It was my sacrificial offering. The body and blood of a man who had dedicated his life to helping others just as I had dedicated mine to avenging others. Regret took the place of guilt. I asked for no forgiveness, knowing none would be given.
But my offering and repentance did not rid me of the unceasing torment of the apparition. I struggled to clear my head. In lucid periods, I planned more carefully and devised a new approach. I had to be certain that my targets were guilty of sexually molesting small children. I discovered that state law required communities to maintain a public registry of convicted sexual offenders. The official list for Chicago, accessible on its website, identified the offender by name. And although it did not provide an exact address, it reported the residence of the offender by block level. The report included race, age, and whether the victim was a minor, all conveniently arranged in columns and rows that reminded me of a baseball box score.
I obtained a printout of the first fifty names and taped it on the inside of the camper’s door. Sitting on the edge of the cot that reeked with my own body odor, I studied the list. I had circled three names: white males, between the ages of fifty and fifty-five, whose victims had been minors, and who lived no more than thirty minutes from the garage. I started with the first name on the list: Harold Mathias of Sunnyside Avenue. On a scrap of yellow-lined paper, I scrawled his street and block, and, early on a dreary Sunday morning, weary from another sleepless night and in desperate need of a shower and shave, I set out on yet another scouting expedition.
Using the list of registered offenders proved more difficult than I had anticipated. Without a specific address, I had to park on the 3100 block of Sunnyside near Kedzie, and wait and watch. On my first try, I parked at the end of the block and scanned both sides of the street. My next target could live in any of nineteen residences, nine of which were three-flats. That meant forty-six homes in all. I had rejected the notion of surreptitiously looking at mailboxes for the Mathias name—a registered sex offender was hardly going to announce his presence with a label above the mail slot.
Although the temperatures had moderated, it was starting to snow again, heavily. I started the engine and flipped on the wipers for just two full swipes when I heard it. The voice on the radio said the psychopath now known as “The Bricklayer” had brutally mutilated the beloved priest who would now never get to see the school expansion project he championed through to completion. From the men with HIV he counseled to the youngest students and oldest parishioners, the whole city mourned the senseless slaying. Hundreds were expected at the funeral to be held that afternoon.
I slammed my hand on the dashboard. “I’m not a fucking psychopath! I’m just doing as I’m told, trying to relieve my friend of his pain. I’m just his messenger.”
This time, I vowed I wouldn’t make a mistake. This time, I’d pick the right man. I sighed and checked my watch. I had been parked in the same spot too long. I drove to the end of the block and turned into the alley to determine if it gave me a better vantage point to observe the comings and goings of the residents. I drove through both alleys several times. Frustrated, I decided to return to the garage before the snow began to accumulate. I’d return later and try to mark the man who the City of Chicago had already marked as a sexual predator of children.
CHAPTER 52
Detective Frank Vincenti
Beth called from LAX. She had flown there from Santa Barbara earlier in the day after saying her goodbyes to her brother. Her flight was due at O’Hare around 4:00 p.m., and she asked me to pick her up. She was waiting at the passenger pickup island on the arrival level at Terminal 3 when I finally pulled up just after five. Her cheeks were red from the cold, and she was stomping her feet to stay warm. I was prepared for her explosion—she hated waiting. And she would probably throw a fit that I was picking her up in an unmarked department car. As I got out of the car and looked across the roof of the black Interceptor, I saw her stare at the car with a look of disbelief. Oh shit. Now it starts. I walked over to where she stood and reached out to take her bag, expecting a sarcastic comment meant as a reprimand. Instead, she said nothing and got in the car.
I pulled out and merged into I-294, expecting the worst from the traffic and from Beth. The National Weather Service had issued a winter storm warning; another six inches of snow were predicted to fall overnight.
“Did you spend New Year’s Eve with your mother at the club?”
“No. I barely saw her. I stayed with Ted in Monticello. I needed brotherly advice.”
