by Julie Kramer
Commercial just ended in my ear, so I knew we’d missed the chief’s opening remark. I could hear our anchor scrambling.
((ANCHOR LIVE))
THAT NEWS CONFERENCE WE
TOLD YOU ABOUT EARLIER IS
JUST GETTING UNDER WAY NOW.
HERE’S THE MINNEAPOLIS CHIEF
OF POLICE.
“Does this mean a serial killer?” the Channel 8 anchor blurted out the question, wanting to get her voice on a competitor’s air.
“Yes,” the chief answered. “But we want to assure our citizens that these cases are widely scattered, and we believe the killer has moved on and poses no immediate threat here.”
A wall of reporter questions moved across the room.
“What links the cases?”
“Do you have DNA from the killer?”
“Did the women know each other?”
The chief took his pick. “We don’t believe the victims knew each other personally. They lived hundreds of miles apart, but the cases are connected forensically.”
“How?” At least three reporters shouted the same question.
“That’s not something we’re prepared to reveal at this time. We don’t want to facilitate copy cats.”
That meant the forensic nugget was the scoop everyone would be trying to land.
I decided I needed to get in play with a question; Channel 3 was probably only going to carry the news conference for another minute or so. Because this type of question-answer format—all for one, one for all—doesn’t allow for scoops, I didn’t want to draw attention to the chalk outlines by asking whether the killer had left any marks at the crime scenes.
Then in the back corner of the room, I recognized a local FBI guy who I’d tangled with on previous stories. He was dressed in a dark gray suit and tie with his arms crossed over his chest and a frown across his face. I could never remember his name, but he always gave his cases Latin monikers to make them sound important. I wondered what the Latin word for angel might be, but knew better than to ask.
I spoke up with another question. “Because this investigation seems to cross state lines, will the feds be taking over?”
The chief glowered. He’d likely also noticed the FBI guy who, from the back of the room, looked most interested in his answer.
But then a woman rushed in, panting. People turned to look, but I was the only one who recognized Laura.
She didn’t seem to notice me, instead sticking her head between the cameras and yelling a question of her own at the chief. “What do you mean, my sister and a serial killer?”
When crime strikes a family, whether it be homicide or a missing person case, relatives sometimes keep the case in the news by granting interviews or handing out photos of the victims. Laura hadn’t done any of this groundwork, not even with me. As a fresh angle, the media abandoned the chief and mobbed her with questions of their own to deliver a new face to viewers.
“Did your sister get any threats?”
“Are you afraid for your own life?”
“Do you think the police are doing a good job?”
Laura’s eyes and mouth opened wide like the Lowry Tunnel near downtown Minneapolis. More likely, she’d been looking for the chief, rather than publicity, not realizing that in this case they went hand in hand. I tried shouting her name and grabbing her arm, but Mr. FBI Guy beat me to her elbow and whisked her out the door and down the hall past security.
That’s when I noticed Malik’s camera pointed at me, and remembered we were broadcasting live.
“You made a mess of the Noon Report,” Noreen said when I got back to the station.
My cell phone showed a missed call from Laura while the news conference was under way. When I tried dialing her back, all I got was voice mail. My guess was the police were giving her a civics lesson in keeping her mouth shut.
“I thought you were tight with the victim’s family,” my boss continued. “Didn’t you claim to have some inside track with the sister?”
“Yep.”
When Laura and I first reconnected, I’d stressed that if she wanted help telling her sister’s story, I’d be happy to do so.
“Actually, Riley, I’d prefer to keep work out of our relationship” was her reply.
“You certainly don’t have to do any interview with me,” I said. “But you can’t do one with my competition and still expect to stay friends.”
I was no longer sure our friendship held any bearing with her.
Now all the media had video of Laura and would be plastering her face across the airwaves. Tonight Channel 3 would look like Channel 6, which would look like Channel 8 which would look like Channel 10.
I saw only one way to set our coverage apart on this serial killer hunt.
CHAPTER 39
Three hundred miles separated Minneapolis from Iowa City and me from the Black Angel.
I sold Noreen on the trip with the promise our investigation would be first exploring any connection between the outline of the statue and the chalk body shape. Because I needed both daytime and nighttime shots, the assignment meant either an overnight stay and/or massive overtime. Time and money. Two things Channel 3 lacked.
But I reminded Noreen the death of Buddy and our inside track with a Nielsen family had put the station on a ratings roll.
“A heavily promoted story about a death angel amok on a Sunday night might deliver an enormous audience.”
So she agreed to let me take Malik, and we hit the road south.
“So you think this Black Angel is cursed?” he asked.
“Well, over the years it’s developed a reputation. Folks say it turns a shade darker each Halloween to symbolize all the new blood it’s spilled.”
I filled him in on the research I’d done on Teresa Dolezal Feldevert, the woman who commissioned the monument and was now buried under it next to her husband and son.
“Legend calls her Iowa’s patron saint for evil,” I said.
“Sounds like an angel of death,” he replied.
“That’s certainly one theory.”
