The Bricklayer of Albany Park

by Terry John Malik

  I paused. Micah had called earlier and asked me to meet him at his office later that afternoon. He had shared his interview notes with a colleague and obtained a second opinion. I had told him that I couldn’t leave Francis alone and said it would have to wait. Sean’s proposal solved that problem. Micah’s office was a little less than a mile from the auto pound.

  “Alright. I’ll wait for Keisha. I’ll take a look at what you have.”

  Late Afternoon — Thursday, May 28

  Alvarez and Keisha arrived in front of my building fifteen minutes later, around four o’clock. Keisha rushed into the lobby where I was waiting. I instructed her to look in on Francis in thirty minutes or so to make sure he was still asleep.

  Alvarez used his siren and dash-mounted blue strobe to get us to the auto pound in less than ten minutes. Wacker Drive runs parallel to the Chicago River at two levels. Lower Wacker is located at the same level as the river. Enclosed by a ten-foot-high chain link fence topped with razor wire, the auto pound is located on “Sub Lower” Wacker near Columbus Drive, the only spot in its two-mile length where Wacker Drive has three levels. Dark, damp, and forever musty, the sub-level captures the odor of a river that flows backward.

  Sean was waiting for me at the front gate near the mobile trailer that serves as the pound’s office, and then led me through a maze of cars and trucks to the far side of the fenced area where several fire-damaged cars were stored.

  “There,” he pointed, “the green camper.”

  I went ahead of Sean, circled the vehicle and studied the exterior; the worst of the fire damage was limited to the cab of the truck. I turned and looked at Sean gesturing as if to say, “So?”

  “It’s what’s inside the camper.”

  Sean joined me at the back of the camper, opened the rear door, and handed me a large Mag flashlight. The heavy odor of burnt plastic filled the small, dark compartment, but Sean was right: only a thin layer of soot covered the interior; it had suffered little fire damage. I took one step in, slowly directing the powerful flashlight beam from one side of the camper’s interior to the other.

  The walls were full of what, at first glance, appeared to be graffiti, but was really a journal of sorts—a crude record of the killer’s plans, travels, and accomplishments—all intermixed with indecipherable ramblings. The walls were full of hand-drawn maps of Chicago streets: Keeler and Grove, Karlov and Kelso, Lawrence, other addresses in Albany Park and Lake View, and maps of Wisconsin, Iowa, and Indiana. Above the maps was a list of dates, perhaps a dozen in all. The scribbling included familiar words and phrases: “Whiet Shutrsr” written above the scrawled word “fag.” There was also a list of construction sites and a napkin from a place called Murph’s Borderline Pub taped above articles from the Tribune about The Bricklayer. A printout of the CPD’s sex offenders registry was taped to the back of the door with three names circled. On the wall above the camper’s bench, the letter “A” was repeatedly written in six neat columns and ten evenly spaced rows almost giving it the effect of a wallpaper pattern. Most disturbing of all, above a storage container, I found crudely drawn figures of a penis and a hand with out-stretched fingers. Written below the figures, in what appeared to be dried blood, were the words “heim.4.”

  I stepped out of the camper, overcome by the lingering odor of smoke, and struck by the pathetic need of the killer to chronicle his story. No need for Sean to see my reaction.

  “What else do you have, Detective?”

  Sean appeared disappointed that I did not comment on the so-called “graffiti,” but answered anyway, “The VIN on the driver’s door pillar has been ground off, even looks like someone may have used acid on it. I need to check, but this model may have a VIN on the engine block. We will get Forensics down here to pull it apart.”

  “Good luck with that, but let me know what you find.”

  I turned my head and took another look at the vehicle saying, “What about security cameras at O’Hare?”

  “I already called the Chicago Department of Aviation. They’re running their search programs now. As soon as they isolate the gate, entrance ramp, and time frame, they’ll download the images directly to the department’s forensics section.”

  “Any hits on the BOLO on Allison?”

  “What? “

  “Allison. Have you located him?”

