The Bricklayer of Albany Park

by Terry John Malik

  “Go on.”

  “Mathias opened a new door completely. When we found the body tied to the utility pole, I saw a flash of a chunk of brick, although Mathias wasn’t buried under a pile of bricks like the other two. And then, while I watched the M.E. empty his rib cage, an image of a small child flashed in my head, but I didn’t recognize him, and I felt our killer’s pain and anger. Foster is pretty certain our guy has been stalking and killing pedophiles and that Anderson was a mistake. I agree with him. But in view of Sean’s interpretation of ‘heim.4’ as ‘for him,’ my original hunch about seeking revenge for a sexual assault on him is wrong. The assault was on someone else, someone he was close to— maybe a brother, a son, or a friend.”

  “What about his attempt to communicate directly with you through this last message?”

  “This guy is all about messages. His kills themselves are messages. As Sean once observed, he wants the world to sit up and take notice. I think our suppression of his torso message has frustrated him. To the extent that he sent a message to someone on the case justifies Foster’s little game, but unless we deal with his message in a fashion he’s satisfied with, he’ll up the ante and kill again. And, one other thing. I haven’t told anyone because I don’t want to make a big deal of it, and besides the image lacks detail.”

  “OK, what is it?”

  “An image of a man wearing a gray hoodie, but his face is covered in darkness, so I haven’t been able to make out any features.” I didn’t bother to tell him that the image had appeared to me more than once.

  Dunbar knew not to pursue it. He knew that when I could identify the face, I’d tell him.

  “What about the reference to Beth?”

  I paused, reluctant to answer. Dunbar repeated the question just as Foster used to do when I tried to deflect his questions.

  “It scares me.”

  “Do you want to get Foster’s opinion on this?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s starting to scare me, too.”

  CHAPTER 68

  Anthony

  My post on the so-called pedophile hotline blog didn’t look much different from what other people had posted. I’d always had trouble reading and writing. I never thought it serious, nor did I really care. Somebody at school, I don’t recall who—it may have been a fourth-grade teacher—concluded I had some kind of reading disorder. The teacher gave me a note to take home that recommended the name of a specialist I should see for treatment, whatever that meant. I was tired of people always saying that there was something wrong with me, so on my way home from school that day, I crumbled the note into a ball, and, imitating a Michael Jordan jump shot, threw it in a neighbor’s trash bin. Now, I figured my reading problem was shared by many of the other people posting on the hotline blog. Maybe we all had the same problem or maybe none of us had a problem.

  If the note was received by the police and understood, then they would be searching for bodies in Schiller Woods, but after a week of daily vigils in the woods waiting for the police to show up and search the river banks, I became worried the note hadn’t been found or my spelling and grammar were not deciphered. I mean, if someone did find it, would they have comprehended enough of it to bring it to the attention of someone at Chicago PD? And, even then, would the cops have been smart enough to understand it was intended for one cop in particular—Detective Francis A. Vincenti? Did I need to take some additional action to draw them to the spot along the banks of the Des Plaines River where I had buried two bodies?

  I waited and watched as jetliners roared overhead. The Schiller Woods Forest Preserve was no more than a mile from O’Hare. The airport was busier now than those nights when I’d spent time on the hood of my father’s car watching takeoffs and landings. Now, every minute or so, an airliner took off or touched down at O’Hare, some flying so low and the sound of their engines so loud, that windows rattled in the nearby neighborhoods. On the planes’ landing approach from the east, the aircraft flew directly above the Des Plaines River where it bends and turns through the Schiller Woods Forest Preserve. That was where I had buried the bodies, less than a mile from O’Hare’s main runway, along the east bank of the river. At the time, I had carefully placed them in shallow graves and concealed them under leaves and loose brush. Now I wanted them to be found.

  It was ten days since I posted a note on the blog when a search team finally showed up. After two days of combing the forest preserve at Schiller Woods, they found the site. As jets thundered overhead casting shadows on the woods, I watched from across the river, behind a clump of short evergreen trees. A group of officers and others in civvies gathered around two large mounds only a few feet from the river’s edge, while two techs wearing green neoprene waders stood in the river guiding the removal of surface debris from around the site. When I had dumped the bodies three summers ago, the river had been shallow and its banks wide. The heavy snow of this past winter had melted and swelled the river, slowing the work of the evidence technicians.

  I watched, gratified, as the evidence techs dug up and removed one set of remains, and then started digging near the second mound where a patch of a dirty blue tarp had been spotted. I had hoped that the search team would be startled, excited even, and would call out to each other. I had counted on the Woods’s parking lot overflowing with press and crime groupies. I was disappointed on both counts. I didn’t know it then, but I would be even more disappointed later when there was no press coverage of the discovery.

  CHAPTER 69

  Detective Frank Vincenti

  I called the M.E.’s office to get a report on the newly discovered bodies. The pathologist assigned to the case estimated that the remains of the two white males wrapped in blue tarps removed from the riverbank had been placed there almost three years earlier. Placement in the moist soil and three years of exposure to the elements had accelerated decomposition, and the tarps had done little to preserve the bodies. Although the victims’ right hands were missing, the M.E. couldn’t determine whether the victims’ genitals had been removed.

