Incendiary Designs

by Michael Allen Dymmoch

  Thinnes looked at Caleb. “Besides, he’s dead.”

  Caleb sat back and said, “Cults are about power. And so is arson, in a slightly different way. By the way, why did Mr. English call himself John? If I recall rightly, his given name was Lewis.”

  Oster shook his head. “You got me.”

  Something stirred below the surface of Thinnes’s memory and he held a hand up to stop the distracting back-and-forth while he tried to grasp it. “I have to check my notes—but one of them said John told them another would come.”

  “But he didn’t say who or you’d have followed up on it.” Thinnes nodded. “Not Brian Fahey.”

  “No. Everyone we talked to, even his sister, seemed to think Wiley was a perfect example of What’s the use.”

  Caleb raised his eyebrows. “An unnamed other could explain the name John. John the Baptist prefigured Christ. John the Beloved was His most faithful disciple.”

  “C’mon,” Oster said. “You suggesting we got a nut running round thinks he’s Jesus Christ?”

  “And if that’s the case,” Thinnes said, “where does the arson fit?”

  “To answer that, you’d have to know what purpose it serves.”

  “Maybe it’s like Carl said, urban renewal.”

  “Then someone’s profiting.”

  “Or it could be a pyro,” Oster added.

  Thinnes and Caleb both shook their heads. “Not according to Fuego,” Thinnes said. “Wrong profile.”

  Caleb said, “I agree. From what you’ve told me, your arsonist is methodical if unimaginative. And it seems businesslike in a macabre way, so he may be setting fires to order.”

  “Okay,” Thinnes said, “we have a hypothetical Svengali running a storefront church by proxy. The proxy drops dead. Svengali disappears. The church members go off the deep end and kill a cop. One of them lays low for three months, then starts setting fires—for no apparent reason—until he accidentally torches himself…It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “You could just give up trying to connect the dots and call it a number of curious random events.”

  “That’s even crazier.”

  Caleb smiled.

  “All right,” Oster said. “Supposing there is somebody behind all of this. What kind of mutt are we lookin’ for?”

  “I’d say someone brilliant, narcissistic, and charismatic. Enough of a talker to convince Lewis English of his election. And he’s probably someone who doesn’t let anyone get close; who has followers but no peers; who loves no one unconditionally. Any affection he bestows would be dependent on absolute acceptance and obedience, in return for which he offers certainty.”

  “Sick,” Oster said.

  “Symbiotic,” Caleb corrected. “Pathological relationships often are.”

  Thinnes finished his iced tea and signaled the waitress for a check. “I guess we better have another look at the church—see if we can find the money.”

  Thirty-Six

  The overnight low had been in the upper seventies, so it was already muggy Sunday morning when Thinnes parked around the corner from the Conflagration Church. He’d timed it to get there just after the service started. He wanted to see how the new reverend was doing without a police presence throwing his game off.

  The dark church interior camouflaged him as he slipped in and took a seat in the back. He estimated a 300 percent increase in the congregation—mostly white and Hispanic, and young—since last March. Oddman’s performance had improved, too—voice or acting lessons, probably. And he must have studied some of Brother John’s old speeches because he was using most of the same lines. He said, “We have been elected to bring God’s message,” and Thinnes got the impression he meant we the way queen Victoria did in “We are not amused.” The sermon was full of catchy quotes and hell-fire and brimstone generalities, but short on advice for peaceful coexistence. It sounded great if you didn’t think about it too much, but the congregation was amening in all the pauses.

  “God has a plan!” Oddman intoned. No doubt. “I know it! And if you refuse to hear that plan, you will burn for it!”

  Thinnes remembered what Caleb had said about religion giving power to the weak. Oddman seemed like a newly minted bully, a might-makes-right thug who’d just found a weapon mightier than pen or sword.

  Thinnes sat through the whole service and waited until the lights came up and the congregants had started to drift away before he approached the minister. “Morning, Reverend.”

