Killing Kate: A Novel (Riley Spartz Book 4) (2 page)

He also had a formula that worked. But it soon grew unsatisfying.

So he broke the pattern. Ditched his distant waitress mania, instead focusing on a closer, more deserving target: Kate.

It was hard to admit to himself, because it meant acknowledging he’d made mistakes, but he’d come to realize he hadn’t played fair with the first ones. Those women had deserved to know why he had come. Initially, he had worried that such a warning might alter the outcome, but he also savored the idea of them brooding over who or what or when or where.

Kate’s transgression was plotted, not fleeting; so she had plenty of warning about his displeasure.

But the risk of discovery was worth the expression in her eyes as the club came down.

He would kill to see that look again.

U
ntil Kate Warner’s homicide, it had been a slow news day in Minneapolis.

In the first hours after her body was discovered, media coverage was fairly predictable. Television live trucks and camera crews with tripods camped out along the street because the neighborhood where Kate had lived and died was previously regarded as safe and quiet—the Minnesota ideal of above-average income and below-average crime.

So when her neighbors learned she had been murdered in her own home, Kate’s death became more interesting to them than her life had ever been.

My name is Riley Spartz. I’m a television reporter for Channel 3. Normally I’d describe myself as an investigative reporter, but those glorious days of long-term special projects are diminishing in the news business. While the word “investigation” still has promotional value, newsrooms simply don’t have the budget for the real thing anymore. Now journalists are under orders to turn breaking news into “instant” investigations, hoping the public won’t discern any real difference.

“Keep back, everyone.”

A uniformed officer motioned to the curious to stay some distance from the crime scene tape. The yellow-and-black plastic
ribbon was the only splash of color across the dried-up yard. If there were any spatters of blood, they blended invisibly into the grass—brown due to the summer watering ban.

The policeman then directed a terse “No comment” at me and the rest of the media. I made a note of his ID pin, “Stanley,” but didn’t press him further, because as a street cop, rather than a homicide detective, he probably understood little about what had happened inside the brick-and-stucco rambler. He might have secured the scene, but the homicide team would have quickly assigned him to the busy work of crowd control.

A large crowd hadn’t gathered—that typically only happens with brutal crime in public places like parks or malls. Most of these onlookers were pretending not to look.

One man walked his dog up and down the block. A woman kept checking her mailbox. Another pushed a young child on a swing in her front yard even though the toddler made noises about wanting to go inside. And more folks than usual strolled past, feigning appreciation for the hot August weather.

But their eyes were all riveted on the homicide house.

I whispered to my cameraman to casually shoot video of all spectators, because sometimes the killer likes to watch the ensuing commotion. Occasionally the killer even volunteers to be interviewed for television newscasts. Researchers have no solid explanation for it, but know that for some psychopaths, the aftermath is even more rewarding than the actual deed.

“Why Kate?” one woman asked, looking with anguish into my photographer’s camera. Her delivery smooth, as if she’d practiced in a mirror. “Who would want to kill her?”

Both legitimate questions—posed as a perfect sound bite that would definitely make air—but two separate queries that might never be fully answered. Such is the reality of violent death. “How” is much easier to explain than “why” or “who,” and the medical examiner would likely release the “how” answer within a day or two.

Often, but not always, when a woman is slain in her own home, the murderer is someone she knows. From a career of covering crime, I knew the police would be looking for signs of forced entry, robbery, and sexual assault as a means of determining motive and focusing their investigation.

Two men were nailing a piece of fresh plywood over the front picture window when we arrived; while their actions resembled hurricane preparation often seen along the coasts, here in the Midwest they suggested a break-in. Though why an intruder wouldn’t opt for a backyard entry seemed puzzling.

I knocked at the door of the two-story stucco directly across the street from Kate’s place. No one answered, and I was about to shrug off the house as empty when I caught a glimpse of someone at an upstairs window. Most of the neighbors had been neighborly, likely hoping to hear whatever information I had without waiting to watch it on TV. This inhabitant was coy.