  “No and can’t find out what happened to him after he left the morgue. He was living with his mother—that’s the only address we have. She claims she hasn’t seen him for months, although she admits that he calls her every couple of weeks.”

  I looked back at the camper. I needed some time to purge my head of the macabre images on the camper’s walls. I turned and started to walk away. I stopped abruptly as I suddenly visualized a seemingly unrelated image and a random thought struck me. I walked quickly back toward the truck and opened the passenger side door.

  Sean called to me. “I looked. No registration or proof of insurance or any other papers that weren’t burnt in the fire.”

  “That’s not what I’m looking for.”

  The visor above the windshield on the driver’s side was badly burned, and all that remained was a metal rod. I tried the glove box, but it was damaged and wouldn’t open.

  “Sean, you got a knife on you?”

  Sean pulled a flip knife from his pants pocket. As he handed it to me he said, “I always carry this.”

  I pried the glove box open using the knife. What I was looking for wasn’t there, and it wasn’t in the center console either. I hurried around the front of the truck, struggled to open the driver’s door, and reached under the seat. I felt something on the floor near the rear of the seat. I reached farther back and grabbed the small square object that I was looking for. I held it up.

  “A garage door remote?” asked Sean.

  “Do you have an evidence bag?”

  Somewhat confused he replied, “In my car.”

  “No time for that. How about an evidence glove?”

  Sean pulled one from his jacket pocket and handed it to me. I quickly wrapped the garage door opener in the latex glove and stuffed it in my sport coat pocket.

  As I walked away, Sean yelled to me, “Hey, where are you going? That should be bagged and marked as evidence!”

  Late Afternoon—Thursday, May 28

  I walked up two cement ramps into the bright afternoon sunlight at Columbus Drive where I crossed the Fahey Bridge that spans the Chicago River. Although I was in a hurry to meet Micah, I stopped in the middle of the bridge, lingered there, and looked out to Lake Michigan. It was a glistening blue with occasional streaks of deep green. It was calm. I was not.

  I stood on the same spot nearly twenty years earlier when I lost Ellen, wondering how I would survive. Now I stood staring at the lake worried I might lose someone else I cared for, but not to a bullet. Instead I feared I could lose Francis to a childhood trauma that scarred both his face and his soul.

  The wailing of an ambulance siren speeding behind me across the bridge brought me back to the problem at hand. I couldn’t get the damn garage door remote out of my head, and I didn’t know why. Sean was right, of course. It was evidence, and it should have been bagged, marked, and processed by evidence techs, but in the musty darkness of Lower Wacker I had suddenly been overcome by an ominous pre-science that led me to believe that the remote was going to open more than a garage door. I had no other explanation for taking it with me.

  Micah’s office was on east Huron, about a mile north of the bridge. I grabbed a cab, and ten minutes later arrived at the hospital’s high-rise annex, which housed the offices of its physicians and staff. I took an empty elevator to his office on the twenty-sixth floor. His assistant had already left for the day, so I let myself into his inner office where he was sitting at his desk, on the phone. He looked up and gestured toward a small conference table in the corner of his office where I took a seat in a chair that was designed as a style statement, but not built for comfort. I waited patiently as
he finished a telephone conversation that sounded like a discussion of Francis’s symptoms.

  After Micah concluded the call, he joined me at the table. “That was the colleague about whom I spoke this morning—a brilliant woman, Dr. Arlene Dougherty, who specializes in amnesia disorders. She needs to know more before we can concur on a diagnosis, so she would like to meet with Francis, perhaps as soon as this evening, but I wasn’t sure how you or Francis would react to that.”

  I rubbed my brow, got up from the table, and walked over to his office window which had a view to the west across the city and beyond to the northwest suburbs. Typical Chicago weather: fifteen minutes earlier the sun had been shining brightly in a clear blue sky, now storm clouds were slowly moving in from the west. Without looking back at Micah, I said, “Before we get to that, I should share with you what Francis told me last night. It may help you and your colleague refine your thinking without talking to him again.” I turned to face him, leaned back against the waist-high windowsill, and proceeded to recount Francis’s story of his rape. I reluctantly repeated all that Francis had shared with me about his father’s attack. I held nothing back.