“Oh? Since when do you ask anyone for advice?”
“You know that’s not true when it comes to Ted.” Beth looked over at me, “I told him I wanted you off the force. He really laid into me for that—told me I was being selfish.”
Ted was older than his sister and was a successful Santa Barbara psychiatrist. She’d always looked up to him and respected his opinion, whether or not she asked for it. Their father had died unexpectedly when she was a freshman in high school. She had become deeply depressed after his death and turned for comfort to “Aunt Nora”—a pseudonym for cocaine used by rich kids to give themselves “street cred” among their WASP friends. Aunt Nora was readily available in the wealthy areas of Santa Barbara County, and trust-fund teenagers had the cash to pay the inflated prices. When her mother discovered Beth’s addiction, she was more embarrassed than alarmed, and insisted that Beth be admitted to an out-of-state rehab clinic. Beth refused and defiantly flaunted her drug use. Finally, her brother gave her the attention and understanding she craved and convinced her to enter a program in one of the two-dozen rehab centers located near home. To make sure his little sister stayed sober, he transferred from Yale to attend a local college. He’d earned the right to criticize her life choices many times over.
“He asked me about The Bricklayer case even before he asked about how I was doing at the firm. I told him I was sick of hearing about the goddamn Bricklayer.”
Without taking my eyes off the road, I said, “The case isn’t really the issue, is it?”
“No, probably not. Frank, don’t you see what your job is doing to you—what it’s doing to us? You sulk, and you walk around in a fog of depression for weeks at a time. And your hours are worse than mine. Sometimes when I leave in the morning I find you asleep on the couch, fully dressed, like you just dropped there. And when was the last time—”
“The last time we slept together? That’s it, isn’t it?”
She didn’t answer.
“Beth, there are plenty of nights I come home to an empty apartment. I understood the demands on a young lawyer in a big firm, and I always figured that’s what I signed up for.”
“Yes, and that’s what my brother said.”
“A cop is who I am.”
“I get it. Honestly, I do. That doesn’t mean I like it, but I get it. I know that I haven’t been supportive—it’s just that so much of the horror that you deal with winds up in our private life.”
“You mean it winds up in our bedroom, don’t you?”
She turned away abruptly and looked out the window without responding. We sat in silence watching the first few snow flurries of a coming storm whirl past the windshield as traffic inched along.
The next morning I woke to five inches of snow and an empty bed. Beth had left early to beat the rush hour traffic that was going to be even more snarled than usual. She’d invited me to share her bed, like usual, looking for instant solutions to long-simmering problems. She was wrong to invite me. I was stupid to accept.
I called her at the office to make sure she had arrived safely. Initially, I thought that was another mistake. She said matter-of-factly that she had been very early, but wasn’t the first in the office. I listened, not wanting to broach the disaster of last night’s sex and hoping she’d let it go for now too.
Picturing her in one of her expensive black and white pantsuits pacing around a cluttered desk as she talked, I replayed yesterday’s conversation during the ride from O
’Hare. I tried to pick up the thread. “What else did your brother say?”
“He said I was acting like a spoiled, condescending bitch. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
“No, Beth, not at all.”
Finally, she got to it. “Last night was nothing new and you know damn well why!”
“It was too soon.”
“And that’s supposed to be your latest excuse? That’s not it, and you know it!”
I stopped listening as a rush of images suddenly reappeared from last night. I watched, unwillingly transfixed.
In the darkness of her room, my head was filled with images of shiny bolt cutters tearing away at Edwards’s and Anderson’s soft flesh.
“I know Foster says you have a unique talent for getting into a killer’s head, but Foster and the rest of them don’t crawl into bed with you.”
As her breathing became heavy and warm upon the side of my neck, I saw Anderson’s blood seeping into the dark cracks of a garage floor.
“Whenever you get a new case, you become obsessed. It’s like the monster you’re chasing gets into your head and then worms his way into mine.”
