A Killer's Daughter Quotes

“But what was the purpose of bringing them here and then re-creating her mother’s crimes? The word scrawled on Nadine’s mirror came to mind: Legacy. If her supervisor wanted to see her break, Crean wouldn’t survive it, because evil didn’t just live among them. It lived within them. Didn’t interviewing Arleen Howler teach Crean that much?”
― Jenna Kernan, A Killer's Daughter

“There was no mistake. The area on the map was a match for Dr. Margery Crean’s home residence, a five-acre plot that included several outbuildings and a dog kennel. How had she missed this?”
― Jenna Kernan, A Killer's Daughter

“The small hairs on her arms and neck lifted as she stared at the blank spot on her map, where the kill site of her classmate showed through from beneath. They recovered Sandra and Mr. White’s bodies where she had held them captive for days. There was no body dump because the police arrested Arleen before she could move her final victims. And just like that, she knew where they’d be. With that information came the possibility that she could save them.”
― Jenna Kernan, A Killer's Daughter

“Nadine placed one map on top of the other and held them to the dining room light. The points were a near-perfect match. The map of Sarasota, Desoto and Manatee Counties was larger than the one of Marion, Volusia and Lake, but her mind made the readjustment. She finally understood why the unsub used Myakka and why he dropped the bodies in Phillippi Creek: because the kill and dump sites now aligned perfectly with her mother’s.”
― Jenna Kernan, A Killer's Daughter

“It clicked in her brain, a corresponding configuration. She snatched up the maps, placing them side by side, but with the local map upside down. A shiver of awareness traveled along her spine. This was what she had been hunting for, something more than topographical similarities. This was the detail that her subconscious had registered, giving her that sense of something missing. Now insight had finally reached her conscious mind. She only had to turn the local map 180 degrees to align the directions of each body dump with those of her mother’s known victims. East was West. North was South. So simple!”
― Jenna Kernan, A Killer's Daughter

“It had been over two years since the last bag. That time, Nadine had finally gotten the nerve to look inside at the men’s jeans and woman’s beige bra, both soaked in blood and sliced. At twelve, she had known what would happen if she told, and what would keep happening if she didn’t. Now at fourteen, she lay on her bed, listening to the rain beating on the tin roof, and knew the police were never going to catch Arleen. If this was ever going to stop, she was the one to do it.”
― Jenna Kernan, A Killer's Daughter

“Juliette made her feel almost normal. Was the ME better at working with the dead than the rest of them? Perhaps seeing the unpredictability of life daily on the autopsy table gave her the capacity to enjoy each moment. But Nadine preferred puppies.”
― Jenna Kernan, A Killer's Daughter

“I don’t date men who threaten me. So, you don’t speak to me again, or I file a complaint with personnel.” “Seems the daughter of Arleen Howler could do better than that.” “I could.” His eyes went wider than usual. She was certain that her expression mirrored her mother’s at her most volatile. There was something about crazy-dangerous that was instantly recognizable by the deeper parts of the brain. Dun stepped back, the smirk gone. “We done?” she asked. He nodded. “Good.”
― Jenna Kernan, A Killer's Daughter

“But their unsub might have underestimated her. She glanced about now with the predatory stare of a hawk, knowing she had one huge advantage over the victims. She didn’t have to slip into the mind of a killer. She was the great-granddaughter of a killer. The granddaughter of a killer. And the daughter of a serial killer. She had survived among them and was well equipped to hunt them.”
― Jenna Kernan, A Killer's Daughter

“Was he thinking serial killer? She was but did not want to voice that opinion yet. This was different and the same. Very much the same as Gail and Charlie, her mother’s superiors, made inferior by Arleen’s knife. Her mom’s killing streak ran for twelve years, and would have continued indefinitely, if she had not taken Nadine’s classmate. Right after Nadine had told her mom that Sandra was terrorizing her, the high school senior went missing.”
― Jenna Kernan, A Killer's Daughter

