Circle of Terror

by Larry Powalisz

  “Unbelievable.” Demetrius looked at his watch. It was a quarter till nine. “Dang, George. I’ve got to get going before Tim goes crazy on me. I have to mop the rest of the rooms and hallway before leaving for the night.”

  Laughing, George put his hand out to Demetrius and embraced it warmly. “You’re a great listener, kid. When you working next?”

  “I’ll be here all day Wednesday ’cause we’re off school. Our next game is Thursday night.”

  “Great, D. Can’t wait to talk to you again. Remind me where I left off. You’re a little younger than me—with a better memory.”

  “Come on! Who’s got the memory? I don’t remember what I had for dinner last night.”

  “You’re funny. Thanks for making my time here more enjoyable.”

  Demetrius grabbed the mop and bucket in the corner of George’s room and walked back to where he had left off. I can’t wait until he tells me more of his story on Wednesday.

  Chapter 4

  MILWAUKEE PD HEADQUARTERS

  Identification Technician Scott Kamble sat at his desk on the third floor of the Police Administration Building located on the southwest corner of West State Street and North James Lovell Drive in downtown Milwaukee. The four-block-long street was named after Milwaukee native and former astronaut, James Lovell. Kamble used scissors to cut open the large, brown paper bag where the white evidence tape had been securely wrapped during the sealing process. He looked at the photo copy of the Milwaukee Police inventory form attached to the bag and matched the inventory number with the one inked on the bag to be sure he had the right items. Inventory# 4618349 was listed in both locations. He noticed Detective Declan Tomczyk’s name listed on the inventory and his initials and date inked on the white tape next to the dried red seal wax. Kamble peered into the top of the now-opened bag to see what goodies had been placed inside that needed to be checked for latent fingerprints.

  “Mike, here’s another big caper from Declan Tomczyk, that bombing at Holy Cross Cemetery from the other day. Man, he’s a great guy, but what a crap magnet. Collects more evidence on cases than all the detectives on CSI Miami combined.”

  “I know. Had two cases last week with him. We pos-ID’d both through prints. He called and thanked me, then mentioned that he got felony warrants on both suspects. If we had more guys like him, they’d have to bring a couple more ID techs up here per shift.”

  “Copy that.” Let’s see what we got. A can of spray paint, white paper receipt, and a brown paper bag, Kamble thought as he gently pulled out each item from the bag with his blue rubber-gloved hand. He first dusted the can with a fine-haired brush, using silver oxide powder. Two identifiable prints became visible on the paper surrounding the can. Kamble always loved this part of the job, getting latent fingerprints from a case and trying to identify the perpetrator. He completed dusting the rest of the can with no further results. Placing the powder and brush off to the side, he picked up the special transparent tape and placed it on the can, one piece of tape for each fingerprint. He then slowly lifted the “latent print” and carefully adhered the tape onto the thin, black cardboard, which accentuated the image much better than other surfaces. Placing his black magnifying glass over the cardboard, he moved his head down for a closer examination. “Excellent.” The process was repeated for the other print and the same result was achieved. He smiled, knowing he had a couple samples for the AFIS machine. The images were scanned into the machine.

  The Automated Fingerprint Identification System came into operation in the early 1990s and revolutionized the identification of fingerprints. In Milwaukee alone, literally hundreds of cold cases were cleared when AFIS came online, as hundreds of thousands of additional fingerprints from arrested suspects from around the state and country were able to be accessed. Prior to that, the department could only utilize the fingerprints they had on file that were stored in countless files in the office. State warrants were obtained on thousands of suspects nationwide for felony offenses based solely on fingerprints.

  He carried the paper receipt and brown bag to the back room where they kept the “fumer.” Kamble placed the items in the machine, turned it on, and watched as the chemicals circulated through the paper. Within fifteen minutes, he had two more identifiable fingerprints. He categorized one as a loop and one as a whirl. Upon classifying these additional prints, he returned to the AFIS machine and entered the second group. Within minutes, all four prints were positively identified. He logged on to the computer and looked his suspect up.