When she rolled over on top of me, I pictured freezer shelves crammed with frosted-over plastic bags containing colorless hands, fingers splayed wide as if reaching for help.
“Like I said in the car coming back from O’Hare, I get it, but this can’t go on.”
When I placed my hand against her breastbone to steady her atop me, I saw gray brain matter and shards of a shattered skull spray into the air.
“I can’t take it any longer, Frank!”
As she moaned, screams of terror echoed in my head.
“It has to stop, Frank. It has to stop.”
As she cursed—a field of blue tarps stretched to the horizon.
“You just don’t get it, do you?”
And there was always a hooded face covered in darkness lurking behind those images, but I still couldn’t make out who it was.
“Frank! Have you heard anything I’ve said?”
Suddenly, a woman’s face appeared and then disappeared just as suddenly. I didn’t recognize her.
“Yeah. Of course.”
The images faded, and although I wasn’t sure what Beth was saying, I knew what I wanted to say. “Beth, I’m a cop. I don’t know anything else, and frankly, I don’t want to know anything else.”
I said nothing and we sat in silence for almost a full minute. I was finally getting into his head, getting an instinctive feel for the killer. It had started last night as I lifted the sheet and slid across the bed toward her. I felt his rage—and his fear. He was on a mission. But I couldn’t make the connection between Edwards and Anderson. Not yet. I needed more time, a breakthrough, something.
But then Beth regained my attention. “When I called you Thanksgiving morning I told you that I’d give you six months to make a change. But, how about this? You remain on the job until you get this Bricklayer guy off the streets and then you can see a career counselor about a career change—a career that’s related somehow to law enforcement.”
“Sounds like another ultimatum.”
“You can take it however you like, but will you at least think about it? Can you do that much? For us?”
I’m sure she meant for her.
An hour later, I leaned against the smooth marble tile wall of our glass-enclosed shower. I had adjusted the electric temperature control to a level that produced a heavy steam. After several minutes of deep breaths, inhaling the steam’s moisture, I stood directly under a cold spray of the shower’s rain head. I watched the clear water swirl into and down the drain. I could now summon at will the images that had flooded my mind last night and that had reappeared this morning. All I could think about was the rage stoked by a sense of revenge that must be driving him, amazed that he had held his rage in check long enough to carefully select his victims and dumpsites, but I was sure of two things as I toweled myself dry. He was out there planning even now and eventually his rage would consume him. And destroy him.
CHAPTER 53
Anthony
After two early morning vigils on Sunnyside and more passes through its alleys, I had narrowed it down to two men. Both were white and appeared to be in their mid-fifties. I had followed one to a west side automobile paint shop. I called the shop, asked for an appointment to obtain an estimate to paint a pickup truck, and then asked to speak to Harold Mathias. They never heard of the guy. By the simple process of elimination, the other man had to be Mathias.
I returned to Sunnyside late the next evening. As I slowly cruised the alley behind Mathias’s house for the second time, I saw him walk down the back stairs of his house, toward the garage. I sped up and pulled into an empty lot farther down the alley. I watched my rearview mirror and waited. A few minutes later, an old silver Chevy passed slowly with Mathias at the wheel. I backed out into the alley and followed him.
Following Mathias wasn’t as easy as following Anderson. He didn’t use his turn signals, traffic was heavy and slow, and the roads were snowpacked and treacherous. He drove south on Kedzie, turned west on Irving Park and then turned onto the Kennedy Expressway. I almost lost him on the Kennedy when a semi pulled in front of me and blocked my view. As Mathias approached the North Avenue exit, he cut in front of a slow moving van, regained control of his car after it fishtailed on a patch of ice, and headed up the exit ramp. With some difficulty, I was able to change lanes and followed him up the ramp, maintaining a safe distance. He proceeded left on North Avenue and, after crossing over the expressway, drove one more block before he pulled into a 7-Eleven parking lot. As I drove past the lot, I saw him sitting in the Chevy with the engine running. I drove to the next stoplight, made a quick U-turn, pulled over, and watched for the Chevy to exit the lot. Five minutes later, Mathias was on the move again, returning to the Kennedy and heading into the city.
