A Rose From The Executioner

by Edward Izzi

  I wanted so much to trust Olivia with updates on this case. But…my sixth sense was screaming at me again. I didn’t quite understand her apprehensiveness in not filing a police report and going on record with the ‘Attorney James Gleason’ visit. There was something inside of me that was holding me back, and I decided to listen to my intuition. I knew that if I continued to share my information with Morton, the two of us could ‘put our heads together’, assemble the facts of this case together and solve it. But at this point, I just couldn’t completely trust Olivia with everything.

  Not just yet.

  I walked over to Olivia while she was standing in the kitchen, and I put my arms around her waist from behind as she was cutting up the garlic and onions. She was cooking, preparing to make her traditional ‘Sunday Sauce’ for our afternoon dinner.

  “You know, I hear you’re supposed to make love before Sunday afternoon spaghetti sauce,” I whispered in her ear, knowing that I could interest her in working up our appetite.

  “You know I’m pissed. Why are you doing this?” as I continued to place small kisses and love bites along the back of her neck, her ears, and her soft, sensuous skin which smelled absolutely wonderful. As I continued to strategically place my kisses along the front of her neck and breasts, she dropped the knife, which incredibly stuck into the hardwood floor. It missed my foot within inches.

  She started to laugh. “You should be careful, Detective. Never approach a women with a knife from behind,” as we both laughed, and proceeded to my bedroom late Sunday morning.

  ____________________________________________

  The early morning traffic was heavy that early Monday, as I was making a left-hand turn onto my favorite Dunkin’ Donuts for my large coffee and my usual sesame seed bagel. After merging back onto North Milwaukee Avenue traffic, my mind was consumed with the status of these “Pedophile Priest Murders” and my discussion with Tommy that previous morning.

  But I was also thinking about Olivia. We had spent a wonderful Sunday together, as it was her final day in Chicago. I found myself getting extremely attached to her, as we had been spending the last several days together. She had to leave my place late last evening to drive back to Detroit. She promised to drive back in the following Friday night to spend the next weekend together. I offered to fly to Detroit and visit her, but we both realized that it wasn’t possible if I was working on these outstanding murder cases.

  I was very hesitant to use the ‘L’ word and had to force myself to keep from saying it in front of her. I wanted so much to tell her what I was feeling. Olivia was so easy to talk to, and we spent most of our time laughing and joking together, at just about everything we talked about. I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt so comfortable with someone, who had the intellect and patience to understand me and get to know me.

  Olivia was kind and easy-going, and she was willing to help me work through all my emotional shortcomings. She knew from the very beginning of how broken and emotionally scarred I was, but she was enduring and tolerant. She made me feel special, and she made me feel like I was the most wonderful man in the whole world. That ‘solid, concrete wall’ around my heart was now completely torn down, and I was scared to death.

  But her stalling and pushing me off when I asked her to come into the precinct to file a police report, still bothered me. I just couldn’t get it out of my head.

  I walked into my precinct and over to Detective Tommy Morton’s office, which was adjacent to mine, and sat at his front chair. I was consuming my goodies from the donut shop, while he was eyeing a pack of Marlboro Lights sitting on top of his desk, just waiting to be smoked.

  “How many cigarettes are you up to now?” I ignorantly asked, realizing that Detective Morton almost always had a cigarette in his mouth.

  “I can’t wait to solve these friggin’ murders, Phil. This ‘three-pack-a-day’ routine is getting too damn expensive.”

  “Yeah, okay, Tommy,” I joked. “Blame it on the ‘Pedophile Priest Murders’. Go ahead and kill yourself smoking cigarettes.” I made myself comfortable in front of his desk with my cream cheese bagel and coffee.

  “I saw Oprah on a Weight Watchers commercial last night. They’re running a summer special this month,” he mentioned. “If you lose weight and can fit into a Speedo bathing suit, the first fifty pounds are free,” he joked back, taking another shot at my waistline.

  I sat in front of his desk, and we were both silent as he was on his computer screen, trying to find information on any and all the ex-priests in the Chicagoland area over the last fifty years.

  “I called Intel again over at the Twenty-First. They promised me a comprehensive list this afternoon,” Morton said.

  “You didn’t specifically limit the list to all those named ‘Mark’, did you?”

  “Of course not. I figured Russo is probably watching us like a hawk if he knows something, and he’s probably eye-balling everything that’s coming out of his precinct regarding this investigation.”

  “Good.”

  Detective Morton continued to search the internet and make notes on his notepad, trying to find more online evidence. He noticed me only sitting there speechless. He knew something was on my mind.

  “How are things with your new girlfriend?”

  “Olivia? Just fine,” I answered.

  Tommy stopped what he was doing and looked at me. We had gotten to be very close friends over the last few weeks, and I mentioned that I had started dating Olivia. At first, he didn’t say much about it. But for whatever reason that morning, he could see something that was on my mind.

  “Phil…aren’t you nervous dating someone who has a conflict of interest in these serial murders?”

  “What do you mean,” I stupidly asked, even though I knew exactly what he was talking about.

