Incendiary Designs

by Michael Allen Dymmoch

  Thinnes noticed something different about him right off—hard to put a finger on what. If it had been one of the other detectives, he’d have asked if he’d just gotten lucky—but Caleb…He realized his unwillingness to ask Caleb was because the doctor was gay, and if he’d gotten lucky, Thinnes really didn’t want to know.

  The line from a song came to mind as he led Caleb to the conference room. “When a man loves a woman…”

  What would a man do if he loved another man? Thinnes knew some of the things. He’d investigated enough domestic disputes turned ugly between gay lovers. Sometimes the only differences from straight lovers’ quarrels was an increase in the violence because both combatants were strong and fueled by testosterone. He recalled the thought he’d had about Morgan at the funeral—maybe he was gay. He should have followed up on that.

  When Oster’d joined them, and they were all sitting around the conference table, Thinnes said, “Tell us about benzodiazepines, Doctor.”

  Caleb looked surprised briefly, then said cautiously, “They’re a class of drugs, including Librium and Valium, used to treat anxiety.”

  “You ever prescribe ’em?”

  “Yes, occasionally.”

  “To Dr. Morgan?”

  “He’s not my patient. No.”

  “How ’bout Mrs. Morgan?”

  “No.”

  “How well do you know Dr. Morgan?”

  “We’re friends.”

  “Close?”

  “That depends on what you mean by close.”

  “Would you stick your neck out for him?”

  “I might.”

  “Lie for him?”

  “Possibly.”

  “To the police?”

  “No.”

  “Would you sleep with him?” Thinnes heard Oster gasp.

  Caleb didn’t seem fazed. “If he asked me.”

  “Did you sleep with him?”

  “Did you ask him that?”

  “You got a thing for Dr. Morgan?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “It ever cross your mind that if you’ve got a thing for him, maybe he’s got a thing for you?”

  “It has. So?”

  “Why’d he file for divorce?”

  “Did you ask him?”

  “Yeah. I want your version.”

  “He told me that his wife had been unfaithful, but that they’d been drifting apart for some time.”

  “That all?”

  “Does there need to be more?”

  “What about the kids? I didn’t see that dragon-lady wife of his letting him have custody if she knew he’s gay.”

  “Why do you assume he’s gay?

  “Hypothetically.”

  “Hypothetically, his wife’s death wouldn’t change anything. His mother-in-law is equally fierce and would also like to have custody.”

  “Maybe.” Thinnes shook his head in frustration. “This isn’t getting us anywhere. Talk to me, Jack. What do you know?”

  “There’s no hell as painful as uncertainty. Martin seems like a decent man, and I’m attracted to him. If I knew anything that would clear him or convict him, I’d tell you.”

  “Where do your loyalties lie?”

  “With the truth.”

  “Which is?”

  “I don’t know,” Caleb said. “But tell me this. Did you stop looking when you decided on Martin?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “What’s this really about?”

  “Money.”

  “No. It’s more than that. People kill for money but they don’t set fire to living beings for money.”

  “He had her insured for a lot of it.”

  “How much did she have him insured for?”

  “You were a little hard on the doc, weren’t you, Thinnes?” Oster asked. “I thought we’d established he’s on our side.”

  “He’s not telling us everything. It pisses me off.”

  Oster shrugged. “How long’s he been gay?”

  “Probably all his life.”

  “You know what I mean—you knew.” There was a little resentment in his tone, implying, why didn’t you tell your partner?

  “Yeah,” Thinnes said. “I guess we all got something we’re not telling.”

  “Isn’t that what I just said?”

  Sixty-Four

  “We got an impressive roster of victims here,” Fuego said. He and Oster and Thinnes were sitting in the case management office, laying out the case for the sergeant, who was sitting on the edge of one of the desks; Evanger was sitting behind it. He had pen and paper handy.

  “There’s Mackie,” Fuego continued. “And, probably, Ronzani, Fahey, Morgan, Koslowski, and Linda Koslowski.”

