by Julie Kramer
For the next hour, I lay with a cover over my head, debating what to say to Garnett in the morning. Imagining possible conversations wasn’t particularly helpful, but at least it kept my mind off the Angel of Death.
I slept late, and when I awoke, my man was gone.
Garnett left an empty bottle of Nordeast beer on the counter along with a note. I expected to read something about him being sorry or stupid. But he mentioned nothing about me going to bed mad, instead that he was off to the Mall of America to meet with a security colleague and would connect with me later.
His suitcase lay in the other room, so he clearly intended to return to the scene of our fight. How things unfolded next would have to wait, but I was actually glad to postpone any showdown.
My Angel of Death nightmare was still vivid in my mind and I was eager to pursue the hunch. More research was needed. While I was no expert on angels, I knew where to go.
CHAPTER 29
So you’re interested in angels, my dear?”
Father Mountain clasped my hands in a warm greeting after the mass crowd had left. His bright green vestments made him look every inch a man of God.
“I thought you might be here to discuss matrimonial vows, but I don’t see your gentleman friend along.” He winked, pretending to look behind me.
Last time I’d stopped by church was with Garnett, because he wanted to meet significant people in my life. I figured my childhood priest was a safe place to start. At least he’d be unlikely to spill embarrassing secrets from my past. But Father Mountain sounded eager for a wedding. He’d gotten cheated out of marrying me to my first husband, Hugh Boyer, when we eloped. But he’d been there to offer comfort when I lost my love to a terrorist.
“No wedding today, Father,” I said. “This is a work visit. I need a crash course on angels. What can you tell me?”
“Well, Riley, angels appear as messengers in many cultures and religions dating back thousands of years,” he said. “In the Bible, you’ll see angels play important roles in communication between God and man.”
He led me back inside the church and pointed to a familiar gilded frame hanging near the baptismal fountain.
“Here you see the angel Gabriel telling Mary that she is to be the mother of the Messiah. Keep in mind the Annunciation is among the most popular of all biblical scenes with artists.”
He rattled off a list of great masters including Da Vinci, El Greco, Botticelli, and Rubens who have all painted their versions of that famous conversation between Virgin and angel.
I knew the winged figures were a staple of art in the Renaissance, Medieval, and even Greek periods. Looking around the church, I saw that affirmed in stained glass, marble, and even wood. Their shape ranged from cherub to warrior.
“Angels are everywhere in the Bible, from beginning to end,” Father Mountain continued. “From the Book of Genesis to the Book of Revelation. And they’re not just pretty faces either. They have jobs to do.”
“Yes, as messengers,” I said to show I was paying attention.
“Right. Who reassured Joseph to take Mary as his wife? An angel. Who announced the birth of Christ to the shepherds? An angel. Who led Moses and the Israelites to the promised land?” He paused, like a theology teacher calling on a student. “Riley?”
“An angel?” I answered.
“Absolutely. And who saved Daniel in the lion’s den?”
“An angel.” I replied with more confidence this time.
“So there you have it, a quick overview on angels.” He smiled, as if tickled to be of help.
“Aren’t you forgetting one?” I asked.
He looked puzzled. “Do you have a special one in mind?
“The angel of death.”
Father Mountain’s eyes widened, then he shook his head. “That’s a complicated question, debated even by religious scholars.”
I needed a more satisfying answer than that. “I’m a smart person, Father. Try me.”
“Well, the angel of death is thought to come to a person at the moment of death. Here’s the disagreement: Is the angel there to cause the actual passing? Or simply observe it?”
My gut told me the angel I was tracking was there to cause death, but I didn’t want to interrupt Father Mountain.
“Then the angel transports the deceased’s soul to their next world, heaven or hell, all per the order of God,” he continued.
“Does the same angel have access to both places?” I asked.
“Nobody really knows. The angel of death concept is not taught in the Bible. Nor is it a core belief of the Catholic Church. Much of the theory about the angel of death has meshed in popular culture with that of the grim reaper.”
I tried to imagine what kind of person would be drawn to play such a dreaded role. They would have to be mad. And I mean insane rather than angry.
“Why don’t you tell me what’s going on, Riley? What are you really hoping to learn?”
So I told him about my hunch: a killer drawing angel figures around corpses.
“Perhaps giving them wings is the murderer’s way of allowing their souls to fly to their journey’s end,” I speculated. “Any ideas?”
“It all seems far-fetched,” Father Mountain said. “What do the police think?”
“I haven’t actually run it by the cops yet. Me and the cops are a bit at odds this go-round.”
“Well, I just hope your imagination hasn’t run too wild.”
His skepticism wasn’t what I expected. So I showed him the chalk outline photo, still on my cell phone. “Does this look like my imagination?”
He stared at the picture, then blinked. Taking my phone from my hand, he held it up closer to his face, then looked back at me. It was like Garnett’s reaction the night before. They both recognized something in the photo.
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” he said.
“What is?”
“Probably just a coincidence.”
After a career in investigative reporting, I’d stopped believing in coincidences. “Tell me.”
