The Ninth Life

by E. H. Reinhard

  “She needed to kill her parents, why?” I asked.

  Koskinen furrowed his brows. “False creators must die,” he said. His answer was blunt. He truly seemed to believe the statement.

  “Why did she pack them in ice and drive them from Wisconsin to Florida?”

  “Because I asked her to,” he said. “I had this vision in my head of how I wanted you to find her. Her dead parents were in the vision. Simple as that. She had to get them there somehow. I’m actually pretty impressed with my molding of her. She did well. Real well. I don’t truly know if she believed in my teachings or if she was just doing everything because she was infatuated with me, but either way, I instructed, and she delivered.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “You keep speaking like you did something more than con a lonely woman into killing for you.”

  “Oh, come on, Lieutenant. You can’t deny it. What else can you even call it other than power? I am the powerful one. I created a killer and then had her take her own life at my request. Know anyone else who has done that? Know anyone else who has that kind of power over another human being?”

  “Why did you give us a way to find her?” I asked.

  “Because my message had been sent.”

  I’d had enough of Koskinen and his delusions of grandeur. I’d had enough of his talk of power over Kleeman and his detailed descriptions of what he’d made her do. I couldn’t take another second of the pride in his face. He’d given us his version of the story. It was time to go and let him enjoy a dank, dark hole in the bowels of the state mental health facility until his ultimate trial and sentencing.

  “Speaking of power, let me show you mine,” I said. I leaned close to the computer monitor and stared at Koskinen’s tattooed face. I clicked the mouse button on the X to disconnect from the video call, stood, and walked to the door of the tech unit.

  “I’m going home,” I said over my shoulder.

  Chapter 40

  Two days had passed since Kleeman took her own life in the storage unit. The press had been gathered at every entrance and exit to the station. We gave them an official press release and a follow-up, but the investigation, and happenings at the storage unit, must have been gathering ratings because the media showed no signs of letting up with the coverage. I hadn’t spoken to Koskinen again and didn’t plan to. I imagined that the assistant director had found a secluded cell somewhere in the state hospital to stuff him in until the DA in Wisconsin had a new set of charges to bring up. He was on video clearly stating that he’d ordered multiple people killed. Whether the new charges would get him into a real prison or not, I didn’t know.

  I sat at my desk, looking over the report that had just been emailed down to us from the Macon, Georgia, PD. Jones, through who knew how many phone calls to different precincts, had found us the final victim of Kleeman. The woman’s name was Mary Sutter. From what I was reading, it looked as though Kleeman had picked her up when she stopped for fuel, killed her shortly thereafter, and left her body thirty miles down the road. The body of the shrink that Kleeman had killed was found in his home in northern Wisconsin. The man had been killed in his living room and had been in his home decomposing for weeks. We were amassing stacks of paperwork and evidence on the case. Everything that we’d been putting in for was finally coming in, after the fact—though I didn’t believe that any of it coming in sooner would have led us to Kleeman before we’d gotten to her. If Koskinen did one thing that was useful, it was giving us a way to put an end to Kleeman’s killings. I flipped the cover closed on the folder and leaned back in my guest chair. I looked down at the chair’s fixed armrests and made a mental note to look at my office budget to see if a proper office chair was in the cards.

  Hank walked through my doorway. I’d noticed a few hours earlier in the morning that he was again wearing sneakers with his suit. They weren’t the same sneakers from the other day—these had neon-green laces.

  “You really have to just learn to tell Karen no sometimes, Hank,” I said.

  “What do you mean? Tell her no about what?”

  I pointed at his shoes.

  “Back to being the fashion police?” he asked.

  “Yeah. And your shoes are guilty of a string of offenses.”

  “Good one,” he said.

  I tapped out a rim shot with my fingers on my desk.

  “Are you done?” he asked.

  “Until I come up with another one-liner,” I said. “Until then, I’ll hold my tongue.”

  Hank rolled his eyes.

  “Anyway, what’s up?” I asked.

  “Two of the three Kleeman sisters are on their way in,” Hank said. “Michelle and Janis.”

  “The third?” I asked.

  Hank shrugged. “Not here, I guess,” he said. “The women were over at the medical examiner’s and should be here within about fifteen minutes or so. Maybe we can get a little more background on Kleeman to fill some holes. Like mainly, what the hell was wrong with Eve Kleeman to make her start killing for Koskinen.”

  I nodded, reached for my coffee cup on my desk, took a sip, and set it back down. “Let me know when they get here. I’ll sit in on the interview with you.”

  “Sure,” Hank said. “I’m going to go put together some things that I’d like to ask them regarding their sister.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “What do you have going on tonight?” Hank asked.

  “I’m going to grab a steak sandwich from Lefty’s, have a beer or two, and go home. Why?”

  “Karen mentioned something about a game night at the house.”

  “Game night?” I asked. “There’s no game on tonight.”

  “No. Like board games,” Hank said.

  “This sounds like a setup. Who’s going to be there?”

  “Just Karen and me.”

  “And?” I asked.

  “Maybe one of her friends.”

  “That’s what I thought. Ask me about it later, and I’ll tell you no then.”

  “Planned to.”

  “Okay. Let me know when the sisters get here.”

  “Yup.” Hank walked from my office.

  I went back to sorting and looking over files. A couple of minutes later, my phone rang.

  “Lieutenant Kane,” I answered.