  “How ’bout the Smith brothers?” the sergeant said.

  Thinnes said, “I think they were just criminally incompetent, and their luck ran out.”

  “Who’re we looking at?” Evanger asked.

  “Ed Limardi, Michael Wellman, and Dr. Morgan.”

  Evanger wrote down the names. “What have they got for motives?”

  “I checked on Franco Ori’s will,” Oster said. “He set up a trust for the widow. She gets use of the house and income from the property during her lifetime. Then it’s all split between Limardi and his cousins.”

  “Who are?”

  “Were. Dino Ori. And an Angela Ori.”

  “Who’s Angela Ori?”

  “I’m workin’ on that.”

  “So Limardi might’ve killed Aldo Ronzani,” Evanger said, “and Dino Ori—if we could prove he was murdered—to inherit. Why kill the others?”

  “Maybe they knew too much,” Thinnes said.

  “What about Michael Wellman?”

  “He stands to make a lot on the real estate he acquired. Ronzani wouldn’t sell to him.”

  “Why would he kill the others?”

  “Maybe they knew too much,” Oster said.

  “And Dr. Morgan?”

  “He was divorcing his wife,” Thinnes said. “And I think he may be gay. He’d lose a custody fight if that came out. Plus, he had a $500,000 life insurance policy on the wife—double indemnity. People have been killed for a lot less.”

  Evanger nodded. “And he might have killed the others because they knew too much. What have they all got for alibis?”

  “Nobody’s got much of an alibi for any of the deaths except Morgan’s,” Thinnes said.

  “Wellman’s is his chauffeur,” Oster said. “He can’t drive, so any place he goes, his chauffeur goes.”

  “And he’s never heard of cabs or busses?”

  Oster shrugged. “That’s his story.”

  “Dr. Morgan claims he was home with his kids,” Oster said, “every night but one the past year.”

  “Where was he the one?”

  “Claims he had too much to drink and a friend checked him into a downtown hotel.”

  “Did the friend stay with him all night?”

  “Not that he mentioned. The desk clerk remembered them. And that Morgan was too drunk to stand up.”

  “What about Limardi?” Evanger said.

  “He has an alibi for Morgan’s death and claims he never heard of the others. Wanted to know if I could tell him where I was on the other dates.”

  “Could you?”

  Oster laughed.

  Thinnes said, “But Limardi’s mother told us he went to school with Fahey, Koslowski, Helen Morgan, and Maria Cecci, who was in on Banks’s murder.”

  “What about Cox?” Fuego asked. “Cox is the real estate broker Helen Morgan worked for,” he told Evanger.

  “The killer drove a white Mercedes,” Thinnes said. “That lets Cox off the hook. He drives a big black Cadillac with vanity plates—MR COX. Parks it out in front of his place in the bus stop.”

  “How do you know the killer drives a Mercedes?” Evanger asked.

  “Mackie’s killer told us.”

  “What else have we got?”

  Fuego summarized: “One, we
have a peculiar religious cult with enough money—from unknown sources—to buy and rehab a small church. It takes in excons, nutcases, and runaways. Two, Helen Morgan died in a fire of roughly the same MO Fahey tried to use to kill officer Nolan last spring. And three, we have the same MO in the deaths of Fahey, Ronzani, and the two Koslowskis—victim was drugged with a tranquilizer and died of smoke inhalation in a fire set up to look accidental or like a botched arson attempt. We gotta see all these cases as connected. Most of the players go way back together.”

  “So how do you figure it?” Evanger said.

  “It looks like someone got the idea for Morgan’s murder from Fahey’s botched attempt on Nolan—maybe the same guy who killed Fahey.”

  “Who?”

  Fuego said, “Probably Koslowski. He roomed with Fahey in Stateville—they must’ve talked about what they were in for—and he and Fahey both holed up in Limardi’s mother’s basement. My money’s on Limardi being behind all of it.”

  “The three of them go way back,” Thinnes added. “I think we can assume that what Fahey knew, Koslowski knew, and he told whoever he was working for.”

