The Bricklayer of Albany Park

by Terry John Malik

  “But I built motive on a foundation of underlying anger with society. The anger builds beyond a point the subject can control.”

  He shook his head. “Simple anger alone is a trite motivation for the killings you describe and simple anger would not push a rational person to surrender control. What’s behind the anger? Where did it come from? Long brewing or spontaneous? When you understand a spree killer’s motive as something more than a flash of anger at the world at large, your choice of victims will be sustainable. Forget who the victims are and consider what they are. Finally, your victim here at Starbucks is all wrong.”

  He stood to leave. “Try again. This time use your imagination, your gut, not your so-called ‘book learning’.”

  We met again three days later. When I set my revised memo on the table, I noticed that he had placed a manila file folder off to the side. I said nothing about it and took my place in line. Upon my return with a coffee in each hand, I was surprised to find that he had just finished reading my memo. Before I could sit down, he took his coffee from my hand and took a sip. “As I anticipated, Francis, your analysis misses the mark again.”

  Dispirited and puzzled, I slowly sat opposite him. He slid the manila folder across the table. “Those are the Atlanta Police crime scene photos from Barton’s rampage—photos of all twelve murder victims, including those of his children. Take them home. Study them, but don’t write another word until you have used your imagination to experience Barton’s feelings, thoughts and urges. And do not burden yourself with emotional attachment to the victims—it will add nothing.”

  When I returned to my room, I tossed the file on my bed intending to put aside Foster’s assignment for a few hours and clear my head. I plopped myself onto my bed and reached for the TV remote, but one of the photos had slid out of the file. It immediately caught my attention, and without picking it up, I slid it across the bed sheet toward me. It was a close-up of Barton’s eleven-year-old son—his head crushed. Deep indentations from the claw end of the hammer were clearly visible.

  Stapled to the photo was a single sheet of paper at the top of which was a note in Foster’s handwriting: “From Barton’s suicide note.” Below it was a news clipping quoting Barton’s note:

  I killed the children to exchange them for five minutes of pain for a lifetime of pain. I forced myself to do it to keep them from suffering so much later . . . The fears of the father are transferred to the son. It was from my father to me and from me to my son. My son already had it. And now for him to avoid my legacy, I had to take him with me.

  One by one I tacked the two dozen photos to my wall, pushing each tack with increasing pressure—with each addition to my wall, my head throbbed. I sat Indian style on the floor leaning against the foot of my bed, and studied every detail of each photo. But I kept coming back to the photo of the young boy and to Barton’s note. Father and son. Son and father. Foster had told me to use my imagination to understand Barton’s motivation, but his admonition to stay emotionally detached was at odds with the horror of the image of the murdered young boy. After an hour of staring at the pictures, my headache became more than I could tolerate, and I resorted to hydrocodone that I had taken from my father’s medicine cabinet. I became drowsy and must have fallen asleep there on the floor.

  I heard muffled screams in my dream. I tried to make out the words, but I couldn’t. It grew louder, and I jolted awake to discover it was my screaming. I looked around the darkened room not sure where I was or what time it was. I took a moment to clear my head. I stood and stared again at the picture of eleven-year-old Matthew Barton, tore it off the wall and re-read Barton’s note.

  I looked down at the scar on my wrist, closed my eyes, and saw the image of my father’s handgun in my mouth. And I saw my father’s face. Is that your legacy to me? “God damn you, you son of a bitch! You may have stolen my childhood, but that’s all you’re getting. You can burn in hell!”

  If, at that moment, my father were there in my dorm room, I would have used the gun on him.

  Then it struck me. “Jesus Christ! Foster, you baited me!” His little exercise wasn’t intended to test my knowledge of spree killers or a simple lesson of motivation. The assignment was simply the second part of his game of twenty questions—a game that forced me to admit that I carried suppressed rage, uncontrollable rage, born of a mean-spirited alcoholic father, who could move me to violence. “Damn you, Foster!” But he was right—unless I confronted my anger, I could never understand the anger of others, and I would never understand the rage that causes a man to kill.

