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Was a botched logo a motive for murder? Ella doubted it, but Herbert Mullin killed people because he thought it would prevent earthquakes in California. It didn’t have to make sense to the rest of the world, just to the distorted mind of the perpetrator.
Natalie continued, “Friends? Katherine didn’t have a big circle. Just a close few, but they live in Des Moines so she rarely saw them. You know how it is at our age. Hard to keep friends, impossible to make new ones.”
“Why so far away?” Ripley asked.
“Our dad moved us down here in our teens. We never went back. And boyfriends? Don’t get your hopes up. I’ve never known Katherine to have a boyfriend in her life.”
Ella rubbed her palms together to displace the sweat. Katherine’s minimalistic lifestyle didn’t create many avenues of investigation, giving some weight to the possibility that she was a victim of opportunity.
“Natalie, your sister was part of a women’s movement, is that right?”
“Yes. When she wasn’t working, she was doing stuff with that group. It was pretty much the only life she had. Quite sad, if you ask me, but what do I know?”
Ripley asked, “Could you shed any light on it? She was a protester against women’s violence, correct?”
Natalie glanced up, searching for the words. “Iowa Against Female Violence, I think. Katherine was pretty much the spokeswoman. The designated leader.”
Ella had searched for the group online but found nothing but a half-finished website and blank social media page. It didn’t reveal anything about the members or their activities.
“What did they do, exactly?”
Natalie shrugged and said, “Beats me. Katherine was always involved in those kinds of groups, but IAFV or whatever it was called was her new project. She only started it a few months ago, but I guess you could say they made a few splashes.”
“How so?” asked Ripley.
Natalie took a few deep breaths then blew her nose. She rolled back into her curled position in the corner of the sofa and said, “I don’t think you need to know. Kath was just trying to do what she thought was best. I admire her for putting herself out there. I couldn’t do that. Someone needs to speak up for women’s rights and she had the balls to do it.”
Ella didn’t want to state the obvious, but Katherine’s protests could have attracted the wrong kind of attention. It was no secret that certain individuals didn’t look favorably upon the kind of social commentary Katherine was part of, especially the kind of people with a festering hatred of the fairer sex.
“Natalie, if Katherine riled up the wrong people, we need to know. I couldn’t find anything about her group online. One of her neighbors mentioned she was slated to be on TV recently? Her group must have been quite successful if they landed a TV interview.”
Katherine’s sister reached for the remote, pulled up her list of recorded programs on a TV that consumed most of the far wall. She navigated past a slew of drama shows down to a recording fromIowa News Channel Five. She hit play then fast-forwarded to the ten-minute mark.
“Watch,” she said.
The news report opened outside a beige rectangle of a building, and the lower third of the screen saidNURSING HOME ABUSE DRAWS PROTESTORS.The anchorwoman appeared and began speaking to the camera.After reports of abuse here at Blue Ridge Nursing Home hit the headlines, the care home has been a magnet for protestors demanding justice. Last year, it was discovered that the owner of Blue Ridge had been taking advantage of not just the home’s female residents, but female staff members too. Now, the owner has been deemed innocent by the Iowa District Court due to a lack of evidence, but locals aren’t happy with the result.
The screen cut to a row of protestors with signs outside the nursing home’s gates; then a familiar face appeared. Ella felt a sudden pang in her chest when she saw Katherine Parkinson on the screen, a wave of sadness catching her off-guard. She clocked the date as a mere couple of weeks ago, and now the same woman was lying on a slab in a mortician’s office. The contrast cut her deep, chipping away another soul fragment.
The on-screen Katherine was full of life, passion, intensity. When she spoke, it was easy to see she was speaking from the heart.
We can’t keep letting men like this get away with these crimes just because they have money and connections.The anchorman then introduced Katherine, stating that she was a speaker for Iowa Against Female Violence. Katherine continued.This guy has testimonies from five different victims. Is that not enough? What more proof do we need? When is the law going to start taking female victims seriously?
Then Katherine turned right to the camera and said:We’ve had enough. If these men want a war, they’ve got it.
Then the broadcast jumped to a different story. Natalie cut the TV.
Ella turned to Ripley, who was still glued to the now-blank television, biting her nails. The woman was lost in her thoughts and Ella knew exactly what was on her mind.
If their unsub had seen this broadcast, he would have seen it as bait. Either that, or he had a personal connection to the nursing home owner that was accused of abuse.
“There it is. Katherine’s fifteen minutes,” Natalie said as she pressed her fingertips against her eyelids. The sobbing began. Ella guessed that Natalie hadn’t wanted to dig into this part of her sister’s life because there was a chance that this on-screen stint had exposed her to the man that later killed her. Acknowledging that fact would give Natalie a new layer of grief.
Ella asked, “Do you know if Katherine or her group received any backlash for this?” Katherine was only doing what was right, standing up for the rights of abused victims. But tragically, there were many people out there who would take offense to Katherine’s demands for fairness and equality.
“Something like that,” Natalie said, clamping her lips together to stop any more words escaping. Ella could see the poor woman was struggling to get all this out, maybe because she subconsciously knew that it was somehow related to Katherine’s death.
But Ripley forewent subtlety. “Any examples? We need to know. Katherine’s killer could have found her via this footage.”