  “Mike, check this out. Harold Sampson Carter Jr.: white male; DOB 05/15/1985; B of I# 302128; AKA, Junior. His last photo was taken June 23rd of this year. This guy’s a real gem—four felony convictions within eight years. Guess putting him in prison for his crimes against society wasn’t a good option. Looks like we positively identified another suspect for Tomczyk. That turkey owes us something.”

  “You missed it, Scott. He brought in two dozen donuts last week when you were off. Thanked us for helping him out on all his other cases.”

  “Story of my life, missing all the fun.”

  Standing in the conference room of the intelligence unit, Captain Steven Spinnola surveyed a couple dozen five-by-seven-inch photographs spread across the large table. Dressed in his Marco Carelli navy blue pinstriped suit, powder blue shirt, and multicolor designer tie, he looked ready to take on the business world instead of commanding a special unit of some of the department’s best detectives and police officers. “What do you make of it, Declan?”

  Tomczyk’s mind was still on the seven o’clock briefing he attended in the “Dahmer Room.” The attempted homicide of Detective John Lemke had stuck in his head because there were so few leads to follow up on.

  “It started out yesterday morning, with my original inclination being mischievous kids, Captain,” Tomczyk answered. “You see some of the photographs. Nothing too crazy or out of the ordinary until I spotted the wires underneath the headstone of the one belonging to this Harold Schlundt guy.” He pointed out the before and after pictures of the headstone and the wires underneath it. “The headstone had been placed in a strange position, was defaced the most, and had the IED underneath—the IED without the explosives, that is. Inside the pipe bomb is that note saying we’d be seeing them again. You see the pictures with the stones knocked over and the pentagrams spray painted in red? Why the one had an inverted cross spray painted on it and the word PIG etched into the cross is the mystery.

  Schlundt died over thirty years ago. Did the suspects just randomly pick his headstone to deface and place a bomb under? Or, was he a law enforcement officer someone had a beef with—a criminal who thought he’d wait thirty years to deface Schlundt’s headstone by putting a derogatory cop phrase on it and placing a fake bomb under it? I think they had that orange wire Lurch followed as a ruse to draw someone over to the tree where they could detonate the bomb. I saw the driver, but he was too far away to positively ID. I’d sure like to see that prick again on another day. At the briefing, they said Lurch is still in critical but stable condition in ICU. I was there until eleven last night. He was still unconscious.”

  “I have a little birdie there, Declan. As of five minutes ago, he was responsive and downgraded to serious but stable condition. Sweet news! Lieutenant Hedder filled me in on your ‘sixth sense’ when you saw the guy and the car.”

  “Too bad my sixth sense came too late to save Lurch from getting hit. Thanks for the update, Captain. That’s the best news I’ve heard so far today. Here’s another twist to this whole, strange thing. The suspects spray painted REMHAD and REDRUM on the entrance pillars. I still don’t have a clue what that has to do with this—if anything at all. The identification division reported they got some latent prints off the receipt, the paper bag, and two off the spray paint cans we found. They’re still running that stuff through AFIS. I’m going to send the can out to the crime lab, along with samples of the spray paint we pulled off a headstone and the pillars to see if the pai
nt matches. No prints at all on the plastic container, any of the components, or the typed up letter. The copper who found the bag and the spray painting, Jerry Boyek, is one tenacious SOB. He’s like a dog on steroids, looking for anything connecting evidence to a suspect.”

  “I’ve heard of him. He’s recovered so many guns off the street by arrest that he could open up his own gun shop. Didn’t Boyek get shot in the arm some years ago by a guy with an AK47 on Eleventh and Burleigh? That was my old squad area at District Five, partnered up with Crazy Charlie Bernard. How many nights did I think Charlie was going to either get us killed or make us Milwaukee cop legends?” Spinnola shook his head in a thankful way. “Boyek and his partner took care of business that night, as I remember.”

  “The same guy. They shot the bastard; however, he lived and is probably in prison showing off his war wound and how he survived it,” Tomczyk responded. “Jerry’s one of those 24/7 kind of cops who will go places if he wants to.”

