Killing Kate: A Novel (Riley Spartz Book 4) (32 page)

I heard the car door open and suspected he was coming for me. When the trunk opened, I was startled by the face of the Black Angel staring down at me. Even though my hands were free, I kept them behind my back so he would think me vulnerable. He dragged me to the cement slab in front of the statue, and slammed me down. Then stood over me, arm raised.

I rolled and ran, taking him by surprise.

Dolezal knew the general direction of my hiding place, and proceeded to search methodically from headstone to headstone.
The full moon offered enough light for his hunt. If I moved, he would see me. If I stayed still, he would find me.

Cat and mouse in a dark cemetery. I tried not to squeak.

Dolezal held his breath. If he listened closely enough, he might hear her pant or wheeze. She must be trying the same trick, because he heard nothing.

While he could not see her, he was certain she could see him. That gave her an edge. He decided to replace suspense with shock by rushing toward a nearby crypt. If she was crouched there, she would be his. If not, she might be startled into giving away her position.

Then the chase could commence.

He never doubted the outcome. Before dawn, a freshly dead body, outlined in chalk, would pantomime the statue of his beloved.

A shriek left his throat as he made his wild blitz.

My ankle was too sore to count on consistently. So I needed a place for a last stand. I decided on Dolezal’s car because I was closer to the automobile than he was.

If the keys were inside, I could escape. Otherwise, I would buy time by locking the doors, leaning on the horn, and praying for a neighbor to call 911 and complain about the noise. The vehicle seemed too old for autolocks.

My confrontation with him would take place there. I was trying to decide when to up and run when he made an odd noise and raced in a direction away from me. My only chance. But almost immediately, he perceived my destination and raced me.

I got there first, but once inside, my plan changed because waiting on the seat to rescue me was my true guardian angel—Saint Saturday-Night Special.

“Drop it, or I’ll shoot.” I cocked the hammer like Ed showed me, then climbed out of the car carefully. “I mean it.”

I had intended to order him to “Freeze, sucker,” but even though I’d practiced, the words did not come.

Dolezal let his weapon, a candlestick, fall to the ground without any fuss. Daylight was hours away. I couldn’t stand watch over him that long. The cemetery was empty, except for us. I thought about firing in the air as a call for help, but wasn’t sure how many bullets remained. And couldn’t risk running out of ammo.

The trunk was still open, and seemed like the ideal place to keep him until I could get assistance. Let Dolezal experience the tight quarters.

“Toss me the keys,” I said.

Instead, he flung them far off into the darkness without saying a word. He folded his arms across his chest in defiance.

“Okay, climb in the trunk.” I motioned with my gun that I was serious.

Instead he moved backward, away from the vehicle, to pose in front of the sculpture, his arms mimicking her wings. I could no longer see his face, and that’s when I noticed he wore plastic gloves.

“Fine, Dolezal. Say your good-byes to your Black Angel. Where you’re going, you won’t see her again. You’ll live the rest of your life behind bars. Prison can be hell on earth. And I will pray that you suffer misery for all the pain you’ve caused.”

He made no move toward the vehicle, merely shrugged as if my remarks were irrelevant. Then apparently changed his mind and decided I deserved a lecture. For such a quiet guy, he surprised me by being articulate.

“The Angel of Death was my destiny. I’ll be more famous than Ted Bundy or Charles Manson. Son of Sam. The Zodiac. Maybe even Jack the Ripper.”

He certainly was well versed on notorious serial killers in history. I detected no shame in his voice, only pride.

“Behind bars, I’ll be a star. A real-life Hannibal Lecter. Law enforcement officers will want to interview me. Psychiatrists will want to study me. They’ll scan my brain. And examine my motivations.”

He was probably right about that. For cooperative research sessions with him, authorities would make his prison stay palatable. Just then, I regretted Minnesota didn’t have a death penalty. Then I realized that neither did Iowa, North Dakota, or Wisconsin. He’d done his murderous homework, and realized he could dodge execution.

