Being Katie Rose: The Katie Rose Saga, #3

By McDonald Hanson

KATIE AT 22: Katie Rose Fowler, the title character of two books that chronicled her very unusual life from age eight to 18, in which she was a kidnap victim at 15 and solved a celebrated local murder case at 18, finally speaks in her own voice in this 66,500-word story. In her story we get inside Katie’s self-reflective brain as she pursues her post-graduate degrees and her summer job in a criminal defense lawyer’s office. Her quiet summer respite’s downfall comes when she gets way too involved in a hunt for a serial killer only to become a target for murder herself, surviving two attacks, barely. Young Katie finds she still has a lot to learn about herself. But we learn a lot about Katie from her good-humored and breezy narrative of her adventures pursuing her prey – and about relationships with her friends and lovers in Montana Bahia. (Third novel in a series of seven.)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Janus Expressions
• Release date: Oct 8, 2013
• ISBN: 9781497770164

Book preview

BEING KATIE ROSE

(Book 3 of The Katie Rose Saga)

McDONALD HANSON

D2D EDITION

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PUBLISHED BY:

McDonald Hanson on D2D

Copyright © 2013

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KATIE AT 22: Katie Rose Fowler, the title character of two books that chronicled her very unusual life from age eight to 18, in which she was a kidnap victim at 15 and solved a celebrated local murder case at 18, finally speaks in her own voice in this 66,500-word story. In her story we get inside Katie’s self-reflective brain as she pursues her post-graduate degrees and her summer job in a criminal defense lawyer’s office. Her quiet summer respite’s downfall comes when she gets way too involved in a hunt for a serial killer only to become a target for murder herself, surviving two attacks, barely. Young Katie finds she still has a lot to learn about herself. But we learn a lot about Katie from her good-humored and breezy narrative of her adventures pursuing her prey – and about relationships with her friends and lovers in Montana Bahia. (Third novel in a series of seven.)

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AN EXCERPT:

I WAS ACTING like a spoiled little brat that Saturday morning because my little Cinderella at the Ball bubble burst when Jeff had to go home to his ailing mom. I was in a snit, the kind of foot-stomping petulant rage that I always criticized Chris for when he would blow up when things didn’t go his way. Now it was me who needed to grow up.

And this for a guy I have scarcely known for what, six weeks, and the first four regarded him as something akin to the office furniture as I was all wrapped up in my killer search and my last fling with Chris. Now with one date, some nice conversation and a hell of a goodnight kiss, I go all freaky because he cancelled a date. And there I was just plain pissed about it and feeling so sorry for poor little Katie. What if he had said, Well, screw mom, we’ll go to the dance! What kind of a creep would he be?

It wasn’t as though he was George Clooney or Cary Grant or such. He is an average looking but interesting guy with a pleasant manner but, dammit, I liked him – a whole lot! Now one fou-fou dress, one half of a new haircut and two-tone nails will go to waste. What a bitch! The situation, not me. Well, maybe me, too.

I spent the afternoon debating whether to dust off the Chris dress and go to the dance. I felt obligated to Warren Dugan. He would want someone selling drink tickets or 50-50 drawing tickets when they sell them for a raffle that splits the pot with the winner. They like the smiling little chickies loosening the men from their cash for that. My strong suit. But the nails militated against the Chris dress, violet with orange nails? I finally tamped down my raging disappointment in Jeff being gone and let my conscience guide me to fulfill my obligation to Warren and decided to go, anyway.

I thought I would take Warren up on his offer and get a cop escort for the trip home but drove myself to the new city multiuse recreation center where the dance was being held in the large building that was one of the crowning achievements of the Dugan administration. The hall was wide and deep enough to hold two side-by-side basketball courts and a stage area for theater productions.

The place was going to be crawling with cops, according to what Warren told me, just in case the killer was planning on attending. With an 8:30 dinner time, it was dusk when I arrived at an almost full parking lot in the old faithful Cherokee. Not exactly your fairy tale chariot, but the fairy tale went poof with Jeff’s absence.

