Violence (37 page)

It was only a couple of minutes later when a waitress deposited a coffee in front of Trax as he sat restlessly at a table in the corner of the coffee shop. The waitress moved away and Trax took a sip of the coffee, hoping by centering his attention on the table he could somehow will himself to be invisible. No such luck. He had company. He looked up to find Derek standing over him like a death shroud.

“Do we know each other?” Derek asked darkly like the devil himself.

“Hey, no, man.” Trax answered anxiously. “Just hangin’ out.”

Trax took another sip of the coffee, and nervously brought out a cigarette, but remembered the long-standing indoor no smoking ordinances. Hands shaking piteously, he tucked the cigarette behind his ear. Oh how Trax wished Derek would just walk away!

“You know who I am?” Derek asked menacingly, his voice lowing like a fierce horned beast about to strike.

“No!” Trax answered. Too quickly.

Derek grabbed a chair, spun it around and straddled it, sitting down opposite Trax, staring at him with unwavering ferocity.

“Well, yes, I saw you on TV.” Trax admitted, quaking. “You’re the one who murdered that guy’s wife.”

Derek eyed him with a laser-like look that scorched the core of Trax’s soul.

“Wasn’t no murder.” Derek growled. “Otherwise how could I be here talking to you? I was screwed by the system. They let me out because they admitted the error of their ways.”

“Hey, cool.” Trax reacted casually to Derek’s explanation, trying desperately to act non-judgmental. “Look, man, don’t get on me, I’m helping you.”

“Helping me?” Derek asked, eyes narrowing with suspicion.

“Yeah.” Trax fumbled for a way to clarify his claim. “That guy, you know, Noel Anderson, he said he was with my girlfriend the night your brother was killed, but I saw him leave her place in the middle of the night. I told the police that.”

Derek’s mind quietly raced to catch up with all that Trax was revealing to him. You could almost see the mental tumblers clicking into place as Derek digested the information.

Trax took a slurping sip of coffee, growing in confidence that he had appeased Derek.

“You told the police that?” Derek carefully confirmed.

“Yeah.” Trax shrugged casually like it was no big deal. “See, I’m helping you.”

Derek, eyes gleaming, nodded thoughtfully and smiled. An evil smile.

CHAPTER 37

         A
nderson was looking out his cell window at the supportive crowd that continued to protest and grow in the street below in the mid-morning haze. There must have been several hundred people now almost choking California Avenue and a number of police were currently on hand to maintain order. The number of news trucks had also increased to about half a dozen.

One of the guards who worked the day shift moved up to the bars of Anderson’s cell.

“Someone to see you, an Al Ward.” The guard informed Anderson.

Al Ward waited anxiously against a wall in the visitation area. As usual it was a teeming mass of humanity that was packed into the all too confining space. It took Ward several hours just to get inside and get his name on the list. Fortunately it was the weekend and there were two sets of visiting hours. This was the first part of the Sunday inmate visitation schedule that stretched from 8 AM to 1:30 PM before there would be a two hour break for lunch and then the next set of visiting hours began that would continue until 8:30 PM in the evening. Ward didn’t fancy hanging around for that extended a period, but he was going to wait as long as it took to talk to Anderson.

A female correctional officer moved up to Ward. “Mr. Ward…” she called out, notifying him with complete indifference, “…the inmate you wished to see, he’s not taking any visitors.”

“Did they tell him who it was?” Ward asked reflexively, taken aback.

“I imagine they passed along the information. They usually do.” The officer answered vacantly, shuffling back to her position at the check-in area.

Ward, to put it mildly, was miffed.

CHAPTER 38

         F
ather Canova had a million things on his mind.

Detective Crotty had one thing on his.

“I’m not going to insult your intelligence and ask you if he admitted it, but I do want to ask your opinion as to his mental state.” Crotty continued his pestering of Cannova who tried to maintain his patience as he stood with his arms folded across his chest opposite Crotty inside the church’s main office.

Crotty had been there for ten minutes already. First, he tried to see if Sister Beatrice had any “information” or “opinions” regarding Anderson or had “talked to him.” Sister Beatrice, who was still busily attending to church office matters behind the pair, assured Crotty that Anderson seemed like a “very nice man” and that he “attends services here” at Our Lady of Sorrows. But that was all the “information” she had.