  I watched closely for Micah’s reaction. He was visibly troubled. Certainly he must have known that somewhere in Francis’s past lay a trauma with which he had struggled to cope, but he looked as if he had not imagined something so serious. He looked down at the notes that he had made during the phone call just concluded and pushed them aside. Appearing to be considering the significance of Francis’s revelation, he tapped his Mont Blanc pen on the table.

  “Tommy, an assault like that is the ultimate betrayal for a child—a violent sexual attack by a parent. My God! Compound that with the lack of the nurturing influence of a mother—well, it’s amazing he’s been able to function at all. Of course, we now know that his coping mechanisms have broken down.”

  “I take it that his story changes your diagnosis.”

  “No, it only serves to confirm it.”

  I returned to the table and sat directly opposite Micah. “Go on.”

  “The trauma of the rape was so horrible he surely tried to suppress it, likely with limited success. His conscious self willed that someone else carry the burden of the memory—probably an imaginary friend or an attachment to a person who he wouldn’t have otherwise befriended.”

  I thought about it for a second and replied, “He never spoke of an imaginary friend, but he did become friends with his next door neighbor who was the same age.”

  “Are you certain this friend wasn’t imaginary?”

  “The friend was Tony Protettore, you know, the man Francis’s partner shot and killed Monday night. He wasn’t proud of that friendship. He told me that Tony was always in trouble, short-tempered, and he tormented other kids in the neighborhood, but Francis maintained the relationship because Tony protected him from class bullies. He said he was ashamed that he had to rely on Tony for protection.”

  “But Tommy, there were no class bullies. In Francis’s mind Tony was protecting him from his father and the memories of the rape. And the shame he felt—probably still feels—was the blame he placed on himself for the attack. Victims of sexual assault usually assume it was their fault. When his imaginary friend was inadequate to shoulder the burden, he turned to Tony. He probably told Tony what had happened in the hope that if he could put the memory in someone else’s head, it would somehow leave his consciousness.”

  “I’m sure Tony knew his secret,” I interjected.

  “Something must have happened to their relationship when they were kids.”

  I nodded. “When he was fifteen, Tony’s family moved out of state.” Micah slowly shook his head.“Leaving Francis alone with the memory.”

  “And with his father.”

  Just then my phone rang. It was Keisha. “Foster, I’m sorry.” Her voice was panicked. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Settle down, Detective. What is it?”

  “He’s gone. Frank is gone!”

  Early Evening—Thursday, May 28

  “He left a note.” She read from a pad of paper I kept on my nightstand to scribble latenight thoughts on my cold cases. ‘I’ve got this. I know where to find him, but first things first.’ Foster, what does it mean?”

  “He thinks he knows who The Bricklayer is and wanted to set out to find him, but he’s not ready. Damn it! He’s not himself. He should have waited for me.”

  Keisha struggled to regain her composure and explained what happened. After I had left her in the lobby, she had entered the apartment and then quietly opened the bedroom door and determined that Francis was asleep. She then used the bathroom in the rear of the apartment just off the kitchen, returned to the living room, and paced the floor reviewing her case notes. An hour later, she looked in on Francis only to discover he was not there. She checked the bedroom’s en suite bath- room and found Francis’s meds in a wadded-up tissue on the bathroom floor.

  “Stay there in case he comes back. I’ll be there as soon as I finish up here.”

  Then I called Eddie. While I waited for him to answer his phone I summed up the situation for Micah. He was alarmed and cautioned that Francis should be considered dangerous. I disagreed. I was concerned, but not alarmed.

  When I got through to Eddie, I asked for his help to find Francis. I reminded him that Francis and I often took walks around the North Pond or sat on a bench at Diversey Harbor. “If he is trying to plan his next steps to locate the damn Bricklayer, he may be venturing no farther than those spots. At least that’s what I hope he’s doing. I suggest you have a couple of patrolmen start there.”