“I’m afraid it’s going to sound nonsensical.”
“Let me decide.”
“This reminds me of the Black Angel.”
Father Mountain couldn’t believe I had never heard the legend of the Black Angel, but assured me the drawing on my phone matched the distinctive shape of a historic cemetery marker in Iowa City, where he’d grown up.
“It’s very old,” he said. “Has to be close to a hundred years by now. And it’s considered the most haunted site in Iowa. When I was a boy, we were always daring each other to visit it.”
He couldn’t remember the name of the woman buried at the foot of the statue, but told me townsfolk believe the angel, once golden, turned black as a sign of her evil.
“Children are raised to beware her wrath. Touching the angel on Halloween is supposed to lead to death in seven years. Any girl kissed at the grave in the moonlight will die within six months. And kissing the angel itself is believed to cause a person’s heart to stop beating.”
“Now you’re scaring me,” I said.
“Everyone for miles around calls the sculpture the Angel of Death. Disrespecting the angel is believed to lead to fatal retribution.”
And suddenly, Kate’s book title and the drawing all fell together. If kissing under the angel tempted death, certainly a cemetery sex scene, even a fictional one, making the angel an unwilling witness to fornication, might be deemed an insult that merited lethal retaliation.
I certainly didn’t blame Kate’s murder on a ghost. But could her killer be taking inspiration from the supernatural tale? And demanding revenge?
I was concentrating so hard on that possibility, I didn’t realize Father Mountain was still talking, until he nudged me.
“Riley! Riley!”
“Yes, Father? What?” I answered, startled.
“You seemed to be focused on another world. I hope it’s not the hereafter.” He looked concerned. But that’s a look priests
routinely practice, so I couldn’t be sure his worry was genuine, or a ruse to get me to abandon my interest in death angels.
“Maybe I was.” And I told him about my nightmare jarring me awake.
“Tonight, say a prayer to your guardian angel,” he advised.
My guardian angel. “I’ve forgotten all about guardian angels.”
“We all have one watching over us,” he said, “guiding us in good deeds and protecting us from evil.”
“With my luck, my angel probably still needs to earn his wings, like Clarence in It’s a Wonderful Life.”
Father Mountain made an exasperated face. “I’ll never understand how Hollywood’s version of a guardian angel gets top billing over the Bible’s.”
“You have to admit, Father, as far as storytelling goes, the Bible is complicated and dark. People like happy endings.”
“For the righteous, the Good Book ends happily,” he said, “for the wicked, maybe not so much.”
Knowing I couldn’t win an argument about religion with a priest, I decided to head home.
As always, he offered to take my confession. I passed, but he left me with the counsel not to underestimate my guardian angel.
“Such angels are thought to manifest themselves as mysterious strangers who appear abruptly to help mortals in distress. When the trouble has passed, they disappear just as suddenly. You may have been aided by an angel, Riley, and never even realized it.”
In the car, I reflected back on some close calls I’d had recently with danger. But I never really thought to credit my survival to a guardian angel. Occasionally, during some tough scrapes, I had felt like someone was watching over me, but I always thought it must be my dead husband.
Do people become angels after they die? That seemed the type of role Hugh might embrace in an afterlife, because as a cop, he protected and served while here on earth.
I remembered my despair upon learning he was killed in the line of duty. So where was his guardian angel?
CHAPTER 30
An online photo from a website about Iowa history showed that Father Mountain was correct. The Black Angel’s winged silhouette was remarkably similar to the outline the killer drew around Kate’s body.
I hit print for a copy of Iowa’s angel when I heard Garnett’s key in the door. I hit stop on the printer because I didn’t want him to see where my investigation was headed. I quickly clicked away from the Black Angel web picture and back to my Internet home page of Channel 3.
“Are you working?” He looked over my shoulder at the computer screen, but because it was a weekend, the day’s news was lame.
“I’m always working.” I rebuffed an approaching kiss, so he changed tactics to a different kind of hunger.
“Let’s grab something to eat.”
He took the car keys off my desk. I expected we’d end up at the Uptown Diner or some greasy spoon that cops favor, but instead he drove across the river to the Muffaletta, a romantic restaurant in St. Paul. That choice seemed like he was apologizing without saying the words out loud.
Now it was up to me to decide, over chablis and salmon, whether to forgive him for caring more about being a cop than a boyfriend.
“You’ve helped me on other murders, Nick,” I said. “What’s changed?”
He shook his head. “These aren’t cold cases. They’re still warm. The last one is even hot.”
He had a point. Media generally got turned loose on old cold homicides that the public had forgotten, and where law enforcement took whatever exposure they could get in hopes of a fresh tip. In current cases, police tried to control media coverage—all the better to not jeopardize the investigation. Sometimes cops wanted help from the public; other times they wanted the public left in the dark.
I tried a playful approach. “Kate’s murder was assigned to me, not you. My story, not your case. You’re just butting in.” Although I tried to keep my tone light, I meant that last line.
