Killing Kate: A Novel (Riley Spartz Book 4) (3 page)

My heart sped up at the familiar name, and I wondered, Which one?

But then she went on to say that Kate lived alone. “Do you think it was her?” she asked.

“No word yet.” I got the neighbor’s phone number by promising to call her if I learned anything—an effective technique to staying in touch with eyes on the block.

A half hour later, when Detective Delmonico confirmed that next of kin had been located, I officially learned that Kate Warner was the murder victim.

I’m ashamed to admit I felt relief. And then I felt guilt that I didn’t feel more sorrow.

I had nothing against Kate. We’d first met when she was twelve. Her older sister had been a college roommate of mine.

Normally journalists steer away from stories in which we might know the players, because that can affect our judgment. Though having inside sources can sometimes trump conflict-of-interest concerns.

During our college days, Laura Warner and I were as tight as
Barbie and PJ or Bert and Ernie. Then we had a . . . rift. I hadn’t seen her or any of her family members, including her little sister, in years. I juggled the math in my head and was surprised that it might have been as many as fourteen years without any contact. Didn’t have her cell phone number. Or email address. Didn’t even know where she was living these days, or what she called a job.

But I always sensed our paths would cross again, probably on Facebook or some other social networking site. I just never guessed it would be at a crime scene. And even though our friendship had ended badly, I knew that with her sister’s death, Laura would need me.

The investigators remained tight-lipped that afternoon, confirming only what they legally had to under the Minnesota Data Practices Act: that a homicide had occurred, the victim’s name, date of birth, and that no arrests had been made.

As far as murders went, it seemed routine.

H
e enjoyed reading and clipping their obituaries.

He learned more about them there than from the news accounts. He was most interested in their genealogy. Who their parents were and whether they had children. He liked to sketch out as complete a family tree—spouses and siblings included—as he could for their files.

As for the murder scene, there was nothing a reporter could tell him that he didn’t already know. Sometimes he watched TV newscasts to feel superior, other times to relive the crime in his head.

The hard part was waiting for the documents. They completed the project. He forced himself to wait at least a month before applying for the birth and death certificates of his victims.

When the mail finally arrived, he felt powerful . . . sliding a letter opener through the government envelope. He stroked his hands and face against the smooth paper typed with the name and official cause of death. Homicide. Blunt Trauma. The records gave him ownership of his deed.

Handsome leather folders finished off his work. Each woman’s a separate color. Bonnie brown. Maggie black. Kathy blue. Kate would be tan. He liked to be organized in all things, whether at work or at home.

The Bonnie and Maggie files were finished and camouflaged on a top shelf with his other books. Kathy’s needed more work. He wanted it to be perfect.

His genealogy hobby revealed from whence his own brutal streak came. What started as a quest to discover his roots became an obsession once he discerned the ancestral pattern of violence he shared. His family tree became his destiny.

His father died on the electric chair at Indiana State Prison for murdering his mother during a domestic argument.

When he reached adulthood, he tried to dismiss what happened in his childhood home as one very bad day. A family can’t be judged by twenty-four hours, he reminded himself. But in the course of mapping his paternal bloodline, he discovered other very bad days that haunted his pedigree.

Generations of other relatives who had killed. In researching their deaths, he discovered sociopaths. Two died in prison serving life sentences for homicide. Others were executed for their crimes. One on the gallows. One by lethal injection. Another perished in a shootout with police. And one in a head-on car crash—trying to escape the cops—slamming into a family of five.

Eight whom society called scum, he called kin.

Plus, a mysterious legend.

B
ack in Kate’s neighborhood, the crime scene tape was down a few days later. The police cars were gone. Things looked normal except for the sheet of plywood still across the front of the murder house.

Laura was parked outside. I pulled in behind her rental car. The night before, I’d slipped her my business card as I went through her sister’s funeral line.

“Let me know if you need any help, Laura.”

