by Julie Kramer
“What?” I said.
“I’m going to turn on my cell camera and record the shot. Watch.”
He clipped his phone to his belt and pressed a button. “Stay where you are, Riley. We’re going to test this.” He backed up, walked forward, then stopped a yard in front of me.
He called up the digital video and showed me a well-framed in-focus shot.
“Can you do that more than once?” I asked.
“I guess we’ll find out,” he said.
I gave Malik a padded manila envelope addressed to Karl Dolezal, and a receipt that required a signature. I knew there was a good chance that the front-desk receptionist would simply want to sign for it herself. On the walk to the law firm building, we went over strategy.
“Try playing dumb and say you were told to have him sign,” I said. “Pretend you’re worried you’ll get in trouble if he doesn’t.”
“I’m an artist not an actor,” he replied. “I find it insulting you think I can play dumb convincingly,” he said.
“I’m going to ignore that to avoid a fight.”
Once on the street outside the building, I called Dolezal’s phone number. When he answered, I acted flustered.
“Sorry, sir. I must have misdialed.” Then I hit the End Call button.
“Nice lesson in playing dumb, Riley. So natural.”
“I’m going to ignore that, too.”
The important thing was we knew our target was at his desk. So it was time to move. Malik positioned his cell phone in a belt holster and checked to make sure the camera lens was visible.
“How long can you record?” I asked.
“Hours. I’ll run out of battery before it runs out of memory.”
I wished him luck and found a nearby coffee shop to wait. I ordered a hot chocolate and found a table and an abandoned newspaper in the corner. The cops had been excited about grilling Chuck Heyden on where he was when I was attacked, but I had told them not to bother.
“Too tall,” I said, eliminating Kate’s lanky boyfriend from any suspect pool.
Five minutes passed. Dolezal worked on the eighteenth floor, so I expected Malik might have an elevator wait. But when ten minutes passed I grew uneasy. I hoped he hadn’t done anything strange that would attract the security staff.
After fifteen minutes, I was agitated and tempted to call him to check his status, but knew interrupting an undercover shoot could be disastrous. I patted my purse where Ed’s gun was hidden. Just in case.
I gazed out the shop window at the crowd hurrying by and noticed a now familiar figure, my guardian angel, glancing up and down the street. I chose to interpret it as God’s way of reminding me I was not alone. Having violated angel etiquette once already, I decided not to engage him, but simply take note of his appearance and disappearance.
And recite a quick prayer. . . . Ever this day be at my side . . .
At the twenty-minute mark, I left my seat to pace on the sidewalk in front of the law building. I texted Malik to reply “OK” if all was fine, but then he walked through the revolving door with a big smile spread across his face.
“Did he sign it?” I asked. “Did you get the shot?”
“At that distance, don’t see how I could have missed.”
“Show me. Show me.”
He pushed a button on his phone and I watched a video clip of him walking up to a woman at a desk. Then the shot moved and for the next thirty seconds I watched his feet, tapping nervously, before he headed back into the elevator, apparently shutting off the camera.
“You missed it.” I couldn’t believe the gaffe. The phone apparently shifted and he missed the shot. I was so dismayed I almost walked in front of a bus driving along Nicollet Mall, but Malik pulled me back off the street.
“Relax.” He held the phone to my face and I watched a new clip of him walking up to a different desk. “I got off on another floor to tape that on my way out to spoof you. Here’s the real thing.”
“What?” I felt like pushing him in front of the next bus. “Do you think this is some April Fool’s joke? We have work to do and you’re messing around with gags?”
“Sorry. Sorry. Look. Here’s your guy.”
The phone screen showed a woman talking on the phone briefly before hanging up the receiver. The scene stayed unchanged for at least twenty seconds. I was getting bored, because in television news, twenty seconds of not much going on is an eternity. If I’d been a viewer, I’d have clicked to another channel after four seconds.
“Here we go,” Malik said. “Keep watching.”
A man in a white shirt, tie, and dark pants walked into the shot and up to the desk. A hand (presumably Malik’s) gave him an envelope and clipboard. The man’s lips were pursed together in concentration while he took out a pen.
I handed the phone back to Malik. “Hey, don’t you want to see the rest?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I don’t need to see any more.”
Karl Dolezal was my guardian angel.
All the times I credited God with placing him nearby to be my protector, he was stalking me.
Back at Channel 3, I found myself wishing I had stuck to my original plan of putting blank paper in the package Malik delivered.
CHAPTER 67
The torn envelope fluttered to the floor as Dolezal raced back to the lobby to catch the man who had handed him the package.
“The man who was just here? Did you see where he went?” He blurted the words out at the receptionist like an accusation.
She pointed helplessly to the elevator. He punched the button for the ground floor. Every time the lift stopped for another passenger, his heart beat faster. On the third floor, he changed tactics and took the stairs. He realized the move probably cost him time, but if he remained in that confined space with other people, he feared he might explode.
He didn’t find the delivery man on the street outside the building. Whoever he was, Dolezal knew, his own anonymity was lost. He held the sheet of paper from the envelope up against his heart. Then he crumbled that picture of the Black Angel into a tight ball and dropped it in the gutter.