  “Assistant Director Charles Gill.”

  “How are you doing?” I asked.

  “We’re getting back to normal around here. Some in-house questions that I still need to get some answers for, but I’ll get it handled. The reason for the call—he’s been asking to speak to you.” He paused for a moment. “Nonstop for two days.”

  “No, thanks,” I said. “I think I heard all that I needed from him.”

  “You don’t want to talk to him?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Um, all right, Lieutenant,” he said. “Any message, or something you want me to pass along to him?”

  “Nope. Thanks for the call, though,” I said. I reached out and hung up the phone.

  The rest of my day went by in a blur. The meeting with the Kleeman sisters took a good portion of the afternoon, and it was far from an easy interview. To say that the women were distraught by the events that had torn apart their family was an understatement. They did give us some background on Eve, mainly saying that they’d had no idea that she was in any kind of relationship with Koskinen and had never once mentioned him. It seemed that she had done a good job of keeping her twisted beliefs, and the incarcerated man that she was involved with, unknown to her family. We asked the sisters about Eve’s mental health background. The one sister, Janis, claimed that Eve had attempted suicide as a teen. Eve had tried asphyxiating herself in a running car in the Kleeman garage. The family had chalked it up to her looking to get attention. It was never reported, and no help was ever sought, though both sisters claimed that they’d always thought she might have been battling some kind of depression—again, undiagnosed and untreated. We asked about her younger years and were told that
she was the quiet, unpopular girl at school, the one that normally had her nose buried in a book. She was never asked out and never had a boyfriend until she was out of high school. Even then, we were told, the relationship didn’t last more than a few months. The few relationships she had after that were all with far older men, old enough to be her father, and still didn’t last. Michelle, the other sister, added that Eve had a couple of years, from around eighteen to twenty-one, where she got into the dark makeup, dyed black hair, and piercings all over. The family referred to it as her ‘goth years,’ and like the phase that they thought it was, it eventually went away. I’d asked if she had gotten into or taken interest in anything satanic during that time. Neither sister knew.

  I was fairly certain that someone could have put together a psych profile that could have connected the dots from her childhood to what we’d witnessed in the storage unit but had no interest in having someone look into it—I knew what I needed to. Eve Kleeman was a damaged woman that had been taken advantage of by Koskinen.

  I’d opted out of the game-night setup with Hank, his wife, and her friend and stuck to my original plan of the steak sandwich and beer at the bar. I walked in a couple of minutes after nine. Loud rock music filled the inside. A layer of smoke hung at eye level. The place had a pretty decent crowd for a Saturday night. I headed for an empty spot at the end of the bar and took a stool. The bartender, the same small-framed, dark-haired girl that had worked there earlier in the week, was there again. She walked toward me and tossed down a coaster in front of me.

  “Beer?” she asked.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Domestic. Or whatever is on special, right?” she asked.

  I showed her a smile. “Good memory. I’ll also have the steak sandwich that’s actually good.”

  She smiled wide. “I’ll get the food put in for you and be right back with your beer.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  She walked to the kitchen window, put in my order, and then filled a mug of beer. She walked the glass back to me and set it down on my coaster. “That one is on me,” she said.

  “What’s the occasion?” I asked.

  “You’re the cop from the news,” she said. “What was it? Kane?”

  “Carl Kane,” I said.

  She reached out her hand for a handshake. “Callie Green. And I just wanted to buy you a beer.”

  I shook her hand. “Thanks,” I said. “You’re new here?”

  “A couple weeks,” she said. “I moved here from Miami. It was time for a fresh start.”

  I nodded. “Well, good luck on the fresh start, and I appreciate the beer. You’ll have to let me return the favor sometime,” I said.

  She turned and grabbed a bottle of Jägermeister from the shelf at the back of the bar. She held it out and swished the half-full bottle back and forth. “How about now?” she asked.

  The End

  Thank you!

  Thanks for reading The Ninth Life, Book 2 in The Lieutenant Kane, Dedicated to Death Series. I hope you enjoyed it!

  All of the available books in the Dedicated to Death Series can be found here.

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  After the Dedicated to Death Series, dive right back in with more Lieutenant Kane.

  The Cases of Lieutenant Kane series follows the Tampa homicide lieutenant on and off duty over the better part of a year—though I think that in reality, if most people who worked law enforcement had a year like his, they would be turning in their resignations. Through the story arc of the six-book series, you see Lieutenant Kane go toe-to-toe with some of the most twisted, homicidal, and downright ruthless adversaries imaginable—all while doing his best to juggle his often-turbulent personal life.

  Malevolent, the first book in the series, has been downloaded and enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of readers worldwide. See where it all starts today. The six books in the series (listed in order) are: Malevolent, Requite, Determinant, Perilous, Progeny, and Denouement. I hope you enjoy them all!

  New investigations, new cities, and countless dead bodies.

  Hank Rawlings has a new title, Agent. His new job description is straightforward—hunt down serial killers operating in the US and bring them to justice. While the purpose of his position may be simple, capturing those responsible for the ultimate evil against their fellow man is far from it.

  Drained, the first book in the series, has just surpassed a quarter million downloads. The six books in the series (listed in order) are: Drained, Consumed, Committed, Judged, Mounted, and Deserted. I hope you enjoy them all!

  Again, thank you for reading!

  Visit the E. H. Reinhard author website at http://ehreinhard.com/.

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