I got off the Canada Line at City Hall and decided that enough was enough. This was getting stupid. I’d spent the last three days making purposeless trips on trains and buses trying to discover if I really was being followed. So far, I hadn’t seen Hoodie again but maybe he was better at this game than I was, or perhaps he just left the hoodie at home.
I crossed at the lights and went into Starbucks at the corner. Ten minutes later, with a double shot iced espresso in me, the world felt like a better place. Then I realised that from the moment I’d sat down – in the back corner of course, where I could see everyone – my eyes had never stopped roaming around the place. When I looked out the window it was to nervously check the benches outside at the bus stop. If I didn’t get this under control it would become something else I have to talk to Abby about, next appointment.
Anyway, I kept telling myself, Schuller’s probably right, I wasn’t the intended victim. But what I really believed was, if Hoodie has stopped stalking me it’s probably because he already knows my routine.
I took the Cambie Street bus up home and felt hollow rumbles of hunger in my belly as soon as I got in the door. My cooking skills were limited but doing anything where I could use my hands automatically, and switch my brain off, calmed me. Feeling in the mood for a late brunch, I cracked two eggs into a saucepan, added milk and a scoop of margarine, then a pinch of salt. The doorbell rang, and I took the saucepan off the burner.
Through the peep hole I saw a middle-aged man in a uniform. Not a cop, but some kind of deliverer. I opened cautiously.
“Canada Post,” he said. “Package for Calvin Knox. Don’t worry, it’s been scanned.”
It was in my hand before I knew it and the man was halfway back to his van. I looked down at what I was holding. A cardboard box of the Amazon book type, but generic. Typed name and address; no return details. A large “Checked by Canada Post” sticker ran down one side and underneath that, in much smaller print, “Open at your own risk.” Very reassuring, not.
I closed the door and took the package inside, wishing I had asked the deliverer more about what the ‘scanning’ involved. I knew they had machines these days to pick out anthrax-filled envelopes. But I remembered reading that Semtex explosive is odorless.
My hands shook as I placed the package on the kitchen table and slowly pulled the tear strip at the back. It came off easily and I leaned to one side and peered into the exposed gap. The spine of a book. Nothing for it now but to do the rest. I unfolded the box and slid the hardcover book onto the table. Very slowly and carefully I opened it about half an inch and flicked through a few pages. Just an ordinary book. Then I noticed the title.
A History of Anthropophagy in South America.
There was no accompanying letter or note. I spent the next few minutes leafing through the text which was only about two hundred pages, plus about sixty more in appendices and endnotes. There were sixteen pages of colour illustrations in the middle and I took a good look at those.
About halfway through there was a photograph of a woodcut depicting a scene in which a naked, agonised native was lying atop an altar. His feet, genitals and one hand had already been cut from his body by a gaudily dressed priest standing over him. But the knife was now in the victim’s hand, not the priest’s, and the poor native had just plunged it into the heart of the shocked and surprised priest. Underneath was the caption ‘Revenge of the cannibalised victim’. Beside the illustration someone had added a large ‘X’ in ballpoint pen.
I felt blood drain from my face. My heart pounded, and I struggled to breathe.
Someone had sent me a message.