Killing Kate: A Novel (Riley Spartz Book 4) (11 page)

Killing Kate might have been a mistake. Because unlike the other women, he and she could be connected.

He’d felt no jeopardy from the early news reports on her homicide, or frankly from any of the media reports on any of the previous slayings. Frustration was a better word. His role of messenger had gone unnoticed by the police and the public.

Some days that made him angry. Why didn’t they try harder? Other times, he reveled in his superiority over their mindlessness . . . reminding himself that eventually acclaim would come.

Just thinking of all this conflict made him feel unclean. The man stepped under hot water and let it shower over him, washing away the smell of sweat and the tightness in his shoulders. As an adult, he’d felt guilt over his private yearnings. But last year, his discovery that he was not a servant of Satan, but rather a descendant of Teresa, freed him to act without remorse.

So with her blessing, he did.

He closed his eyes and imagined her angelic rapture at finally receiving the recognition she deserved, rather than mere superstition. But the water turned cold, ending the fantasy. He grabbed a towel and dried himself, but before slumber, he had a routine.

He posed naked in front of the mirror in his special stance—a salute to his brutal bloodline. The pose always calmed him. Yet he still slept poorly that night.

I
was still at home, breakfasting on peanut butter toast while I checked my voice mail messages.

One came from Ed, my pal down at the liquor store. I expected he might have a case of Nordeast tucked away for me, but instead, his recording said he had a story idea.

“Just had a visit from the cops, dearie. And they took a hundred bucks out of my cash register.”

I’d heard rumblings over the years that certain cops might be on the take, hitting up businesses, usually bars, for protection money to either patrol more or patrol less. I was very anxious to hear what Ed was promised for his one hundred dollars.

“I thought that message might bring you around,” he said as I walked through the door of the liquor store on my way to the station.

“Who were they? Did the surveillance cameras catch them?”

I looked up toward the ceiling, doubting an investigation could be nailed so easy. But I felt I was due for a break soon after such a bad run of news.

“Sure,” Ed said, “but that’s not going to do either of us any good.”

“Why not?”

“I called you about counterfeiting, not bribery.”

“Counterfeiting?”

“Bad bills being passed around town. The cops took the hundred and the camera tape of the customer as evidence.”

Ed’s bank had called yesterday, rejecting a twenty-dollar bill from his deposit bag.

“They said it was phony. So I’m out the money. But today a guy comes in and buys a bottle of Shakers Vodka. His hundred seemed a little off to me. So after he left, I called the cops.”

“Why’d you take the bill, Ed? You should have told the guy to take a hike.”

He explained his philosophy that counterfeiting was part of the cost of doing business.

“If I tell someone their money’s no good, I could be wrong, or could risk pissing off a customer who might have gotten it passed to them unknowingly. If the shopper is a crook, I risk getting punched or worse.”

Seemed to me Ed was overlooking the obvious. “But you have a gun.”

He crunched his lips together and shook his head. “Unless your life is at stake, you generally don’t want them to know you have a gun. Criminals can always use another gun, especially one that’s not registered to them. They might come back to get yours.”

So Ed simply reported the crime, hoping that if the cops busted a counterfeit ring, he might be eligible for a reward.

I
had to sideline my research on counterfeit cash, because to show the citizens of Minneapolis that the Kate Warner homicide case was under control, the police arrested Chuck.

Channel 3 didn’t get perp parade video because our first word about the news was a phone call from him, in jail, asking me for the name of that attorney I had mentioned.

“I’ll send him down,” I promised. Neither of us brought up how our previous encounter had ended.

Benny Walsh was one of the top criminal lawyers in town. His dark suits and black stares were legendary in the courthouse. I wasn’t sure Chuck could afford him, but Benny was willing to head down to the slammer to find out. Sometimes, if he thought the case had enormous potential for publicity, Benny could be flexible about money. But most times if a defendant couldn’t cough up a hefty retainer, he turned him over to the public defender’s office.

Suspects can be held in Minnesota jails for thirty-six hours before being charged. That gives the cops time to make their case. So Chuck’s best hope of not spending the rest of his life in prison was not to be charged with murder in the first place.

I told Benny about the people meter alibi, figuring if I attributed
the information to him, Channel 3 could report it without fear of retribution from the ratings giant.