Being Katie late as usual, I took off at a brisk walk wending my way between parked cars. I passed by a large green SUV backed into one space when he grabbed me! At the last second I felt a rush of negative energy, He came from behind me, probably from behind the SUV, and pinned my left arm to my side with his hold around my middle. His right elbow partially pinned my right arm as he covered my mouth with his hand.

My clutch went flying when he struck and he pulled me backwards behind the SUV. Time slowed down. My training took hold immediately. I was instantly alert and unemotional. No fear, only icy concentration. As he backpedaled pulling me with him, and moved his left foot back, I could see his right foot exposed in a ray of parking lot lighting hitting the patent leather shoe and dark trouser hem. I went into action.

Raising my right knee about 12 inches, I mentally thanked the deity for the inventor of the spike heel, the ones made with actual metal spikes attached to the heel area and covered in leather. Using all my leg strength, I drove that heel into his right instep mercilessly and heard his muffled cry of pain when it hit home.

His grip on my mouth loosened and I freed my right arm and, making a fist, raised my arm, and as I twisted to my right, drove my elbow back full force into the area of his solar plexus. My aim was right, I felt the explosion of his breath on my neck as I struck and his arms went limp. I twisted away, turning to my right to face him and ready to drive my right knee into his groin.

But I found his body doubled over from the strike from my elbow and, instead, drove my knee upward straight into his face. I heard a loud crack as my knee struck him, the sound of a bone breaking, I thought, or nose cartilage being crushed. His head snapped back but only far enough for me to see the top of his head. Out of breath and bent over, he was a perfect target for my last blow, my doubled fists joined like a sledge hammer and brought down from over my head full force on the back of his neck at the base of the skull. He was driven to his knees with his forehead hitting the pavement, his hands across his stomach area.

I stood over him for what seemed like an eternity in case he came at me again, but I could see a pool of blood forming to the left of his head. I assumed at least part of my knee shot had struck his nose. He was silent and still stunned when I did something really stupid. I ran.

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License Notes

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, you should return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

This book contains some minor sexually explicit scenes and some graphic language which may be considered offensive by some readers. Please store your files where they cannot be accessed by minors.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1 to 5

Chapter 6 to 10

Chapter 11 to 15

Chapter 16 to 20

Chapter 21 to 25

Chapter 26 to 30

Chapter 31 to 35

Chapter 36 to 40

Chapter 41 to 45

Chapter 46 to 50

Chapter 51 to 55

Chapter 56 to 58

Epilogue

About the author:

Other Katie Rose books

An author’s note:

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BEING KATIE ROSE

1

SHELLEY BEAUCHAMP was found raped, strangled and mutilated in one of the posh rooms at an ocean view hotel on the night of the annual cotillion dance – that thing where the 18-year-old chicks and wannabee society mavens do their debutante coming-out thing. I was still finishing up classes before graduation at UC Santa Barbara, out of town and away at school most days when it happened, although I was nearby on that very night.

I found out about it when the story of the murder and her photo that ran in the local newspaper, The Bahia Breeze. She was a tall, elegant, dark-haired woman in her late 30s dressed to the nines in the current fashion. The story identified her as the catering director at our faux five-star hotel and convention facility here in Montana Bahia where the dance was held. It was a black tie affair. And I was there.

The ladies all dressed in their finery, the men in tuxes and formal attire. I was there because Warren Dugan always drags me into these things to sort of co-hostess, but I suspect really for some added eye candy. After all, I am one of Montana Bahia’s celebrated young women – the one who got herself kidnapped when I was 15 years old. Some way to become a celebrity. Not recommended.

