Incendiary Designs

by Michael Allen Dymmoch

  The squad room was unusually busy and as serious as a funeral—no casual conversations, no bullshitting. Every detective in the room—and the property crimes dicks were in on it, too—was either on the phone or going over records. There wasn’t any of the black humor, either, that usually lightened up the atmosphere.

  “Thinnes,” Swann called. “Viernes for you. On one.”

  Thinnes picked up the phone. “Yeah, Joe?” Viernes’s name was actually John, like Thinnes’s, but everyone at the Area called him Joe. It was an inside joke that only those who knew Viernes or spoke Spanish got.

  “Maybe some good news, Thinnes.” “We followed up on that hubcap from where they found Banks. Looks like it came from a church van that got a flat. Guy working on his car three blocks east of the scene noticed some idiot driving on a rim. White Ford van—which is consistent with the hubcap. He—the mechanic—noticed the church name, something like Congregation Church, on the side. We found a gas station three blocks farther down, where they sold the driver a used tire. The flat was shredded. Anyway, they wrote down the license because the schmuck paid with a church check. I got the mechanic and the gas station attendant coming in to look at pictures.

  “The van is registered to a Conflagration Church.” Viernes spelled it out. “On Western. Place is closed up like a tomb right now. My snitches tell me it’s run by a Brother John.”

  “You locate the van yet?”

  “Just a matter of time.”

  “This John, he a priest?”

  “Some kind of mail-order minister, I think. I tracked down somebody who’s heard of the outfit. Guy collects nutcases for a hobby. He’s sending over a video of the head hardcase.” There was a short pause, during which Thinnes could hear traffic noises. Then Viernes added, “Too bad we’re not allowed to keep files on these turkeys. Be a lot simpler.”

  “Yeah,” Thinnes said.

  “Anyway, after you see this video, you got any questions, contact Detective Flyer, over at Four.” Viernes gave Thinnes Flyer’s pager number.

  “Thanks, Joe.”

  Thinnes brought his coffee mug when he went into Evanger’s office to report. Evanger was drinking coffee himself, out of a large Starbucks cup.

  Thinnes sat down and summarized what he’d done since he last reported in. “I sent Carl over to the hospital with pictures, but its pro forma,” Thinnes said. “The sketch from our witness was pretty damn good. What I can’t believe is we don’t have an address on this guy yet!”

  “Sunday,” Evanger reminded him. “People fall off the ends of the earth on Sundays.”

  “Yeah. Well, Felony Review is going over the paperwork as we speak. And as soon as we get an address for this low life, we’ll have a warrant.”

  Thirteen

  The video arrived before Thinnes had a chance to make even a small dent in the pile of notes he’d acquired. It was labeled Lewis English. He took it into the Identisketch room and ran it in the machine they used for reviewing surveillance videos.

  The set was dark except for an overhead spot trained on the lectern and the man behind it. The harsh lighting made the speaker’s face look skull-like, made him seem a little crazy. With his wild hair and beard and mesmerizing eyes, he reminded Thinnes of Charles Manson. It was obvious he’d studied acting or public speaking. He maintained eye contact with the audience. And the camera was clearly one of the audience. He sucked the viewer in along with his unseen chorus, who AMENed at nearly every pause. It made Thinnes think of John Kennedy’s “Ask not” speech and Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream,” which pissed him off because he knew this guy’s speech was some sort of sophisticated con.

  “God!” English paused, circling the audience with a look. “Sent flood to punish the sons of Adam for their wickedness!” Another pause. “He sent plague to bring great Pharaoh low. Next time! It will be fire! There will be a conflagration the likes of which have not been seen since Hiroshima! Fire to sear the soul of the unbeliever! Fire to cleanse the nation of the contagion of godlessness! Fire to temper our resolve to be among the righteous!

  “My brothers and sisters, we have a mission!”

  By the time Thinnes had run through the tape again, Oster was back, reporting that Nolan had positively ID’d Brian “Wiley” Fahey as the nutcase who’d poured gas on his squad car and tried to set it on fire with Nolan in it.