“But I’m not sure your sculpture looks imposing enough for the title.” He shook his head at a Black Angel photograph I’d taped to the dashboard. “In Islamic theology, the angel of death has four faces and four thousand wings,” Malik said. “Your picture seems tame for a death angel.”
“I can’t speak for Muslim culture, but as far as Christianity goes . . . black as night, staring down toward hell . . . makes for one scary angel.”
Malik was Muslim, and enjoyed sharing information about his faith when it meshed with his job. Sometimes his religious views helped us land interviews, other times it cost us them. The assignment desk had learned the hard way to stop sending him to photograph government building exteriors. Even shooting on a public street, security staff always surrounded him and demanded identification.
Malik continued with his theology lesson. “Islam calls our angel of death Azrael, though the Koran uses the name Malak al-Maut, which means ‘angel of death,’ literally.”
“That’s interesting because Father Mountain says the Bible teaches nothing of a specific angel of death.”
“Well, there certainly is in the Muslim world . . . Malak al-Maut . . . angel of death.” He lowered his voice to make the words sound exotic and sinister.
“Malak sounds a little like Malik,” I observed, thinking that probably explained his interest.
He shook his head. “Malak means angel; Malik means master.”
“Don’t get any ideas.” I was driving the station van because Malik had learned to nap almost anytime anywhere from his days in the United States army. He called it sleep efficiency. “You get to siesta only because I’m Minnesota Nice, not because you’re my master.”
“I work better behind the camera,” he said. “You work better behind the wheel. Wake me when we get there.”
He didn’t seem to remember that I already had a job—behind the microphone. But I let him doze, figuring we
’d both try to stay up late driving back rather than spending the night in Iowa City. This allowed Malik to rack up scarce overtime money toward a new stove with a convection oven for his wife, Missy, rather than having the station pay for hotel rooms.
While he slept, I drove past flooded fields of corn and soybeans, pondering the mysteries of heaven and angels.
More than four hours later, we stood face-to-face with the Black Angel. She was jarring. And magnificent. I’d worried it might be hard to find the famed figure, but the monument was the centerpiece of death in the massive forty-acre cemetery.
Even Malik was impressed. “Malak al-Maut.” He said the words with respect.
I stepped back to give him room while he shot the statue from all directions—every zoom and pan imaginable. I let him play artist, but made sure he recorded the angle that matched the chalk outline I’d taken on my cell phone. That wasn’t difficult. It was our first view of the angel as we drove along the cemetery road. And as Father Mountain had mentioned, it was distinctive.
Nearby, on the ground behind the sculpture, I found a long, black feather.
Chills along my back. I bent to pick it up, but changed my mind.
“Malik, get a shot of this.”
He saw where I was pointing in the grass and noted the irony. “ ‘Blackbird singing in the dead of night’?”
“I was thinking less Beatles and more Poe. ‘Quoth the Raven, nevermore.’ ”
“Maybe our angel simply sheds at night, returning to her concrete perch after a journey of horror.” He looked wistful to capture video of such a diabolical scene.
“You could camp here and find out firsthand,” I suggested. “After all, you like to brag you can sleep anywhere. Then you’d earn even more overtime.”
Just then I noticed a middle-aged man in a blue uniform driving a green cart toward us on the cemetery road. The maintenance building just outside the main gate had been empty when we drove by, but I figured him to be one of the groundskeepers.
“I’m hoping you’re the local lore,” I said, introducing Malik and myself as a Minnesota news crew. “We’ve come to learn about your famed Black Angel.”
“What do you want to know?” Ends up, we were speaking to the head groundskeeper, Bob Wachal. “The history or the mystery?”
“We’re journalists, so let’s start with the history.”
“I can give you that,” he said, “but nobody is ever content with the truth. The truth is the color change is the result of the natural oxidation of the metal. When outdoors, bronze turns from gold to black. End of story.”
“We drove hundreds of miles.” I handed him a business card that he pocketed. “I need to bring back more than that for my boss or my next assignment will be six feet under.”
Wachal chuckled at my graveyard humor. “People would rather believe in spirits than science. I have a hard time selling what I don’t believe.” He pulled out a cell phone and asked for my number, then texted me a name and phone number. “But I do accept that the angel is a piece of the town’s past, so I’m going to point you in the direction of a better storyteller.”
He assured us that Carole Schram, a long-retired school-teacher, would be worth an interview. “She knows more about the Black Angel rumors than anybody.”
I called the number and she agreed to share her expertise.
“When would you like to come over?” she asked.
I explained that we’d rather interview her in the cemetery, next to the statue. “Is there any chance you could meet us here? Or we could come get you.”
Carole agreed to be there in about an hour, but cautioned the sun would be setting. Even better, I thought. “That’s fine, we need day and night video.”
Meanwhile, Malik shot cover of the groundskeeper trimming some shrubs, the Black Angel observing him in the background. Some interesting clouds moved across the sky, forming a wall of white and gray. Tombstones lined the horizon in all directions. I felt outnumbered; more people lay buried in this cemetery than had ever lived in the farm town where I grew up.