  I was certain the killer would know we’d uncovered his victims, and warned M’Bala that he might take obscene pleasure in having his handiwork discovered and receiving inordinate publicity of the find. I had instructed her and the search team to keep the search and discovery low-key. Dunbar and I agreed with Foster’s recommendation that the discovery of the bodies be kept out of the press for now. We had intentionally delivered a mixed message to the killer: Yeah, we received and deciphered the message you left on the pedophile blog, but we’re not going to let you enjoy any publicity. Even without the publicity, I was certain he’d know we’d found the bodies. Yet a week after the discovery, we still hadn’t heard anything more from our killer.

  “I don’t like it,” Sean declared, shaking his head.

  “I don’t like it either, but Foster thinks it will force the killer’s hand.”

  “But the lack of press coverage may trigger another kill.”

  “That’s Foster’s point.”

  “That’s a dangerous game.” Sean leaned against the cubicle partition between our desks and fiddled with a pen, flipping it end over end in his hand. “I would have preferred sending him a message back on the pedophile blog. You know something like, ‘We feel your pain. We can help you.’”

  “Yeah. In fact, I suggested just that to Dunbar. Foster nixed it. Said that if we mollify his rage, he might go quiet for an extended period of time, maybe years, and we may never catch him.”

  “You believe that?”

  “I don’t know. If we’re right about the bodies in Indiana and Wisconsin being his early kills, that means that he’s moved around— maybe for a job or he got married or something. If we don’t force his hand here and now, he may wind up killing in California or New York or who knows where.”

  “And Dunbar bought into this?”

  I nodded.

  “What does Foster say about The Bricklayer mentioning Bet
h in the message?”

  “I haven’t asked.”

  “Why not?”

  “He doesn’t need to know everything we do, Sean.”

  “Since when?”

  “He’s enjoying the chase and gamesmanship a little too much lately, and continues to be consumed by a twenty-year manhunt. I still don’t like that he deceived me planning the La Pointe setup. Besides, Beth isn’t his problem.”

  “Have you told her?”

  “She won’t take my calls, and the one time she did answer, she told me to go to hell and hung up. Sometimes I think she’d like to have my balls in a plastic bag in her freezer.”

  “Jesus, Frank!”

  “Never mind. Anyway, my lawyer sent her lawyer a letter advising him of the possibility that she may be stalked. Although she refused police protection, they’ve retained a security service at the office for her, but I don’t know about the rest of the time. She’s on her own now and can figure out what to do. She’s a big girl.”

  246

  CHAPTER 70

  Anthony

  The police weren’t following my breadcrumbs. It was clear Detective Vincenti had received and understood my message. I’d watched the deputies from the sheriff ’s office and their evidence techs find the bodies at the river. I watched the news for more than two weeks waiting patiently for some mention of what I had hoped the press would tritely describe as “grisly discoveries,” but there was no mention of it. That had to be at the direction of the CPD, but surely not Vincenti.

  I was also confused by the failure of the press to give adequate coverage of La Pointe’s release and the reasons for it. And, although I had been flattered temporarily by the copycat’s efforts, he had gotten more press coverage than the discovery of the riverbank bodies. I was frustrated and angry, and the disjointed scenes of the attack on my friend reappeared more frequently, always followed by headaches and repeated episodes of blacking out from the pain. Everything was getting confused, scrambled in my mind as the pain became too much to bear. I could wait no longer.

  The widely reported fact that Mathias was a convicted pedophile proved my reliance on the CPD list of sex offenders to be sound. I turned to the list again where I found Luis Cervantes of the 4900 block of Lawrence Avenue. This time, I was determined to go undetected as I surveyed the block that was harboring a child molester. This time, it took me only one long afternoon to single out Cervantes from the rest of the residents of Lawrence Avenue, and I pledged I would do more homework and spend more time observing his habits. And, this time, I would make sure the CPD would receive my message, understand it, and spread the word. This time, I would leave no doubt about its meaning.

  CHAPTER 71

  Detective Frank Vincenti

  After three weeks at Sean’s apartment, I decided that being with Sean at work and at home didn’t give me the time I needed to be alone, and living at a hotel on the weekends was becoming cost-prohibitive. It was time to face the only viable, affordable alternative: moving back to my father’s house.

  I stopped by the house on Newland that weekend. It had sat empty for almost five months, and as I parked on the street and killed the engine, I thought back to the day I claimed my father’s body. I hadn’t stepped foot in the place since and hadn’t paid attention to its condition. I approached the concrete stairs leading to the entrance with more than a little trepidation, and paused momentarily at the front door, knowing that painful memories lurked on the other side. I put my hand on the doorknob and squared my shoulders. I feared that only regret would greet me.