  Thinnes added that to the information he already had in his warrant application. While he waited for Fuego to get back to him with Fahey’s address, he called Detective Flyer.

  Like every other cop in the city, Flyer was looking to do what he could to get Banks’s killer. He was nearby when Thinnes paged him, and he said he’d be right over, happy to help and delighted to talk about his favorite hobby. When he came into the squad room, he walked over to where Thinnes was reading the pile of phone notes the sergeant had just handed him.

  “How’s it goin’?” Flyer asked. He took the empty chair next to Thinnes.

  Oster stood and rested his arm on the desk partition on Thinnes’s other side.

  “We got a couple leads,” Thinnes said. He pointed to the videotape. “What are we looking at here?”

  “Lewis English, aka Brother John—among other aliases—founder and chief beneficiary of the Church of the Divine Conflagration. He formed it while he was doing time in County for fraud.”

  “Divine Conflagration,” Thinnes said, “sounds like the name of a rock group.”

  Oster said, “Sounds like a bad pun to me.”

  “So where do we find this guy?” Thinnes asked.

  “Rosehill Cemetery. He died three weeks ago in County, where he was waiting to bond out on a charge of disorderly conduct. Apparently he was arrested exhorting his flock to burn down a neighborhood adult bookstore. The state’s attorney was trying to decide if they could get a jury to buy conspiracy to commit arson, too.”

  “So this is an anti-porn group?”

  “Also anti-abortion, drugs, gay rights, women’s lib, immigration, affirmative action, and the ACLU. And they claim battered women’s shelters lead to the breakdown of the traditional family. There’s some indication church members torched a couple of abandoned buildings since their leader bought it. A few of the crazier ones’ve been picketing County, claiming the cops beat English to death.”

  “Any question about that?”

  “Nope. ME called it natural causes. Guy had a pipe bust an’ he bled to death—officially a burst aneurysm. We called up his bruise sheet—nothin’.”

  “What’s his connection to Brian Fahey?”

  “Wiley Fahey is one of his more outspoken disciples. He used to be the reverend’s chauffeur and general flunky. Since English died, Fahey seems to have taken over as chief instigator. He’s the most outspoken advocate of the police brutality theory.”

  Thinnes said, “So what’s with these people?”

  “We tried to convince ’em to blame God for the reverend’s demise, but since when does a nutcase take a cop’s word for anything?”

  Oster frowned. “You tellin’ us these assholes beat Banks to death and tried to set Nolan on fire because they think cops killed their nutcase leader?”

  Flyer shrugged. “I’ve seen ’em come up with crazier theories.”

  The search warrant gave them permission to look for “one standard red gasoline can, accelerants and incendiary devices, and documentary evidence supporting a conspiracy to commit arson or murder.” Oster looked like he was all in, but he wouldn’t be left behind. They brought Fuego to identify any “accelerants and incendiary devices” they might find.

  “If that means matches, lighters, and gasoline,” Oster said, as they were getting in the car, “we would probably handle it without help from Arson.”

  “Look on the bright side, Carl,” Thinnes said. “If we find anything he’ll have to carry it out.”

  “That’s fine with me,” Fuego said. “As long as you guys haul away any bodies we find.”

  “Humph. I s’pose th
at means we gotta call for an explosives tech if we find an M80.”

  “It’s called division of labor. Or job security, if you like.”

  The landlady let them in after insisting she hadn’t seen Fahey for a week—not since the day before the rent was due. In fact, the apartment looked as if no one had ever lived there. It had all the warmth and charm of a thirty-nine-dollar motel room. It was piled with boxes of old office equipment, including a manual typewriter and reams of flyers—propaganda for the Conflagration Church. The three detectives put on gloves and sorted through everything. The first item of interest was a handout demanding FREE BROTHER JOHN and a blurb suggesting that tax deductible contributions to the church could be sent to a post office box in Uptown. Eventually they came across lists of church members and contributors and an unopened envelope that looked like a bank statement.