  “Good morning. Detective?…”

  “Thinnes.”

  “What brings you to our humble service?”

  Thinnes could’ve called it a lot of things—humble wasn’t one.

  Oddman continued. “I read in the paper that those responsible for the police officer’s death pleaded guilty. So does this visit mean you’ve gotten religion?” No mention of the fact that those responsible had been church members.

  “Not quite. We’re still looking into it.”

  “What can I do for you?” He seemed more eager to appear helpful than actually help.

  “You never got back to me about your business manager.”

  “I must have been mistaken on that.” Thinnes waited. “We don’t have a business manager. I must’ve been thinking of the church’s counsel. But I understood you spoke with him. He said he’d been contacted by the police.”

  “I’m sure he was, but I didn’t talk to him.”

  “Well, he takes care of Caesar, if you get my meaning.”

  He almost didn’t. He decided, when he’d made the connection, that it was too cute. He tried to recall the first impression he’d had of Oddman. He’d seemed a lot more timid. Comparing then to now was like looking at a cocaine user before and after. Or watching a bully with a new sap.

  Thinnes asked him a half dozen more questions about leadership, membership, and church business. Might as well ask a car salesman the dealer’s cost on a car. Oddman avoided straight answers by going off on tangents. Thinnes said, “You getting any pointers from other preachers?”

  “Just ‘It Pays to Increase Your Word Power.’ ” When it was obvious Thinnes hadn’t a clue what he was talking about, he added, “You know, in Reader’s Digest. Why? Do you think I need pointers?” It was the first sign of the insecurity Thinnes remembered.

  “Actually, you seem a lot more sure of yourself.”

  “Practice makes perfect. And I believe I’ve discovered my forte.”

  No doubt. Not faith, but the power to manipulate with words. But it wasn’t a total transformation. There was a certain nervousness in the way he said, “Overall, Detective, how did you find the service?” He blinked and his jaw sagged when he got the implication of Thinnes’s answer:

  “Educational.”

  Thinnes took comp time on Monday morning and slept in. When he walked into the Area, Oster said, “What time zone’re you workin’ out of?”

  “Nice to see you, too, Carl.”

  “The state’s attorney’s been trying to get you all morning. He took our theory about the Conflagration Church’s mysterious business manager to a judge to try’n find out who the new owner of the church property is.” Lewis English, it turned out, hadn’t left a will. His church “and all its appurtenances” had been transferred by some legal hocus-pocus to a real estate trust. And the attorney handling the paperwork was invoking client privilege to avoid telling anything to the cops. “The church’s attorney called our warrant application unwarranted interference by government in church business. The judge is callin’ it a crock.”

  “So we’re SOL”

  “Yeah. But I’ll keep diggin’. Somebody’s gotta know somethin’.”

  “Tell us about Terry,” Thinnes said. They were sitting in one of the tiny District Nineteen interview rooms. Linda Koslowski was hunched forward in her chair with one leg crossed over the other and her arms together—elbow to wrist—on her thigh. She straightened and ran a hand through her auburn hair. She didn’t look at them.

  �
��We got married right out of high school. Back then, getting married was all I thought I could hope for. He started knocking me around almost from the beginning. I took it fifteen years, then told him I wanted out. It was ugly. He wouldn’t agree to a divorce or anything else. When he went to prison for setting that fire, I got my chance. When he got out, he tried to get me to take him back. I had to get a court order to keep him away.”

  “When did you see him last?”

  “February.”

  “Were he and your brother friends?”

  “We all went to high school together, Brian and Terry and me and some others.”

  “What happened to the others?”

  “One of the guys was killed in Vietnam. Two went to college and never came back. Three of us girls married and lost touch. Brian’n Terry went to jail.” She shrugged.

  “Do you have any idea where we can find Terry?”

