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news floor was as deserted as I imagined it could ever be. Neither Mike nor Brent was there, and the two reporters I saw just looked at me glassily when I interrupted their typing to ask where either might be.
    I felt a tremor of doubt when Mike and Brent weren’t around, but only a tremor. I quelled the small voices. It was late. They might have gone for coffee or a bite, together or not. I left a note at Mike’s desk, letting him know about the email. Then I left. I was tired, and tomorrow was coming at me so fast it was already there.

SEVEN
    I ’m lucky. I always have been. Things fall into place. When graduation was near and I needed a job, one came. When the job turned out to be in downtown Vancouver, my family came through with my late aunt’s apartment.
    It was a tiny apartment in a co-op building off South Granville Street. I was surrounded on two sides by widows who’d been living in the building “since Trudeau was that exciting young man at 24 Sussex,” as one of them put it. This was Mrs. Noble, a woman so old I found it difficult to see the young woman she might have been. The fact that she’d been living in the building for over forty years gave me a clue to her age. I knew she’d had a life before that. She talked about it sometimes. A house in Kerrisdale. Kids, a dog—a husband, I presumed, though Mr. Noble was never mentioned and the kids never came by.
    On my other side was Mrs. Fast. “Call me Rachel, dear.”
    Rachel’s hair was not blue. It was a rich, dark blond, and though I strongly suspected the color was not her natural shade, I never saw a paler root or a hint of brass. Whoever did Rachel’s hair did a good job.
    Rachel Fast was a more recent occupant. She told me that when she moved into the building, my aunt Agnes had already secured her end-unit apartment. I knew Agnes had been keeping an apartment in the city since her engineer husband did well in the Alberta oil fields in the late 1970s. It afforded her more than enough money to escape the Edmonton winters and spend time with her brother’s family in Vancouver while keeping her own space. It all meant that Rachel had moved into the building more recently than Mrs. Noble, but she still might have been there a quarter century.
    There were four apartments to a floor. Two two-bedroom suites—and Mrs. Fast and Mrs. Noble each had one of those—and two very small apartments, mine and another across the hall that was owned by a dentist from Victoria, who we never saw.
    I made my way up the stairs to the third floor of the four-story building. I didn’t see anyone, nor did I expect to. This late at night, it was unlikely anyone else would be stirring, the Mesdames Fast and Noble firmly tucked away in their beds.
    I didn’t realize how tired I was until I closed the apartment door behind me and dropped my bags on the table in the small foyer. I aimed to hang my jacket on a hook in the foyer and didn’t notice I’d missed altogether until I heard the leather hit the hardwood. I was too tired to pick it up. Too tired to care.
    My kitchen is tiny. All sunny yellow tile and ancient appliances. I put the kettle on to boil, then perched at the counter, too keyed up to do anything but make tea.
    Something was bothering me. I am no kind of mechanic. And I’m not an expert on tools. But the one sticking out of Marsh’s neck had been odd. And not just because it was stuck in his neck.
    I grabbed my camera and scrolled to the photos I’d taken of Marsh in his SUV . When I found what I was looking for, I enlarged the image until the handle of the tool filled the entire frame. Then I could see it. The thing that had been bugging me. Though I couldn’t see the part buried inside Marsh, the tool was unlike anything I’d ever seen. It looked like the handle had been turned on a lathe. It was fine work. And it was old. And worn. I sat back and sipped my tea. It made no