  “I guess we better have someone go over this for fingerprints,” Thinnes said.

  “No incendiary devices,” Oster said. “Not even a match-book. Tough luck, Fuego.”

  Thinnes had been lifting the equipment out of the boxes to see if anything interesting was stashed underneath. “Hel-lo,” he said, as he extracted an adding machine. He put it aside and reached a fat white, leather-bound album from the bottom of the box. “I want to bring this to show and tell.”

  Fourteen

  Patrol found the white van in an alley off Western, near the late Lewis English’s residence. The Major Crime Scene techs had photographed it in place and had it towed to the District garage. They were processing it for fingerprints with cyanoacrylate fumes—Crazy Glue—when Thinnes caught up with them.

  The van was a Ford Club Wagon, new enough for Thinnes to wonder where English got the money for it. The rear bumper had minor damage from a collision and bumper stickers that said: GOD IS THE ANSWER and JESUS SAVES. Someone had used a marker to add WHAT’S THE QUESTION? to the first, and AT CITIBANK to the other. The license plate bracket was an add-on advertising a Ford Lincoln Mercury dealership. In the upper corner of the rear window was a faded parking decal, C8, with no company name or clue to where the lot might be. Below it, a strip of yellowed, dried cellophane tape hung from one side of the band of adhesive it had been part of, marking where one end of a License-applied-for placard had been attached vertically to the window. The card itself dangled from a strip of tape below the adhesive line with its number facing into the van. Thinnes walked around to the passenger side, where THE DIVINE CONFLAGRATION CHURCH showed in self-adhesive letters. Someone had “keyed” both doors. The antenna was bent. The windshield was cracked and had three city vehicle stickers on it—none current. The message on the driver-side door had been reduced to CONFLAGRAT ON CHURCH, though shinier patches of paint stood out like ghosts of the missing letters.

  “What’ve we got?” Thinnes asked.

  Before the tech answered, he looked behind Thinnes, who turned to see what was happening. An unmarked Caprice had just pulled into the garage. Thinnes felt the hair rise on his back. As the overhead door closed behind the car, the technician’s supervisor, got out. Bendix was balding and out of shape. His usual sour expression was in place, and the perpetual cigar was clamped between his jaws. Halfway between the van and his car, he paused to relight the cigar, waving the spent match to cool it and dropping it in a jacket pocket out of reflex. Whatever else his faults, he’d never been accused of contaminating a crime scene. “Figures you’d be in on this, Thinnes,” he said.

  “Nice to see you, too, Bendix,” Thinnes told him.

  Bendix turned to the tech and said, “What’ve we got?”

  The tech looked uncomfortable. “No prints on the outside,” he said. “Looks like it was wiped clean. Ditto on the spare rim, but we got a partial from the tire iron. Guess he didn’t wipe it carefully enough. Oh, and on a hunch, one of the beat coppers checked the storm drains in the vacinity—came up with these.” He took a plastic bag out of the box he’d been collecting evidence in; it held a bunch of keys. “Ignition key fits.”

  “Log ’em and give ’em to the great detective here,” Bendix said, hitching a thumb toward Thinnes. “Maybe he can figure out what the rest of ’em fit.”

  The tech nodded.

  “What else?” Bendix demanded.

  The tech reached into his box and took out a large brown paper evidence bag with the date, case number, and other pertinent information scrawled on the outside. He held the bag open so Bendix could look inside. Thinnes crowded in to see, too. The bag contained a roll of white fabric that looked like the material graduation gowns were made of. Left in the box were an assortment of paper and plastic envelopes. Thinnes could see a matchbook in one and a paper that could have been a dealer invoice for the van. He pointed. “Think I could get a photocopy of that?”

  “Sure thing.” The tech took the bagged invoice and started to walk toward the office, then must’ve realized that that would leave his evidence in the temporary custody of Thinnes, in violation of protocol. On the other hand, giving a detective evidence before it had been processed was also against SOP.