  I called Foster and told him, “Tomorrow at 8:00 a.m.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Anthony

  Exhausted and light-headed, I struggled to push Henry’s lifeless body off me until, with one final shove, I rolled him over to the side. His head hit the floor with a thud. Sprawled on my back on the cold concrete, I worked to control my breathing, the chunk of the jagged, bloody brick still clutched in my hand. I stared up at the rafters and listened to my heart pound, as loud as a hammer blow. Adrenaline still coursed through my veins, and time seemed to stand still. Finally, I struggled to my knees and braced myself against the garage floor, slippery with blood. The sight of Henry’s battered face ignited the rage I tried so hard to control. He had ruined everything. The fucking bastard had fucking ruined everything!

  I grabbed his head and turned it to face me. “Open your eyes, goddammit! Open ’em! I wanna see the terror in your eyes. I need to see you suffer!”

  I let Henry’s head flop back into the pool of blood. “You bastard. You fuckin’ bastard.” I shifted the chunk of brick to my left hand. “This is all your fault!” I slammed the brick down on Henry’s head—again and again and again until my own face dripped with his blood and the garage door was splattered with gray brain matter.

  Enough! I finally sat back against the bumper of the pickup and looked over to where the lantern stood. Spotted with blood, it threw distorted images against the garage door and the back of the truck. I inhaled. The smell of Henry’s blood on my flesh was like nothing I’d ever smelled before. Oh, I knew the smell well enough—it was like copper, but this time . . . this time was different. The clay of the brick, the mix of copper and fear, salt, sweat and adrenaline combined to produce something like the dying sparks of a welder’s acetylene torch. A single drop had settled on my upper lip, and for just a moment I thought of licking it to learn how bloodlust really tasted. But I couldn’t. I was afraid Henry’s evil would infect me. Instead, I wiped my sleeve across my mouth in disgust.

  I still held the chunk of brick. I held it up to a narrow shaft of moonlight that seeped through a broken pane of a small decorative window that was three-quarters up the wall. The blood looked black in the moonlight. I turned the brick in my hand and considered the heft and shape of it. I studied it, admitting I had no idea why it was in the garage or how it got there. As I stared at the brick I sensed there was something familiar about it, and a painful image from deep within my memory flashed in my mind, disappearing as suddenly as it came. I strained to summon it again, but the only image I saw was the brick, in slow motion, crushing Henry’s skull.

  CHAPTER 21

  Detective Frank Vincenti

  I wasn’t sure whether Foster was surprised that I had simply told him that we would meet instead of requesting a meeting. Either way, I didn’t care. He had played a mind game with me, so I had decided that I would reverse the roles and play a game with him. I would become the game master.

  I had our coffee waiting in place when Foster joined me at the outdoor table where he had started this little exercise ten days earlier. He sat down and took a drink from his coffee. Seeing the look on my face, he said, “I see you figured it out.”

  I nodded. “It’s all about rage. Raw, unchecked rage. Rage born of being forced to feel worthless. Rage fed by being devalued as a human being. The rampage killer feels alienated and alone. He’s not born feeling worthless. He is taught to feel that w
ay, and his classroom is the home. His rage builds to a point at which, unlike other men, he can no longer control it.

  “All my victims represent an oppressor or a transgressor in the mind of my subject. But none of them had actually wronged him. They are simply convenient surrogates for those who, in his eyes, had belittled him or deprived him of any shred of self-esteem. They represent people in his life who failed to see that he was special, failed to recognize that he was someone to be reckoned with.

  “My subject isn’t killing the maintenance man; he’s killing everyone who ignored his pleas for help. And he isn’t killing the drug store manager; he is killing every boss or teacher he ever had who, in his eyes, unfairly reprimanded or embarrassed him. Rage isn’t rational or logical. And slowly—ever so slowly—the rage transforms your son’s Boy Scout leader, or the person who sits in the cubicle next to you at work, into a psychopath capable of monstrous acts of savagery.”

