The Bricklayer of Albany Park

by Terry John Malik

  Sean explained. “I’ve already walked the exterior perimeter. I entered the building where the body was found, conducted a preliminary survey, and established a second perimeter around the body.”

  “OK, but I can still get a read on the killer. You know the routine.”

  “The M.E. and evidence techs are already working the inner perimeter,” Sean said. “So far, everything is the same as the Keeler site. And we caught a break. The tarp wasn’t well secured this time. It tore away from the head, and we were able to make a preliminary identification.”

  “Huh? So soon?”

  “When I couldn’t reach you, I tried Beth but got her voicemail. Per department directives, I was required to have a second detective on the scene, so I called Commander Dunbar to assign a temporary substitute. When I told him where we found the body, he insisted on meeting me here.”

  Dunbar explained, “I got a call at home yesterday morning from the superintendent’s office about an archdiocesan priest that had gone missing. The Chancery’s Office was reluctant to file a missing persons report, and I was asked to make some discreet inquiries. The priest’s name is Jack Anderson—he’s a monsignor. The Chancery sent Superintendent Di Santo a photo of Anderson, and Di Santo sent it to me. So when Sean called me and told me the location of the body, my gut told me it was Anderson.”

  Sean finished Dunbar’s explanation. “We identified the body as the missing priest using the photo that the dommander had been given.”

  Dunbar took his hands out of the pockets of his down jacket and blew on them. “I’m told Anderson was recently appointed head of a School Buildings Task Force to get control of cost over-runs, and reduce construction delays. He’d probably been to this site overseeing the construction of the school’s new gym.”

  “But that doesn’t explain why our guy dumped his body here.”

  “Yeah, well, you guys will have to figure that out, but more on point, I made some initial inquiries about the monsignor. The Task Force assignment was intended to deflect him from an unpopular ministry. It seems the monsignor was the self-appointed minister to Lakeview’s gay community. Apparently, some Catholics believe priests should not be seen saving souls in gay bars.”

  Dunbar looked back over his shoulder at the row of news vans. “The press is going to love this. They’ll spin the incident to describe Anderson as a rogue priest who wandered off course and will try to make this into a homophobic hate crime.”

  I stepped forward. “This is the second body deposited in Albany Park. We need to determine if our guy lives in the neighborhood, or there’s something that’s drawing him here.”

  Dunbar nodded and without saying another word, headed back toward the warmth of his car. After a few steps, he stopped and turned. “Keep me in the loop, boys. Foster, too.”

  As soon as the M.E. had removed Anderson’s body, we headed to the Town Hall station, headquarters for Chief of Detectives Thomas for a briefing. Sean always took the lead on dealing with command officers. He was polished and more articulate, and far more patient with the politics involved in the chain of command. I spoke only when asked a direct question. He provided a sitrep that was brief and succinct.

  The chief paused, looked back and forth between Sean and me, and then settled his gaze back on Sean. “Kelly, I spoke to Dunbar. I think it’s time to assemble a task force.”

  Sean demurred. “Please hold off, Chief. Give us a few days to sort things out.”

  “Dunbar predicted that would be your reply. Look, I’ll get pressure from Di Santo on this, especially if the press reports that we have a serial killer on our hands. We aren’t really sure how many more bodies are out there, are we?” He turned to me. “Frank, have you involved Foster in this?”

  With some hesitation, Sean responded, “Foster is helping us work up a profile. He has his own theory of the case.”

  There was silence in the room before the chief let out an exasperated sigh. “Nothing ever changes with Tommy.”

  Sean glanced at me, then broke the awkwardness of the moment. “If that’s all, we’d like to get over to the morgue.” With a wave of his hand, the dismissed us, and we beat a hasty retreat from his office and made it to the morgue just as the M.E. finished.

  “Exsanguination,” the M.E. said as we walked in. “Your victim bled out from the severing of the genitals.”

  “Was he was alive when the killer sliced off his testicles and penis?” Sean asked with a shudder.