He should have just stuck to waitresses.
The Black Angel must be punishing him for the wrong kill. Unless he performed suitable penance, he might be sacrificed himself.
He couldn’t risk going back to the office or his apartment. A trap could be waiting.
He called in sick to the office manager. “I thought fresh air might help, but I feel so nauseous.”
She urged him to get some rest. It was summer flu season. “Lot of nasty stuff spreading around.”
Phooey on guardian angels. That’s all I could think about on the way back to Channel 3. But once there, no time to pout about spiritual disappointments.
Malik held out his cell phone so Noreen and Miles could watch the slick video of Karl Dolezal. I’d also printed a close-up of his face off the shot.
“We can’t broadcast it,” Miles said. “Whatever we say about him is bound to be defamatory at this stage. Your dead dog guy has already retained an attorney to make problems over that live interview. We don’t need more trouble. And this Dolezal fellow works for a law firm.”
“I agree we don’t have context to air the video as is,” I said. “What we have is coincidence after coincidence. But it might be enough for the cops to get a warrant.”
“What do you think?” Noreen asked Miles.
He nodded. “Might be the difference between someone’s life and death. Let’s go play Law and Order.”
While Nanna fixed him a baloney and cheese sandwich, Dolezal used a chair to climb to the top shelf of the bathroom closet. In the back, high out of her reach, was his stash.
Nanna’s place was the perfect safe-deposit box. Easy access, no questions asked, and no records kept. Over the last year, he’d tucked nearly five thousand bucks in a rolled-up towel in case he ever needed to disappear fast. Mostly twenties, but some hundreds, fifties, and tens for variety.
H
e put about a hundred fifty bucks in his wallet along with a fake driver’s license and library card he’d obtained the year before by “borrowing” a client’s name and documentation. At the time, the man’s appearance and age seemed a good match. Whenever Dolezal visited his clandestine cash, he always fingered the plastic to make it look worn.
“Nanna, always remember, you did your best raising me.”
His compliment seemed to please her, as did his kiss against her cheek. Squeezing his hand, she murmured something about nurture and nature that he couldn’t follow.
“You stay seated,” he said, clearing the table. “I’ll let myself out.”
This time, he took his grandmother’s old Taurus out of the apartment garage without telling her. He left his own car behind, first cleaning out anything he might need. Like a hunk of chalk from the glove compartment.
When the media ran his name and photo, a call from her senior housing facility might tip police to their relationship. He wanted Nanna genuinely confused when the detectives came to interview her.
About a mile away, he imagined her pain and shame. The news of his sins would destroy her. He headed back to fix things.
When Dolezal finally left her place, he slipped a heavy brass candlestick from the fireplace mantel under his jacket. He felt naked without his trophy bat, but knew he could not chance returning to his apartment to retrieve it without jeopardizing his scheme. The bat, and all it stood for, would have to be surrendered.
He turned his cell phone off and drove south because south felt familiar. And also because Riley Spartz’s parents lived on a farm in that direction.
CHAPTER 68
One by one, I laid out the list of suspicious connections concerning Karl Dolezal for Detective Delmonico. Miles listened and took notes.
First, surname Dolezal.
“That only works if we buy into your Black Angel conjecture, and we really don’t,” he said. “What else you got?”
Victim was client. Dolezal signed will.
“That helps. What else?”
Dolezal works near Minneapolis library.
“So do ten thousand other downtown employees,” he said dismissively.
Dolezal stalking me.
Delmonico scrunched up his face. “That helps regarding your attack, but it really doesn’t as far the murders go. Unless we can prove the same hand is behind both.”
He promised to show Dolezal’s picture around my neighborhood and Kate’s and see if anyone recalled seeing him before. “We’ll also bring him in for some questioning about his apparent interest in you.”
“But won’t that put him on alert?” I asked. “And give him a chance to destroy evidence?”
“I’m sorry, but there’s nothing here to get a judge to sign a search warrant,” the detective said. “It’d be different if you could positively identify him as your attacker. Then we’d have to act.”
So that’s all they needed. “Absolutely, Detective.” I could play that game.
“The minute I saw the tight camera shot of his face, I recognized him as the woman in the elevator. His eyes. His nose. No doubt. Put him in a wig and dress, he’s the guy.”
“Really?” Delmonico seemed skeptical. Even Miles looked doubtful. “Why didn’t you mention that fact before?”
“I was working my way up to it. Didn’t want to make the interview all about me.”
Like I said, I could play that game. And once I understood the rules, it wasn’t hard to break them.
He went over my statement, and again I claimed that Karl Dolezal was my assailant.
When I got back to Channel 3, I briefed Noreen on the meeting.
“Will the police let us be there to shoot any arrest?” she asked.
“Doubtful,” I answered. “But I told them if they give our video to any other media, there’ll be another homicide to investigate.”
“So we need to wait.” As I nodded in agreement, she changed the subject from death to dogs.
