A Rose From The Executioner

by Edward Izzi

  “That’s none of your damn business, Detective!”

  “Then maybe I should ask the Cook County D.A’s office to get a subpoena and make it my business, Olivia. You obviously have something to hide. Something that needed to be put into a safe deposit box right away!”

  “Fuck you, Phil,” as she angrily started to walk out of the restaurant. It looked as though she was in a foot race for the door. I decided to run after her, which maybe wasn’t the smartest move. I was chasing after her in the middle of the restaurant, yelling at her with more questions.

  “Why are you leaving Olivia, if you have nothing to hide? Why are you running away?” I yelled out at her, as we were getting the attention of the other restaurant patrons. She angrily looked towards me as she approached and unlocked her BMW, opening her car door.

  “You’ll always be a detective, Phil. No matter what I say or do. You’ll always be suspicious. Why can’t you love and accept someone for who they are? Why can’t you accept reality for a change, instead of looking at every woman as though we all have an angle? The whole world is out to fuck you, right, Phil?” she said as she was starting to cry.

  “I cared so much about you, Phil! I was looking so forward to having you in my life,” she loudly sobbed.

  She started crying profusely, standing next to her car with her door wide open. As I stood in front of the restaurant door, I could see her tears streaming down her face.

  “For your information,” she began to yell back, “I had some gold jewelry which I had been keeping in my purse for several weeks’ now…expensive jewelry that my mother had given me. I didn’t feel comfortable walking around with $20,000 worth of gold and diamonds in my purse or keeping them at home.”

  As the tears were running down her face, I seriously thought about tackling her down in the middle of Grand Avenue and putting an end to this whole argument. I wanted to apologize. I was starting to feel terrible, remorseful and so goddamned guilty.

  “Come back inside, Olivia. Stop running away. Let’s talk about this.”

  “No, dammit! I care about you so much. Put that down in your damned report and in your damn subpoena, Detective Dorian!” as she got into her expensive, high end BMW and put the car in drive.

  I approached her car and knocked on her passenger side window, yelling back, “Why are you running away, Olivia? Come back inside!”

  “Go to Hell!” she yelled back.

  She pulled out as fast as she could onto the busy boulevard, pushing down on her accelerator and loudly screeching the tires of her car. She almost collided into another car, trying to run away from me in front of the restaurant as fast as she could. I stood there for several minutes, watching her car go west bound on Grand Avenue. Her BMW taillights were getting smaller and smaller, as she drove further and further away.

  If Olivia was telling me the truth, then why was she getting so angry and running away when I was asking her questions? Why was she so defensive? Because I found out about her safe deposit box? What was she hiding from me? What was Olivia not telling me?

  I kept turning the events of our dinner date over and over in my head, trying to make heads or tails out of all that had just happened. I was frozen in front of 1372 West Grand Avenue, as if I couldn’t move. I was so conflicted and upset, and now I was feeling emotions that I hadn’t felt in a very long time.

  I paid the bill and went home that evening. I tried to call and text Olivia that night and several times the following Saturday morning, but she didn’t respond. By the way her Apple iPhone was immediately responding, I could tell that she had blocked my phone calls and texts.

  Olivia made me feel as though I didn’t have a right to be investigative and suspicious. If she would have come into the precinct and filled out that police report, I would have had no reason to be so apprehensive and distrustful. I was angry that she had flipped and pointed the blame and her anger towards me. I was hoping we would talk again whenever she cooled off. But unfortunately, that never happened, and I was left feeling the very thing that I hoped I would never emotionally, ever feel again.

  I was feeling pain.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  The Fourth Evangelist

  It was still dark outside as Mark Ryan arrived at 5:00am at the Sauganash Fitness Center for his morning workout routine. Ryan was very religious about getting in his fitness routine every morning. At the age of 70 years old, he was still quite fit and trim. He usually spends an hour doing cardio exercises on the Precor elliptical machine and then another thirty minutes power walking on the treadmill. Afterwards, he did over hundred crunch exercises and some light weights before the end of his two-hour morning regimen.

  On that morning, his routine was no different. He spent two hours doing his normal workout, then returned to the men’s locker room. There were only a few people working out that early morning at the gym, and the locker room was void of other people. Ryan removed his workout clothes and walked toward the adjacent shower room, where there were several private shower stalls.

  An older man, dressed in gray sweatpants and a black tee shirt, sunglasses and black baseball cap, entered the men’s locker room of the Sauganash Fitness Center, carrying a gym bag. He walked around the locker room, making sure there was no one else there, except noticing that Ryan was taking a shower in the shower stall. The man then removed all his clothing and placed them in a locker. He then put on a pair of elastic, surgical gloves. Being naked and holding only a knife and a red rose, he placed the flower on the floor next to the shower stall. The locker room intruder then approached the lone gentleman while he was taking a hot shower.

  As the hot water was continuing to lather the former priest, the intruder opened his shower stall door and placed his hand over Ryan’s mouth from behind, closing the shower door behind him. He then quickly inserting a sharp serrated knife deep into his throat. Blood began squirting everywhere inside the stall, covering the glass stall door which seemed to be the only witness to this gruesome murder as the killer said a quick prayer.