  Foster sat silent for a moment. He sipped his coffee. “I trust you didn’t come to that conclusion on an intellectual level. Did you rely on your intuition, your imagination?”

  And now, the real game began. “No. I reflected on your little game of twenty questions and Barton’s fear of the legacy he was passing on to his son.” I paused and looked him in the eye to let him know I figured out his game and turned it into mine. “Then I summoned my rage.”

  He nodded with approval. “But it was not my questions that upset you, it was your answers that led you to discover and give voice to your own suppressed rage.” He had taken the bait.

  “True.”

  Foster looked down at his coffee cup as if it contained his next question. “And your rage grew out of being raised by an angry and bitter man and your fear of his legacy.”

  “There’s no reason to get into that.”

  “I think there is.”

  “No.” I was enjoying the game: Check.

  Foster sat silent for a moment. “Another time then.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “And who is your final victim here at Starbucks?” “You.”

  Checkmate.

  Foster took a sip of his coffee and looked past me at the courtyard full of students. A smug smile slowly appeared as he nodded his head in approval. His eyes came back to meet mine. “Francis, may I buy you a croissant to go with that latte?”

  CHAPTER 22

  Anthony

  After I calmed down and my head cleared, I realized that although Henry’s attack had interrupted my plan, there was no reason not to finish what I’d started. My purpose had been served, if not its means. I still had work to do.

  My latex gloves were covered in blood and had been torn during the struggle. I tugged them off, rolled them into a ball, and tossed them to the side of the garage near the freezer. I lifted the lantern from where I had so carefully placed it before Henry’s attack, and held it at shoulder height, its dim light allowing me to inspect the scene behind the pickup. It was a grisly mess. I opened the door of the camper, stepped over Henry’s body, and set the blood-spattered lantern inside on the floor. Grabbing a towel from the rear bench, I wiped my face, hands, and forearms, removing most of the blood, and then threw the towel toward the freezer.

  I stood over Henry’s body and stared at his crushed skull. Dammit to hell! Henry had denied me the pleasure of inflicting the pain he deserved while he was still alive. There was no satisfaction in this kill, no muffled screaming, no wide-eyed look of terror in his eyes. No desperate pleas for mercy. Henry had escaped the long and painful death he deserved, the death so many like him deserved. The death I had delivered so many times before.

  My rage began to boil again. I grabbed the corpse by the feet and dragged it over to the front of the freezer, leaving a trail of smeared blood and gray brain matter. I walked back to the rear of the camper and grabbed the lantern. The heat of its glowing mantle had caused the spattered blood on its glass globe to dry, turning the bright red blood to dark carmine. Tilting my head, I stared at it momentarily with schoolboy curiosity, then regained focus and rotated the lantern’s in-take valve, leaving just enough light to see my way around the garage. I needed room to work. But first, I needed to back the camper out of the garage and park it on the alley apron.

  I left the garage through the side door and surveyed the backyards and porches visible to the south. The neighborhood was dark. There was no activity. Staying close to the brick wall of the garage, I walked down the narrow sidewalk that ran along the side of the building and then swung open the rusty gate to the alley. Everything was quiet—I thought. At first I didn’t notice it, but under the streetlight, no more than ten yards to my right, a man walked a German Shepherd. They were headed straight toward me. They hadn’t spotted me yet, but I knew I’d attract attention if I rushed back into the garage. Instead, I eased the gate closed and stepped back into the shadows. I tugged up my hood, pressed my back against the cold and wet brick wall, and pulled my .38 from my pocket.

  CHAPTER 23

  Detective Frank Vincenti

  Foster started to conduct our sessions at his home. When he suggested it, he told me that he lived in a basement apartment and scribbled the address on the back of a Starbucks napkin. I recognized the street name; it was located in Lincoln Park. I doubted very much that there were many basement apartments in Lincoln Park. It was an old area with a rich history and even richer residents.

