Killing Kate: A Novel (Riley Spartz Book 4) (16 page)

So him, Chuck, and me. All scrunched in a row.

“Where you want to go?” the cabbie asked.

“Hey, Riley,” Benny said. “No media interviews. Get out.”

“One quick question, Chuck,” I said. “Don’t even need it on
camera. When you discovered Kate’s body, was there a chalk outline around it?”

“What kind of question is that?” Benny asked.

“I have a reason.”

“I’m sure you do, but I’m not sure I’m going to let my client answer.”

“It could help your case,” I insisted. If Chuck could definitively say the chalk outline was there when he found the body, that might tie this murder to the others Garnett mentioned, and could clear him. Unless he was the killer.

Chuck paused like he was thinking. “I can’t remember.”

“Where do you want to go?” the cabbie asked again.

“You got your answer,” Benny said. “Now you and I are getting out and he’s going home.”

“You sure, Chuck?” I asked one more time. “This might be important.”

“I don’t want to remember her body. It’s something I’d like to forget.”

“Give address or get out,” the cabbie said.

I thanked Chuck, climbed out of the cab, and assured him Channel 3 would report the news of his release. The cab pulled away. Benny opened his umbrella and I ducked underneath.

“So what happened with the cops?” I asked.

“Their thirty-six hours to make their case came and went,” Benny said. “Clearly they don’t have enough evidence on my guy. I told them to put up or shut up. They declined charges . . . for now.”

I wondered if this development had anything to do with Garnett talking to the homicide team this weekend about the chalk outline.

“So Chuck’s back to being a witness, not a suspect?” I asked.

“Unclear. But I warned him to keep his mouth shut. I hope he understands that means you, too.”

I explained to Benny that I was trying to connect this murder
to others in the Midwest. “It might come down to whether a chalk outline of the body was made by the killer, or an overeager cop.”

“Good luck getting the police to own up to that one.”

“Chuck was the first on the scene. He knows.”

“But you heard him, he can’t remember. So drop it.”

Then I mentioned a case that happened years ago in Denver in which the witness who found the body couldn’t remember a key fact. The police brought in a hypnotist and all became clear. The cause of death changed from suicide to murder.

“You’re not suggesting I let the cops hypnotize my client? That’s insane. They’ll just try to trick a confession out of him.”

I saw Benny’s point. So I dropped the idea.

Just then a station van pulled up alongside us and honked. I waved the photographer off. “Too late, he’s gone.”

“What do you mean too late?” Benny said. “You got me, don’t you?”

So I called the camera back and we taped a sound bite on the street of Benny in his lawyer suit and voice talking about how the police had obviously recognized they had the wrong man.

No one from the cop shop wanted to be on TV answering questions about whether an innocent man had spent the weekend in jail. Even off-camera they wouldn’t say whether they were spooked by Chuck’s supposed people meter alibi or whether something else—possibly Garnett’s serial killer theory, though I couldn’t bring it up—played into their decision to release their suspect.

I caught up with homicide detective Delmonico in the basement of city hall, but all he would pony up in regard to Chuck Heyden’s discharge was a statement that the investigation was continuing, and he couldn’t comment further.

“Have the feds showed any interest in the case?” I followed
him as he proceeded down the hall toward the safety of the homicide department—off limits to the media unless invited.

I could tell that my question surprised him, but he stuck to his single talking point. “I am unable to comment on the investigation.”

“If the feds had reason to move in, how might that affect your case, Detective?”

When jurisdiction overlaps, the FBI and local police almost always clash because the feds like to come in and play bigfoot, and the locals fight to protect their turf. I knew it; Delmonico knew it. Why I continued down that path of inquiry troubled him. So he ignored me.

“I’m hoping maybe we can chat off the record.” I winked just to keep the mood casual. “I was talking to the chief the other day about the chalk fairy outline and thought you might have something to add.”

As part of the homicide team, I knew Delmonico had Garnett’s information. I could also see my use of the term “chalk fairy” disturbed him.

“Excuse me, but I need to get back to the job.” Delmonico escaped through the homicide door, shutting it in my face.

