“It wasn’t fair,” I said, “a beautiful young girl like your daughter, struggling to make it as a model, fighting a slight tendency toward plumpness, reading fashion magazines, soaking up junk from people like Mitzi, soaking up ideas that sparked the anorexia that killed her.”
“She wouldn’t listen to us, her mother and me, everything was the fashion gurus. Mitzi…” he spat the name, “Mitzi was the worst. We heard about her all the time from my daughter. Mitzi Brochu this, Mitzi Brochu that. Even when we could see my little girl’s ribs sticking through her clothes, Jenny kept on talking about Mitzi’s latest witticisms about plump people. I wanted to make an example of Mitzi, with her vicious physical pronouncements on the right way for people to look. Mitzi and the scum like Wendtz who make money pushing drugs to kids like Jenny.”
“But Richard, no one knows what your motivations were, they don’t realize you were making an example of Mitzi…and the others. If you tell them, and I’ll help you, it will make people think about these things.”
“I don’t think so. There’s still a lot of people out there who need to pay the price for what they’ve done. They’ll lock me up and I don’t want that to happen until I’m finished my work.”
Shit. We had edged close to the patio doors to the balcony. The balcony I loved, where I savoured warm summer air. Now I caught the faint odour of death. Buy time, I screamed to myself, buy time, buy time.
“Did you kill Robin’s cat?”
The man who had murdered four people looked offended.
“Of course not. I figure it was Wendtz trying to scare you off. The kind of thing he’d do.”
“Hmmm. How did you know Wendtz and his muscle man would be at Justice for Victims yesterday?”
“I didn’t. I was following them, looking for my opportunity.
When they went into your office, I knew they were going to try to hurt you. I had the gun. I was waiting for my chance.”
“And you probably saved my life.”
He nodded.
“Then why the change now?”
“You know what happened. I have no choice.”
“Really? And did you write a poem for me?”
“Of course.”
“What, um, does it say?”
The little smile played around his lips. I watched it, horrified, wondering how I could ever have wanted to be close to him. His eyes had once reminded me of chocolates. Now they were cold, hard, dark and dreadful. Like dog turds in the snow.
“You wouldn’t like it. It’s a suicide note,” he said. “It will explain your guilty feelings about the other deaths. Your involvement in them. Your suicide note is next to the items they’ll find in the woods.”
All the time he was talking he kept shoving me toward the balcony door.
My wonderful balcony, where I could see all of Ottawa and no one could see me. Or us, struggling. Where a six-foot-two man could flip a five-foot-two woman over it. Where all traces of violent struggle would be obliterated after the sixteen-story fall. I tried not to think of what that fall would feel like. Instead, I decided it was as good a time as any to put up a fight. But the only weapon I had was distraction.
“Get him,” I shrieked, looking over his shoulder.
In the seconds when he turned to look, I picked up the little dog by my briefcase, flicked the switch and flung it toward the other end of the room. A blizzard of barking filled the space.
Richard stared at me with contempt. “I can’t believe you’d think I could fall for that. And what’s that dog thing supposed to do? Scare me?” He had to yell it to be heard over the barking, but it didn’t detract from his menace in any way.
I hollered and kicked as Richard pried my fingers away from the door. Just as he peeled the last finger off, I aimed a kick at his crotch. It stopped him, but not for long. As I streaked across the living room towards the front door, he brought me down with a body tackle. The boom must have shaken the ceiling fixtures in the apartment below.
The dog kept barking.
I was gasping for breath as Richard slung me over his shoulder and moved toward the balcony again. I grabbed at his hair, pulled with one hand and raked my fingernails across his face with the other. If he was going to kill me, there was goddam well going to be evidence of it on my body and on his. As I took a tearing bite at his earlobe, he slammed the side of my head and I slumped.
“Why?” I pleaded. “I understand why you killed the bad guys, but I’m one of the good guys. Why are you killing me?”
“You know too much. I’m not done yet. I owe it to my wife.”
What the hell, I thought, it’s a Sunday afternoon in a highrise apartment complex in peace-loving Ottawa. Someone must be going to call the police.
“But still,” I yelled, praying I had an audience somewhere, “it must not feel right. You don’t want to kill me.”
“You get used to it,” he said, just before I elbowed him in the eye.
I grabbed the curtains as we passed through the door and held tight. I felt the fabric tearing in my hands. None of me touched the balcony floor.
“Good-bye, Camilla.”
I looked over his shoulder and shrieked, “Get him.”
“You don’t think that will work again,” he said, too softly, as he lifted me higher. Over the edge.
I clung to the wrought iron railing of the balcony, screaming. My body dropped, and I could feel the skin on my palms shredding. I fought the thoughts of the sixteen-story fall as Richard pulled at my hands.
“Hang on, Camilla!”
I hung. Richard whipped his head around and slumped, half-stunned. Mrs. Parnell whacked him in the chest with the leg of her walker. He reached over to loosen my hands. I heard the sound of metal hitting bone as Mrs. Parnell loomed behind him.
I heaved and managed to climb back onto the right side of the balcony, my legs without bones.
Mrs. Parnell continued to slash the walker at him. He staggered and lurched towards her. He struck with both fists in her direction. Mrs. Parnell dropped her walker and tumbled forward.
I flung myself at him with enough force to throw him off-balance. I picked up the walker and hurled it at him, pushing him back to the edge of the balcony, striking the side of his head.
Mrs. Parnell crawled toward him. A woman who never gives up.
Richard lurched against the balcony rail and kicked Mrs.
Parnell. She slid and lay still on the balcony. He picked up the walker and dropped it over the side of the balcony.
I could hear my breath in harsh rasps as he turned toward me. I stepped back and leaned down. With every bit of failing energy mobilized, I picked up the cast-iron pot of geraniums and heaved.
The thonk of metal against skull reverberated in the fear-filled air.
Richard’s head snapped back. His arms flailed and he grabbed for the rail. Blood spurted from his forehead, washing into his eyes. He staggered, blinded, stumbling against the balcony rail. Crying and sweating and hardly believing he could still be conscious, I pressed myself against the wall.
He made a growling sound and surged forward, one final vicious lunge. Against the balcony rail, he reached and found only air.
I stared as Richard plunged tearing and grabbing through the sixteen story drop, his scream echoing back on the wind.
Mrs. Parnell’s shrivelled paws shook as much as mine