and clumsy in front of this woman, who, as far as he could see, had already achieved perfection.
“Keep up the good work.” Pope wandered off.
Casey looked into Emma Shaughnessy’s blue eyes and said the only thing he could think of. “You come here often?”
She laughed. “Three times a week.”
“Three,” he repeated stupidly.
She laughed again. “Usually.”
Her eyes unmade him. She was a witch.
She was laughing at him. He tried to think of something intelligent to say. “I don’t like these things much.” He nodded down at his StairMaster. Brilliant! he told himself.
“Me neither. I run the seawall and the park trails instead.”
“Seawall.” He tried to think of something interesting to say. “Park trails,” he said. If he had a gun, he would shoot himself. “The great outdoors,” he continued, hoping his brain would kick in soon or this woman would never speak to him again. An echo of this thought in the deeper recesses of his paralyzed mind made him realize that he very much wanted her to speak to him again.
“When I use a machine,” she said, “it’s exercise. But for me, running is recreation.”
“Is that right, now?” He sounded in his own ears like an Irish country bumpkin.
“Feels more natural. Trees and animals instead of mirrored walls. Smell of alder, cedar and fir instead of stale sweat. Fresh air and silence. No pounding music.”
“Music?”
She jerked her small pointed chin at the speakers over their heads.
“Ah!” he said. She wore no lipstick. Lips naturally pale pink. Her mouth slightly open. Tips of two very white teeth.
“I run most mornings. Early.”
“Maybe I’ll try it myself sometime. Get rid of some of this.” He patted his sucked-in belly.
“I hear Belfast in your voice, am I right?”
He nodded. “And I hear Derry in yours.”
“Right. I came to Vancouver-”
“Hey, Emma, could you spot me?”
Emma turned her head in the direction of the voice. “Sure, Kevin.”
Casey tore his eyes from Emma Shaughnessy’s face. A muscle-bound Adonis was taking her away to the free-weights area, where he had the bench press set up with weights the size of truck tires.
“Talk to you again, Casey,” said Emma with a smile.
Casey watched her stand behind Kevin’s bench, hands poised to assist. The horizontal Adonis, his face upturned in a grimace of pain, pushed and grunted underneath her.
Casey felt he had done enough for a first visit. He escaped to the locker room, pulled on his sweats and headed for home.
CHAPTER FIVE
Percy Simmons, editor of the West End Clarion, was a small untidy man in late middle age. Prominent blue eyes and thick white hair contrasted with bushy dark eyebrows. His outdated clothes always appeared to need pressing. Today he was wearing flared polyester trousers, a lemon shirt with long pointed collar wings and a striped tie, discolored by an overuse of cleaning fluid. A faded brown Value Village jacket hung over the back of his chair. His way of talking made Casey feel like he was in the newsroom of the New York Times. But Percy was a good editor. Casey liked and respected him.
Percy called Casey and Debbie Ozeroff into his office. Jack Wexler was already there. Percy massaged his thick, dark eyebrows. “It’s this murder. Everyone’s crazy with fear. Take a look at this.” He pointed to a letter on his desk.
They read it.
An open letter to the police. Maggoty: I am the Angel of Death. I write from the abyss. You will never discover who I am. The gutters of Vancouver will run with the blood of harlots before I am done. When she carried on her harlotry so openly and flaunted her nakedness, I turned in disgust from her. Ezekiel 23:18. And I will direct mine indignation and I will deal with her in fury. Yea, I shall cut off her very head. Thus I will put an end to her lewdness and harlotry and leave her naked and bare and the nakedness of her harlotry shall be uncovered. Ezekiel 23:25.
“Who’s Maggoty?” asked Casey.
“MacAtee, the detective in charge of the investigation,” said Wexler.
“And they think this is from the killer?” asked Ozeroff.
Debbie Ozeroff was a slim, attractive woman in her fifties. Dark hair cut short in the latest blond-streaked fashion. She possessed a warm, if sometimes excitable, personality. Openly gay, she lived in the West End with her partner, Vera Taniguchi, an alternative medicine practitioner.
Wexler said, “Looks like it. All the Lower Mainland news media were sent copies.”
“A religious maniac,” said Ozeroff angrily, perching herself on the corner of the editor’s desk where she could talk down to him. “I was thinking, Perce, I’d like to do a piece on serial killers. You know, Ted Bundy, Gary Ridgway-creeps like that who go after women. I’d do it as a-”
“I think not, Deb,” said Percy with a sigh. “This’d be the absolutely wrong time to-” His prominent blue eyes widened. “What? You wanna scare everyone to death? You can’t call one murder the work of a serial killer. Be reasonable.”
“Look at the letter,” said Ozeroff. “This is just his first.”
“Cool it, Deb,” moaned Percy. “What I’m thinking is, wouldn’t it be something if we scooped the Province? Huh? You know what I’m sayin’? I’m sayin’ keep your eyes and ears open. That’s all. Ask questions. Somebody might’ve seen something. You might pick up a hot tip.”
Ozeroff pursued her subject doggedly. “Research shows that sixty percent of all serial killers select a game preserve-that’s what they call it. They stake out an area and hunt only in that area. Like Gary Ridgway, the Green River psycho. He killed between fifty to seventy women in the Seattle-Tacoma area. Well, that’s exactly the same as our killer here in the West End, and I think-”
“Exactly the same?” said Percy, eyes popping. “Fifty to seventy bodies? Come off it, Deb! All I’m asking is to keep a lookout, okay?”
“You know,” Ozeroff persisted, “almost seventy-five percent of the serial killings in the whole world were committed in the United States.”
Percy stared at her. “You’re kidding!”
“Them’s the numbers,” said Ozeroff.
“What’s the next highest?” asked Percy.
“Europe’s a distant second with about twenty percent.”
“How many in Canada?”
“We don’t even rate.”
“Keep the material,” Percy said. “Might be useful later.”
Wexler appeared to be asleep.
Casey crept out the door. Nobody noticed him leave.
He had felt stiff all weekend. His arms, shoulders and legs felt like they’d been beaten with a shillelagh. But his new diet of fruit and rabbit food seemed bearable. For now anyway.
By Monday evening the aches and pains had subsided. He was determined get himself in better shape. Impressing Emma Shaughnessy had nothing to do with it, of course. It was just…well, it was important for a guy to keep fit.
