Rosary girls

5 8

According to DMV records, Wilhelm Kreuz lived on Kensington Avenue. He worked as a parking lot attendant in North Philly. The strike force headed to the location in two vehicles. Four members of the SWAT team rode in a black van. Four of the six detectives on the task force followed in a department car: Byrne, Jessica, John Shepherd, and Eric Chavez.

A few blocks from the location, a cell phone rang in the Taurus. All four detectives checked their mobiles. It was John Shepherd's. "Yeah… how long… okay… thanks." He slid the antenna, folded the phone. "Kreuz hasn't been in to work for the past two days. No one at the lot has seen him or talked to him."

The detectives assimilated this, remained silent. There is a ritual that attends hitting the door, any door; a private interior monologue that is different for every law enforcement officer. Some fill the time with prayer. Some, with blank silence. All of it intended to cool the rage, calm the nerves.

They had learned more about their subject. Wilhelm Kreuz clearly fit the profile. He was forty-two years old, a loner, a graduate of the University of Wisconsin.

And although he had a long sheet, there was nothing close to the level of violence or the depth of depravity of the Rosary Girl murders. Still, he was far from a model citizen. Kreuz was a registered Level Two sex offender, meaning he was considered a moderate risk to re-offend. He had done a six-year stint in Chester, registering with authorities in Philadelphia upon his release in September 2002. He had a history of contact with minor females between the ages of ten and fourteen. His victims were both known and unknown to him.

The detectives agreed that, although the victims of the Rosary Killer were older than the profile of Kreuz's previous victims, there was no logical explanation as to why his fingerprint would be found on a personal item belonging to Bethany Price. They had contacted Bethany Price's mother and asked if she knew Wilhelm Kreuz.

She did not.

Kreuz lived in a second-floor, three-room apartment in a dilapidated building near Somerset. The street entrance was beside the door to a long-shuttered dry cleaner. According to building department plans, there were four apartments on the second floor. According to the housing authority, only two were occupied. Legally, that is. The back door to the building emptied into an alley that ran the length of the block.

The target apartment was in the front, its two windows overlooking Kensington Avenue. A SWAT sharpshooter took a position across the street, on the roof of a three-story building. A second SWAT officer covered the rear of the building, deployed on the ground.

The remaining two SWAT officers would take down the door with a Thunderbolt CQB battering ram, the heavy cylindrical ram they used whenever a high-risk, dynamic entry was required. Once the door was breached, Jessica and Byrne would enter, with John Shepherd covering the rear flank. Eric Chavez was deployed at the end of the hall, next to the stairs. They drilled the lock on the street door and gained entry in short order. As they filed across the small lobby, Byrne checked the row of four mailboxes. None was apparently in use. They had long ago been pried open, and never fixed. The floor was littered with scores of handbills, menus, and catalogs.

Above the mailboxes was a moldy corkboard. A few local enterprises barked their wares in fading dot matrix print, printed on curling, hot neon stock. The specials were dated nearly a year earlier. It seemed the people who hawked flyers in this neighborhood had long ago given up on this place. The lobby walls were scarred with gang tags and obscenities in at least four languages.

The stairwell up to the second floor was stacked with trash bags, ripped and scattered by a menagerie of urban animals, two- and four- legged alike. The stench of rotting food and urine was pervasive.

The second floor was worse. The heavy pall of sour pot smoke lounged beneath the smell of excrement. The second-floor corridor was a long, narrow walkway of exposed metal lath and dangling electrical wire. Peeling plaster and chipped enamel paint hung from the ceiling in damp stalactites.

Byrne stepped quietly up to the target door, placed his ear against it. He listened for a few moments, then shook his head. He tried the knob. Locked. He stepped away.

One of the two SWAT officers made eye contact with the entry team. The other SWAT officer, the one with the ram, got into position. He counted them silently down.

It was on.

"Police! Search warrant!"he yelled.

He drew back the ram then smashed it into the door, just below the lock. Instantly the old door splintered away from the jamb, then tore off at its upper hinge. The officer with the ram pulled back as the other SWAT officer rolled the jamb, his.223-caliber AR-15 rifle high.

