James Heneghan - Fit to kill

“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.

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 His outdated clothes always appeared to need pressing.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.

The gym was busy. He looked for Emma. She wasn’t there. He worked out for almost an hour. He was ready to go home when Pope barred his way, a grin on his face and his enormous eyes staring.

“Glad to see you, Casey. Come and meet Harry Fuerbach.” He pushed Casey lightly by the elbow, steering him over to a bearded forty-year-old who was wiping sweat from his face with a scrap of towel. “Harry, this is Casey. Writes for the West End Clarion. You must’ve read his stuff.”

Fuerbach stuck out his hand. “Sure have. Sebastian Casey, right? Are you writing an expose of the fitness center?”

Fuerbach had a high, fluting voice and an iron grip. His beard was small, neat and starting to gray.

“No,” said Casey. “Just trying to work on this spare tire of mine.”

Fuerbach laughed. “Aren’t we all?”

Casey stared. Fuerbach’s belly was flat.

Pope said, “Harry’s a psychiatrist. We were talking about the West End killer. Harry thinks he was probably abused or neglected as a child.”

“Or it could simply be an insecure home life,” said Fuerbach. “The dad leaving, something like that.”

“Lots of dads leave,” said Casey, “but their kids don’t turn into killers.”

“Right. But killers like this one generally have additional, psychological, motives for their crimes. Sado-sexual overtones. And they also exhibit strong compulsive behaviors.”

Pope laughed. “Would you call my behavior compulsive, working out in this place, same time every day for the past fifteen years?”

Fuerbach smiled. “Would you call it compulsive, Pope?”

Pope said, “They’re all the same, these shrinks-always answer a question with a question.” He turned to a young woman who was passing behind him. “Lucy, meet Sebastian Casey, reporter with the West End Clarion.” He turned back to Casey. “Lucy runs the aerobics classes here at the center.”

“Hi, Sebastian,” said Lucy with a friendly smile.