“I’m surprised you drove all the way down from Minneapolis.” Wachal seemed a little suspicious of our purpose. “The only bronze statue around here that Twin Cities media has ever cared about is a pig, not an angel.”
“You mean Floyd of Rosedale?” Malik asked.
Floyd is a rival trophy in college football between the Universities of Minnesota and Iowa. The tradition dates back to 1935 when the governors of the two states bet a live hog over whether the Gophers or Hawkeyes would win the big game. The practicality of exchanging livestock annually gave way to a pig-shaped traveling trophy.
“You head on over to the campus and you’ll see Floyd’s bronze has turned black, too,” Wachal said. “You going to report it’s because he’s an evil pig?”
“Well, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen football players kiss Floyd and not die,” I said, “but if we can find people who believe he’s jinxed, sure, we might be able to make it into a story.”
“I think it’s the Gophers who are jinxed,” said Malik, like most U of M alumni, discouraged by the team’s dismal performance.
“But if we’re going to talk sports and the Black Angel,” I said, “shouldn’t we be talking baseball?”
I’d done my homework, and learned that Desiree Fleur’s book wasn’t the angel’s only literary fame. About twenty-four years earlier, W. P. Kinsella, author of Shoeless Joe, wrote another novel, The Iowa Baseball Confederacy, in which the Black Angel came to life and played right field in a game erased from the memory of those who witnessed it.
“I hear she can catch fly balls with her wings,” I said. “No telling what else she’s capable of doing.”
Wachal shook his head the way people often do when they are tiring of bothersome company. “My yard work is done.” Then he pointed us in the direction of some other angel markers—white ones—before heading back toward the main gate.
“Say, Bob,” I called out after him, “before you go, have you seen any strange people hanging around here lately?”
“You mean ghosts? Folks are always reporting seeing glowing lights and shadowy figures in the cemetery.”
“No, I mean real-life guys who give you the creeps. Like a Black Angel fan club.”
“Their kind lurk around here, too. I try to size up whether they’re trouble, figuring that’s a job the cops are paid to handle.” He glanced at his watch, saying he really needed to get home. And so Malik and I stood alone, the dark landmark our only company amid the dead.
We were daring each other to touch the Black Angel when our next interviewee drove up. Her car was old, but Carole Schram was older. A frail lady wearing a dress style popular at least a decade earlier. Compared to the monument, she was tiny. I apologized for dragging her all the way out here.
“Nonsense,” our new guide said. “This is my hobby. And it appears you’ve come a long ways for our legend.”
“Absolutely. So what can you tell us about Teresa Dolezal Feldevert?” I asked.
“Where would you like me to begin?”
“Assume we know nothing,” I said.
Malik snickered behind me, but I shut him up with a well-practiced glare.
“The Black Angel has stood in this spot for ninety-nine years,” she said. “Almost a century of intrigue.”
I nodded to show I was paying attention. “How old are you by the way, Carole?”
“I’m eighty-one,” she said, proudly. “Plenty old enough to know what I’m talking about.”
“That’s what we like to hear,” Malik said as he clipped a microphone to her neckline. “You’re my kind of expert.”
“But the angel outranks you,” I joked. “So give us the basics.”
“The statue stands watch over three sets of human remains.” She held up three fingers, then did a countdown. “The first is Teresa’s husband.” She explained that she had commissioned the statue following his death, for five thousand dollars. “That would cost we
ll over a hundred grand today, but her husband left her a wealthy woman.”
Malik whistled in admiration. “Angels don’t come cheap.”
“The second remains are those of her son.” According to Carole, seventeen-year-old Eddie Dolezal had died from meningitis twenty years before the angel’s arrival, and was buried in the cemetery under a custom-made tree-stump monument; Teresa moved his body and concrete marker next to the angel so her family would be together after death.
I’d wondered about the significance of the tree stump at the foot of the statue. “It symbolizes a life cut short,” she explained.
The final line of Eddie’s inscription read, Do not weep for me, dear mother. I am at peace in my cool grave.
“And finally, Teresa makes three.” Carole’s most interesting insight was that while Teresa’s year of birth—1836—appears on the Black Angel’s platform, her year of death is blank.
Malik crouched to shoot a close-up of the strange enigma.
“So is she dead or not dead?” I asked.
“She died in 1924, but the real debate is not over her death, but the mystery concerning the angel’s sinister color metamorphosis.”
“What are the leading theories?”
“You mean besides oxidation?”
“Well, yeah. But we’re most curious about the supernatural secrets.”
“One view has the angel turning black after being struck by lightning the night of Teresa’s funeral,” she said. “But most of the conjecture centers around a curse of evil—and rumors of infidelity or murder. Legend speculates that Teresa cheated on the memory of her husband, or perhaps that her son died by her hand; thus the blackness serves as a reminder of her sins and a warning to stay clear of her grave.”
“Wide-ranging gossip,” I said. “I understand she moved to Iowa as a widow, and didn’t marry the man buried here until years after Eddie passed away. How did she support herself and son?”
“That’s an interesting question,” Carole said, “and leads to another reason some townsfolk back then may have felt the angel’s hue change as evidence of her own malevolence.”