Fit to Kill (10 page)
Casey heard the scream.
He had been standing on the opposite side of the street from Emma's apartment, having arrived just in time to see her alight from the taxi. He watched her walk to the lobby door. And saw the dark figure attack her.
Casey raced across the street, dove into the shrubbery. He leaped onto the man's back. But the killer smashed his left eye with his elbow, and Casey saw stars. He fell beside Emma, dazed with pain.
The attacker ran away. Casey rose groggily to his feet and tried to run after him. But, half blind with pain, he lost him in the darkness.
He returned to Emma, still lying on the ground, and kneeled beside her. “Emma, it's me, Casey. Can you stand if I help you up?”
“Casey?” Her voice was a croak.
“Let's get you inside.” He took her weight on his shoulders. “I need your keys.”
“In the door⦔
The keys were in the lock. Casey opened the door and eased Emma into the lobby.
From there he helped her into her ground-floor apartment. She collapsed, half conscious, onto the couch.
Then she struggled, trying to get up.
“Stay where you are, Emma. Relax. He's gone. You're safe.”
“Whereâ¦?”
“He got away.”
“Did youâ¦get a look at his face?”
He shook his head. “No. Did you?”
“No.” She noticed his eye, already swollen.
“You're hurt.”
“I'm all right.”
“Your meetingâ¦?”
“Didn't go. Had a feeling about you⦠Jack covered for me. Close your eyes and relax.”
When her breathing settled, he called the police. Then he looked at his eye in the bathroom mirror. Swollen, closed, already discolored. But not too bad. Could be worse. He made an ice pack with one of Emma's tea towels and waited for the police to arrive.
THURSDAY, JANUARY 11
Emma had nightmares.
The killer with his knife. Her headless body in a dumpster.
At dawn she crept quietly out for a run, leaving Casey asleep.
The rain lashed down. She headed off into the wind, toward the park. She was soaked before she had run three hundred yards. But it didn't matter. The rain and wind were what she needed to banish the images from her mind. Exorcise the devils. Wrench back the power that had been stolen from her.
She ran hard, pushing herself until her muscles, lungs and heart protested. She moaned loudly, exulting in the pain. Running like a wounded animalâferal, wild, fierce. She attacked the hill up to Brockton Point, running recklessly, savagely. The rain lashed her with whips of ice, the wind tore at her face and hair. She cried tears and raged down the Siwash trail to the seawall, splashing through leaves and mud. Finally, an hour later, totally spent, she emerged from her own private storm.
Casey was waiting for her when she got back.
“Shaughnessy! Your own blessed mother wouldn't know you!”
She looked down at herself, soaked and splattered with mud and forest needles. She felt good. She smiled at Casey, stood on her toes and kissed his injured eye. “My brave knight.”
He put his arms about her and kissed her.
FRIDAY, JANUARY 12
T
he storm rattled Casey's window. He couldn't sleep. His eye hurt. He glanced at the clock:
1:25
am
.
He lay with his eyes closed, listening to the howl and scream of the wind and the rattle of rain against the window.
After a while he gave up trying to sleep and opened his book, but couldn't read. He kept thinking of Emma. No matter how many new locks Emma had fitted to her slider door, that ground-floor apartment of hers was not a safe place. Not with the killer still on the loose. He wanted to call her. He looked at the clock:
2:06.
He picked up his book and tried again to read.
After an hour, his eyes were tired. He switched off the light and lay back, closing his eyes, listening to the wind gusting outside, drifting into sleep.
A loud splintering crash jerked him awake again. He threw himself out of bed and hurried to the window. The giant chestnut tree across the street had blown down. He could see that it had crashed through the roof of Matty Kayle's house. Its roots, torn from the ground, formed a twisted mass that reared high in the air like the arms of a monster.
He threw on some clothes and ran. The front door wasn't locked. He pushed it open.
“Matty?” The light was on in the kitchen.
“Matty?”
Silence except for the wind.
He hurried through into the kitchen.
The back door was wide open. He looked outside and saw a figure kneeling in the dirt.
He shouted, “Matty! Are you all right?”
The only answer was a deep rumble of thunder and flash of lightning.
He went out. “Matty? Come inside!” He stood over her. “What are you doing?”
“I'm burying them,” she said calmly.
“I can't have them in my house.”
Using a small hand shovel, she was digging a shallow grave in the soft muddy ground. Beside her was a single wood burl, like a bowling ball, glassy with Albert's epoxy resin finish. Casey bent closer to examine it. He stared. Under the layers of resin, and mounted like a trophy, was a human head.
He yelled at her over the howl of the wind, “Where are the others, Matty?”
She led him into the house and down the stairs to the workshop. She pointed. On the shelf in front of her were four more heads like the one in the backyard, preserved like museum pieces in layers of resin. Like flies trapped in amber.