Seeing her for the first time since college wasn’t as weird as I expected. For one thing, she looked about the same. No extra pounds. No graying hair. Still unmarried, if I went by her ring finger. And still distant toward me.

She’d seemed noncommittal about my offer for a favor, so I was taken aback when she’d called this noon, telling me she didn’t think she could go inside her family home alone and didn’t know who else to ask.

“I’ll come over,” I assured her.

We walked to the front of the house in the muggy summer weather and paused while she rummaged through her purse. She pulled out a house key . . . back from the days when she also lived under that same roof, before their parents died. I let her walk in first, but immediately regretted my courtesy.

The crime scene had been cleared, but not cleaned.

A white outline seemed painted on the carpet, just a few feet from where we stood. I bent down to touch the white color and it smudged like chalk. It was chalk.

Laura’s face paled as she realized this spot was where her sister lay dead. Philosophically, she understood that the house would be forever stigmatized by such a gruesome history. But being face to face with the tragedy clearly rattled her.

She made the sign of the cross and prayed. “I believe in God the Father, Almighty.”

I stepped back to give her the illusion of privacy, but actually, I was scanning the room for clues. The outline was shaped like a human, but different. Where the victim’s arms should have been were wide, pointed contours, as if Kate wore kimono sleeves.

“Maker of heaven and earth,” her sister continued.

Near her head was a large reddish-brownish discoloration. A bloodstain. Numerous, smaller spatters had ricocheted over the surrounding floor and walls.

The room was dark because the picture window remained boarded up. Broken glass lay everywhere, and a steel lawn chair flung to one side seemed out of place in the room. I even wondered if it might have been the instrument used to break in. In that case, the killer would have dispensed with much element of surprise.

The next line of the prayer that I heard jarred me from such an interesting hypothesis. “He descended into hell.”

He sure did, I thought. And he put Kate through it, too.

I’d seen bloodstains before, in the aftermath of other murders. Even crushed brain matter. But one thing you seldom see in real life covering crime is an actual chalk body outline. These days they exist only on TV dramas for visual effect.

Homicide investigators don’t use them anymore because they can contaminate the crime scene with hair, footprints, and even
DNA from law enforcement rather than a suspect. Photographs and videotape better document the position of the body.

Chalk outlines are done by inexperienced police officers, often the first on the scene. They think they’re being helpful and even feel important as they perform the artistic act. But they play dumb when a ranking investigator arrives and storms about, wanting to know who was playing detective. The investigators even have a nickname for them when no one owns up beyond a shrug.

“Huh, must have been the chalk fairy,” I mumbled.

All this was explained to me by my cop beau Nick Garnett when he pointed out a “chalk fairy” to me once in a crime scene photo, telling me that’s how the officers would razz each other when they’d come across an anonymous outline at the crime scene.

I wondered who got chewed out for drawing this one. Then thought back to Officer Stanley, the cop who played keep away with me and the crime scene tape. I considered looking him up and joshing him about the chalk fairy artwork, just to weigh his reaction.

Gazing at the wide arms, I realized the shape even resembled the wings of a fairy.

Laura faltered through the rest of the Apostles’ Creed. Rushing down the hall the minute she reached “Amen.” I heard a gagging sound, a toilet flush, then a door shut. While my old roommate was puking up her breakfast, I pulled out my cell phone and took a picture of the chalk body outline.

I felt sneaky doing it, but I also doubted Laura would let a Channel 3 photographer through the door. I told myself I wouldn’t air the picture; I just wanted to have it handy. For research.

I took a second shot as backup.

Then I walked over to the bathroom door, and tapped gently. “Can I get you anything, Laura?”

No answer.

“I’ll just wait out here,” I told her. “Take your time.”

I stared at the mess around the room. A small couch was knocked over. Fingerprint powder was spread in several places. I imagined the detectives put luminol on the walls to check for additional blood spatters under black light. Rubber gloves lay discarded in one corner. The cops must have left the pair behind; if they’d belonged to the killer, they would have been tagged and taken as evidence.

