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Back We Were Killers Once Save as PDF
Chapters (65)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Notice
  3. Dedication
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. Six
  10. Seven
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Sixteen
  20. Seventeen
  21. Eighteen
  22. Nineteen
  23. Twenty
  24. Twenty–one
  25. Twenty–two
  26. Twenty–three
  27. Twenty–four
  28. Twenty–five
  29. Twenty–six
  30. Twenty–seven
  31. Twenty–eight
  32. Twenty–nine
  33. Thirty
  34. Thirty–one
  35. Thirty–two
  36. Thirty–three
  37. Thirty–four
  38. Thirty–five
  39. Thirty–six
  40. Thirty–seven
  41. Thirty–eight
  42. Thirty–nine
  43. Forty
  44. Forty–one
  45. Forty–two
  46. Forty–three
  47. Forty–four
  48. Forty–five
  49. Forty–six
  50. Forty–seven
  51. Forty–eight
  52. Forty–nine
  53. Fifty
  54. Fifty–one
  55. Fifty–two
  56. Fifty–three
  57. Fifty–four
  58. Fifty–five
  59. Fifty–six
  60. Fifty–seven
  61. Author’s Note
  62. Acknowledgments
  63. Also by Becky Masterman
  64. About the Author
  65. Newsletter Sign-up

“You told me you didn’t have anything on them,” I said.

“I just remembered,” Carlo said. “It’s not much.” He raised his eyebrows with, I thought, some air of faked mystery, which made me wonder if he was telling the truth and why he would lie.

“Those are the killers from the book In Cold Blood,” he said, pointing to their pictures in the article. “Your aunt and I were talking about it just the other night. I assume you’ve heard of that as well.”

“I just know the killers’ names because I saw those movies they made about Truman Capote a few years ago. I never read the book,” Gemma-Kate said.

“I have a copy.” I went into the library where Carlo had gotten the bin from. I haven’t said much about this room in my earlier stories. It was to Carlo what garages or other man caves are to other men. Shelves lined the walls floor to ceiling, and more shelves were placed in two rows down the center of the room, with access on both sides of the shelves. Some of the works I recognized, like Plato’s Republic, and Bertrand Russell’s History of Philosophy, but only because of hearing Carlo quote from them. No question about it, Carlo and I were different. I was only recently beginning to admit how much.

My own paltry collection rested on a single shelf, so I was able to find the book easily. It still had the original jacket on it, cream-colored background with the title in black and Capote’s name in maroon.

“You take care of this, it’s a first edition,” I said, bringing it back to the living room.

Gemma-Kate opened it to the title page. “‘To my little girl on her birthday.’ Grandpa gave this to you?”

“Your grandfather didn’t have real strong boundaries,” I said.

Eight

Beaufort had loaded his bike on the bus to Sarasota. A rental car would have been nice, but he needed Yanchak for that. He had told the man in Pascagoula he might be back and thanks for the use of the room.

It was easy to find the cop he wanted. Even if Beaufort hadn’t seen his name on the internet article about the Walker cold case investigation, Ian Meadows’s photo was on the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Department website. Small towns like Sarasota, where they didn’t think they had to worry about gangs, real criminals, they’d be all over themselves being friendly with the populace, that whole community-policing thing. Photographs of each guy in the division. There he was, round baby face with a mustache that didn’t help, older guy who might have been a real homicide detective in his heyday, now working cold case homicides.