  “May Jesus have mercy on your soul, Father Ryan,”

  The murderer began to continuously stab Ryan’s torso from behind, while blood was splattering everywhere along the shower floor and onto its white, ceramic tiled walls.

  With the shower door still closed and the water still running, the naked intruder stood under the hot water for a few seconds, washing Ryan’s blood off his body. After blessing the body, he grabbed his knife and exited the shower, placing the red rose on top of Ryan’s wet, lifeless body. He then quickly walked back to towards his locker.

  As the killer hastily dried off and was throwing his clothes back on, another older man came into the men’s locker room of the Sauganash Fitness Center and walked towards his locker. The stranger had already worked out and was proceeding to get undressed to take a shower in the adjacent shower room. The intruder looked in the other direction, making sure the man didn’t get a good look at him, then proceeded to quickly leave. Wearing his cap and sunglasses, he then hurriedly exited the Sauganash Fitness Center, and casually drove away in a black, older model Ford Explorer.

  ___________________________________________

  It was barely 7:30 when I had arrived at my office. I didn’t even have time to take a sip of my Dunkin’ Donuts coffee before my cell phone starting ringing. It was Tommy.

  “Phil…Ryan was murdered.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, Phil, Mark Ryan was just found dead at the Sauganash Fitness Center. Somebody walked into the men’s locker room and stabbed him while he was taking a shower.”

  “How in the hell did they get to Ryan? We had fucking surveillance on him.”

  “Don’t know Phil. Just got a phone call from the Twentieth District. They had an unmarked cop car in the parking lot of the Fitness Center. They saw Ryan walk in at 5:00am, and they found him stabbed to death around 7:15 in the shower stall.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  I jumped into my squad
car and raced over to the 3140 West Peterson address of the Fitness Center, approaching what would be now the fourth “Pedophile Priest Murder” in six weeks. I imagined it was going to be a friggin’ zoo out there with the media, the police, the politicians and the ‘Ivory Tower’.

  As I arrived at the parking lot in Sauganash, there was crime tape blocking off the Fitness Center entrance and Chicago patrol cars everywhere. There was even a helicopter circling the area high above, and it looked like ‘Vietnam’ with detectives and patrolman ubiquitously around the area. I was afraid to approach the front door as I was bombarded with reporters inquiring about the victim and the crime scene. Tommy Morton was the first one to approach me.

  “The Superintendent wants to see us,” he said, as he was holding a cigarette with one hand and his pack of Marlboro Lights in the other.

  “Wonderful, just can’t friggin’ wait,” I replied.

  We walked past the front desk and into the men’s locker room where the shower area was taped off. The body of a naked older man was laying in the shower stall. His throat had been slit and he had several stab wounds across his torso. His blood had been slowly draining towards the middle of the shower room, and there were blood stains splattered everywhere around the shower cubicle. Because the murder took place in the shower area of the locker room, I expected to find more blood around the murder scene than I did. It was as though the murderer had time to ‘wash off’ the body before placing his signature red rose on the former priest.

  Superintendent Ryan was already fielding questions from the press when I approached him and Commander Callahan, standing near the front desk.

  “Why haven’t we solved these murders?” demanded the Superintendent.

  “We have a lot of clues and some evidence. We had this victim under surveillance. We predicted he was the next victim.”

  “Then how in the hell did he end up murdered?”

  “We don’t know. We had a squad car parked in front of the victims’ house, and a ‘tail’ on him 24/7” I replied. I felt foolish trying to explain to the Superintendent that we predicted the next “Pedophile Priest Murder” victim.

  “Let me get this straight, Dorian. You figured out that this guy was the next victim, and with police surveillance, you still couldn’t stop his murder?”

  “Apparently not, Superintendent,” I replied, knowing that I would now probably feel the wrath of his temper.

  “How did you know this former priest was the next victim, and what other evidence do you have,” he asked me point blank asked me.

  I looked at Commander Callahan, knowing that I would have to limit my answer to his questions, not wanting to disclose any information that I had on Detective Russo at the Twenty-First District.

  “We believe it’s more than one killer, and they’re part of a religious cult,” I tried to explain.

  The Superintendent looked at Callahan at myself, with that surprisingly shocked look on his face.

  “There is a lot of information that Detective Morton and I have uncovered, and we are not at liberty to explain our theories on this just yet.”

  “Well, when are we going to hear your ‘crime symposium’ on these ‘Pedophile Priest Murders’, Detective,” Callahan was starting to explode. “I can’t believe that you predicted the murder of this victim, and yet you were unable to stop it.”

  At that moment, Detective Russo showed up at the crime scene, and elbowed his way between the other patrolman and the media reporters and shook hands with all of us standing in a circle in the middle of the fitness center near the front desk.

  “We have another victim, I see,” was all Russo said.

  “Yes,” I replied. I was gazing very closely at Russo, as he looked like he was a little disheveled. I noticed right away that his hair was wet, as though he didn’t have time to dry it off.