“As a matter of fact, so do I.” I pounded my fist, then called after him ominously. “Got to write a story for tonight.”

T
his was his day to visit her.

Dolezal bought flowers from the farmer’s market during his lunch hour so she could brag to her friends about him being “such a good boy.” Folks living in her senior housing gained standing among their peers if they had regular company. Especially if the visitors remembered the names of other residents like Doris or Otto.

“Hello, Nanna.” He put the bouquet in a vase she kept on the kitchen counter and held it to her face to smell.

“My boy, my boy.” She paused to catch her breath, and he wondered if these blooms were too pungent. “You are so good to me.”

“Nanna, you deserve it.”

When she battled cancer, he remained at her side, pretending he couldn’t tell she wore wigs or no longer had breasts.

Now twice each month he held a free genealogy class in the dining hall of her building to teach residents how to track their family trees with birth, death, and marriage records.

“Leave this be your legacy,” he told them as he checked their progress. “Because when you are gone, so will be the knowledge. Write names on the back of photographs. Record memories of special happenings in your life.”

None of his students had been able to trace their roots to anything important like the
Mayflower,
but one insisted at each lesson, with no documentation, that the blood of Charlemagne flowed through his veins.

Dolezal always congratulated the man on his ancestry, but privately doubted the lineage.

All this made Nanna important among the residents and staff. Occasionally some of the seniors needed legal work and a few had even become clients of the firm because of the ease of Dolezal handling their paperwork.

He enjoyed taking Nanna for a drive in her older model Ford Taurus just to make sure the car didn’t sit too long between trips. Other times, if she didn’t feel like riding the road, she encouraged him to take the car by himself and bring it back serviced.

“You like driving for me, don’t you, Karl?”

“Very much, Nanna.”

“You must care for my car because one day it will be yours.”

The Taurus was nothing special, but Karl Dolezal had reason to appreciate driving a vehicle registered to an eighty-two-year-old woman.

“I raised you well, Karl.” She squeezed his hand in contentment. “You make me proud.”

He only hoped she died before ever learning the truth.

((ANCHOR SOT))
POLICE ARE KEEPING QUIET
ABOUT WHETHER THE MAN
RELEASED FROM JAIL IN THE
MURDER OF THE EROTIC AUTHOR
REMAINS A SUSPECT OR IF THEIR
INVESTIGATION HAS TAKEN A NEW DIRECTION.

B
ack at my desk, I started cranking out the story while sixteen email messages waited for attention. I opened one labeled BUDDY’S REAL FAMILY. It was a note from Barbara Avise, a woman claiming to be Keith Avise’s ex-wife and Buddy’s true owner.

Please call me and I will tell you the bona fide story.

The last thing I wanted was to hear any more about the egg man’s personal life. Not hard to understand him having an ex; I figured whatever her story was, she was better off alone. Parties in nasty divorces sometimes try to get the media involved for revenge. I always strived to steer clear of such motives and not let one spouse use me to bad-mouth the other on our air.

Barbara had included two attachments she described as a photo of her and Buddy, plus legal documents supporting her claim. Declining to look at either, I sent a polite reply expressing sorrow for her loss and explaining that station staff aren’t allowed to open attachments from unknown sources.
As you know, Barb, Buddy’s death affected me deeply, but I feel Channel 3 has told his story.
Wishing her the best, I hit Send and finished my script for that night’s newscast.

((ANCHOR TWOSHOT))
CHANNEL 3’S INVESTIGATIVE
REPORTER . . . RILEY SPARTZ . . .
JOINS US NOW WITH THE STORY.

I’d phoned Laura on my way back from the jail to let her know about the police not filing murder charges against Chuck.

She sounded upset. “Does this mean my sister’s killer is going free?”

“I don’t know what it means, Laura. I’m not sure the cops even know. I just didn’t want you to hear it cold on TV.”

I kept my word to Garnett not to mention any possibility of a serial killer. But I did put my photo of Kate’s crime scene outline in the story, because after all, that belonged to me.

