The Ninth Life

by E. H. Reinhard

  I nodded as I thought back to the call. “The man that I spoke to immediately knew that I was talking about Eve. If you have four daughters, and someone calls and says that they need to talk to you about your daughter, the first thing that you’d say is which one.”

  “And he didn’t?”

  “Nope. He said Eve right away.”

  “So if it was Koskinen that you were talking to, how would he have her father’s phone?” Hank asked. “I’m pretty sure that I’d know if my phone was missing and cancel it. Unless he’s involved. Or he’s…”

  “Dead,” I said, finishing Hank’s sentence. “The phone. The bs that he fed me and having to get off right away. The car down here.” I thought about Koskinen killing his parents. “We need to get into contact with someone up in Madison and get a car out to where her parents live. I need to talk to the captain.”

  “I’ll go make a couple calls,” Hank said. “Try to get someone to go and check out the house.”

  “Look to see what you can find on her sisters as well. Make contact.”

  “Do you have their names?” Hank asked.

  I pulled back up the DMV records on my computer and copied the names and addresses down for Hank. He walked from my office—I followed him out, walking next door to the captain’s.

  “Where are we at?” Bostok asked.

  “Waiting to get a callback from the assistant director up at the state mental hospital.”

  “What’s going on now?”

  I filled the captain in on the latest developments.

  “How is Koskinen making and taking calls in there?” Bostok asked. “Is this place that relaxed? He’s not monitored?”

  “I don’t know, Cap. The facility sure as hell doesn’t have as tight of security as it should if Koskinen has had a cell phone and been communicating with Kleeman for the last week, or however long she’s been gone.”

  Bostok and I talked for another couple of minutes before I heard my desk phone ringing in my office. I left Bostok’s doorway and jogged back into my office. I scooped up the ringing phone.

  “Lieutenant Kane,” I said.

  “Charles Gill.”

  I heard him let out a big breath into his end of the phone.

  “We have the cell phone,” he said. “He was holding the damn thing when we entered his room. He then casually passed the phone to the guards that I entered the room with like it was no big deal.”

  “Did you check the log?” I asked. “Who has he been talking to?”

  “All the calls and messages were deleted except for one entry in the call log to someone named Susan. That call was today.”

  I figured the chances were good that Eve Kleeman was using her mother’s phone. It also let me believe to a point of almost certainty that both of her parents were deceased—not from natural causes, I imagined. “I need that number,” I said.

  “Hold on. The phone is in the guard office. I’ll have to go and get it.”

  “How is he able to sit in his room with a cell phone?” I asked. “Sit in his room and talk to someone who is down here killing people?”

  “I don’t know. My guards do a rotating round of checks and contraband sweeps. The times always change so the patients don’t know when they’ll be by.”

  “Is this something that’s written down somewhere?” I asked.

  “Well, it’s scheduled on our end, yes. We schedule it two weeks ahead of time.”

  “And Eve Kleeman could have shared this schedule with Koskinen,” I said.

  The assistant director said nothing for a moment, before clearing his throat. “I guess that could be a possibility.”

  “Probably a certainty,” I said.

  He didn’t respond to my comment. “I have the phone here,” he said. “I’ll get the call log pulled up.”

  I held on the line.

  “Okay. I have the number. Are you ready?”

  “I am,” I said.

  He gave me the number, and I wrote it down. “What did you come up with as far as me talking to him?” I asked.

  “I haven’t got an answer, Lieutenant.”

  “Well, he’s involved in my murder investigation now. Get one,” I said. “And call me back.” I pressed the button on the base of my desk phone to hang up and dialed Terry’s extension in the tech department downstairs. A busy tone sounded in my ear. “Dammit.”

  I took the paper with the number on it from my desk and left my office.

  “Hey,” I heard as I passed Bostok’s office door.

  I took two steps back and poked my head in.

  “What did you get?” the captain asked.

  “I’m taking this number down to tech to be run,” I said. “It could lead us straight to Kleeman.”

  “Go,” he said. “Fill me in on the rest later.”

  I jogged down the three flights of stairs to the first floor and walked through the doors to the tech center. My eyes shot right toward Terry’s office. He sat at his desk on the phone. I looked toward the back of the room and saw Westbrook at a computer station. I went straight to him.

  “Westbrook, I need a number run,” I said.

  Chapter 30

  Eve stood in front of the open refrigerator door in Dana’s house. She began pulling items from inside of the refrigerator and lining them on the counter—ham, cheese, mayo, tomato, and lettuce. Eve looked around the kitchen, scanning the items on the counter—she didn’t see any bread. Eve walked to the door next to the oven and turned the handle. She reached inside and snatched a loaf of wheat bread from the pantry shelf. Eve took all the ingredients to the kitchen island and fixed herself a sandwich. She didn’t bother putting anything away.

  Eve grabbed a can of diet soda from the refrigerator and hip bumped the door closed. She took her lunch out to the living room and clicked on the television. She picked a nineties sitcom, leaned back into the couch cushions, and ate.

