, interforce inquiries—but these added little to his knowledge. From the angle of the cuts on the branch ends (plus the blade shape left in the flesh of Grabowski and Portman) the lab had determined that the weapon was probably a large bowie knife. That was more an American instrument than one found in Canada. The autopsy report revealed that there were cuts on several of the rib bones indicating that the North Van corpse might also have suffered a slash through the breasts. The time of death was estimated at between three and five months ago, but probably closer to three, since the last days of August had been very hot and decomposition would have advanced rapidly. A soil search of the entire gravesite was negative; a diver search of the shore waters by the RCMP frogman team had turned up nothing; an infrared helicopter scan of the area recorded no temperature differences that might indicate other rotting human remains. A check of the Harbor Patrol had proved fruitless and not one of the neighbors living on top of the hill had noticed anything