Benny had a hard time following my account of how the ratings system worked. “So if I subpoena these records from Nielsen, they’ll show that he couldn’t have committed the crime?”

“If what he says is true, the data will show that somebody was watching TV in Chuck’s house during the time of the murder. It’s up to you to convince the cops or jury that it was Chuck.”

“Interesting,” he said.

“Remember, Benny, you have to learn about this from him and keep me out of it.”

“Yeah, I got it. But you keep this straight, Riley, if I take him as a client, my allegiance is to him, not you. His secrets are my secrets. You get nothing unless I determine it to be in his best interest.”

I didn’t need Benny to tell me that. I’d been a criminal defendant myself.

I handed Noreen a copy of Chuck’s mug shot. He looked dazed, like he’d been pulled out of bed and hauled off to jail.

She was pissed on a couple of matters. First, that Chuck was behind bars and couldn’t turn his people meter remote to Channel 3 for the news. Second, that Benny knew about the ratings device from me.

“Riley, you’ve put us in quite a quandary.”

I disagreed. “Nielsen will never know we knew about it first. We’re merely reporting the news via his lawyer. And privately, as journalists, we’ll know we did the right thing to get the truth out. If the ratings data clears him, fair’s fair.”

That interpretation did not reassure her. “It’s entirely possible he’s lying about being home and was actually out committing murder.”

That was true. When it comes to homicide, more often than not, the suspect is the killer. “If that’s how this plays out,” I acknowledged, “we’ll report it.”

Then Noreen warned me in her familiar boss voice that I’d be held accountable if this predicament got messy for the station.

“Being held accountable” was a businesslike way of saying being punished. I tried looking somber as I left her office so she’d know I took her rebuke seriously.

Then I went to work on the arrest story. This wouldn’t be any exclusive. Because of the erotica author angle the other media now wanted a piece of Kate’s death.

((ANCHOR CU))
A BREAK IN THE MURDER CASE OF
THE EROTICA AUTHOR . . . RILEY
SPARTZ JOINS US LIVE OUTSIDE
HENNEPIN COUNTY JAIL WITH THE NEWS.

((RILEY LIVE))
MINNEAPOLIS POLICE MADE AN
ARREST IN THE KILLING OF KATE
WARNER, ALSO KNOWN BY HER
PEN NAME OF DESIREE FLEUR.
THEY HAVE A FRIEND OF THE
VICTIM IN CUSTODY BUT SO FAR
HAVE NOT CHARGED HIM WITH
THE CRIME.

I deliberately left Chuck’s name out of the script because our broadcast policy was not to name suspects unless charged. The exceptions were public figures such as politicians or celebrities or suspects who were an immediate threat to society. Chuck didn’t fit either criteria.

Benny spent an hour in jail with Chuck and came out representing the guy. He even called to thank me for the referral. I didn’t bother quizzing him about whether he thought his client was guilty, because I knew Benny didn’t care. More important to him was whether he’d make air that night on the news.

I saw a way to make my story different from the competition. So I asked whether he had confirmed the stuff about the people meter.

“Yeah, Riley, the guy says he was home watching TV. Alone. Took a bit of pulling to get him to explain how he’s one of those ratings households you were talking about. But then even he could see this might firm up his alibi.”

“So you calling Nielsen for the data?”

“Absolutely.”

“They won’t hand it over,” I warned. “They’ll consider it proprietary—trade secrets.”

“I’ll get a court order. A man’s freedom is at stake.”

Benny swung by the station to do a quick on-camera interview with me. “It’ll rattle the cops because it’s something they won’t have expected. They might even kick my guy loose to avoid looking like idiots.”

I started reworking the story.

((ANCHOR BOX))
CHANNEL 3 HAS LEARNED THAT
THE SUSPECT BEING HELD IN THE
EROTICA AUTHOR MURDER MAY
HAVE AN UNUSUAL ALIBI. RILEY
SPARTZ JOINS US LIVE FROM THE
HENNEPIN COUNTY JAIL.

((RILEY LIVE))
THE HOMICIDE SUSPECT CLAIMS HE WAS HOME ALONE WATCHING
TELEVISION . . . AND BECAUSE
OF A NEW FORM OF RATINGS
TECHNOLOGY, HIS ATTORNEY SAYS
HE JUST MIGHT BE ABLE TO PROVE IT.