I am not really complaining about going to the dinner-dance. Like every woman, I have something inside me that revels in the spotlight. Throw me into a designer dress and I’ll follow you anywhere. Besides with my college boyfriend, Chris Miller, off to Reston VA on an intensive half year-long fellowship for a master’s in journalism, I don’t mind rubbing shoulders with the handsome young men at these kind of affairs – make that more like rubbing bellies on the dance floor. It keeps the juices flowing.

If it wasn’t for that torture-murder, the prodding of my very nervous friend, Annie Callas, and the influence of my long-time mentor and friend, Jake Thomas, you wouldn’t be reading this. Jake is the one who wrote two books about me as the title character, one on that kidnapping and the second on a peripheral role we both played in a celebrated murder case and trial that we managed to resolve when all else failed. Jake in his writing made me into kind of a local heroine and also gave me a rather daunting reputation to live up to. Jake saw me through rose-colored glasses – Katie Rose-colored glasses.

Jake is gone more than three years now, but his influence on my life will never fade. At the time they found that woman’s body, I was torn as to a life direction. Jake always wanted me to write, my summer boss wanted me to go to law school, and my teachers wanted me to become an academic. In fact, I probably would have only been happily readying myself for grad school during a leisurely summer break – well, kind of leisurely, in comparison to how things worked out. You might say I am a girl who tends to get involved – way too involved! That involvement resulted in someone trying to kill me – and almost did, twice!

In some ways, being Katie Rose is an adventure in itself, as you will see.

You will note in this narrative, I often refer to myself in the third person as little Katie or Katie Rose. This isn’t an ego thing. I just think that since my early celebrity as a kidnap victim, I have this duality about me. There is the Katie that I really am, the one inside with all the faults and frailties and those little ego things, and this almost fictional Katie Rose that has been created and nurtured by two books that chronicled some bizarre aspects of my life.

That second Katie is more an image than reality and I feed that image half by accident and half by design. She is real, in a way, and I actually like her. She is the ideal Katie, the one I might aspire to be, but am not and probably should not. She is only partially a genuine, real person. I like to think the inside Katie is a person of some quality without the attention to image. That Katie is a work in progress and always will be.

I don’t think I am anyone very special, but I have this weird and unusual life and that summer just added to it – a summer of when that serial murderer made me a target for death, and a grisly one at that. I decided I wanted to tell it all from my perspective. When summer break came, I was up to my posterior in prepping for grad school and interning at Rusty Garcia’s law office. Maybe I should start there.

My long-time friend, Annie Callas, thinks I am some kind of latter-day Nancy Drew because of my rather interesting past. That summer, I was much more concerned about the prospect of an uncertain future than what actually developed into a scarier present. But in truth, at the beginning I wasn’t even aware of the beginning which was that formal dance that night Shelley Beauchamp met her awful end at the hands of a monster. The poor woman in the photo was absolutely beautiful. Tall, slender as a nail, single and very large with the men, I gathered, and I could see why. But her life ended with duct tape across her mouth, her body clothed, but sexually assaulted. The terror was still in her dead eyes when they found her.

A shiver ran up my spine.

I was battling my senior thesis in the late spring, trying to graduate on time and still pitching for the softball team when it occurred. So I kind of blew it off. I made a mental note to quiz Bob Wood, one of my surrogate fathers, the detective commander at the San Juan County Sheriff’s Office, about it. As it ended up, I had many conversations with Capt. Wood and Tom Wallace about the victim and the others that were to follow.

About the same time, Chris and I had a fight over that whole going away thing.  He wanted to marry me and have me go east with him. I refused. He sulked. I told him to grow up. He got angry. I got angry. Big brouhaha. Slammed doors. You know the routine.

How come I’m just not ready, yet just doesn’t cut it with the guys? I guess it sounds too much like I have a headache and bruises the male ego. I am perfectly willing to screw him, but I’m just a little wary of that bigger commitment right now. You will have to pardon me, I have picked up some rough edges hanging around Jake and Emmett and cops and lawyers and the like. I am usually very proper and suitable for polite society. Jake always said I scrub up real well. But that’s the truth about Chris and me.