“Sometimes she wished she didn’t have to hide. But she preferred it to being hunted by reporters again. Worse still, revealing who she was now would take necessary resources and attention away from this case. She wasn’t having that. Focus must stay on the victims and catching this killer.”
― Jenna Kernan, A Killer's Daughter

“Nadine’s photo had been on the national news and in all the newspapers. She was the famous daughter of the infamous killer. The girl who had turned her own mother in to the police.”
― Jenna Kernan, A Killer's Daughter

“What Nadine recalled was that her mother had come home late on Sunday, used the garden hose to wash herself and shoved her wet clothing in a large black garbage bag with whatever else was in there. Nadine had watched from inside the trailer, terrified. When ordered to throw that bag away, Nadine had done as she’d been told—suspicious, but refusing to look in the bag. Nadine had waited for the police to come and arrest her mother, frightened and hopeful. But they never came. If they even questioned Arleen, Nadine didn’t see them. Did they think a woman couldn’t do such a thing? They were wrong.”
― Jenna Kernan, A Killer's Daughter

“The article reported that sheriffs recovered Louder’s nude body two days after her disappearance and her husband’s tearful pleas for her safe return. Her death was not immediately connected to the earlier double homicide, and her husband had been falsely convicted for her murder. Even when a forest ranger, Drew Henderson, had been found butchered in his vehicle with a length of cord on his wrist, matching the one tied to Louder, the connection was not made to Louder or the earlier unsolved homicides. Only after Arleen’s confession was Louder’s husband released from prison, his sentence overturned.”
― Jenna Kernan, A Killer's Daughter

“Nadine would never forget this death because it had been her eighth birthday. Arleen had come home late, striding into the trailer in wet underwear carrying a boxed cake so warm the frosted flowers had melted off the top. To this day, those innocuous cake boxes with the clear-plastic tops made Nadine’s stomach clench.”
― Jenna Kernan, A Killer's Daughter

“Crean stepped around her desk and motioned toward the door. Now Nadine’s skin prickled with anticipation. This is how it begins. Rationalizing. Telling herself that she had no choice, when deep down hunting killers hiding in plain sight was exactly what she’d always wanted to do—if she were only brave enough. But the prospect scared her, brushing so close to what she most feared.”
― Jenna Kernan, A Killer's Daughter

“As a profiler, she would be great. But hunting a killer was hunting people, the job she’d avoided all her life because it was what her mother had said she was born for. Taking this assignment put her one step closer to her demons. Giving a drunk a drink.”
― Jenna Kernan, A Killer's Daughter

“Nadine might look like the rest of them—ordinary. But ordinary differed from normal. Appearances of normality did not always indicate a person was so, and Nadine had learned to mask atypical behaviors long ago. Her greatest fear was that what made her different was that, deep down, she and Arleen were the same. Panic over becoming like her mother kept her in a constant state of self-evaluation for any hint of a monster living within herself.”
― Jenna Kernan, A Killer's Daughter

“And figuring people out was Nadine’s A game. All she could ascertain pointed to a woman who was scary ordinary. But nobody went into this field because they were whole and happy. Two kinds of individuals settled into the profession of psychology, the broken and the ones who like to drive a pin through a living fly to watch it wiggle.”
― Jenna Kernan, A Killer's Daughter

“Nadine walked with calm assurance toward Crean’s office. She looked the part of the professional she tried to be and, if necessary, she could utilize very effective masking techniques. Before she studied psychology, she had become a social chameleon. She didn’t stand out. She blended in groups. Mimicked reactions. Copied expressions. Nothing too special. Nothing too odd. Hiding among normal people, like her mother had done for so long. The good ones, the successful ones, always did.”
― Jenna Kernan, A Killer's Daughter

“I'm not a monster. But I do kill people, have been for more than two decades. Mostly, I'm doing the world a favor.
~Prologue~”
― Jenna Kernan, A Killer's Daughter