  “Yes, but he may have been rendered unconscious by shock. The removal of the hand was certainly postmortem.”

  I pointed at the man’s neck. “Was he strangled?” “Well, the bruises on either side of his neck are very similar to those we found on the body of Henry Edwards, so our thinking at this point is that, like Edwards, he was strangled to the point of unconscious prior to any other wounds being inflicted.”

  “Anything that would suggest he made an attempt to resist the torture?”

  “Not sure. He may have been very subdued. The autopsy revealed inflamed bronchial tubes. The victim had asthma, and from the looks of it, he seems to have had a severe case. Your victim could have been passing in and out of consciousness from narrowed and inflamed bronchial tubes exacerbated by the strangulation. And, just to correct your thinking, the genitals were not sliced off. I’m pretty sure he used his bolt cutters again.”

  “Time of death?” Sean asked.

  “The freezing ambient temperatures during the last week makes determining time of death difficult. The body could have been at the scene as early as four days before it was discovered.”

  “What about a foreign item on the body?”

  “You mean genitals stuffed in the victim’s chest? Yes, they were placed under the left rib cage. I removed tissue samples and sent them to Forensics. I can tell you this: Those tissues had been frozen for some time. Not just from the recent cold spell.”

  “Otherwise, is there anything different from the prior victim?”

  “Not really. Not my job to speculate, but I’d say the person who killed Mr. Edwards killed the good monsignor and, except for the removal of the genitals while he was alive, your guy hasn’t altered his M.O.”

  Once in the elevator, Sean leaned back against the wall, exhaling in frustration. “OK. Same method of rendering the victim unconscious, same mutilation, same message on the torso, different cause of death.”

  “But except for their ages, these are two very different victims.”

  “Yeah. Sit down with Foster and chart it out.” “Sure. But listen, I need to spend time with the body, preferably alone.”

  The elevator doors opened at the first floor, and as Sean stepped out, he turned back to me. “Yeah, well, you blew that opportunity, buddy, when you turned off your phone.”

  CHAPTER 49

  Anthony

  I woke confused. I squinted, trying to focus on the cheap electric clock that I had balanced on top of an outdated but still operational Sony TV. The clock’s small red numerals read 9:58, but I wasn’t sure if it was morning or night. I threw off the two layers of blankets and sat up on the couch where I usually crashed. I searched for the TV remote but couldn’t find it among the mess of empty pizza boxes, paper plates, and empty fast food bags and wrappers. The basement apartment had only a single window, placed high above the painted cement foundation. It was frosted over. The basement was always damp and cold, and the original owner had done little to mitigate either.

  I gave up looking for the remote. In stocking feet, I walked across the cold linoleum floor and turned the TV on using the set’s manual control. The local ten o’clock evening news was just starting. I returned to the couch and draped one of the blankets over my shoulders to ward off the chill. As I had hoped, it was the lead story. I watched and listened closely, intending to savor every detail.

  Now they’ll understand. Now, the loathsome press will describe the nature of what I had done to Anders while he was still alive. Now, the message that the apparition ha
d demanded would be delivered as a warning to the likes of Anders, Henry, and all the others.

  But the details reported weren’t what I had expected. I sat hunched over, stunned by what I heard: Anders wasn’t his name. It was Anderson. Monsignor Anderson. He was a well-known Catholic priest who counseled gay men and was described as an advocate for abused children. The report on the murder and discovery of the body featured twelve-year-old file footage of Anderson when he first became an outspoken and fiery critic of the Church’s cover-up of pedophile charges against archdiocesan priests. The report included a clip of a ten-year-old PBS interview in which he accused the Vatican of “reckless ignorance” when it had announced in the late ’90s that gay men should not be ordained in order to prevent sexual abuse of children by the clergy. He had condemned the Vatican’s announcement, claiming that it perpetuated the myth that gay men are more likely than heterosexuals to engage in child sexual molestation.