Byrne was in next.

Jessica followed, her Glock 17 pointed low, at the floor.

The small living room was directly to the right. Byrne sidled up to the wall. They were first accosted by the smells of disinfectant, cherry incense, and moldering flesh. A pair of startled rats scurried against the near wall. Jessica noted dried blood on their graying snouts. Their claws clicked on the dry wood floor.

The apartment was sinister-quiet. Somewhere in the living room a spring clock ticked. There were no voices, no breathing.

Ahead was the unkempt living area. A stained gold crushed-velvet love seat, cushions on the floor. A few Domino's boxes, picked and chewed clean. A pile of filthy clothing.

No humans.

To the left, a door to what was probably the bedroom. It was closed. As they drew closer, from inside the room, they could hear the faint sounds of a radio broadcast. A gospel channel.

The SWAT officer got into position, his rifle high.

Byrne stepped up, touched the door. It was latched. He turned the knob slowly, then quickly pushed open the bedroom door, slid back. The radio was a little louder now.

"The Bible says without question-uh that one day everyone-uh will give an account of themselves-uh to God!"

Byrne made eye contact with Jessica. With a nod of his chin, he counted down. They rolled into the room.

And saw the inside of hell itself.

"Oh, Jesus," the SWAT officer said. He made the sign of the cross. "Oh Lord Jesus."

The bedroom held neither furniture nor furnishings of any kind. The walls were covered in peeling, water-stained floral wallpaper; the floor was dotted with dead insects, small bones, more fast-food trash. Cobwebs lined the corners; years of silken gray dust covered the baseboards. The small radio sat in the corner, near the front windows, windows covered with torn and mildewed bedsheets.

Inside the room were two occupants.

Against the far wall, a man was hung upside down on a makeshift cross, a cross that appeared to be fashioned from two pieces of a metal bed frame. His wrists, feet, and neck were bound to the frame with concertina wire that carved deep into his flesh. The man was naked and had been slit down the center of his body from his groin to his throat-fat, skin, and muscle were pulled to the sides to form a deep furrow. He was also slashed laterally across his chest, forming a cruciform shape of blood and shredded tissue.

Beneath him, at the base of the cross, sat a young girl. Her hair, which may have been blond at one time, was deep sienna. She was soaked with blood, a shiny pool of which had puddled in the lap of her denim skirt. The room was filled with the metallic taste of it. The girl's hands were bolted together. She held a rosary with only one decade of beads.

Byrne recovered from the sight first. There was still danger in this place. He slid along the wall opposite the window, peered into the closet. It was empty.

"Clear," Byrne finally said.

And while any immediate threat, at least from a living human being, was over, and the detectives could have holstered their weapons, they hesitated, as if they could somehow vanquish the profane vision in front of them by deadly force.

It was not to be.

The killer had come here and left in his wake this blasphemous tableau, a picture that would certainly live in all of their minds for as long as they drew breath.

A quick search of the bedroom closet yielded little. A pair of work uniforms, a pile of soiled underwear and socks. The two uniforms were from Acme Parking. Attached to the front of one of the work shirts was a photo ID tag. The tag identified the hanging man as Wilhelm Kreuz. The ID matched his mug shot.

At long last, the detectives holstered their weapons.

John Shepherd called for the CSU team.

"It's his name," the still-shaken SWAT officer said to Byrne and Jessica. The tag on the officer's dark blue BDU jacket read D. MAURER.

"What do you mean?" Byrne asked.

"My family is German," Maurer said, trying his best to compose himself. It was a difficult task for all of them. "Kreuz is cross in German. His name is William Cross in English."

The fourth Sorrowful Mystery is the carrying of the cross.

Byrne left the scene for a moment then quickly returned. He flipped through his notebook, looking for the list of young girls for whom missing-person reports had been filed. The reports contained photos as well. It didn't take long. He crouched down next to the girl, held a photograph by her face. The victim's name was Kristi Hamilton. She was sixteen. She lived in Nicetown.

Byrne stood up. He took in the horrific scene in front of him. In his mind, deep in the catacombs of his terror, he knew he would soon face this man, and they would both walk to the edge of the void together.

