Written in Blood Read Online Free Page A

University in New Orleans and summoned Margaret Ratliff home. He placed a call to Martha at the University of San Francisco to let her know she was needed there, too.
    Late morning, the telephone rang at the northern Virginia home of Kathleen’s sister Candace Zamperini. Candace answered the call. It was Mike Peterson. “I want to speak to your husband,” he said.
    Her husband, Mark, was not at home. Candace gave him Mark’s cell phone number. Michael would tell her nothing, but she knew from the tone of his voice that something was amiss. Her imagination ran through the possibilities. Perhaps Kathleen lost her job. Maybe her employer was going bankrupt or the stock plummeted down so far it was close to valueless. Neither sickness nor death crossed Candace’s mind.

    An hour later, Mark arrived at the house. Candace took one look at his horror-stricken face and her first fearful thought was that something had happened to one of her daughters. Her eyes scanned her husband’s face for hidden answers.
    Mark led her to the porch outside of the kitchen. “I have some really, really bad news,” he said. “Kathleen fell,” he continued. “And she’s dead.”
    Candace fell to the floor, and fell apart. When she regained a modicum of composure, she wanted to know what happened. “How?” she asked him. “Did she fall off a ladder while decorating the tree?”
    Mark could not give her any answers—Michael told him no more than that. When they called him back, the only additional detail he provided was that Kathleen had fallen down the stairs.
    Mark phoned the northern Virginia home of Kathleen’s other sister Lori, and talked to her husband, Bruce Campell—he, in turn, informed his wife. Candace called a good friend of her mother’s. That friend and another woman delivered the news to Veronica Hunt at her home in Florida. They stayed with her to offer any comfort they could. Veronica crumbled—no mother should live to bury her daughter.
    At the Tennessee home of Kathleen’s brother, Steven Hunt, the phone rang, then flashed off. The caller ID readout told Steve’s wife, Cynthia, that it was Kathleen’s number. The phone rang again. It was Michael. He was sobbing and incoherent.
    â€œWhat’s wrong? What’s wrong?” Cynthia asked.
    Michael’s caterwauling turned off as if he had flipped a switch. “Kathleen’s dead.”

    â€œWhat happened?”
    â€œShe fell down the stairs.”
    â€œAre you alone?” Cynthia asked.
    He told her that his boys were there and his brother, Bill, was on the way. “I cannot talk to the Hunts. You have to tell your husband.”
    Steve was in Puerto Rico working on an engineering project for the government. Cynthia reached him there. “There’s no way she fell down those stairs,” Steve said. “He must have had something to do with it.” He flew home to Tennessee the next day.
    At Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, sophomore Caitlin Atwater, Kathleen’s only biological child, was out to brunch with a friend when the call came from Durham. She returned to her sorority house and found a note from the sorority president asking her to come see her right away.
    When Caitlin entered the president’s room, Becca, Caitlin’s roommate and best friend, was there, too. Becca’s tear-stained face alarmed her. She was certain her friend was in trouble and asked what was wrong.
    Becca said, “Caitlin, it’s fine. It’s fine. Someone is coming to talk to you in a minute.”
    Caitlin was not letting Becca off the hook. She looked her in the eye and said, “Becca, you can’t do this to me. You’ve got to tell me what happened.”
    â€œCaitlin, it’s your mother,” Becca said. “She’s dead.” Becca had spent time with Kathleen on four different occasions. She had some sense of the devastating