  “But why would Koslowski kill Fahey? And who killed Koslowski?”

  “Whoever put him up to killing Morgan. With Fahey gone, Morgan’s killer’s our best bet. And, I’d be willing to put money on it, that it’s either Limardi or Dr. Morgan.”

  “And one of them killed Linda Koslowski?”

  “One of the three,” Fuego said. “Limardi, Morgan, or Wellman.”

  “I’m going to talk to Nolan tomorrow,” Thinnes said. “Maybe he’ll remember something helpful. Meanwhile, we’ll just keep turning the pieces around until we fit them—”

  Evanger interrupted him. “What can we do for you, Doctor?”

  Thinnes turned around; Caleb was standing in the open doorway. He wondered how much of the conversation the doctor had overheard.

  “I want to help,” Caleb said.

  “Forget it, Doc,” Thinnes said. “Go home. Let us deal with it.”

  Sixty-Five

  It was Patrolman Nolan’s day off. Thinnes located him at home, and when he opened his door, he was covered with paint. “Mind coming in the kitchen?” he said, after inviting Thinnes in. “I promised my wife I’d have it done when she gets home from work. She’s having some friends over.”

  Thinnes sat on a chair and watched him roll pale-green semigloss on the wall over the sink without wasting time or paint. He probably didn’t spend as much thought on Thinnes’s questions as he should have, but he repeated the story he’d told at the hospital without any changes or omissions.

  “I looked over the rap sheets and arrest records of the assholes you nailed—hope they fry in hell,” he said. “None of ’em anyone I know or ever arrested.” He got down from the chair he was standing on and filled his roller with paint, then climbed back up to apply it to the wall. “What’s this about?”

  “We had an agg-arson recently, car fire. Same MO as yours.”

  Nolan got down and put down his roller. “That the Mercedes that was torched?”

  “Yeah.”

  “My wife knew the victim. Went to school with her.”

  “No shit! Did you know her?”

  “Nah. It was in high school—before my time. And she didn’t know her well enough to go to the wake or anything; she just recalled the face when she saw it in the paper.”

  “What time does your wife get home?”

  “Five-ish.”

  “I’ll be back. Meantime, watch your back. If I’m right, whoever was behind Banks’s murder may have really been after you.”

  “What in hell for?”

  “If we knew that, we’d know who we’re looking for.”

  “I thought you finally got all the assholes that killed Banks.”

  “I wouldn’t bet my life on it.”

  Angela Ori Nolan—Angie—lit a cigarette and took a long drag before she answered the question, “What was Dino Ori to you?”

  “My cousin. But we weren’t close.”

  “Your father and his father were brothers?”

  “Yeah. They’re both dead now. So’s my aunt. Dino was her and my uncle’s only kid.”

  “He was a waste of sperm,” Nolan volunteered.

  “Don’t, Paul,” she said. “It’s bad luck to speak ill of the dead.” Nolan made a face and shook his head. Angie continued. “I didn’t even go to his funeral—not that I missed anything. My aunt went—another aunt, not Dino’s ma. My aunt told me she and the priest and Mrs. Renzi were the only ones who showed up, which shows how much of a deadbeat Dino was. He didn’t even have a friend who’d come to his funeral.”

  Thinnes said, “I understand you knew Helen Morgan?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well?”

  “Nah. And she wasn’t Helen Morgan then, she was Helen Kerrigan. Morgan must be her married name. In high school, she had the hots for another cousin of mine and was always hanging around his house. I don’t know why. He was dating someone else.”

  “Who?”

  “A girl named Maria Cecci.”

  Serena.

  “…And after Maria died, he asked me out a couple of times.” Angie took another pull on the cigarette and gave her husband an affectionate look. “That was before I met Paul.”

  Thinnes said, “What did Maria die of?”

  “Eddie told me a drug overdose. It was years ago. She was in college. He didn’t go into detail. I thought he just didn’t want to talk about her because it kinda ticked him off that she went away to school instead of marrying him.”