Byrne wanted to say something to the team, a squad he had been selected to lead, but he felt like anything but a leader at that moment. For the first time in his career, he found that no words would suffice.

On the floor, next to Kristi Hamilton's right leg, was a Burger King cup with a lid and a straw.

There were lip prints on the straw.

The cup was half full of blood. Byrne and Jessica walked aimlessly, a block or so down Kensington, alone with images of the shrieking insanity of the crime scene. The sun made a brief, timid appearance between a pair of thick gray clouds, casting a rainbow over the street, but not over their moods.

They both wanted to talk.

They both wanted to scream.

They remained silent for now, the storm roiling inside.

The general public operated under the illusion that police officers can look at any scene, any event, and maintain a clinical detachment from it. Granted, the image of the untouchable heart was something a lot of cops cultivated. That image was for television and movies.

"He's laughing at us," Byrne said.

Jessica nodded. There was no doubt about it. He had led them to the Kreuz apartment with the planted print. The hardest part of this job, she was learning, was to relegate the desire for personal vengeance to the back of your mind. It was getting harder and harder.

The level of violence was escalating. The sight of Wilhelm Kreuz's eviscerated corpse told them that this would not end with a peaceful arrest. The Rosary Killer's rampage was going to end in a bloody siege.

They stood in front of the apartment, leaned against the CSU van.

After a few moments, one of the uniformed officers leaned out the window in Kreuz's bedroom.

"Detectives?"

"What's up?" Jessica asked.

"You might want to get up here." The woman appeared to be in her late eighties. Her thick glasses prismed rainbows in the spare, incandescent light thrown by the two bare bulbs in the hallway ceiling. She stood just inside her door, leaning over an aluminum walker. She lived two doors down from Wilhelm Kreuz's apartment. She smelled like cat litter, Bengay, and kosher salami.

Her name was Agnes Pinsky.

The uniform said: "Tell this gentleman what you just told me, ma'am."

"Huh?"

Agnes wore a torn, sea-foam terry housecoat, buttoned a single button off. The left side hem was higher than the right, revealing knee-high support hose and a calf-length blue wool sock.

"When was the last time you saw Mr. Kreuz?" Byrne asked.

"Willy? He's always nice to me," she said.

"That's great," Byrne said. "When did you see him last?"

Agnes Pinsky looked from Jessica to Byrne, back. It seemed she just realized she was talking to strangers. "How did you find me?"

"We just knocked on your door, Mrs. Pinsky."

"Is he sick?"

"Sick?" Byrne asked. "Why do you say that?"

"His doctor was here."

"When was his doctor here?"

"Yesterday," she said. "His doctor came to see him yesterday."

"How do you know it was a doctor?"

"How do I know? Hell's a matter with you? I know what doctors look like. I don't have old timer's."

"Do you know what time the doctor came?"

Agnes Pinsky stared at Byrne for an uncomfortable amount of time. Whatever she had been talking about had slid back into the murky recesses of her mind. She had the look of someone waiting impatiently for her change at the post office.

They would send up a sketch artist, but the chances of getting a workable image were slim.

Still, from what Jessica knew about Alzheimer's and dementia, certain images were quite often razor sharp.

His doctor came to see him yesterday.

There was only one Sorrowful Mystery left, Jessica thought as she descended the steps.

Where would they go next? Into which neighborhood would they come with their guns and their battering rams? Northern Liberties? Glenwood? Tioga?

Into whose face would they peer, sullen and lost for words?

If they were late again, there was no doubt in any of their minds.

The last girl would be crucified. Five of the six detectives gathered upstairs in the Lincoln Room at Finnigan's Wake. The room was theirs, closed off for the time being from the public. Downstairs, the juke played the Corrs.

"So, what, we're dealing with a fucking vampire now?" Nick Palladino asked. He stood at the tall windows overlooking Spring Garden Street. The Ben Franklin Bridge hummed in the distance. Palladino was a man who thought best on his feet, rocking on his heels, hands in pockets, jingling change.

