Killing Kate: A Novel (Riley Spartz Book 4) (30 page)

I knew those dogs and knew them to be as much protection as marshmallows. Any intruder who petted them and talked pretty would get a welcome lick.

Me? I was through with pretty talk. When I got back to the station, I headed straight to my file marked
G,
grabbed Ed’s gun and bullets and practiced uttering “Freeze, sucker” and other words the FCC doesn’t let us say on the air.

I
called Malik at home, interrupting him in the middle of a backyard landscaping project involving laying sod on wet dirt. My message that I needed him to come in early the next morning for a hidden camera assignment met with no zeal on his end.

I was scruffy-looking when Malik arrived. My neck was stiff. I hadn’t eaten. And I’d slept poorly because the morning crew kept forgetting I was in the green room.

“I hate this spy stuff.” My photographer was pouty even though he’d climbed out of a cushy bed to a hot breakfast. “Why can’t I just set up the camera and you wear it?”

“Because they’ll recognize me, either from TV or being in the office the other day.”

My plan called for Malik to wear a hidden camera—his choice: glasses, baseball cap, or watch—and deliver a package to the law firm and ask Karl Dolezal to sign for it. “Barring technical difficulties,” I said, “that should get us our picture.”

“Good luck there,” he said.

Malik grumbled that Channel 3’s covert devices were not the most current. They were clunky compared to the sleek digital
models on the market, but hot hidden camera gear wasn’t a high priority after the station reduced the emphasis on investigative stories.

“It doesn’t bother me as much as you, Malik. I guess I don’t necessarily want my hidden camera video to look perfect, otherwise viewers won’t believe it’s undercover.”

Channel 3’s devices had pros and cons. The glasses provided a pinhole lens in the nose of the frame and shots wherever the wearer looked. But the frame resembled something out of a Buddy Holly movie, and didn’t allow the photographer to be inconspicuous.

The hat also offered good sight lines, but if the brim turned slightly, the shot could miss. And undercover often didn’t get a second chance. Both devices had noticeable cables that ran down the back of the wearer’s neck and allowed the video to record in a fanny pack.

The watch was harder to aim, but the cables ran under the photographer’s sleeve and were less noticeable.

Malik put on the hat, adjusted it in the mirror, then flung it on the floor. “Forget this, I’m just using my cell phone.”

“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.

T
he 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.

He 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.

O
ne 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.