A woman a few doors down thought Kate had a boyfriend, but didn’t think the relationship was particularly serious because she’d never introduced them. Once the police got wind of him, I knew they’d be pursuing the idea of a domestic squabble turned savage.

I glanced at a snapshot of Kate that a friend of hers had given me with the promise I’d return it later. I could have simply had my cameraman videotape the photo on her doorstep, but then other media might have landed the same shot. This way, I’d be the only reporter with this particular picture.

Kate’s appearance was ordinary. Her hair brown. Her smile pleasant. No clues there. I weighed what details I had learned about the victim during the last couple of hours and saw no overt reason for anyone to want her dead. The script was practically writing itself. I made notes.

Kate didn’t dress to attract trouble.

“Very modestly attired,” said an elderly woman who cherished the deceased because she drove her to doctor appointments.

Kate sang lead in the church choir.

“A voice like an angel,” said a man who regularly attended the same Sunday service.

If Kate had money, she didn’t flaunt it.

“Frugal,” said a woman in Kate’s book club. “She preferred waiting for the paperback.”

They confirmed that Kate worked at home as a medical transcriptionist, so it wasn’t as if she upset retail customers or annoyed office colleagues. She didn’t even have a dangerous commute.

Hers was a common case of Girl Next Door Gets Murdered. We all want to believe if someone dies violently, they must have done something to deserve it. That makes the rest of us feel safer. But a career of watching body bags being loaded in the back of medical examiner vans has taught me that nice people are sometimes killed for no good reason.

While it’s not something we tout, the media appreciates a good murder, particularly if the motive contains some mystery—a disputed inheritance or a covert celebrity lover can bring an audience to a broadcast in numbers that robbery or rape can’t.

If a case isn’t solved right away, that can be okay as long as there are fascinating follow-ups and indications it will eventually end in an arrest. Cold cases frustrate families, police, and the public.

And, to be honest, we newshounds also want endings to our stories. You can argue that we don’t care whether it’s a happy ending or a sad ending, just as long as it ends. And that might be a fair assessment; we can’t cover the same victims year after year without craving closure ourselves.

Our interest isn’t just professional. Even we have a personal need to know what happened to the missing, whether it be eleven-year-old Jacob Wetterling, abducted two decades ago on a rural Minnesota road, or Iowa TV anchor Jodi Huisentruit, vanishing
fifteen years ago on her way to work. Instead we settle for anniversary stories reliving the crimes.

So that night on Channel 3, I told viewers everything I could substantiate about Kate Warner’s death. No sense in holding back a juicy fact for later, because you’re only likely to get beat by your competition and reamed by your boss.

Right then, none of the other newsies in town seemed to have an inside track on the murder investigation, so I was sitting fine journalistically because it wasn’t clear yet whether this homicide would have staying power with the media and the public. That status of a victim becoming a household name is awarded to only a handful of the more than ten thousand Americans murdered each year.

I didn’t know yet that Kate had led a secret life, and that her secret did not die with her.

H
omicides were among the news stories my boss had recently banned me from covering, so Kate’s murder wasn’t assigned to me. More like I assigned myself, even though I suspected that move could bring me trouble.

Even reporters get tired of recounting heartache, so each morning I prayed for optimistic news stories to break. Maybe a cure for cancer. Or a solution to the state budget deficit. But miracles seldom happen, and most days the media has to get realistic and settle for a dog being rescued from a sheet of ice floating down the Mississippi.

In the midst of a deepening recession, happy news gets harder to come by.

Today was no exception. Earlier, a thousand miles west, a disgruntled man had piloted his small airplane into a government building, sparking a massive explosion and national debate on just what defines a terrorist. I’d been assigned to report that staple of local journalism: Could it happen here?