  “Would it surprise you to learn that she’s still alive?”

  “No!”

  “Yes.”

  Angie said, “Why would that lying?…Eddie. I’ll bet he couldn’t admit a girl would throw him over.”

  “Where is she?” Nolan asked.

  “In a hospital for the criminally insane. She was the woman who flagged you down in the alley that night.”

  “No shit!”

  “I’m amazed you didn’t know.”

  “I was pretty out of it for a while. And by the time I got back to work, they told me I wouldn’t have to testify ’cause the douche bags that killed Arlette had copped pleas.”

  Thinnes said, “Angie, tell me about your cousin Eddie.”

  “Eddie Limardi. We used to call him mostly Malarky ’cause he was full of it, but he could talk people into things. Most of the time, I think he even believed his BS.”

  “What’s he doing now?”

  “I haven’t kept in touch, but his ma—she’s the aunt that went to Dino’s funeral—tells me he’s selling Mercedes-Benzes. Like that makes him not a car salesman.”

  “You ever meet Martin Morgan?”

  “Helen’s husband?” Thinnes nodded. “No.”

  “How about Michael Wellman?”

  “The name sounds familiar but…”

  “The developer?” Nolan interrupted.

  “That’s him.”

  They both shook their heads.

  “Did Eddie have any close male friends?”

  “Oh, sure, in school. Back then, we didn’t have these vicious gangs—Kings or GDs or Vice Lords. Most of the guys hung out with other guys from their neighborhood. And they were mostly divided up by nationality—you know, Irish or Poles or Italians.” She looked at her husband. “We got a lot of flak ’cause we didn’t marry ‘our own kind.’ ” She took a drag on the cigarette and tapped the ash off into an ashtray. “Eddie and his friends go way back—went to Catholic grammar school together, then public high school. ’Til Brian—I can’t remember his last name—dropped out. We used to call ’em the unholy trinity cause it wasn’t natural—them being all different. Eddie was Italian, of course, but the other two were Irish and Polish. The Polack was Terry something—I forget. But I think I got an old yearbook somewhere if it would help.”

  It would.

  Sixty-Six

  “Thinnes,” Oster said, “
Angela Ori is—”

  “Nolan’s wife.”

  Thinnes was instantly sorry he’d said it.

  “So what did I spend half a day burning up the phone lines to find that out for?” Oster looked like he’d spent half a day digging ditches.

  “Corroboration? Why don’t you take the other half the day off?” This in spite of the fact that it was almost 7:00 P.M.

  “What, are you my boss now?”

  Thinnes let it go.

  “You got a request to call Dr. Tambourine at her hospital or stop by and see her. She gets off at nine.” Before Thinnes could comment, Oster went back to what he’d been doing.

  Thinnes looked up the number in his case notes and called. He had to wait a long time for the woman who answered the phone to tell him the doctor wouldn’t be free for half an hour.

  Half an hour later, an aide led him to the room in the hospital that they’d used to interview Serena. Dr. Tambourine was sitting cross-legged on an end of one of the couches with a tissue box next to her. She gestured toward the couch’s other end. She looked older than Thinnes, even older than he felt. She said, “Please sit down, Detective Thinnes.” He sat. “I thought you’d want to know. Maria Cecci killed herself last night.”

  “Are you sure she wasn’t—”

  “She locked herself in the shower room, plugged up the toilet, and drowned in it. The door was locked from inside—we had to break in.”

  “How the hell did she do it?”

  “She put her head in the bowl and wrapped her arms around the joint between the base and the tank. And she tied her hands together with a strip of towel so she wouldn’t save herself by falling off when she passed out.”

  “Christ!”

  Dr. Tambourine shook her head and blinked back tears.

  Thinnes softened his voice.

  “Did she have any visitors or phone calls recently?”

  “A phone call. A man who said he went to school with her. He said his name was Brian Fahey.”

  Not! as Rob would say. Chalk up another victim. Thinnes wondered what Limardi had said to her to make her do it. He was sure it was Limardi.