  At the conclusion of the two-minute segment, I sat perfectly still staring beyond the television at the frosted-over window, only half-listening to reports of fatalities from the bitter cold. In the darkness beyond the window, I replayed my encounters with the man I thought was named Anders. A fucking priest? A priest at war with his church over protection of innocent children? Damn, I should have known. With the revelation that he was a priest who had challenged the church over its cover-up of pedophile clergy, my encounters with him took on a new meaning. And, Jesus Christ, I tortured and killed a man who, like me, in his own way, fought to protect the innocents among us. Worse yet, by killing a priest who spoke out against abusive clergy, trying to protect children, I had sent the wrong message. How was I so wrong about this one?

  The bolt-of-lightning pain in my head suddenly returned. I stood, letting the blanket fall to the floor, and began to pace, clutching my head in both hands, knowing that the haunting nightmares would soon return and fearing that the apparition would make more demands.

  CHAPTER 50

  Detective Frank Vincenti

  I had no reason to celebrate the arrival of the New Year. I’d dropped Beth off at O’Hare, where she caught a 6:45 a.m. flight to Santa Barbara to be with her brother and his family for the holiday weekend. It was a last-minute invitation, and Beth had jumped at the chance to escape the Chicago winter. I was invited too, but I wasn’t about to sit on the side of a mountain dotted with over-priced houses and peer out through layers of fog trying to enjoy the so-called vistas of the Pacific Ocean while a serial killer prowled the streets of Chicago. Beth wasn’t disappointed—nor was I. Sean had been right, she was getting under my skin; worse, her moodiness was beginning to interfere with my ability to get into our killer’s head.

  The lower level of the station house was quiet as I sat alone at my desk, hours before the next shift of detectives would start arriving. I looked over to the corner of my desk, where I had accumulated several handwritten notes from the desk sergeant letting me know that Tony Protettore had been trying to reach me since Christmas Day. I had no interest in renewing that relationship and hoped he would finally understand that. I truly felt sorry for him, but some relationships are better left behind.

  Besides, there was a killer to catch. I thought back to the call I’d received the previous day from the Deputy M.E. “There’s something you should know,” she’d said. “One of my pathology techs, a guy named Allison, became very upset when he showed up to work today—he was virtually hysterical about the Anderson murder. He had taken off the week after Christmas so he wasn’t here when we performed the Anderson’s autopsy. He claimed that Monsignor Anderson had been his parish priest, but I have no way of knowing if he’s telling the truth. He not only cursed the killer, he also cursed you guys for not preventing the priest’s murder.”

  “Not the first time that kind of thing has happened. What do you know about him?”

  “Allison seemed alright when we hired him a couple of years ago. I got a reference on him from the Hines County Medical Examiner in Jackson, Mississippi. Very sound from a technical point of view, but lately his reports have been sloppy. He doesn’t interact well with his co-workers, either leaves early or calls in sick, claiming to suffer from migraines, and seems to spend way too much time alone with the bodies he works on. Candidly, I would like to fire him.”

  “Can I talk to him?”

  “If you can find him. He stormed out, swearing he’d get even with Anderson’s killer. I’ve called him on his cell, but he’s not answering. Maybe he went home to his ex in Jackson. If he fails to report for five consecutive days, I can fire him. It would save me a lot of paperwork if I could can him for unexcused absence.”

  I’d made a few notes after I hung up and emailed them to Sean. Out of an abundance of caution, he replied letting me know he’d call the M.E.’s office in Jackson to see who knew him in there. If this guy was telling the truth—that he had a connection to the priest—I could understand his reaction. If not … no word yet from Sean on that front.

  I picked up the piece of creased, dog-eared paper on the desk in front of me. I’d retrieved it from my file cabinet, and now stared at the handwritten list. The craziness had started when the details of the Sacred Cross killing were leaked. The Chicago press had learned that Monsignor Anderson’s body was found under a pile of bricks, just like Edwards’s at the Keeler demolition site. The reporters put two and two together and reported that Chicago had a serial killer who has “a thing” for bricks.

