James Heneghan - Fit to kill

Brenda at the front desk smiled when she saw him. “Messages for you, Casey.”

“Thanks, Brenda.” He examined the yellow slips. “Here. I brought you a Mars bar.” Which wasn’t quite true. He’d bought it for himself to eat while working on his piece about the infighting at the parks board. But chocolate didn’t exactly come under the doctor’s prescription. He should try to shed a few of those extra pounds. Take some of Tom’s advice. The parts about eating sensibly and exercising anyway. The good woman he definitely did not need. He was a loner, always had been.

He’d thought about jogging last summer, but had never got started somehow. He wasn’t sure if he possessed the will or motivation. It was as simple as that. Why struggle? You lived, you died. Who cared if you were a few pounds overweight?

“Thanks, big guy,” said Brenda. “Jack’s been looking for you.”

Jack Wexler was at his desk. Their third reporter, Debbie Ozeroff, was out. Debbie covered the arts, fashion, women’s issues and the environment. There was also a part-time photographer, Doug Duchesne, who was mostly out. The four of them shared an office the size of a jail cell. When the three reporters were all there, the place reminded Casey of the farmer’s market back home in Belfast-noise and chaos unlimited.

Wexler stood and grabbed his jacket off the peg when he saw Casey. “Come on, it’s lunchtime. I’ll buy you a bagel.”

Wexler was over sixty. Lately he’d been telling anyone who would listen that he couldn’t wait to retire and sell his overpriced West End condo. He and his wife Midge would buy a small place near sunny Victoria at half the price. Short and wiry, he looked much younger than his age, even with his balding pink head. He always dressed smartly. Today he wore a dark houndstooth jacket, dark green V-neck sweater over a white cotton shirt, green cords and a pair of brown oxfords. Wexler had been married for almost forty years.

They were early, so they got two seats at the window counter of Hegel’s Bagels looking out toward the beach and seawall at English Bay. Wexler ordered coffee and a gypsy salami bagel. Casey took only a house salad and a glass of water.

“What’s with the rabbit food?”

Casey shrugged. “Doctor says I should lose a few. What’s on your mind, Jack? Anything new from Cop Shop on the murder?”

“Cop Shop” was the daily police information service at police headquarters, held weekday mornings.

Wexler wiped cream cheese off his chin. “Not a thing. Kind of hard to identify someone who’s missing a head.” He bit into his bagel. His glance fell to Casey’s middle, bulging slightly over the belt of his cords. “Look, you wanna lose some weight, you buy yourself some barbells.” He propped his elbow up on the counter and offered Casey a bicep. “Feel that.”

Casey looked into Wexler’s eyes to see if he was serious. He was. He prodded the older man’s arm gingerly with a fingertip.

“Hard, huh? And lookit!” Wexler slapped his stomach. “Steel drum.”

“I didn’t know you lifted weights.”

“Four years. Work out three times a week, mornings at six, before breakfast. Try it for three hours a week, Casey, and you’ll look like me.”

“No comment.”

“I’m serious.”

“Exercising is hard work, Jack. I’ll have to think about it.”

Lunch hour. Hegel’s Bagels.

Casey toyed with his salad, wishing it was a ham-and-egg bagel.

Wexler consulted his Cop Shop notes. “Woman’s name was Julie Dagg, white, twenty-five, secretary. Lived at 1976 Haro with roommate Beryl Gibb, who goes by the name of Billie. Julie was on her way home from the West End Fitness Center about half an hour after it closed. That would put the time of the murder around ten thirty. Her naked body was found in the minipark next to Pearl’s Restaurant around midnight by a guy on his way home. He cut through the park and saw a dog eating-”

“Ugh! Say no more.”

Wexler put down his sandwich and sipped his coffee.

“Woman was decapitated. Head missing from the scene. Marks on her wrists from handcuffs. No clothing, no id left at the scene-that’s all I got.”

“How did they id her if she had no head and no personal papers or clothing?”

“Fingerprints. Arrested two years ago, impaired driving charge, so they had her on file.”

“Was she raped?”

“Probably. Awaiting confirmation.”

“Pretty creepy, Jack.” Casey wiped his fingers with his napkin.

“Creepy ain’t the word for it.”

Vancouver’s West End district was mainly residential. It occupied the center of the downtown peninsula between the office towers on the east and Stanley Park on the west. Shaped roughly like the sole of a foot, the peninsula divided into three parts. The toe was the green Stanley Park forest with its seawall. The instep was the residential West End. And the heel was the downtown business district. The whole peninsula was surrounded by the natural beauty of forest, sea and mountains. In the spring and early summer, when most of the rain had finished and snow covered the mountains, Vancouver shone like a jewel.

Vancouver was the most beautiful place in the world as far as Matty Kayle was concerned. Not that she’d traveled much-a trip to New York with her parents when she was ten. But, to Matty, Vancouver was fresher, younger than anything she had seen. Green and beautiful and sparkling. It was like the sweet and innocent child she’d never had.

This afternoon she felt just fine. She had been adjusted. Dr. Malley had twisted her spine, wrenched her neck, leaned on her lumbars, squeezed her cervicals and thumped her thoracics. He had manhandled her in a most agreeable way. And now she was ready for her short walk. She tried to fit one in every day.

Matty and Albert never walked together.

Albert was downstairs in his workshop. She could smell the paint. She slipped into her edging-toward-shabby navy winter coat.

Her resentment of Albert’s authority in the house had grown steadily over the years. The house wasn’t his, it was Matty’s. She was the one who had lived here all her life. She was the one who held happy memories of her parents and their life together. Albert was an intruder. A fraud. He had married Matty for his own cunning purposes. He no longer-now that he ignored and mocked her and felt repugnance toward her-had any moral right to be there. He had forfeited that right when he broke his marriage vow to love and cherish and protect her.

Love and cherish. Matty’s eyes prickled with tears. She pulled on a red tuque over her gray curls, jerked the front door closed behind her and set off at a good pace to the park.

But the wind was cold. So after only half an hour she turned for home, walking briskly back the way she had come. The wind now blustering at her back.

Casey, home from a sour City Hall council meeting, needed a beer. He grabbed a lager from his fridge.

You’re too young for a coronary.

It would do no harm to look in on the fitness center. Just a look, see what the place was like. It wasn’t as though he was ready to make a commitment of any kind.

He changed into shorts, T-shirt, his old tracksuit and a ragged pair of runners.

The gym wasn’t crowded. The only person he recognized was Albert Kayle, his neighbor from across the street, working hard on a rowing machine.

He started working out cautiously. No sense in overdoing things the first time.

A man strolled over and introduced himself as Gordon Pope. Mostly bald, with wisps of hair around his ears, Pope wore blue nylon shorts and a loose net shirt that left his narrow waist, muscular shoulders and much of his well-developed pectoral area exposed.