  “No, but his mother might. I think she still lives in Jefferson Park. Part of the reason we all drifted apart was the old neighborhood was integrated—ethnically speaking. I mean, most everyone was Catholic, but we had Irish and Italians and Poles all living together in the same parish. But then things started to go to hell. I…I mean, I’m not prejudice or anything, but the neighborhood started changing and everyone moved.”

  He understood. White flight.

  “What’s Koslowski’s mother’s name?”

  Stella Koslowski turned out to be no help at all. The two-flat she’d lived in after she moved away from the “old neighborhood” was occupied by renters who paid a management company every month. The management company deducted their fee and expenses, then sent the balance to a bank. The bank held it in a trust set up to pay monthly installments at an upscale nursing home. All arranged by Koslowski senior, before he passed away, when Mrs. K. was already getting forgetful.

  Just to be on the safe side, Thinnes and Oster drove to the nursing home and interviewed the management. No, Mrs. Koslowski’s son didn’t visit his mother, not since she stopped recognizing him. Yes, they’d be happy to give the police his address and phone number, although the person they were supposed to notify in case of emergency was her lawyer, not her son. The address was the same one the parole officer had given them.

  They found the old lady in the facility’s day room, strapped into a wheelchair so she wouldn’t fall out. She was dressed in a clean, cotton dress and mismatched socks and slippers. After watching her stare into space for five minutes they decided that they’d hit a dead end.

  Thirty-Seven

  Caleb had refined his talent for reading body language to an art, but it was sometimes a dubious gift. At times he could only turn it off with sleep, or isolation, or alcohol, or by running to the point of exhaustion. Friday, after he’d seen his last patient out, he felt melancholy, which boded ill for isolation. And it was too hot to run, so he headed for his favorite watering hole. Gentry’s was on Rush, less than a mile north and only a block west of the office. He took a cab.

  Inside, he sat where he could watch the bartender and ordered a Bass.

  He was enough in tune with his own psyche to know what being out in the scene meant. Faced with the prospect of dating again, everyone was thrown back to age thirteen, with all its anguish and insecurities. He sometimes read the singles pages of the paper, but always found something wrong with the petitioners—too young, too old, too narcissistic—so he wouldn’t have to respond. Sour grapes. It was harder to do that in here where the men were uninhibited or desperate enough to walk up and introduce themselves, sometimes too quickly to allow for the invention of an excuse. Still he enjoyed the show.

  Today the press of gorgeous bodies made him think of Martin Morgan—Martin!—though the doctor wasn’t as beautiful as some of those present. Walt Disney—paraphrasing Freud—had had it right: A dream is a wish your heart makes.

  Then Martin was suddenly there, at the far end of the bar, sipping a mixed drink, looking exquisite if uncomfortable. When you’re thinking of someone and he’s there suddenly, it’s as if your wish had conjured him up. For a full minute, Caleb wondered if he was hallucinating, if the heat and the intensity of his loneliness had combined to drive him round the bend.

  The only way to find out was to confront the problem. He picked up his glass and walked over to the space Martin had left between himself and the man next to him. He said, “Good evening.”

  Martin blushed and stammered, “What are you doing here, Doctor?”

  “My question precisely.”

  Morgan reddened, shrugged.

  They were both embarrassed; each made a clumsy attempt to set the other at ease. Both laughed.

  It was only human, Caleb reflected, to choke in situations where the outcome of the encounter is too important. “What are you doing for dinner tonight, Doctor?”

  “Martin, please. I hadn’t any plans.”

  Was it Caleb’s imagination, or did he detect an undercurrent of excitement? He felt his own pulse accelerate. “Would you join me?”

  Martin seemed pleased. He nodded.

  “Excuse me for a moment.” Caleb put his beer down and headed for the men’s room. Giving Martin a chance to bolt? Or hoping he would take the opportunity to vanish discreetly? Or was the latter possibility wishful thinking on Caleb’s part?

  On his way back to the bar, he helped himself to several of the free condoms the establishment provided. Martin was still there, looking anxious.