That brought Crotty to Cannova who simply confirmed Sister Beatrice’s sentiments. Cannova, while he had no prior dealings with law enforcement before this, knew clearly enough that the detective, no matter how he phrased the questions, had only one intention and that was for Cannova to give him some indication that Anderson had somehow revealed to the priest that he had committed the murders of Ruben Roney and Gabriel Lysander.

“Father, these are not questions that overstep any boundaries.” Crotty went on with increasing frustration. “I have Mr. Anderson’s best interests at heart, too, but I also have to think about the safety of the general public. Maybe he’s insane, seeing things, believing he’s possessed by God or the devil. You have to be a pretty good judge of that. I mean, it’s part of your job to get to know your parishioners.”

“I wouldn’t be a good judge at all.” Cannova responded bluntly. “There are so many personalities I deal with on an everyday basis. I’ve tried to answer your questions as best I can, but my job is to run a church, so if you’ll excuse me.” And with that, Cannova began to walk away.

“Father?” Crotty called after him, making Cannova stop, but it was clear to Crotty that it was useless to question the priest any further. “Forget it.” Crotty quickly gestured, moodily dismissing Cannova from any further harassment.

Cannova smiled tightly and disappeared through a doorway.

Crotty thrummed his fingers on the office countertop as he thought to himself, looking about everywhere for clues. For inspiration. Anything.

A man walked in the front door of the office from the parking lot with an armload of clothing.

“Where do I drop these off?” The man asked Sister Beatrice.

“Right there.” Sister Beatrice answered him, pointing to a trio of labeled bins in a corner, more particularly to the one that was marked “clothing.”

The man stepped over and started to deposit his donation.

Crotty started to leave when something brought him to a dead stop. He looked at the bins: one for “clothing”, one for “books, etc.”, and one for “
shoes
!”

Crotty had his cell phone cradled against his ear as he eagerly scanned a pile of donation forms on the counter in the church office. “I think I found an angle on where Anderson may have gotten the shoes he used in the Gabriel Lysander murder!” Crotty spewed the news excitedly into the phone. “The church takes in clothes and shoes from the public and they keep records for a lot of the charitable donors. We can narrow down the dates and look for a possible match, call up some of these donors and see if we can get some shoe samples and establish a link to the crime scene-”

“Hold your horses!” Peterson interrupted, obviously not sharing Crotty’s enthusiasm at all for the find. “You know and I know that’s not a piece of evidence that’s going to get a grand jury to hand down an indictment.”

“Who cares about a grand jury?” Crotty continued. “We already got an indictment! This is another piece of the puzzle for the prosecution to challenge Anderson with. It would look awfully fishy if-”

“No, we need evidence for a grand jury again!” Peterson exclaimed from the other end of the line, stopping his partner once more in mid-sentence. “Anderson’s alibi for the night Gabriel Lysander was killed just got a hundred percent stronger because I got Bernard Johnson laying over here on the West Side in between a couple of dumpsters.”

“’Bernard Johnson’?” Crotty responded, irritated. “Who the hell is that?”

“That’s the legal name of Jack Trax.” Peterson answered.

“He’s dead?” Crotty asked.

“Or a very good imitation.” Peterson replied grimly.

Peterson was standing in an alley amidst a phalanx of police cars and a cordon of cops. Peterson had to step back because a morgue transport van was angling in near some waste bins. That’s where the lifeless body of Jack Trax was laying in the narrow space dividing two large trash receptacles, the back of Trax’s head a bloody mess of exposed brain tissue from the effects of a close-range gunshot wound.

“Looks like it happened some time yesterday afternoon.” Peterson added gloomily. “A sanitation crew reported it this morning. You know we can’t hold Anderson now.”

CHAPTER 39

         T
here were now over a thousand people and nearly a dozen news vans outside the Cook County Jail awaiting Anderson’s discharge from custody. Rains had dampened the area but not the spirit of supporters who remained upbeat and vocal. There were reporters of nearly every ilk, from tabloid journalists to high-profile correspondents for worldwide cable news providers. News cycles were three days max in modern times. Anderson, though, was quickly becoming a living room fixture with many Americans.