I was starting to worry that as an inmate, he might be smart enough to escape from prison; or as a defendant, beat a murder rap by pleading insanity.

“Get in the trunk, Dolezal.”

He didn’t seem to fear me or my gun. In this spooky graveyard, I was uneasy that he might catch me off guard. I could still end up dead before morning.

“My trial will be the trial of the century.” His spiel continued with enthusiasm.

He smirked in anticipation of his celebrity. During our other encounters, I couldn’t recall him ever smiling. His face, once stoic, now beamed like salvation was his alone. Under his breath, I heard snickering.

He was right about his destiny. He would become a champion of evil. And I couldn’t stand it.

Society would grow more fascinated with him each year. Anniversary stories would appear. No one would remember the names of his victims, but Karl Dolezal would become a household word. And when he finally died, headlines across the globe would publish clever lines like
Grim Reaper Finally Claims Angel of Death
. For generations, his grisly deeds, like those of his bloodthirsty idols, would be glamorized.

To reward him with infamy seemed so wrong.

And I could see only one way to prevent it.

I took two steps forward and pulled the trigger.

In the past year, I’d seen too many people die up close. But this was very different. They had wrought their own demise—by their own hand, own carelessness, certainly by their own demons.

Now, Karl Dolezal lie bleeding across the cement slab at the foot of the Black Angel. And I was culpable.

His eyes locked on those of the statue. Hers black as stone, his black as glass. He struggled to throw wide his arms as if embracing her wings. All the while, his chest wound gushed blood that looked more black than red.

He muttered, “Do not weep for me, dear mother, I am at peace in my cool grave.” It took a second for me to realize he was quoting the inscription from the tree-stump marker over the buried son.

Then I heard a final word slip from his lips. “Teresa.”

As his life slipped away, I had an overwhelming sense Teresa Dolezal Feldevert was transporting his soul to hell.

I
n a midnight instant, I, too, had become an angel of death.

I told the Iowa City police how I acted in self-defense using Karl Dolezal’s revolver. That seemed more prudent than a long-drawn-out explanation of why an unregistered firearm belonged to me.

The police had questions about the events leading up to me blowing a hole in my abductor’s chest. So I outlined a complicated scenario about disarming my foe, and how he had then resisted my plan to lock him in the car trunk by charging at me in the dark with a candlestick.

They wondered why the candlestick was so far from the scene of the shooting.

I shrugged. “It happened so fast, I don’t remember even pulling the trigger.”

Certainly, that part of my statement was a lie. Pulling the trigger is something I will never forget. Strange how an action that took a mere split second is now one of the paramount memories of my life.

Neither the police nor the media wanted to dig too deep. After all, Dolezal was a most unsympathetic victim—a delusional young man who believed a cemetery statue was urging him to kill.

They confiscated the firearm for forensic tests and determined from gunpowder residue and fingerprints that I had indeed fired the lethal shot. What puzzled them was that my fingerprints were on the remaining bullets in the gun. So I lied about emptying the firing chamber afterward to check whether any ammo was left, just in case my attacker had an accomplice lurking behind another tombstone.

Everyone told me how lucky I was to be alive.

Yet I wondered if I had become another pawn of Teresa Dolezal Feldevert. Perhaps I wouldn’t have fired the fatal shot if our confrontation had not happened on her turf. Might I have fallen under her power? Or was I just making excuses, telling myself it was really her spirit that pulled the trigger? Maybe I was seeing ghosts to avoid accountability for my own actions. Or perhaps she was determined that someone, anyone—Karl Dolezal or me—die on her grave that night.

I shook those ideas aside, because I believe in news. I believe in facts. The paranormal has no place in my world.

Regardless, the episode changed me. Because when I killed Dolezal, a little bit of me died inside.

I supposed I shouldn’t have been surprised. What was the infamous quote from the German philosopher Nietzsche?
He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster.

So was I a newshound or a hellhound? I was no longer sure.

Father Mountain was the only one who knew the truth of what happened that night, but he was bound by the confidentiality of confession.

