Killing Kate: A Novel (Riley Spartz Book 4) Read Free Page A

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.

CHAPTER 4
    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.

CHAPTER 5
    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