Canada was back at her Rubik's Cube when the cell rang.

Domo aragato Mr. Roboto

    Domo

         Domo

"Yeah" 

She could see that it was Harris and she knew he rarely called to wish her a good day.

  "Where the **** are you two?"

  Rick started to laugh as Canada's head jerked away from the phone, but caught himself. Harris sounded a lot like Lou Grant and sometimes Canada would egg him on by doing her

Mary Tyler Moore impersonation. Not this time. She knew things were getting serious, fast. This was the third lone woman to be shot on her own property in less than a month. Of

course they all had to have taken place in the Kootenay Heights - an artsy/hippy neighbourhood which attracted its fair share of lesbian activists.

  She hung up.

'Christ the media is gonna eat this up', mumbled Canada.

  Normally Canada loved living and working here. She lived alone with her cat, Oscar, and never felt uneasy about walking home late at night or whether the front door was locked. The

most serious crime in the last year was when a disgruntled tweenie, who had recently been fired from My Morning Mellow, a local health food co-op, decided to burn down the building in the

middle of the night. Unfortunately, he spilt a bit too much gasoline on himself as he was quite high on mushrooms. Consequently, both he and the building went up like kindling. My Morning

Mellow re-opened a couple of months later on the next block.

  Twirling her cube, her mind wandered, 'This is starting to look like a serial hate crime'.

The murders all shared another common trait - a single piece of clothing hanging in an otherwise empty bedroom closet.