  The name had first appeared in social media: crime groupies tweeted a whole host of names, each Twitter user trying to be more clever and more colorful than the one before, but the press picked up on just one and made it stick: “The Bricklayer.” I had grown tired of giving names to killers. In fact, I was disgusted by it. It glamorized the killers and gave them undeserved attention that served no useful purpose.

  At first, I had played the game and adopted the nicknames the press had coined for serial killers. Over time, that changed. I grew to shun nicknames and labels. I cringed when I heard a fellow detective refer to a victim as the “vic.” Try using that term when you have to inform a mother that her son has just been murdered. Detectives and FBI agents used terms like, “perp,” or “subject,” or “unsub.” I didn’t like any of those either. For me, the murder of an innocent person was always personal. I made it personal, and, for better or worse, I always called the killer “our guy.” Foster had taught me that, but it took a couple of years staring at autopsied corpses for it to sink in.

  Early in his career, Foster had expressed his disdain for the press generally, but especially when they sensationalized a murderer. Foster lectured: “Thanks to the morally bankrupt press, ten years from now the public will still remember the catchy nickname given to a serial killer, but, after the trial, no one will recall the names of the victims.”

  Now I was thinking of another piece of Foster’s advice. He had once told me that people shouldn’t make lists of things to remember, they should make lists of things to forget. He said, “If there is something you would like to forget, put it out of your head by writing it on a piece of paper and stick the paper in a cabinet drawer.”

  It was good advice, and I had done just that several times since I joined the Violent Crimes Section. I desperately wanted to forget the callousness of naming serial killers like they were boats in Belmont Harbor or a family pet, so I made a list:

  The Cleveland Torso Murderer

  Lipstick Killer

  The Zodiac Killer

  Moors Murderer

  Co-ed Killer

  The Trash Bag Killer

  The Freeway Killer

  The Scorecard Killer

  Killer Clown

  Casanova Killers

  Green River Killer

  BTK - Bind, Torture, Kill

  Houston Candy Man

  Riverside Prostitute Killer

  Genesee River Killer

  Hillside Strangler

  Son of Sam

  The Baltimore Cannibal<
br />
  The Kindly Killer

  The Milwaukee Cannibal

  The Tool Box Killer

  Coast-to-Coast Killer

  Bike Path Rapist

  Sunset Strip Killers

  Night Stalker

  The Happy Face Killer

  The Psycho Sailor

  This morning I had retrieved the folded and dog-eared sheet of paper, and, after a few minutes of reflection, added The Bricklayer to the list. Then I refolded the sheet of paper in half, and half again, and returned it into an unmarked envelope and shoved it back into a seldom-used cabinet drawer.

  CHAPTER 51

  Anthony

  For days, the TV remained on the floor where it finally came to rest on its side, unplugged, with its screen shattered and dark. It had betrayed me. Everything and everyone had betrayed me. Even Anders, or rather Monsignor Anderson. He’d looked the part. He’d been at that gay bar. He’d yelled at those kids. Surely he was just as much to blame for my mistake as I was.

  Asleep or awake, it didn’t matter. I was tormented by images of the priest. They materialized on the blank television screen as if seeing the killing on a replay loop: the terror in his eyes as he laid on the garage floor, his trembling lips as he cried for mercy, his blood swirling around and down the drain. I couldn’t remain in the same room with a television that had become a cruel instrument of the apparition, so despite the freezing temperatures, I moved out to the camper and slept on the pull-down cot.

  Monsignor Anderson did not deserve his fate, the fate I forced on him. I couldn’t allow the city to believe that he had been punished for his sins; of course, I did punish him, punished him without mercy, but for sins he hadn’t committed. I had been wrong, and now I had to make amends. From the freezer, I removed the clear plastic bag that contained the priest’s severed body parts, tenderly placed them in a purple velvet bag with gold ribbing that I had taken from a bottle of Canadian whiskey, and placed the bag in the snow on the steps of Holy Name Cathedral.