Women's heads.
Fixed for eternity.
If you didn't know they were real women, you would think them beautiful.
“Matty, we have to call the police.”
“No!” She turned on him quickly, pleading.
“Nobody must know. Help me, Casey! Help me buryâ”
“But, Mattyâ”
“My lifeâ” She gasped for breath. “My life would be overâ¦if this got out.” She reached out and gripped his arms. “Please, Casey?”
He looked into her suffering eyes and felt suddenly tired. A huge weight settled across his shoulders. His legs felt weak. The story would be in all the papers right across the countryâif not the whole world. The tv scorpions would be after her. Police would be in and out of the house for a week. They would erect a barrier with yellow crime-scene tape around the property. Sightseers would drive by the house taking pictures. People would point out Matty in the street and whisper together as she went by.
“It's no good, Matty,” he said quietly.
“The police need to know.”
She cried.
“How long have you known Albert was the West End killer, Matty?”
“Since yesterday,” she said. “He left his workshop door open. He never leaves it open.”
She wept. Casey held her in his arms and then steered her out of the workshop and up the stairs to the kitchen.
“Sit here, Matty.” He pulled out a chair for her. The floor was muddy. He crouched beside her. “Look, Matty, it will be all right, you'll see. Leave everything to me. Now tell me, where's Albert?”
She raised her swollen eyes to the ceiling.
“Is he all right?”
She shook her head. She was trembling.
He made a fast 9-1-1 call and then hurried up the dark stairs to the bedroom. His fingers found the switch near the door and flipped it on. There was an immediate flash as the wires shorted.
He returned to the kitchen. Matty was shivering. “I need a flashlight.”
She pointed. He pulled open the drawer and took out a flashlight.
“Get out of those wet things before you perish, Matty. Police and ambulance will be here any minute.
He climbed the stairs again and shone the flashlight about the wrecked room, open to the wind and rain. The chestnut tree filled the room.
The rest was broken plaster and lathe, roof tiles, splintered timbers. He moved forward cautiously, feeling his way, acutely aware that a roof timber might fall and trap him.
Then he saw Kayle on the collapsed bed, pinned and crushed under the weight of the huge chestnut tree.
The West End killer was dead.
SATURDAY, JANUARY 13
T
he storm blew itself out by noon. A ridge of high pressure had moved down the coast, bringing bright winter sunshine. The mountains seemed higher than their four and five thousand feet on days like this. They towered over the city, dazzling white, like bright young nurses in starched caps surrounding the bed of a recovering patient.
SUNDAY, JANUARY 14
The Stanley Park seawall was crowded with walkers, joggers, cyclists.
“All we need is daffodils and it would be just like spring,” said Emma, breathing in the sharp air. She and Casey were on their way to the Sylvia Hotel to meet Debbie Ozeroff and her partner for lunch.
They introduced themselves. All were dressed casually. Ozeroff was the happiest Casey had seen her in months. She shook Emma's hand enthusiastically. “You're quite the surprise, Emma. Finally, we meet you. Casey tells us nothing.”
Emma smiled at these words. “He's a quiet one all right, Debbie.” She pulled off her wool cap and shook hands with Vera Tanaguchi.
Ozeroff asked Casey, “How's Matty Kayle?”
Casey and Emma had arranged for Matty to stay with Emma's cousins' family in Port Moody.
Emma said, “Matty's good. Dan and Maureen make sure of that. Matty isn't used to having so many people about her, especially their noisy twins. But Maureen says she's settled in nicely. She's talking about things, her husband and her marriage, not locking everything inside. And that's a good sign, I think. If they can keep her for a while, the police and the media will be out of her hair. Maureen thinks Matty should stay a month at least. They all say she's lovely and no trouble. The twins love her. Matty seems to think rather a lot of you, too, Casey.”
“She's a good woman, so she is.”
Ozeroff laughed. “Casey likes to charm the ladies.”
They sipped their drinks.
Later, back at her apartment, Emma closed her eyes. “I'm glad it's all over. I don't want to talk or think about that monster for the rest of my life.”
“Is it, Emma? Is it really over for you?”
“No, not really. I'll probably always have a scar. I don't like to think of Albert Kayle and what he did.”
“Yes,”
“Will you stay for supper?”
“I will. What are you cooking?”
“It's vegetarian. You'd better like it.” She frowned. “Casey?”
“Hmm?”
“I've been thinking. I could be dead. I'm only alive today because of you. It makes me want to savor more than ever what's left of my life. D'you hear what I'm saying?”
“I do.
Carpe diem
. Seize the day.”
Emma said, “Did you ever drive the winding road from Belfast to Galway?”
“I did.”
“Do you recall the sight of the town as you drive down from the hills?”