“We’re here outside the jail in Chicago…” A distinguished network news field veteran in a suit and tie stood in the early afternoon sunlight and spoke into a microphone in an area cleared for the media by police. He gestured to the throng behind him. “…where an enormous gathering of well-wishers anxiously anticipates the imminent appearance of alleged vigilante Noel Anderson after authorities suddenly dropped all charges without, at least at this time, revealing the reason for the surprise turn of events.”

Crotty and Peterson were unperturbed, seated in their unmarked Crown Victoria parked not far down the street from the spectacle and the large white metal gate just south of 26th & California where Anderson would soon be set free. For them, it was a fait accompli that Anderson would “walk” right now but that didn’t mean, with new evidence, murder charges couldn’t be reinstituted even though their higher-ups were looking askance at their continued involvement in the case. Crotty tapped the top of the steering wheel as he waited. Peterson killed time by thumbing through the case file. Neither of them felt much like talking.

Lyndsey, meanwhile, was in the same coffee shop across from Rave where Trax had sealed his fate with Derek. She was picking up a coffee order and staring slack-jawed in wide-eyed astonishment at a wall-mounted TV that was broadcasting the “Breaking News” scene where the crowd was “Awaiting the imminent release of accused vigilante Noel Anderson” outside of the Cook County Jail. She didn’t even take the time to put lids on the coffees and ended up spilling half of them as she trotted back to Rave to breathlessly tell Jeannie, “That guy you know is on TV again! They’re letting him go from prison!”

Anderson, after going through the time-consuming process of being officially discharged, paused briefly to view the pandemonium that awaited him before pushing through the gate to a thunderous ovation from his “followers.” He was immediately cheered and surrounded by his devotees as he tried to edge his way into the street.

Reporters joined the crush and shouted out questions:

“Mr. Anderson, can you tell us what prompted the police to release you?”

“Noel, how does it feel to be out?”

“Is there anything you want to say?”

Anderson just plodded into the crowd, searching the sea of faces, hoping to see Jeannie among them.

More and more people surged at him. Many crying.

A jaundiced young man with tears running down his cheeks pressed close, touching Anderson as if he were a holy relic. “I was just diagnosed with liver cancer. I have six months to live but I’m not afraid, thanks to you!”

Anderson just gazed back at him, speechless.

A middle-aged woman with her mentally retarded teenage son yelled out, “We love you! We love you!” This was as she tried to reach through the multitude and place her son’s hand on Anderson’s shoulder.

There were more and more cheers as Anderson finally made it to the street.

A woman holding a baby managed to step in front of Anderson, shouting with raw, ecstatic, heartfelt energy. “My husband was murdered but I’ve released my anger! You’ve made me live again!” She kissed Anderson’s hand and smiled.

Anderson stared back at the angelic innocence of the pair, tears forming in his eyes.

More and more people swarmed around him, singing, crying, dancing in a beatific blur that made Anderson swell with emotion.

Al Ward waded forcefully through the crowd and managed to get a hold of Anderson’s arm.

“We gotta talk!” Ward hollered over the clamor of the boisterous horde.

“Stay away from me!” Anderson responded, wresting his arm from Ward’s grip.

“You can’t walk away from this!” Ward bellowed, getting right in Anderson’s face as Anderson continued to work his way through the pulsating pack of supporters. “Do you know who was blowing holes in your alibi? It was Jack Trax, the boyfriend of that girl you’re seeing! The police found Jack Trax in an alley this morning, shot through the head! That’s why they had to let you go!”

Anderson stopped in his tracks and stared intensely back at Ward, thoughts racing.

“And Derek Lysander was let out of prison two days ago!” Ward bellowed, eyes locked on Anderson.

Peterson’s brow suddenly furrowed as he sat up uneasily in the passenger seat and gravely read to Crotty the latest report from Anderson’s case file. “Get a load of this. Anderson has been making sizable donations to the Innocence Ministries, an advocacy group that works on inmate appeals. He specifically assigned the bulk of his donation to the Derek Lysander defense fund.” Peterson flipped quickly to the next page of the report and scanned the information there. “One of these advocacy group attorneys got the appellate court to remand for a retrial on appeal… Lysander pled out in lieu of a new trial… He was released for time served. He walked out of Stateville…” Peterson looked up at Crotty. “…the day before yesterday.”