"I mean, gimme a gangbanger," Nick went on. "Gimme a homeboy and his Mac-Ten, lighting up some other asshole over turf, over a short bag, over honor, code, whatever. I understand that shit. This?"

Everyone knew what he meant. It was so much easier when the motives hung on the exterior of the crime like a shingle. Greed was the easiest. Follow the green footprints.

Palladino was on a roll. "Payne and Washington got the squeal on that JBM banger in Gray's Ferry the other night, right?" he continued. "Now I hear they found the shooter dead over on Erie. That's the way I like it, nice and neat."

Byrne shut his eyes for a second, opened them to a brand-new day.

John Shepherd came up the stairs. Byrne motioned to the waitress, Margaret. She brought John a Jim Beam, neat.

"The blood was all Kreuz's," Shepherd said. "The girl died from a broken neck. Just like the others."

"And the blood in the cup?" Tony Park asked.

"That belonged to Kreuz. The ME thinks that, before he bled out, he was fed the blood through the straw."

"He was fed his own blood," Chavez said on the tail of a full body- shiver. It wasn't a question; merely the stating of something too hard to comprehend.

"Yeah," Shepherd replied.

"It's official," Chavez said. "I've seen it all."

The six detectives absorbed this. The attendant horrors of the Rosary Killer case were growing exponentially.

"Drink of it, all of you; for this is my blood of covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins," Jessica said.

Five sets of eyebrows raised. Everyone turned their head toward Jessica.

"I've been doing a lot of reading," she said. "Holy Thursday was known as Maundy Thursday. This is the day of the Last Supper."

"So this Kreuz was our doer's Peter?" Palladino asked.

Jessica could only shrug. She had thought about it. The rest of the night would probably be spent tearing apart Wilhelm Kreuz's life, looking for any connection that might turn into a lead.

"Did she have anything in her hands?" Byrne asked.

Shepherd nodded. He held up a photocopy of a digital photograph. The detectives gathered around the table. They took their turns examining the photo.

"What is it, a lottery ticket?" Jessica asked.

"Yeah," Shepherd said.

"Oh, that's fucking great," Palladino said. He walked back to the window, hands in pocket.

"Prints?" Byrne asked.

Shepherd shook his head.

"Can we find out where this ticket was purchased?" Jessica asked.

"Got a call into the commission already," Shepherd said. "We should hear from them anytime now."

Jessica stared at the photo. Their killer had placed a Big 4 ticket into the hands of his most recent victim. Chances were good that it was not simply a taunt. Like the other objects, it was a clue as to where the next victim would be found.

The lottery number itself was obscured by blood.

Did this mean he was going to dump the body at a lottery agent's location? There had to be hundreds. There was no way they could stake them all out.

"This guy's luck is unbelievable," Byrne said. "Four girls off the streets and not a single eyewitness. He's smoke."

"Do you think it's luck, or that we just live in a city where no one gives a shit anymore?" Palladino asked.

"If I believed that, I'd take my twenty today and head to Miami Beach," Tony Park said.

The other five detectives nodded.

At the Roundhouse, the task force had plotted out the abductions and the dump sites on a huge map. There was no clear pattern, no way to anticipate or discern the killer's next move. They had already regressed to the basics-serial murderers start close to home. Their killer lived or worked in North Philly.

Square one. ByRNE WAlkED JEssiCA to her car.

They stood around for a short while, each rummaging for words. It was at times like these that Jessica wished she smoked. Her trainer at Fra- zier's Gym would kill her for the very thought, but it didn't stop her envying Byrne for the comfort he seemed to find in a Marlboro Light.

A barge lazily cruised up the river. Traffic moved in fits and starts. Philly lived, despite this madness, despite the grief and horror that had befallen these families.

"You know, no matter how this ends, it's going to be ugly," Byrne said.

Jessica knew this. She also knew that, before it was over, she would probably learn a large new truth about herself. She would probably uncover a dark recess of fear and rage and anguish that she would just as soon leave undiscovered. As much as she wanted to disbelieve it, she was going to emerge from the end of this passage a different person. She hadn't planned on this when she agreed to take the job but, like a runaway train, she found herself speeding toward the chasm, and there was no way to stop.