  Getting back to the case, Tomczyk pulled out his notepad, paging back to his notes from yesterday. “Anyway, REMHAD is the obvious one. I’m sure there’s still a following who think Jeffrey Dahmer is a hero in some sick and perverted way. Still trying to figure out how REDRUM fits into the equation. There are a number of references to it on the Internet. I remember watching a very old Son of Dracula movie years ago, starring the king of scary movies, Lon Chaney Jr. Dracula went to some party and introduced himself as Count Alucard. Later on that night, he ended up killing someone and sucking out his blood. Even back in the ‘40s, when the movie was made, they were spelling names and words backwards.”

  “You have to be a buff of scary movies to remember Lon Chaney Jr.,” added Spinnola. “He also played the best Wolfman.”

  “You said it, Captain. Speaking of scary, some hits came up on a Milwaukee case from May 1989 that happened on the South Side regarding Redrum.” Tomczyk went on to relate how two women lured a man to their apartment and tried to kill him in honor of Jack the Ripper, to bring Ripper back from the dead. “The guy goes to the bathroom to take a leak and while he’s in there, peeks behind a shower curtain for some reason. He looked down and saw two sets of legs, then looked up and saw the two women in the shower. He heard what sounded like a child’s voice saying, ‘Redrum, redrum.’ One of the women hit him in the head with an ax. Kind of the opposite of what happened in the movie Psycho. This is more from the movie that should be called Bizarro. The guy ran outside, and the women chased him around a car, still yelling ‘Redrum!’ Before the police arrived, an ambulance saw the guy bleeding in the street and took him to the hospital. The two women pled guilty to attempted first-degree intentional homicide and got five years in exchange for turning key state witnesses against the third woman. They found her not guilty by reason of insanity, and she was sent packing to the state mental hospital in Oshkosh.”

  “Here’s the bizarre part. Just over four years after the offense occurred, the victim shot himself in the head. Turns out he had attempted suicide before. In January of 1994, one of the two women was found nude and dead in her room at a halfway house—an apparent overdose. According to an article, her head was in a box of cassette tapes and a crucifix was lying on the bed next to her. The article also said the third woman told investigators she had been Jack the Ripper’s mother in a previous life. Man, you can’t make some of this stuff up.”

  Tomczyk completed his thought on the matter. “What, if any, connection this whole scenario has to thirteen defaced and dumped-over headstones with a fake bomb and one that almost killed a detective friend of ours, I have no idea. Guess we’ll get the answers when we find the perps who did it.”

  Captain Spinnola shook his head. “Like they say, ‘Milwaukee, a great place on a great lake’—except for some of the crazy things that happen in this city that we have to deal with on a daily basis.”

  Just then, FBI Special Agent Dvorak walked into the conference room. “I’m so sorry, Captain Spinnola, Declan. I had to brief my assistant special agent in charge on another case I have going. He wouldn’t let me leave the office until I did.”

  “No problem, Anne. Declan can fill you in with everything after we’re done here. Can you tell us what possible interest or knowledge the FBI might have regarding this since you showed up at our cemetery scene?” Spinnola didn’t expect much of an answer, but thought he’d throw it out there anyway.

  “Well, Captain, we’ve had some cult investigations with defaced headstones and dug-up graves in various cities around the country. That’s why I responded since my squad supervisor has me as the local cult expert in our office. We’ve even had some conviction success and a couple related interstate offenses where we’ve taken two of them federal. The pentagrams and inverted cross are similar to some of the other crimes. However, the fake bomb and threatening letter are completely new to us, and the IED that blew up really has us perplexed. I don’t think they’re related to any of the other crimes we’ve had. I saw the words spray painted on the pillars as I was leaving the cemetery, but that could’ve just been adding some local flavor to it. How’s the bomb tech doing? I saw Kevin Cleary this morning, and he’s definitely not doing well. He told me that he and Detective Lemke go back a ways.”