  “What do you make of his note?”

  “The note is his way of telling me not to worry about him,” I lied. “That’s all. I’m not concerned about the note, just where he is.”

  Eddie agreed and alerted the Mounted Patrol Unit to search the park and the lakefront, and dispatched a blue and white to patrol the Lincoln Park neighborhood. Eddie also called Sean and instructed him to join Keisha at my apartment and await further instructions.

  Although I wanted to return to the apartment immediately, Micah implored me to stay and hear him out. “Tommy, in his present state of mind, he may be dangerous to himself. Look, Dr. Dougherty’s preliminary diagnosis may explain a lot. It may help you find him and keep him safe until we can admit him—”

  “That again?”

  “Just listen, will you?”

  I sighed and nodded, and Micah laid it out for me.

  I found his diagnosis hard to swallow. I peppered him with questions. “It may take some time to digest that.”

  “Arlene Dougherty is highly respected in this area.”

  “All the same . . .”

  “I understand your skepticism. I’ll admit without spending more time with him, there’s a good deal of speculation baked into the diagnosis.”

  He tried to elaborate, but I cut him off. “I gotta go. I need to get Francis off the street. If you’re right, for his own good.”

  There was a slight, distant rumble of thunder from the west as I stood at Michigan and Huron, attempting the near impossible—looking for a cab during rush hour with an impending storm brewing. I finally waved one down and fifteen minutes later was back in my apartment, where Eddie, Keisha, and Sean were debating strategies for locating Francis. I wasn’t listening. I couldn’t get Micah’s diagnosis out of my head. I checked the time and calculated that Francis had been gone for more than two hours.

  Frustrated, I got to my feet. “This is a waste of time! You’re focusing on how to locate him. Figure out why he left—that’s more likely to lead you to him.”

  Annoyed with my impatience, Eddie barked, “And I suppose you think he has set out alone to find The Bricklayer. Is that it?”

  “After I told him this morning that you weren’t convinced Tony was the killer, he said he had a hunch and was adamant I permit him to get dressed and follow his instincts.”

  “I assume you said no.”

>   “Of course I said no. He wasn’t ready to go anywhere, let alone go looking for a killer. But, if he decided to set out on his own anyway, then the first place he’d go would be his home—if for no other reason than for a change of clothes and his service revolver.”

  Eddie shot back. “I thought you already eliminated that as a possibility.”

  “That was an hour ago! Come on, given his state of mind and that note, the last thing either of us wants is for Francis roaming the streets with a weapon in his hand. Do me a favor. Send Keisha and Alvarez to Francis’s house on Newland.”

  Eddie looked over at Sean and Keisha. “Yeah. OK. M’Bala, grab Alvarez and get going.”

  Keisha stood and started putting her jacket on, but I asked her to wait a moment.

  I went to the kitchen, returned with a key. “This is the key to Francis’s front door. He gave it to me when he moved there in case of an emergency. Enter through the front and proceed carefully. Francis may not be himself right now. He may be dangerous. Clear the house, be careful, and then,” I looked over to Eddie, and he nodded, “and then call me.”

  Evening—Thursday, May 28

  It took Alvarez and Keisha thirty minutes to arrive at Francis’s home, and another fifteen to clear the house and for Keisha to call me. It was almost dark by the time they got there. “No luck, but it looks like he’s been here. There’s a half-eaten fresh sandwich with a couple of bites out of it and a cold Coke on the kitchen counter next to the sink.”

  I pictured Francis eating over the sink, looking out the window at his backyard. I had seen him do it before. Maybe he saw something in his backyard or in the garage and went to investigate.

  Keisha added, “Foster, it looks like Frank uncovered some additional victims but didn’t tell us. I was looking at the maps and other stuff he has taped to his dining room wall. There are pushpins on his maps that weren’t there before and photos of victims I don’t recognize. Why wouldn’t he share this with us?”