"It was bloody dark," the man says in the car, "and he came out of nowhere." A touch of fear lingers in his voice as he recounts the incident. "I'd just bought The Globe and mail in the corner store and I was walking up to Danforth Avenue."
- The woman, her hopes for an evening at home in front of the fire dashed, huddles beside him in the freezing Toyota. Waiting for the heater to kick in, she can picture the place - the store with its red neon sign, the twin white apartment buildings looming nearby, the near deserted street. On Broadview Avenue, east side, just below the old folks' home.
- "Suddenly I heard a voice. 'Witches and whores, brother,' it said loudly in my ear. 'Everywhere you look. Witches and whores.' While I was stupidly trying to figure out whether whoever it was said witches or bitches, he'd rushed on ahead. I thought, man's as mad as a hatter, barking mad. He should be locked up before he hurts someone, a woman or a child."
- An irreverent image pops into the woman's mind. A long-dead American actor leans against a police cruiser at the end of an old TV show called "Highway Patrol." Broderick Crawford is a heavyset man in his fifties, big belly pushing at a crumpled white shirt. There are eight million stories in the big city, he rumbles in a gravelly voice that dares the viewer to disagree, and this has been one of them.