((BENNY SOT))
IN A FIRST OF ITS KIND
SUBPOENA . . . I’LL BE CHECKING
HIS ALIBI AGAINST COMPUTERIZED
RECORDS OF HIS TELEVISION
VIEWING . . . IT’LL BE LIKE RATINGS FORENSICS.

I explained to viewers how Nielsen measures audience size with people meters and that the suspect’s TV viewing habits were monitored by the ratings company.

Noreen grimaced as she read the news script.

I tried reassuring her. “Now that he’s under arrest, the fact that he’s a Nielsen household is going to come out as part of his defense. So we might as well be the ones breaking it.”

“Don’t you forget.” She waved her finger at me. “This goes bad, I’m holding
you
accountable.”

Just then, neither of us had any idea how bad it could go.

T
his time, watching the news on television upset him.

He could live without glory. He had proved that over the last several months. What he couldn’t bear was seeing fame go to someone else. That needed to stop. He realized his reaction sounded vain and knew he should make his dissatisfaction about maintaining accuracy, not taking credit.

That was more admirable than egotistic.

Errors must be corrected.

He wrote down the reporter’s name. Riley Spartz.

I
didn’t feel his eyes watching me the next morning when I walked to the station after parking my car. My mind was on Garnett flying home and his arms around my body. I didn’t know anything was amiss until the blow to the back of my head.

My bag fell to the sidewalk. My knees buckled and my hands reached upward; my hair wet and sticky. But when I held my fingers to my face, instead of seeing red, they looked . . . yellowish.

I turned toward my attacker and another egg hit me, this time in the chest.

“See how you like it.” The man appeared familiar but it still took me about ten seconds to recognize Keith Avise, Buddy’s owner. “Doesn’t feel so good, does it?”

I dodged the next egg, and the yolk hit the station’s yellow limestone wall, blending nicely. But the succeeding one struck me across the chin. The edges of the shell sharp against my skin.

“Stop it,” I yelled, finally able to speak.

“No,” he said. “You deserve it.”

By now a crowd had gathered, at a safe distance, to watch the confrontation. Some looked puzzled. One sniggered and pointed.

“How’d you like to wake up every morning and find your truck egged?” He pointed to his black pickup, parked illegally, and I saw yolk and eggshell dried on the side. “They keep punishing me for that damn dog. It wasn’t my fault; it was an accident. You made it worse.”

He lifted his arm to throw another one, but a well-dressed young man stepped between us. “Beat it or I will call the cops.” He held up a cell phone to show he’d already punched 911 on the screen. All he had to do was hit Send.

My attacker hesitated.

“Do you want the police?” the man asked me.

As tempting as assault charges sounded, I knew the resulting police report would be emailed immediately to all the other media. I could only imagine the headline:
Reporter Gets Egg on Face.
The radio talk shows would be even worse, using words like “scrambled,” “cracked,” and “rotten” to describe me. Being called a crybaby after Buddy’s death was starting to look like a compliment.

“No,” I said. “Just let him go.”

Keith looked infuriated at being interrupted. His hand trembled and he seemed to contemplate striking my protector.

“Don’t try it,” the man said. “Or I will call the police.”

The crowd cheered at his bravado and started chanting, “Nine one one . . . Nine one one . . .”

Keith’s fist closed tight upon his fragile weapon. The mood was so quiet we could hear the shell crunch. Disgusting liquid oozed down his arm, dripping onto the sidewalk at his feet.

He shook the goo from his hand and everyone stepped back to avoid being spattered with yolk. Keith swore before driving away in his pickup truck. I noticed the shattered window glass, through which Buddy had been rescued, had been replaced. Other than the egg scars, the vehicle looked new.

I glanced around, trying to thank the man who aided me, but
he was gone. The incident was such a blur, I couldn’t remember what he looked like, other than his face was pallid.

When I entered the sanctuary of Channel 3, the first person to see me was Noreen.

“What happened to you?” she said. “You’re a mess. You’re not thinking of going on the air looking like that?”

O
n the walk to his office, he played back in his mind the scene of coming to the reporter’s aid. Such a gallant deed was out of character, but he was surprised how bold and strong playing hero made him feel. Where that confidence came from, to speak so cockily in front of onlookers, he didn’t know.