  The house was dank, the air stale. The furnishings were just about the same as I remembered them and located in the same places as when I had left fourteen years earlier, but I noticed the television was missing and empty beer bottles and fast food wrappers littered the floor. Damn! Had the place been taken over by a squatter? The kitchen was also a mess. There was food in the refrigerator and a pile of unwashed dishes in the sink. I checked the back door. The lock had been jimmied and duct tape had been placed over the lock’s faceplate holding the latch in the open position. I was right. Someone had broken in and made himself at home. I was tempted to call the desk sergeant at the 21st District and have them send over a forensics team, but decided against it. It would serve no useful purpose at this point.

  I was able to convince a neighborhood locksmith to come to the house later in the day and had him change the locks while I checked all the windows on the first floor to make sure they were closed and secured. Layers of paint and swollen sashes apparently served better than any window locks. If my squatter returned, he would take the hint that he had been discovered when he tried to gain entry, and, if not, then he’d find an armed Chicago PD detective waiting for him. I hired a neighborhood cleaning lady to make the house minimally livable. It took her and another person two days of hard work. I told them not to bother with the bedrooms. Even then, she apologized that they couldn’t do a better job. I paid them, thanked them, and made arrangements for them to clean every two weeks.

  I refused to sleep in my old bedroom. The day I moved in, I opened the door just to see what my father had done with it and discovered that he had turned it into a junk room. It appeared as if every time he had an old or broken piece of furniture or a pile of old clothes, he just opened the door and threw the unwanted items into the room. I closed the door and decided to leave it closed. I didn’t even bother with my father’s bedroom. The door was closed, and it would remain closed. I replaced all the furniture in the living and dining rooms with inexpensive furniture from a neighborhood superstore that promised next-day delivery. I solved the sleeping arrangement by ordering a leather sofa bed for the living room.

  I fell into a regular routine. Get to work early and stay late. In between, I pored over old case files, trying to find a suspect or collar that might be carrying a grudge, or, more likely, someone I had helped convict who wanted to show me that he was more clever than me. All of it seemed so familiar. I had gotten to know this guy. I thought I knew him well, but every time I tried to visualize him or anticipate his next move, I got lost in my own analysis. This had become far more than a serial killer case. Our guy had made it personal.

  At night, I reviewed all the crime scene photos on my iPad. In addition to the photos that forensics techs had taken, I had taken many myself, including photos I took as I witnessed the autopsies. I had also downloaded autopsy photographs of the Indiana and Wisconsin victims. I had obtained photos of the known victims from family albums, and in the case of the monsignor, old newspaper articles, and posted them on my dining room wall with pushpins. Next to their photos, I had taped four maps: one each of Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, and southeastern Wisconsin, placing red push pins where we had found his five confirmed kills in Illinois, and green push pins for the suspected killings in Kenosha County, Wisconsin, and East Chicago, Indiana, near the Calumet River. When I was too tired or too lazy to make my own meals, I walked across the street and down the block to the Grand Grill, a little neighborhood diner on Grand Avenue that had been there since I was a kid. It became my regular breakfast spot.

  On a late spring Friday morning, my breakfast routine at the Grand Grill was interrupted. I immediately called Sean on my cell.

  “Hey, we may have a problem. I think I’m being stalked.”

  “Are you in danger?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Is it that Allison nut from the morgue?”

  “No, it’s not him. It’s a long story. I’ll explain when I get there.”

  Sean was waiting for me at the rear entrance to the station. “Were you followed here?”

  “No. Let’s go in and I’ll brief you, and you’d better get Keisha.”

  Five minutes later I briefed Sean and Keisha. Sean leaned against my desk with his arms folded in front of him. Keisha pulled Sean’s desk chair next to mine. I sat at my desk and turned my chair to face them.

  “OK. Start from the beginning,” Sean directed as if I were a
witness.

  “Remember last winter when I ran into someone from the old neighborhood?”

  “Yeah, he was someone you wanted to forget.”

  “That’s right. His name is Tony Protettore. He lived next door to us when we were kids. He called me several times after that, but I never returned the calls. It isn’t a relationship I want to renew. This morning I saw him outside the restaurant where I usually have breakfast. He stood on the sidewalk across the street on Grand staring into the diner.”

  “Are you certain he saw you?” asked Keisha.

  Replaying the scene in my head, I answered, “Yeah, he was looking directly at me. When he saw that I had recognized him, he seemed startled, quickly looked away, hurried down the street, and then ducked into a backyard in the middle of the block.”

  “OK, so maybe he’s just visiting the old neighborhood.”

  “No. It’s got to be more than that. Last week while I was eating a sandwich over the kitchen sink, I looked out the window and saw someone standing in my backyard. When he realized I had spotted him, he turned and ran into the alley. I saw the guy’s face just momentarily, but now I’m sure it was Tony. I didn’t think much of it then because I couldn’t have imagined it was him.”

  “Again, harmless coincidences, Frank?”

  “And then I found this note stuffed in my mail slot. I found it this morning when I went back to the house after I called you. It may have been there for a couple of days. I don’t always check my mail.” I handed Sean a crumpled-up piece of yellow paper with child-like block printing that read, ‘how do I get yu atentoin?’