“Who is it who likes to say, ‘I’m always working?’ Well, I’m always working, too.”
I couldn’t dispute that. It’s one thing news and law enforcement have in common: our eyes are always open for the next big break. One difference: their mouths are usually shut.
Just for a change, I kept my mouth shut on the drive home. My silence seemed to rattle him, making him talk more than usual. But most of his remarks were about politics, airports, and terror—nothing I wanted to hear just then. I wanted his insight about my angel photo, but I was careful not to call it by that name.
“How about my chalk fairy photo?”
“Let’s just say I saw something in your picture I needed to act on immediately. I felt it was my duty as a law enforcement officer.” He kept his eyes focused on the road to avoid eye contact with me.
My cell phone buzzed and one of my few girlfriends texted me an FYI that she had seen a guy who looked like my boyfriend in a jewelry store at the Mall of America earlier today. She posted a :) symbol at the end, but I couldn’t bring myself to smile.
At that moment, Garnett pulling a ring out of his pocket seemed as far-fetched as me letting him slip it on my finger. But I had to admit, when times were dire, he had my back. And lately, dire seemed normal. That’s why we had developed what folks of my parents’ generation called “an understanding.”
Right now, “misunderstanding” felt more accurate.
We arrived at my rental house near Lake Nokomis in south Minneapolis. Real estate was bargain priced—the house next door was for sale, foreclosure priced—and I had enough cash in the bank for a down payment. But I’d held off buying a place of my own because I wasn’t sure where my personal life was headed.
Some nights, I wanted to be part of a couple again, curled up together, looking at carpet samples and talking about how our days had gone. Other times, Greta Garbo’s classic line “I want to be alone” resonated and the idea of trading privacy for companionship had as much appeal as Minnesota’s Metrodome during a snowstorm.
So far I hadn’t come up with a tactful way of telling Garnett that, much of the time, I actually enjoyed living a thousand miles apart—me in the Midwest, him on the East Coast. The distance kept our relationship vibrant. Or so that’s what I told myself.
He pulled into the garage and took my hand as we walked across the yard to the front door. Fumbling for my house keys gave me the excuse to untwine my fingers from his before we stepped inside. The decor didn’t reflect me; it came with the rent check. I’d sold or given away most of my furniture and other belongings when I’d sold my house, craving a fresh start with no troubling memories. The problem with that approach was I never felt I was home when I was home.
I hung my coat in the closet, tossed my bag on the counter, and continued our debate. “Nick, can we talk about our disagreement over the serial killer story?”
He looked exasperated that I wouldn’t drop the subject. A fancy lunch was supposed to buy peace. And love. “What are you saying, Riley? No story, no sex? I thought we already established that last night. What’s new?”
“I wasn’t going to be so crude. I was going to propose a deal rather than an ultimatum.”
“So what’s the deal?”
“Off the record. Tell me what my photo means off the record.” I held up my cell phone and clicked the crime scene so there’d be no doubt what picture was at stake.
“Do you mean off the record, you won’t report the story? Or off the record, you won’t attribute it to me?”
It was a good question. More sources should think to establish the parameters before offering information.
“How about I quote ‘a law enforcement source,’ and leave you out of it?”
“No, you can’t broadcast the story, period. It’s not about shielding me, it’s about protecting the investigation. That’s got to be the deal.”
“But this is a local investigation, you’re a fed now. Why are you so concerned?”
“The feds will be running it sooner rather than later.” He sp
oke cryptically, but I knew exactly what his hint meant.
“So the murders cross state lines. Our killer likes to travel.”
He didn’t answer.
“Okay, I won’t report the serial-killer angel . . . angle now.” I said angel by mistake, luckily he didn’t notice. “But you have to fill me in on what’s going on with the case and keep me up to speed as best you can. But if I can confirm anything with other sources, or it leaks out, then I’m free to run with it.”
Maybe he was tired of fighting, or maybe he just wanted us to feel close again. And I wanted both of those things, too. So when he pulled me tight and kissed me deep, I led him to my bedroom and we crawled under the covers together.
As we undid buttons and zippers, he told me about the similar chalk pictures he’d seen a couple of months earlier at a briefing in Quantico at the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime.
“Is that part of VICAP?” I asked. VICAP—the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program—helped far-flung jurisdictions find clues for investigations of serial killings, missing children, and unidentified human remains.
“Actually VICAP is part of us,” he said. “Much of my agency’s work also involves behavioral analysis of terrorism threats. That was my primary mission, but I stuck around for another discussion involving two Midwest murders.”
“Once a homicide detective, always a homicide detective.” And not just with Garnett either; I’d seen that pattern in cop after cop. Unable to leave the beat. As he nuzzled my neck with his beard stubble, my fingernails dug into his back.
“When I saw your chalk fairy, déjà vu hit,” he said. “Those other murders had been tagged because the victims had chalk outlines around their bodies. All the officers on the scene swore they didn’t mark them. Yet there they were. Speculation came that the outlines might have been made by the killer. Seeing your photo makes me certain.”