“The puppy thing isn’t working out, Riley.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think it’s time for Max to go home.”
“He doesn’t have a home, Noreen. I was hoping you’d decide to keep him.”
She shook her head, claiming to have dogs aplenty. “You’ll have to drive him back to your parents’ farm.” She held out a spare house key and told me I should pick him up now and take tomorrow off.
This show of consideration was quite unlike my boss.
Then I realized what must have happened. “Garnett called you, didn’t he?”
Her face gave it all away. “If you don’t head down there, he’s going to call them and tell them you’re in danger. What do you think will happen then?”
No good. My parents would show up in downtown Minneapolis to protect me. They would take turns standing watch while I slept. My dad might even bring along the old shotgun he used to hunt pheasants.
I agreed to leave town for a day until things settled down. After all, it wasn’t like I could count on my guardian angel.
I texted Garnett. OFF TO FARM. YOU WIN.
After twenty minutes of sniffing the interior of my car, Max curled up in a ball of fur and fell asleep in the backseat. I hit cruise control and played with the radio reception as we got farther from the Twin Cities.
I hadn’t called my parents about my visit. I decided to surprise them. Otherwise they might ask too many questions. Max would be my excuse.
Halfway to the Black Angel, Dolezal had to rely on memory to locate the Spartz family farm because he didn’t want to ask directions. He took a few wrong turns, but luckily their name was posted on the mailbox.
He didn’t pull into the yard because he didn’t want them to know they had company . . . yet. Instead, he found a private dirt road that ran through the land and connected to the main road via a pasture. He hid his car between a grove of trees and field of corn, then made his way on foot toward the homestead. He listened for the sound of a dog, but heard nothing.
A barn loft, decorated with a wooden quilt painting, offered good sight lines around the property. So he hid inside, moving straw bails to an open window to watch for signs of activity amid the silos, sheds, and grain bins. He heard some pigeons in the rafters, and was starting to think this farm might be a good place to temporarily hide out.
After he finished.
Just as the sky was turning dark, large yard lights came on that cast mysterious shadows. He would wait several hours, maybe even nap first. He was in no hurry.
Then he heard voices. Two figures left the house, slowly making their way toward an outbuilding. A garage, he realized as they drove away in a pickup truck.
They would be back. And they had left the garage door open. He wondered about the house. Sometimes people in the country didn’t lock their doors. He contemplated exploring, but decided to wait.
About ten minutes later, as his eyelids felt comfortably shut, a vehicle turned back into the yard. He shook himself alert, but instead of the truck, a sedan stopped near their front door. A woman climbed out and a small, barking dog followed.
It was Riley Spartz.
The Black Angel must have sent her. A sign. He put on plastic gloves.
Mom and Dad weren’t home. No church service tonight, so they’d probably headed to town for a supper of tacos or fried chicken at the American Legion. I must have just missed them on the road.
Had it still been daylight, I’d have taken Ed’s gun out behind the barn to practice. The yard lights shone deep enough for some visibility, but not enough for shooting.
Max wanted to explore and do his dog business, so I tailed behind him as he nosed along the ground. He seemed to be following some kind of trail toward the barn. Likely a raccoon or possum. Because my parents were retired, they rented out the farm fields and had no livestock.
The puppy barked, running faster.
“I’m coming, Max.”
The dog smelled him. Another sign. Dolezal believed in
signs. The puppy would make her suspicious in a matter of minutes. And he realized it would be best to move now, before the truck returned and two more sets of eyes arrived.
The pup looked up and began growling at Dolezal’s window, ten feet above the ground.
“Did you find him? Did you, Max? Go get him.” The reporter stood just below his hideout, humoring the pooch.
Then she turned toward the house, whistling for him. “Come along, boy.”
Dolezal jumped, knocking her to the ground. He could have kept tightening his grip, thus ending the mission there. But the Black Angel wouldn’t have approved. She preferred blood to bruises. And he had promised her a visit from them both.
CHAPTER 69
This death endeavor was his riskiest. But it stood to be the most rewarding. Karl Dolezal kept his eyes on the road and his mind on his cargo.
Whether the reporter was awake or not would make no difference for hours. Until he opened the trunk, she was his. Once they arrived, she would belong to the Black Angel.
A sacrifice at her feet would make him historic.
He thought Riley Spartz’s car more likely to be reported stolen than his grandmother’s. So he loaded the reporter, unconscious, into her backseat and drove down the private farm road to switch vehicles.
The puppy raced after them, barking, but couldn’t keep up.
Pawing through her purse while he drove, Dolezal discovered the gun. A loaded revolver. Nice. He put the firearm in the glove compartment to examine later. In her wallet, he found two twenties, and pocketed the cash.
He threw her purse and cell phone out the car window into a ditch and continued driving south.
CHAPTER 70
The last thing I remembered was barking. So much for my presumption of seeing life two seconds faster than everyone else.
Until I recognized road noise, I didn’t even realize I was trapped inside a car trunk. Not a crack of light shone through the night. My neck ached, my ankle hurt, and coarse twine fastened my hands behind my back.