  “I’ll vouch for that. I’ve been out a couple times with them. Just so you know,” Tomczyk said as he peered disturbingly into both of their eyes, “we still have a great cast of a size eleven Doc Martin boot that is the only one of its kind because of some strange marking when it hooked on something. If we find that boot and the person wearing it, we find a connection to this whole thing. At least it’s a great start until we can connect a couple more of the dots. The homicide detectives found next of kin information on the thirteen headstones that were involved. I was way too tied up to take care of it yesterday. My main focus will be Harold Schlundt, but we need to cover all the bases. After thirty years, hopefully we will still find some useful info.”

  “I’m with you, Declan. Keep me posted. Since these turds tried to kill one of our own, it becomes very personal to all of us.” Captain Spinnola walked back toward his office.

  Tomczyk and Dvorak walked out of the room together. When they reached his desk out in the assembly area, he spoke up in a deadly serious tone. “Anne, you can blow smoke up the Captain’s ass, but I know there’s more to it than that. If you’re going to throw out some BS story, cover your tracks. I spoke to my buddy who’s our rep on the Joint Terrorism Task Force. He told me you’re assigned to the domestic terrorism squad with him. You’ll have to fill me in on why an FBI special agent on the JTTF DT squad would give a crap about defaced headstones in a cemetery. If you want to drop the FBI persona and talk ‘cop to cop,’ I’ll give you 110 percent of all I have. If not, you can stick it because I won’t give you a damn thing unless you throw a subpoena in my face. Lurch is like a very close uncle to me, and I want the guys who almost killed him.”

  Anne thought for a moment and a smile slowly came over her lovely face. “Let’s start over. Detective Declan Tomczyk, I’m Special Agent Anne Dvorak, FBI. I’d love to buy you some coffee.” She warmly extended her right hand.

  He reached his out in return, and they met in the middle. “Fair enough. I know of a great place. I’ll even drive.” They laughed and walked out of the office.

  Chapter 5

  MILWAUKEE

  They conversed as Tomczyk drove the navy blue unmarked Dodge Charger east on Wisconsin Avenue in the direction of the lake. It was another beautiful, sunny fall day. As he reached the end of the “Avenue”—long considered Milwaukee’s main drag—he passed the large, white, open wings of the Calatrava artwork that showcased the Milwaukee Art Center.

  “Now that has got to be one of the more spectacular sites in Milwaukee,” Dvorak remarked. “Especially when the wings are open. Santiago Calatrava is definitely one of the best architects in the world.”

  “Agree, 100 percent. Nothing prettier than that. I’m not sure if you know this, but the Calatrava sail was
his first project in the United States, so we’re lucky to have such a treasure. When they flew the wings in from Europe, they had to use that monster Russian cargo plane because no other plane could fit them.”

  “Really?”

  Tomczyk followed the road as it veered north past the War Memorial Center and turned into North Lincoln Memorial Drive along the sparkling waters of Lake Michigan. A number of skaters, bikers, and walkers were taking advantage of one of the last warm days before winter. A minute later, he pulled into the parking lot of Colectivo at the Lake, his favorite coffee shop. Built in 1888, the grand old building, constructed of typical-cream city brick, was originally the Milwaukee River flushing station. Large turbines beneath the building pumped water from the lake through an elaborate piping system several miles north up the river to the North Avenue Dam. An engineering feat in its day, the dam was removed in the ‘80s, and the once-proud river assumed the appearance of a large creek.

  They parked in the lot and got out. Anne asked, “What would you like?”

  “A large iced mocha latte, please. That’s what we chocolate addicts drink. I’ll grab a table for us outside if it’s okay with you. It’ll give us a little more privacy, plus we can take advantage of November’s rays.”

  “Excellent. A big strong brute who drinks lattes—now I’ve heard it all.”

  “Consider me a man of the twenty-first century. Just don’t tell my dad. He flips when I tell him I drink lattes. Calls me a sally boy!”

  “I love your father already.”

  She joined him on the patio a couple minutes later, holding two drinks in her hands. “I want to apologize. You know what they always tell us. Don’t divulge anything to the locals because you can’t trust them. Hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to call you Declan. I’ve always loved that name.”