  Eve finished her meal and stared at the time on the television’s cable box—a few minutes before two. She fished Dana’s phone and the battery from her pockets, reinserted the battery, and powered it on. The phone went through its process of powering up. As soon as it got signal, it showed a text message.

  Eve pressed the button and read the screen.

  Larry: Keep this phone turned on. I’ll try calling you right around two. If you don’t hear from me, you must be ready for Kane. I love you, and I’ll see you in his kingdom.

  She waited. Two o’clock came and went. At five after, she began to get a little nervous. At ten after, she began to worry.

  Chapter 31

  “I got nothing,” Westbrook said. “It’s disabled. Probably yanked out the battery.”

  “Shit,” I said. “What about triangulation?”

  “We’d have to subpoena the phone carrier. Guessing it would be tomorrow at the earliest that we’d get something. Obviously, we wouldn’t be looking at anything close to real time.”

  “Let’s get going on that either way,” I said. “And we need the complete phone records requested for both Susan Kleeman’s number and Colin Kleeman’s.”

  “Sure. I can get it put in for. I just need the pertinent information for the paperwork.”

  “I’ll get it to you. What about the search we’re looking at here. Can we keep it open?”

  “Yeah. I can set up an alert in here to notify me when we get a signal. Otherwise, I’d have to sit here and stare at the screen.”

  “Okay, do that,” I said. “Let me know the second that anything comes up.”

  “Will do,” Westbrook said.

  I left the tech department and got back upstairs. I walked into Bostok’s office.

  “Fill me in,” the captain said.

  “They found Koskinen with the phone. I guess he passed it over without issue. The assistant director said that everything on the call and message log was deleted except one call from earlier today. The call went to a Susan. Susan, I assume was Susan Kleeman, Eve Kleeman’s mother. I think they’ve both been
using her parents’ phones.”

  “Meaning that her parents are dead,” Bostok said.

  “That’s how I’m leaning until I hear otherwise.”

  “And what did we get from the search? I don’t imagine I’d be looking at you if we got a signal and location.”

  “Westbrook didn’t get a signal, but he’s going to keep the search open.”

  “We need the logs from the phone carriers on both phones,” the captain said.

  “I already asked Westbrook to put in for them. We just need to get him the paperwork on it.”

  “I’ll get it taken care of,” Bostok said. He rocked back in his chair and pointed at one of his guest seats. “So what are we trying to do to get any kind of confirmation on dead parents?”

  I took a seat. “Hank was making a call to the local PD up there to request that someone go out to their house. He’s also trying to make contact with Kleeman’s sisters, which she has three of.”

  “So what’s next, then?” the captain asked. “As far as finding her?”

  “We wait on an alert.”

  “And if that doesn’t come?”

  “Keep doing what we’re doing until we run out of leads. We got the BOLO out on Kleeman’s father’s vehicle that Jones has on video. We still have her name and face everywhere. We could probably release another statement to keep the coals stoked on that. Hopefully when the call logs come in, we’ll get some more answers.”

  “What can we actively do?”

  “I’m getting Koskinen on the phone.”

  “Do you think he’ll actually tell you anything?” Bostok asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “We should maybe get the bureau involved. They can put real-time tracking on any of her banking and credit card information. I’m sure they can do the same for her victims. You never know, she may have lifted a credit or debit card off of one of them.”

  “Not the worst idea,” I said.

  “I’ll make a call over there after I get the phone records set,” the captain said.

  “Okay. Let me go and see what Hank got as far as getting anyone to the parents’ house, or sister information. I’m going to get back into the records we have after that. Maybe we missed something on the first go around.”

  Bostok nodded and reached for his phone. I left his office and found Hank at his desk.

  “Did you get ahold of anyone?” I asked.

  “The local PD, yeah. They’re sending a car out to the house as we speak. Well, it’s probably there if they dispatched it right away. The patrol sergeant that I spoke to said the address was just a mile or so from their station. I’m going to get a call as soon as we know anything there.”

  “The sisters?”

  “I only found a number for one out of the three. An internet search showed that Janis Kleeman was the proprietor of a cupcake shop. I tried calling the place but didn’t get an answer. Their hours showed that they should be open. The voice mail gave another number for reaching Janis directly. I tried that, which I also didn’t get an answer on.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Do you think the sisters are dead as well?” Hank asked.

  I hadn’t even considered the possibility. I did a quick bit of mental math—three sisters, mother and father, Billie Webber, Erica Osweiler, and Phyllis Boucher. Eight victims. If she was going for nine, she only needed another. What would happen after she hit nine was unknown.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I hadn’t even considered that. I want you to keep trying to get one of them on the line, though. Do whatever you have to. Call local PDs for house calls, whatever.”

  “Okay,” Hank said. “Did they find the phone at the hospital?”

  “They did. They entered Koskinen’s room, and I guess he was just sitting there with it. He turned it over to them. Everything in the logs erased except a single number dialed earlier today to someone named Susan. I have to think that is Susan Kleeman, and I’m thinking that Eve Kleeman has her mother’s phone.”