I figured that’s what happened to the sheets on Kate’s bed. No bloodstains on the mattress. No signs of scuffle in the bedroom. But forensic tests would look for semen stains to determine whether Kate had sex recently, and if so, with whom.

I also peaked into the kitchen where I saw shriveled-up veggies on a cutting board and dead lettuce in a bowl. Kate had been tossing a salad shortly before her skull was crushed.

Back in the living room, it felt creepy standing in a place that once held good memories, some belonging to me, but now reeked of terror. I could only imagine Laura’s distress.

I thought back to years ago, me walking through the front door; Kate cheering my visit, acting happier to see me than her big sister.

“I want to sit by Riley! I want to sit by Riley!” she’d chant to tease Laura.

I wondered what her sister had told her when my visits stopped. And just then, I felt Kate’s death more personally than I had at any time since her murder.

A door clicked, and Laura walked out of the bathroom. Her eyes were red and puffy.

Neither of us said anything. I used my body to block the death scene from her view, but that wasn’t even necessary. She seemed to be purposely avoiding looking at her sister’s final resting place. I wasn’t sure what to say, and decided it best to keep quiet and take my cues from her.

Laura took a deep breath, looked straight into my eyes, and spoke. “Riley, will you help me?”

“Of course.” I forced myself to make a small smile that I hoped looked reassuring. “Anyway I can.”

I knew this was the kind of promise that could be trouble later on. But I also knew this wasn’t the moment to negotiate the terms of our reunion.

“I’ll make sure your sister’s death gets publicity,” I assured her. “I won’t let Kate be forgotten.”

“It’s not that, Riley.”

She stared over at the chalk outline, as if she’d decided to play dauntless in the face of heartbreak. Then she turned briskly and opened a hall closet, cluttered with a broom and mop.

“I can’t clean it up by myself.”

The medical examiner had removed Kate’s body from the murder scene to conduct an autopsy. The homicide team took whatever they needed for their investigation, such as blood, fluid, and tissue samples. But lots of grisly things get left behind, things too icky for me to talk about on television.

It’s not law enforcement’s job to clean up the mess after homicides. That’s up to the victim’s family to arrange.

“Neither of us is going to do it, Laura.” This was a job for professionals. “I’ll call someone.”

The expression on her face was a cross between relief and disbelief. “Who?”

“There are people.” I explained that many crime scenes, unless a family was very poor, were cleaned by biohazard crews because of fears of infection from diseases such as HIV or hepatitis.

She shook her head angrily. “My sister didn’t have any diseases. She didn’t do drugs or sleep around.”

“I’m sure you’re right about Kate. But what about her killer? Who knows what kind of scumbag he was? I’m not taking any chances and I’m not going to let you.”

Those words gave her something to think about.

“You’ll call them?”

“Yes.”

Crime scene cleanup is a fairly new occupation—and expensive, often hundreds of dollars an hour. But I knew of other homicides in which homeowners insurance had covered the cost and then there were crime victim relief funds. Otherwise the bill could be paid from Kate’s estate. My guess was, Laura would be executor.

“I’ll call them,” I assured her.

So we locked the front door and headed for our vehicles. As Laura climbed in her rental, I promised to let her know the details for the cleanup.

“You’re going to have to be here to let them in,” I told her.

She nodded, but didn’t look like she enjoyed the prospect.

“You can probably leave them to do their work, Laura, and wait somewhere else until they’re finished. Then lock up.”

“That sounds best.”

Figuring I had nothing to lose, I asked to bring a photographer to shoot the crime scene for a future story.

She seemed more sad than angered by my question. “No, Riley. This can’t be about that. I know you think publicity might help solve the case, but I’m not sure I want additional media coverage.” Then she slammed the car door and drove away.

Seeing her for the first time after so long had been a little disconcerting for me. Neither of us mentioned the passage of time. She didn’t bring up getting together again to visit or how great it was seeing me.