  “Did you go out for your usual run, Paul?” I cleverly asked.

  “Yes. I just finished my run on the lakefront when I heard about this murder. I got dressed and ran over here right away.”

  My sixth sense was talking to me again, and it hadn’t even had its Dunkin’ Donuts coffee.

  “This murder took place in the shower stall,” I said directly to Russo. He tried to look surprised, but I was seeing right through it.

  We continued to discuss the details of the crime scene. Tommy confirmed that there were no security cameras either in the building or in the parking lot, which I thought was unusual. He had talked to the Recreation Director, a Ms. Justine Lishamer, who said that the park district didn’t have the funds budgeted for such security allowances, as the clientele were mostly senior citizens in the area.

  I interviewed the patrolman in the squad car, who was supposedly ‘tailing’ Ryan, but said he didn’t see anything unusual. He couldn’t even tell me which cars had gone in or out of the parking lot that morning, which made me believe that the copper in charge of watching Ryan must have fallen asleep.

  Commander Callahan approached me in private, when the others were not within earshot of our conversation.

  “Dorian do you and Morton know what the hell you’re doing?” he point blank asked, as he motioned Tommy over to our huddle.

  “Trust me, Commander. We were onto this one. I have a feeling the patrolman in charge of surveilling Ryan fell asleep in the parking lot, otherwise, we would have caught the killer,” I explained.

  “We have a witness who thinks they saw a black, older model Ford Explorer leave the parking lot just before the body was discovered,” Morton said.

  Thankfully someone was awake, I thought to myself.

  “I’m getting some shit from the Superintendent. I need a report on this case on my desk by tomorrow morning. I hope it will be as enlightening as you say it will be,” Callahan sternly ordered, trying very hard to keep his temper under wraps.

  We both looked at the Commander and nodded our heads in unison, knowing that we had our marching orders in hand.

  We interviewed a few of the other employees of the Fitness Center and took some notes, but the whole time my eye was on Russo. He was standing around, talking to a few patrolman and trying to look busy. As he was walking back to his squad car, I decided to catch up with him.

  “Paul, have you got a minute?”

  “Sure,” he uncomfortably answered, as he opened his squad car door.

  I opened the passenger door and sat with him in his car. By that time, his salt and pepper hair had dried off and looked disheveled.

  “Where were you this morning, Detective?” I asked him, point blank.

  “I told you, Dorian. I was finishing my run on the lakefront.”

  “How far did you run?”

  “About four miles, up to Belmont Harbor and back.”

  “How long did it take you?” I inquired.

  “About 32 minutes.”

  “Do you run with a running watch?” I asked.

  “Well yeah, sure.

  “Where is it?” I asked.

  Detective Russo pulled out his Nike running watch from his glove box. Knowing the habits of most dedicated joggers, they usually have their running watches close at hand, especially competitive runners like Russo.

  “Can you show me your running time from this morning?” Most running watches not only have exact split times from their runs but have GPS capabilities as well.

  Russo started fidgeting with his black running watch, pressing some of the buttons and looking for his morning distance time.

  “That’s funny,” he exclaimed. “My time must have gotten erased.”

  I looked at him suspiciously, and I knew in my mind that I had him.

  He started getting defensive. “Why all the questions, Dorian?”

  “Is there someone who can verify your whereabouts this morning?”

  “Where are you going with this, Dorian?” he demanded, while raising his voice.

  I just looked at him, as I placed my hand next to my gun holster. I wanted to call over Morton and have him help me
arrest him right there on the spot, but I knew I didn’t have enough to hold him. Besides, I didn’t want to blow up my theory and have this whole case explode in my face.

  I just glared at him for about over a minute, and I wanted to let him know that I was now holding the cards to solving these murder cases. I also noticed that he was wearing his ‘SRC’ red-cross ring on his right hand while it was on the steering wheel. Russo started looking nervous with my questioning.

  “Detective Russo, who were the four evangelists in the Bible?” I asked him.

  He had a shocked look on his face at first, pretending he didn’t know what I was talking about. But then, he began to smirk as he was nodding his head. He knew exactly where I was going with my questions, and a cool look of confidence came over his face. I could tell by the look in his eyes, that he knew I was onto him, and that his ‘out for a run’ story wasn’t going to hold up.

  “You can’t prove a goddamn thing, Dorian,” he laughed, as the look on his face turned from jovial to evil and satanic.

  His response was almost cocky, as if he truly believed that he could never be caught or accused of any murder. He truly believed he was a professional, and that he never made any mistakes. He knew that I didn’t have any concrete evidence against him, and that there was no way I could make any murder charge against him stick on that morning.

  I gave him my Cheshire cat grin, as my right hand was still covering my holstered gun. As I began to exit his car, I initially didn’t say another word. But I continued to study him for another minute or so, waiting for him to say something else incriminating.

  “Make sure your running watch is working next time you’re out for a run, Russo,” I advised him as I was closing his passenger car door. I was doing everything in my power to keep myself from lunging at him right then and there. I then gave him my final words as he was turning on the ignition.

  “And by the way…watch your back, ‘Brother Cain’.”