  They dined in the Chicago Athletic Association members’ dining room with its spectacular view of Michigan Avenue and the park beyond. During the main course, they discussed life, art, and Martin’s children. During dessert, Caleb gave a TV guide version of his own life and love life. He got the check and told Martin he could get it next time. After dinner, they took a cab to Gentry for a nightcap.

  When they’d installed themselves at a tiny table and were sitting with knees almost touching beneath it, Martin said, “One of the reasons I’m seeing a shrink is that…”

  The pause was anguished. Caleb couldn’t help. Though the suspense was murderous, pressing him might kill the embryonic confidence.

  Martin continued. “When you came into my office last March, I felt—for the first time in my life…” He looked away, “…sexually attracted.” He glanced at Caleb, then wiped his face with his hands. “No, that’s not true. It was the first time in my life I freely admitted to myself being attracted to a man and wanting desperately to act on the feeling.” He glanced at Caleb and must have been reassured by what he saw because he went on. “I renounced my nature when I took my marriage vows, the way a priest renounces sex.” He smiled ruefully. “Like many priests, I’ve discovered I have no vocation. But I have my children…”

  Caleb nodded. People outside his profession might have found the story incredible, but Caleb saw it often enough to think it commonplace. He limited himself to resting a hand on Martin’s forearm though he wanted to take him in his arms, to try with all the skill he’d acquired over the years to ignite the passion he suspected Martin harbored. Common sense and self-control prevailed. “I understand. Many of us are so desperate for affection that we latch onto the first semipresentable person who pays us any attention. We stop looking for a better fit. But ultimately, our grip on our unsuitable lover becomes a stranglehold because we know, on some level, that there’s nothing else to keep us together.”

  “I’ve felt that. When we were first married, I was afraid Helen would find another man more appealing. And she’d be like a mad woman when she saw me even talking to an attractive woman.”

  Caleb nodded. “But no intelligent adult believes for long that jealousy or possessiveness is love. And no sane person will accept either one as a substitute. They may be flattering at first, but they become stifling.”

  “Eventually we came to our senses.”

  Caleb thought about that during the ensuing pause; Martin studied the ice cubes in his glass. A lock of his hair had fallen over his forehead and gently kissed hi
s lowered lids with their long lashes. Strange how a particular constellation of features could capture one person’s imagination but leave another’s cold. How could Helen Martin resist him?

  But he knew. A love eroded by indifference or incivility was almost impossible to rehabilitate. An unrequited passion could quickly turn to hate.

  “A penny for your thoughts,” Martin said.

  Caleb wondered how candid he should be. Martin wasn’t a patient, but he was—technically—still married. On impulse, he said, “Frankly, I find you very attractive.”

  It was obvious that made Martin uncomfortable. He said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to put you on the spot.”

  It seemed like a non sequitur; Caleb knew it wasn’t. He sat back and made himself sit perfectly still, willed himself to seem neutral and nonthreatening. He felt his professional persona taking over. He said, “Go on” before he could even think whether it was an appropriate response.

  Martin took another sip of his drink and put the glass down. Swallowing, he looked at Caleb, then looked away. “I don’t know if I can love anyone.”

  It might have been a subconscious ploy or a brilliant pickup line to catch a shrink.

  “Why did you agree to dine with me?”

  “I thought…I hoped…”

  “That I’d seduce you?”

  Martin nodded without looking at him.

  “Look at me, Martin.” He looked. “Would you like me to seduce you?”

  “God help me. I don’t know.”

  “That’s honest.”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Have you ever made love with a man?”

  “No. Are you?…Do you?…”

  “Am I HIV positive? You know I’m not.”

  Morgan blushed.

  “But it’s one question you never trust anyone to answer honestly.” He reached into his pocket and took out one of the condoms he’d put there earlier. He slipped it into Martin’ jacket pocket and repeated, “Not anyone. Not even once.”