Newsrooms get a lot of mileage out of that question. A few phone calls later, I’d discovered yes—if someone’s willing to crash his own plane into a building, then it’s no more a security breach than any of us taking our car out of our own garage. Certainly less difficult than hijacking a jumbo jet. I was on my way
out to shoot the story at a small airfield when the assignment desk yelled out the address of a homicide just coming over the police scanners.

“What was the location again, Ozzie?” I asked.

The last few killings I’d covered finished badly for me. I’d started off in my investigative journalist mode, then ended up a homicide suspect, and in one case, almost a victim myself. Those developments had taken some of the luster out of covering If-It-Bleeds-It-Leads crime.

It wouldn’t have occurred to me that I even had a choice. My news director Noreen Banks was the one who suggested a change might be best, though she could have phrased it more diplomatically.

“Riley, you’ve become my biggest newsroom headache.”

I was certain this was what being fired felt like, so was surprised she saw an alternative.

“We need to put you on less perilous stories,” Noreen said. “You are becoming a distraction to the news we cover.”

So she assigned me to white-collar crimes like embezzlement, Ponzi schemes, and fraud. And luckily, with the economy tanking, there were plenty of those to report—some even concerning public figures in the Twin Cities.

So when the word “homicide” was being tossed around the newsroom that day, I could have held tight to my airplane security story and steered clear of up-close violence.

But the address of the crime scene sounded familiar. I was fairly sure I’d been on that block before. And deep down, I wondered if I’d been inside that very house. Curiosity, and even a sense of duty, beckoned—not to the news of the day, rather a friendship of yesterday.

So I handed my airport notes off to a rookie reporter and to the surprise of our assignment editor, volunteered to check out the killing.

“Give it to me,” I insisted.

Ozzie glanced toward Noreen’s office, knowing our boss might disagree.

“I’ll be done with the story before she even knows,” I said. “Plus, I might have an inside line on this case.”

The latter won Ozzie’s collaboration because anything that gives us an edge over the competition is worth a minor misunderstanding with management.

When I arrived on the scene, I recognized the brick rambler, even though I hadn’t been inside for more than a decade. I knew the layout as well as my own home, and wondered where the body rested.

“Please,” I prayed silently to myself in the Channel 3 van parked at the curb. “Let them have moved.”

“Come on, Riley, what’s taking so long?” asked my cameraman, Malik Rahman. “We need to get going. Hit the dirt.”

I’d been so eager to claim this story, Malik was puzzled why I was uncharacteristically slow getting out of the van.

“Just a second,” I told him. “I need to focus.”

“No, Riley, focusing is my job, the photographer’s. Your job is to snoop. Now go nose around.”

So while Malik sprayed the scene with video, I reverted to reporter form, knocking door to door until a woman holding a long-haired cat answered. She recognized me from TV, and I waited to see whether that carried pluses or minuses.

In this case she had enjoyed a story I did a couple weeks ago about owners who groomed and painted their dogs and cats for art shows. The fur certainly made an interesting canvas, but to me, the animal’s eyes looked sad.

“Thanks,” I said, accepting the compliment without debate. “It was my boss’s idea.” Noreen was fixated on animal stories as a way to win viewer loyalty . . . and station ratings.

“Be sure and tell her I liked it,” the woman said.

“I sure will.” Like hell. Noreen didn’t need any more encouragement for fluffy features.

I craved sympathy for having to work for a rigid manager like Noreen, but these days of growing unemployment, almost anyone who still had a job hated their boss. And those out of work hated the bosses who’d fired them.

“Too bad you have to cover a murder,” the neighbor said. “That’s got to be rough.”

“Yep.” I nodded. Not the kind of consolation I was looking for, but I played along. “I wanted to cover that northern Minnesota story about the lost baby bear being reunited with its mother, but another reporter snatched it first.”

Technically, that was a lie, but telling people something they like hearing often makes them more agreeable sources. Commiserating also allowed me to point to the crime scene and casually ask her the last name of the family.

She answered, “Warner.”