“What’s this son of a bitch up to?”
He exited at Ohio, turned south on LaSalle Street, and drove to Lake Street and Dearborn where he entered a twelve-story self-park garage. I followed close behind to avoid being cut off by traffic.
“Now where’s he going?”
As the electronic gate rose at the entrance, I looked around the immediate vicinity—office buildings, high-end restaurants, and the Goodman Theatre. “Hell, there’s nothing here for this guy, especially at this time of night.”
I wasn’t sure where the Chevy was parked, so I pulled into a spot on the eleventh floor assuming he wouldn’t have parked on the roofless top floor unprotected from the weather. I hurried to the elevator and impatiently pushed the down button three or four times. Finally the door opened. There in the elevator stood Mathias with a tire iron in his hand.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
Mathias rushed me and pushed me hard against the cinder block wall opposite the elevator, pressing the rusted tire iron across my throat. “You think you’re the first self-appointed vigilante to find me on the goddamn Internet?”
With his free hand, he pushed my head against the cinder block and brought his face close to mine. His breath stunk of onions and garlic.
“I’ve seen that shitty little homemade camper of yours drive by my house, and I saw you late one night poking around my garage. Yeah, I’m awake at three in the morning, motherfucker!”
Pinned against the wall, I struggled to breathe and fought to get free, but when I pushed back, he applied even more pressure, almost cutting off my windpipe altogether. “Look, asshole, I’ve done my time and I’ve paid a price, but you wouldn’t know about that would you? You wouldn’t know about the beatings, you wouldn’t know about prison scum lining up to stick their cocks up my ass. I’ve had enough. I don’t need pathetic little do-gooders like you watching my every move, trying to find a reason to send me back to Danville!”
I couldn’t breathe and feared I was about to pass out. Mathias paused suddenly and eyed a security camera hanging from the top of the
wall just to the left of where he had cornered me. He put his head down, turned away from the camera, and delivered a solid swift blow to my gut, causing me to double over. Then Mathias rammed home a knee to my groin. I collapsed, writhing in pain.
“Stay away from me, goddammit!”
CHAPTER 54
Detective Frank Vincenti
I had just returned to my desk with a vending machine ham sandwich as Sean hung up his phone. “Ditch the sandwich, pal. We’ve been invited to lunch.” Sean announced with some mischief in his voice.
“By whom?”
“None other than your old buddy, North Area Commander Edward Dunbar,” he replied as he opened a cabinet drawer.
“He’s not my buddy.” I was still living down the four-year-old, whispered rumor in the Detective Bureau that Dunbar had done a favor for Foster, his former mentor, by intervening and fast-tracking my promotion and assignment.
“Well, buddy or not, he wants us to meet him at Jake’s in thirty minutes.”
“Did he say what it was about?”
“Come on, Frank, it has to be about The Bricklayer,” Sean replied as he rooted around a cabinet drawer.
He pulled a red tie from the bottom of the cabinet, looked over at me and saw my scowl. “Frank, get over it. I don’t like nicknames for serial killers, either, but like it or not, it has become a part of the street vernacular now.”
“Just don’t use it around me, OK?”
He had turned his shirt collar up and was tying his tie when he stopped and looked at me with a wrinkled brow. “Frank, you look like crap!”
“What’s wrong with the way I look?”
“When was the last time you got a decent night’s sleep?”
I ignored him, pulled out my bottom drawer, and dug around for a tie.
Jake’s was a ten-minute walk, and on our way I told Sean I’d received two threatening phone messages in my voice mail. “It’s the same guy. He keeps talking about Anderson and his body parts.”
The Bricklayer of Albany Park Page 15