  “Come on, Phil. She’s the one holding the purse strings for these insurance claims for the Archdiocese. How much are we up to now, with the death of three priests? Fifteen million or more?”

  “I haven’t told her much, Tommy. I’ve only given her some tidbits of information which she has inquired about. I’ve been giving her just enough information to keep her company from hiring an independent private investigator and getting in the way of these homicide cases,” I replied.

  “And what makes you think she hasn’t done that already, Phil?”

  “If she has, she hasn’t informed me about it.”

  “Could that be the reason why she’s spending so much time in Chicago? To perform her own investigation and keep track of her own private investigators?”

  Tommy had a point. I was so involved in trying to solve these ‘Pedophile Priest Murders”, I never thought that she could have very well hired her own investigators, using my loft as her remote office. She could have quite possibly, been conducting her own private investigation on behalf of the life insurance company. She could have been working on this case behind my back in my own living room, never mentioning a single word about it.

  “I would be careful if I were you, Phil. Until these cases are solved, I would keep her at arm’s length.”

  Now my ‘sixth sense’ was yelling at me again. Could this be related to why she didn’t want to file a police report regarding her ‘miscellaneous visit’ from Gleason’? Who could quite possibly be a member of this ‘SRC Secret Society’? Was she hiding something?

  “Tommy, do you have any connections at the Detroit Police Department?” I asked.

  “Yeah, sure,” he thought. “As a matter of fact, I have an old fraternity brother, who is a detective on the force there.”

  “Find out whatever information you can get on Olivia Laurent. Have someone do a thorough ‘run-up’ on her and see what comes up. Have one of their detectives look into her financial records as well,” I asked.

  “Okay, Phil. Let me make some phone calls.”

  I left Tommy’s adjacent office, totally befuddled and confused. Was it quite possible that Olivia was using me to get addition
al information on these outstanding life insurance claims? If she was, what was in it for her? My mind was racing in a million different directions.

  That afternoon, Tommy Morton knocked on my office door, with several pieces of paper in his hand.

  “Phil, I’ve got that information you requested.” I was dreading what Tommy had found.

  “From the records that were pulled by the Detroit Police Department, your girlfriend is clean, for starters.”

  “Well…that’s good, right?”

  “Yes, except now my suspicions are turning over in my head. The AG’s office did some financial checking, corresponding her filed tax returns with various broker investment accounts. One thing came, that…well….maybe it’s nothing.”

  “What is it, Tommy?”

  “She just recently opened up a safe deposit box at Comerica Bank.”

  “So?”

  “She opened up the safe deposit box on the same day that she told you about her “Gleason” visit.”

  I had previously mentioned Olivia’s personal visit from ‘Gleason’ in Detroit that prior week to Tommy. I looked at my calendar, pinpointing the exact date, and which Comerica Bank branch she had opened the safe deposit box at. It was indeed the same day.

  “Why is this unusual to you?” I was trying very hard to give her the benefit of the doubt.

  “Really Phil? Come on. She gets a visit from some suspicious character, who says he’s a lawyer from Chicago representing one of the victim’s families. His business name and address don’t check out, and he happens to be wearing an ‘SRC’ ring. On that very same day, she opens a safe deposit box. Then on the very next day, she’s in Chicago, snooping around this investigation.” I thought long and hard about what Tommy was saying.

  “Doesn’t all of this make you suspicious?” he asked again, driving his point home.

  “Maybe she had a lot of jewelry that she needed to deposit. Maybe she just decided to get a safe deposit box for other reasons,” as I was looking for a reasonable, alternative explanation. I didn’t want to believe the worst.

  “Or…maybe this Gleason character gave her something that she didn’t want to keep in her office. Did she ever come in to give you a statement on this guy’s visit in Detroit?” Tommy asked.

  “No. I asked her to come in a few times, but she couldn’t make it in. She’s been very busy,” I replied, trying to make up more excuses for her.

  “Or…she doesn’t want to go on the record.” Tommy suggested.

  I sat there for several minutes in silence, trying to digest all this new information. I realized that perhaps, Olivia wasn’t being one hundred percent honest with me, and that there was a possibility that she had hired her own private investigators to research these homicides and insurance claims.

  I decided to make a few more phone calls and talked to one of the detectives at the Twenty-First District who was on Paul Russo’s team. His name was Detective Max Palanti, and we had once worked together on a homicide case before. He was also extremely loyal to Russo, so I had to be very careful how I phrased my questions. I figured that if there was another private investigator involved on these ‘Pedophile Priest Murders,” Detective Palanti at Intel would know about it.

  “Hey Max, its Phil Dorian from the Sixteenth,” I replied when he answered the phone.

  “Phil, what’s up? I hear you’re ‘knee deep’ into these ‘Pedophile Priest Murders,’” he mentioned. I figured by that point, the whole Chicago Police Department probably knew about my being the lead investigator on these homicide cases.

  We then talked and exchanged a few pleasantries, catching each other up on our personal lives. I ended up spending longer on the telephone talking with Palanti than I wanted to, remembering what a ‘Chatty Cathy’ he was.