Not even Garnett suspected my sin. I wasn’t sure I’d ever tell him. The fewer people who know something, the easier it is to pretend it never happened.

“I’ve never killed anyone,” he said. “All my years in law enforcement
and I’ve never actually drawn my gun in the line of duty. I can only imagine what you’re going through.”

I shook my head. No, he couldn’t. What I was going through was beyond his imagination. I worried about trying to build a life with someone while keeping that big a secret from him. And not just a secret, a lie. But I didn’t see much choice. I didn’t want to put him in the position of choosing between me and the law. I had no doubt he would chose me, but I also feared a choice like that might change him. And us.

I’m not denying what I did that night in the graveyard; I took responsibility in the confessional. “Oh my God, I am heartily sorry.”

And I meant it.

I just didn’t feel the legal system needed to be involved in my contrition. A life sentence in prison can easily cost taxpayers more than a million dollars per inmate. So I argued in my mind that I had saved the state money that could be better spent educating children and caring for the environment.

Perhaps one day God would judge me, and I might be punished. But until that happened, I would pray for a merciful God, and hope He would understand the extenuating circumstances that night in Oakland Cemetery when I violated the sixth commandment.

I had no idea fire and brimstone waited just around the corner.

I
took a couple days off work after pulling the trigger, and holed up at my parents’ farm with my fiancé. I did an interview with Channel 3, but ignored all network requests and other media.

Nothing seemed normal, especially not my first day back at the station. Garnett dropped me off, then left for a meeting with state officials before he needed to fly back to Washington.

The assignment desk had just gotten word about some bootleg booze found hidden in the walls of an old house once owned by the Gluek brewing family in northeast Minneapolis.

“Sounds like it might have been a Prohibition hideaway,” Ozzie said.

I wanted to run on the story because I enjoy local history and because this assignment seemed to hold a minimal chance for bloodshed, but Noreen had put me on standby in the newsroom.

Keith Avise wanted a word with my boss about our coverage of his dead dog and deceased marriage. He was bringing his attorney along to weave terms like “libel,” “defamation,” and “reckless disregard for the truth” into the discussion.

“Money we spend on legal costs means money we can’t spend on news,” Noreen said.

My boss thought it best Miles participate in the meeting instead of me. That way she’d be armed with a lawyer too. And
maybe, behind closed doors, they could make all of this go away without hysterics.

“I sure don’t want to meet with him,” I said. “But I don’t think you two should meet with him either. The guy’s nuts. If he wants to sue us, bring it on. Let’s handle it in court.”

“Clearly we’re in the right,” Miles said. “No way would we lose the case before a judge. But we’d like to avoid having it get to a jury because there are viewers who felt sympathy for him during that live interview with Sophie.”

“Even more reason to keep me out of it. This is more Sophie’s fault than mine.”

“But we’re all part of the Channel 3 news team,” Noreen said. “We stick together.”

“If you have to talk to this jerk,” I said, “go to his attorney’s office. Remember this is the dude who egged me just outside the door.”

“I think there’s an advantage to meeting here,” Miles said. “Gives us the home court advantage.”

Noreen agreed. “We may have you join us in the meeting later, Riley, but we’d like to speak with him first and see where he’s at. Wait in your office until we call you.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. Seemed like I might get dissed out of earshot just to appease a crazy newsmaker. But honestly, I no longer cared. Anything was better than that night with the Black Angel. Dodging eggs was easier than dodging death.

Those memories remained troubling, so I lay my head on my desk, trying to let my brain go blank and escape the haunting that happened in my mind when I wasn’t focused on news.

I told myself that while Noreen was definitely the worst boss I had ever had, she might also be the best.

Then my phone rang; when I opened my eyes, I saw the black feather pinned to my bulletin board. That boded ill. The front desk called to say Garnett was out in the lobby. The receptionist put him on the phone.

“How about a quick farewell lunch before my flight?”

If he’d called before showing up, I would have told him I was busy, because I didn’t feel like I could handle another round of good-bye. But I didn’t see much choice with us under the same roof.