  “Try tracking it yet?”

  “No signal,” I said.

  “So we have him with a phone up there. Whether he erased the information on the phone itself or not, we should still be able to get everything from the phone carrier.”

  “Being put in for as we speak.”

  “A tech department might be able to recover the things deleted on the phone faster than waiting on the records,” Hank said.

  “I could see that turning into a transfer of evidence nightmare unless it came directly to us. Let me kick that around for a second. I’ll call the assistant director back and have him get the thing bagged and secured.”

  “Okay. Let me get on this crap. I’ll let you know when I get anything back from the PD up there. I’m about to make a call on that Biomed charge to see what I can find out. I’ll get back on the sisters right after that.”

  “I’ll be in my office,” I said.

  I walked through the bull pen to my office and sat at my desk. I dialed the assistant director at the hospital. He didn’t answer. I left a message for him to bag and secure the phone and call me back as soon as he got a minute. I then dialed Jim.

  “Jim Gase,” he answered.

  “Hey, it’s Kane.”

  “How’s it coming down there?” he asked.

  “Figuring things out. None of them are getting us closer to our woman.”

  “What have you gotten since we last talked?”

  I filled Jim in on everything, which took the better part of fifteen minutes.

  “You said that they entered his room up there and he was sitting there with his phone?” Jim asked.

  “That’s the word that I got, yeah. And then turned it over to the guards.”

  “Why the hell would he just sit there with it, and let them find him with it? You would think he’d hide it the second he thought that someone was coming.”

  “One would think,” I said.

  “Unless he wanted to be found with it. You said it only had the one number in it? But everything else was deleted?”

  “Right.”

  “So he wanted someone to look into the number.”

  “We can’t say if that was his intention or not, but we’re looking into it,” I said. “I tried tracking it, no signal. We think that the number belongs to Susan Kleeman, though we have yet to actually prove that. Either way, with her father’s phone and vehicle being involved in all of this, we thought it prudent to get a car out to their house. I guess that is happening as we speak.”

  “You need to get Koskinen on the phone,” Jim said.

  “I just tried calling back up to the assistant director there right before I called you. He didn’t answer. I left him a message but haven’t heard anything back ye—” I almost had the word yet out of my mouth when Hank shot into my office.

  “Sorry,” Hank said, stopping a couple of steps from my desk.

  “Hang on a second, Jim.” I gave my attention to Hank. “What’s up?”

  “Body bags,” Hank said.

  “What about body bags?”

  “The charge on her credit card.”

  I went back to the call. “Let me call you back, Jim. It looks like I’m getting some news.”

  “Keep me updated,” he said.

  I hung up.

  Hank sat across from me at my desk.

  “Okay. So she bought body bags?” I asked. “What the hell for?”

  “I don’t know. But these are the nice, commercial-grade and double-zippered ones,” Hank said in his best impersonation of whoever he’d talked to. “Or so I was told from the place where the purchase was made.”

  “And she bought two?” I asked.

  “Correct,” Hank said. “With next-day delivery.”

  “Who are the two people that seem to be missing from this equation?” I asked.

  “Her parents,” Hank said. “You think that she brought them down here in body bags?”

  “And could have had them on ice in that upst
airs bathroom.”

  “Why would she do that?” Hank asked.

  “That I don’t have an answer for.”

  Chapter 32

  Hank left my office and said he was going to resume trying to get into contact with the sisters. In the fifteen minutes since Hank left, I’d been talking to Detective Jones and bringing him up to speed with the latest happenings. Jones had brought back the video from the grocery store and just left my office to take the memory card with the video down to the tech department. My desk phone rang, and I scooped it up.

  “Lieutenant Kane,” I answered.

  “Assistant Director Charles Gill. We’re going to get you on a video call with Koskinen. We’re just getting things set now. You’ll need a computer with a camera and have to log into an online meeting that we’ll create. It will record the call and allow you to download it.”

  “Perfect,” I said. “When are we going to be ready?”

  “Call it a half hour. I have your direct number. I’ll call you a few minutes before we’re set.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “You’ll hear from me shortly.”

  I hung up the phone and dialed Terry’s office down in the tech department. He picked up right away.

  “Hey, it’s Kane. I just got off the phone with the assistant director up at the state hospital in Wisconsin. They’re going to get me on a video call with Koskinen in about a half hour. They say that we’ll be able to record it and download it, but I just wanted to see if there’s anything on our end that we should do in preparation.”

  “What service is this going to be through?” Terry asked.

  “I didn’t ask. He’s going to call me a couple minutes before they’re ready.”

  “Okay. I imagine that they’ll use some virtual meeting service. Let me get a station set up for you. At least that way we’ll be able to record everything ourselves and not have to rely on some third-party service. It should just take me a few minutes, then when it’s time for the call, you can do it down here and we’ll have the video from it immediately.”

  “Works for me,” I said.

  “Just come down after he calls you. I’ll have everything ready.”