  “Max, have you been getting any inquiries from the Great Lakes Insurance Company regarding these homicides?” I inquired.

  “Are you kidding? We’ve been getting phone calls every day…especially from their claims department and their own private investigator,” he answered.

  “Do you remember their names?” I asked.

  “Yes, I’ve got her card right her,” as he stumbled through his desk while still holding the telephone.

  “Here it is…her name is Olivia Laurent, and she’s from the life insurance company.” At that moment, I felt my heart drop down to my stomach.

  “Who else has been inquiring?”

  “Besides the FBI and the media, some other private investigator named Michael Lemanski. His office is in the South Loop. Apparently, he was hired by this woman to investigate the validity of these claims and especially, Monsignor Kilbane’s possible involvement.”

  Just beautiful, I thought to myself. Olivia had hired an outside private investigator while she was here in Chicago and never mentioned a word about it. That was all I needed to hear.

  None of this was sounding good concerning the women who had so valiantly, destroyed and crumbled that concrete wall that was surrounding my previously broken heart. At that moment, I was in complete and total emotional pain, and I was physically sick to my stomach. I realized that I could never completely trust this woman. She was probably hiding other information from me regarding this case and Lord knows what else.

  I calmly walked into the men’s room from my office, walked into a bathroom stall and I physically threw up. I was standing over the toilet, just puking my guts out. Tommy came into the men’s bathroom several minutes later.

  “Phil, are you okay?”

  “Yeah, Tom. I’m alright. Must have gotten some spoiled cream cheese on my bagel this morning.” I was trying to make excuses, but Tommy knew better.

  “Take the rest of the day off, Phil. I’ll cover for you. I’ll call you with anything else that I find out.”

  “Thanks Tommy,” as I grabbed my gun and suitcoat and walked out of the district.

  As I sat in my Crown Vic that afternoon in the parking lot of the precinct office. My head was dizzy, and my stomach was still queasy and in knots. There was a part of me that wanted to drive five hours down I-94, straight over to Olivia’s Detroit office and just choke the living shit out of her. I felt like I had been used. I felt like I was completely deceived and our whole time together was just a lie. I just sat in my car with both hands on the steering wheel for several long, quiet minutes. It seemed like my squad car was the only place where I could find any peace and quiet and put in a quick prayer.

  I prayed for understanding. I prayed for patience, and I prayed for strength. I didn’t want to believe that the woman that I had completely opened myself up to was conducting her own murder investigation behind my back, and never thought to mention any of this to me. And why the safe deposit box? On the same day as her visit from Gleason? What the hell was she hiding?

  I knew I had to play it cool from here on out. I knew I had to keep quiet and not let Olivia know what I know. I had to play my cards close to my chest. From that day forward, I had a new name:

  Cool Hand Luke.

  Chapter Forty-one

  Fitting the Pieces

  When I got to my office the next morning, there were several files sitting on my desk. Tommy Morton had called me the night before, letting me know that he had finally received the information we had requested from Intel regarding the list of ex-priests in Chicago. He had gone through the extensive list and located the specific information regarding ex-priests with the first names of Mark, or a derivative thereof. The four files on my desk were the names of the former priests Mark Decker, Marc Ugolini, Marcus Gillian, and Mark Ryan. I read through the files extensively, as Morton had done a great job doing an extensive background check on each former priest.

  Mark Decker, 53 years old, had resigned from the priesthood in 2009, and was now currently married with children and living in Highland Park. He currently works as an executive banker for Bank of America in the city.

  Marc Ugolini had resigned from the Archdiocese in 1995 and was now 67 years old and currently l
iving in Naples, Florida. He is currently a widower and had worked as a financial planner for a Chicago Loop consulting firm before his recent retirement.

  Marcus Gillian, 71, left the Joliet Diocese in 1999 and worked as a cost accountant for a manufacturing company in Geneva, Illinois for many years. Gillian was married and divorced twice, and is currently retired and living in Scottsdale, Arizona.

  Mark Ryan, 70 years old, who left the Archdiocese of Chicago in 1992, was a former high school English and Religion teacher at both Montini High School in Lombard and Driscoll High Schools in Addison before his retirement four years ago. He is currently living in a townhome in the Sauganash neighborhood on the north side of Chicago and does extensive volunteer work at a handicapped children’s home in Ravenswood. His file states that he currently unmarried and lives alone.

  None of the files included any formal charges, arrests or accusations of any sexual deviant behavior by any of the former priests. Two of the four former priests now lived and retired out of state, while one former priest was currently married with children. I concluded that those circumstances precluded three of them from being likely candidates for the ‘secret society’.

  By process of elimination, Mark Ryan was the only likely candidate who could possibly, fit the profile. It was a long shot, but I convinced Commander Callahan to give me a few patrolmen to start the surveillance of Ryan, who lived at 6014 N. Kilpatrick in the north end of Chicago. We had put an unmarked car in front of his house, and another car to follow Ryan, his daily whereabouts and his routine. He seemed to enjoy going to the local gym early every morning, and except for doing a few daily errands, didn’t often leave his house.