I love being a small town girl. I like my surfing, my kayaking, the whole bit. I love the house that Jake left to me when he died, all paid up with his mortgage insurance, and to me it is kind of a shrine to him. I am a sucker for the California Central Coast way of life. My folks had moved away when my dad was transferred in his civilian job with the Air Force and I am on my own. Well, theoretically. Emmett Free from The Bahia Breeze has taken over Jake’s mother-hen duties, watching out for me, and then I have Ken Olden watching out for my financial interests. Then there is Bob and Maddy Wood in my life whenever I need them and Rusty Garcia and that gorgeous Mel Murphy that somehow he refuses to see as the woman he should marry, as my summer bosses.

I’m never lonely. I have too many people that love me and care for and about me. And I love that!

2

TOM WALLACE got the Beauchamp murder case. The old Wood and Wallace detective team was no more as Tom passed the lieutenant’s exam and was appointed interim deputy commander of the Sheriff’s Department detective bureau – No. 2, as the British like to say – to his boss, Bob Wood

And guess who was there when he learned about that. So I have to jump back a half year or so. Stay with me here. I was at the Wood-Teresi wedding last fall. The coolest wedding ever! Like Jane Austen’s Emma, I take credit for getting Bobby and Maddy hooked up permanently. OK, maybe they were going together before I met Maddy. But I think I cemented the deal. Trust me. The wedding? A black and white affair in a gazebo overlooking the bay at Montana Bahia on a gorgeous fall day last year! And I was in the wedding party, turned out in a classic LBD, the little black dress, accessorized tastefully and looking good, if I may say so myself. Which, of course, I will.

I love Maddy. She is such a strong and confident woman. I really connected with her, kind of like I did with Mel and Bella over at Rusty’s law office. But I was still surprised when she asked me to round out the wedding party as one of her sort-of bridesmaids. The ceremony was anything but traditional. Tom Wallace stood up for Bob, and Maddy had an older sister as her maid of honor. Bob’s two daughters, beautiful brunettes both, rounded out Bob’s side of the party. It was very non-traditional, and heavy on the female contingent. Except for Bob and Tom, it could have been a lesbian wedding.

Though married before, Maddy had no children and picked a friend from the department where she is a liaison deputy and me as her matching attendants. The women, except for Maddy, all dressed in a variety of black dresses and Maddy wore white – a short skirted dress with lacy filigree around the bodice and black piping here and there. Beautiful! Bob and Tom were practically drowning in this estrogen pool as the only two males in the ceremony that was even performed by a retired judge from the San Juan County Superior Court – also a woman and an old friend of Bobby’s.

Pardon me for calling a man more than 30 years my senior Bobby. I know it sounds impertinent but I picked up that from Maddy. And, besides, I am always a little impertinent, anyway. Of course, I cried. I am a sucker for weddings. I ought to hire out for weddings and funerals to provide the waterworks. But the reason I bring up the Wood-Teresi nuptials is that it was there that I really got a chance to start to get to know Tom. After the ceremony in which we all gathered around the happy couple like a football huddle and cheered like it was the winning touchdown when he kissed the bride, I was mingling when Tom tracked me down.

Katie. He started to introduce himself, but I cut him off with a smile and I know all about you, Tom. Which of course was a lie, but the smile was genuine. He wanted to thank me for that memo about the Graham murder that put a ribbon on that case. Very sweet, but I think they really can’t be too thrilled that a little chick like me got lucky and figured it out. Out of embarrassment, I diverted the conversation by asking him questions about the investigation into those three rape-murders linked to the San Juan City college campus a couple of years back that Bobby thought was going to be a wrap. Turned out the suspect didn’t pan out and the serial nature of the murders came to a halt with no arrests. This was an issue I had never had the courage to ask Bobby about. He is very intense and