  On my first visit he greeted me at the door holding an unlit cigar and wearing a blue blazer and a light blue button-down shirt opened at the neck. He showed me around his one-bedroom basement apartment, explaining that the building, a 1900s-era brownstone, had been built by a displaced British aristocrat and that the ground floor had been designed to house his children’s nanny. In the early ’80s, the three-story brownstone had been converted into three luxury apartments, and the owner rehabbed the long-abandoned nanny’s quarters to accommodate a fourth tenant. His apartment became a classroom for me then, and over time, it became a second home as well—a safe place where I knew I would never be turned away.

  In his environment, the sessions changed—he changed. In soft, low lighting and with cigar in hand, he was more relaxed. Unlike our previous sessions, he encouraged discussion. He sought my opinions on files, psychological profiles and case rulings. He finally entertained my questions, although he had been right—I had answered most of them myself.

  He freely discussed his cases, including the unsolved murders that still haunted him. He knew the name of every victim. He spoke of them as if they were members of his family—especially the children. “The most innocent of all victims.”

  Some nights, when it was late and he knew I was vulnerable, he returned to his game of twenty questions. The new questions were logical extensions of the first set, but questions I never gave much thought to: Why did Grandpa Angelo resent your father? Who else was in the car when your mother was killed? Sometimes, when I was caught off guard and too tired to resist, he would push back, refusing to accept my abrupt responses. He kept returning to Grandpa Angelo’s dismissal of my father.

  “Tell me about your grandfather. Obviously, to deny your father a chance at college and passing his money for tuition on to you has had consequences he may not have foreseen.”

  “My grandfather again, Foster?”

  “Francis, some people are so afraid of the future that they cling desperately to the past, sharing it with no one.”

  “Not me.”

  “Really? But what about your father? The disdain he has for life, and you, started with your grandfather. So, tell me about him.”

  “My father never talked about Grandpa. But, I remember some of my grandmother’s stories—they’re not really informative. Grandma always acted like Grandpa’s past was some kind of secret.”

  “Was it?”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “And, I rather you would.” Working on relighting his cigar and without looking at me, he didn’t let up. “What about your grandmother? There�
��s more about her that you’re not telling me.”

  I looked over at him. Busy fumbling with matches, he didn’t see my frustration. Grudgingly, I continued. “I won’t bother you with fond childhood memories—I know what story you’re fishing for. One Christmas at my uncle’s house in DeKalb, my father was being his usual obnoxious self, so Aunt Anna got me out of harm’s way by asking me to help her in the kitchen. Without looking up from the sink full of soapsuds in front of her, she tried to explain my father’s behavior. She told me that Grandma had become pregnant ‘out of wedlock’ and that Grandpa had refused to marry her. The unwanted baby was my father. After he was born, Grandma’s family threatened to go to the immigration authorities and have Grandpa deported unless he married her. So he did, and according to Aunt Anna, entered a lifelong loveless marriage. Grandpa took out his shame and bitterness by beating Grandma, even repeatedly pushing her down flights of stairs. Grandpa, like my father, was a mean drunk, often taking a belt to my father’s backside.”

  “So, your father was literally a bastard.”

  We both sat quietly. He succeeded in relighting the stub of his cigar, and examined it as if he had never seen it before. He looked up at me. “Francis, shame and bitterness, and the anger they engender, are not traits we inherit—we impose them upon ourselves. I had hoped you had come to that realization when you read Barton’s suicide note. I suppose your aunt’s story explains a lot—your grandfather’s resentment of your father, for example—but it is not your shame, nor is it your father’s. It is your grandfather’s shame. It is too late for your father to understand he was a victim of your grandfather’s bitterness; your father will go to his grave angry at the world and ignorant of the cause of his anger. But it is not too late for you to understand. That your father was a victim makes you no less a victim but, unlike Barton, you can reject your father’s legacy.”