((RILEY SOT/PIX))
CHANNEL 3 HAS LEARNED THAT
POLICE ARE PUZZLED ABOUT THIS
CHALK OUTLINE DRAWN AROUND
THE VICTIM’S BODY AND ARE
TRYING TO DETERMINE WHETHER
IT WAS MADE BY AN OFFICER AT
THE SCENE . . . OR PERHAPS LEFT
BY THE KILLER.

I recorded my voice track and went back to work, this time concentrating on my Angel of Death theory. While I’d promised Garnett I wouldn’t broadcast the other cases, we had no agreement that I wouldn’t investigate them.

I taped a map of the Midwest on the wall of my office and starred Ames, Iowa, and Madison, Wisconsin, with a red marker. Because I had a time line and because both cities were small enough that homicides were infrequent, I was confident I could identify the correct homicides even without the victims’ names.

I did a computer search of the local newspapers in Ames for murders in the past year. Two popped. I disregarded an elderly man who died in an arson fire and concentrated on a young woman beaten to death in her garage a couple of months ago. I wrote her name—Kathy Loecher—and her date of death on a Post-it and stuck it on the map.

I repeated the search for Madison and found only one murder. Maggie Agnes killed in her home a few months earlier. I added those details to the map, then printed the news accounts of both cases and put them in a file folder.

I also marked a red star on Minneapolis—the freshest lead. The feds would be converging soon, if only to discount the conjecture. I printed out a photo of Kate and taped it to the map.

I thought back on my last question to Garnett as he unloaded his suitcase from my car trunk outside the airport terminal. I was trying to understand the killer’s motivation.

“What do you think this chalk outline business is about, Nick? Do you think the murderer might have always wanted to be a cop?”

All he would offer up was that anything’s possible. Then he turned back and whispered in my ear, “It’s also possible he is a cop. But whatever he does for his day job, when he’s not out killing, he’s smarter than most serials. So leave this one to the pros.”

I chose that moment to plant a big kiss on his lips, as a means of saying good-bye and ending the conversation.

The television monitor on my desk was tuned to the station’s in-house feed, which showed what the news control booth could see in the studio. Sophie sat at the anchor desk in the newsroom recording brief promos of the most interesting, but not necessarily important, reports. The purpose of promotion was to alert viewers to stories they might not expect to see on the news and convince them to tune in for the details.

A floor director walked into the shot to tweak Sophie’s microphone and point out which camera she’d be reading. I noticed Chuck’s release was included in the day’s lineup, and the facts were essentially correct, so I turned off the monitor to concentrate on my homicide cases.

The next hour was spent on the phone offering my condolences to the families of the two murdered women in Wisconsin and Iowa and arranging for them to email me photographs of the victims.

“What did she do for a living?” I asked in each case.

The only things the women appeared to have in common, besides their deaths, were their age and occupation—both were waitresses in their early twenties.

“Do you know if the police have any suspects?”

Neither family seemed to have a grasp on the status of the investigation, nor were they media savvy enough to question why a television station was calling about a homicide so far outside its viewing area.

The police departments of Ames and Madison weren’t quite so dense.

“What station are you with again?” and “Why are you calling about this case?” were the first words out of their mouths. It was like they were channeling each other.

I tried taking an academic approach. “Channel 3 is conducting a study about homicides in the Midwest during the last six months. I’d like to confirm whether your case is still open.”

Yes from both jurisdictions.

“Have there been any arrests?”

No to either.

“Do you have any suspects whose descriptions you’d like us to broadcast?”

No witness saw anyone leaving the scene in either case. As with most homicides, their leads involved investigating people who knew the victims.

“Did anything strike you unusual about the crime scene?”

Neither detective offered up any details about the chalk outline, so they may not have realized three cases could be connected, or they might have been keeping that clue quiet as something only the killer would know.

The investigator in Madison mentioned that blunt force trauma was not typical.

“When it comes to homicide, the leading cause of death is gunshots, followed by stabbing, strangulation, then blunt objects. The fact that the assailant chose to beat his victim isn’t the norm according to murder stats.”