  “Gimme that,” Bendix growled. He puffed the cigar as he took gloves from his pocket and pulled them over his stubby fingers. Then he grabbed the invoice and stalked off with it.

  Thinnes restrained the urge to offer the tech his condolences.

  “Hey, Thinnes,” the sergeant said when Thinnes walked into the squad room two hours later. “AFIS got a hit on that partial they found on the church van, and—surprise!—it belongs to one Brian Fahey.”

  “Surprise.” Thinnes got his coffee mug and walked over to get coffee.

  Ferris was sitting at a table next to the coffee table. He had his feet up and the Sun-Times spread out in front of him. “Thinnes, what were O.J.’s last words to Nicole?”

  Thinnes didn’t want to know.

  “ ‘Your waiter will be right with you.’ ”

  Thinnes shook his head. He wondered if anyone would remember O.J. jokes after Simpson’s trial was over. How long would it take before a question like Ferris’s would be answered with a puzzled, who? huhn?

  “What you got there?” Ferris asked, pointing to the album Thinnes had under his arm. “Wedding pictures?”

  “Evidence,” Thinnes said.

  “Lemme see.”

  “Go collect your own evidence.”

  Ferris laughed, and Thinnes realized he’d only asked to see the album to annoy him. “You got your report on the canvass done yet?”

  “It’s not written up, but I can tell you nobody saw a thing. Too dark. Too foggy. Too early.”

  “Well, get it written up. I need it ASAP.”

  “Why? You’re not anywhere near ready to close the case.”

  “I’ve been on more than twenty-four hours; I’m caught up on my paperwork; and there’s an arrest warrant and an all-call out on a suspect. When I finish with this, I want to punch out and go home.”

  “Do tell.” Ferris picked up the Sun-Times and made a show of reading it.

  Thinnes filled his mug and headed for the conference room.

  The album was still smudged with fingerprint powder. He got paper towels and cleaned it up, then studied it. Lewis English—Brother John—featured prominently in almost every picture. In some, his was the only face showing. There were several newspaper clippings on demonstrations involving the reverend’s flock. One was accompanied by a picture with a woman’s face clearly showing. And underneath it was the woman’s name. Newspaper photographers usually got releases from the people they photographed. With addresses. Thinnes picked up the phone and rang the paper.

  Fifteen

  If he hadn’t done a tour as a medic in Nam, Caleb would have found the bruises he’d developed overnight alarming. The exam at the hospital ER reassured him nothing was broken or seriously injured, but this morning everything ached. He inspected the damage as soon as he rolled out of bed. His shoulders, elbows, hips, knees, and forearms were a mass of blue and bile-yellow. And lacerations too small to have been n
oticed yesterday, while he was under the anesthetic of shock and adrenaline, made their presence painfully obvious every time he moved. After he’d finished in the bathroom and struggled into clothes, he dialed the office of his physician. A recorded message informed him that the doctor was on vacation. Emergency calls were being taken by another service; if he would leave his name, number, and a brief message…He left a message with his pager number. He had work to do and wanted breakfast first. Aspirin doesn’t sit well on an empty stomach.

  Dr. Martin Morgan’s office was on Ridge Avenue in Evanston, just south of Evanston Hospital. Caleb found an open space for the Jaguar, mercifully near the door. He hobbled in and took the elevator up.

  The doctor’s hours were nine to five, Monday, Thursday, and Friday, but he’d agreed to see Caleb early. When Caleb entered the waiting room, the doctor himself greeted him and led him back to a small, tastefully furnished office. He was as tall as Caleb—six-foot-two, fortyish but fit, with gray eyes and auburn hair graying at the temples. His suit was expensive and conservative, except for the red paisley tie. His manner was reserved but not standoffish.

  He offered Caleb a chair across from his desk and sat down. From a drawer in the desk, he took a blank chart form and a pen and began to elicit Caleb’s medical history. He seemed to be in no hurry, waiting until he was sure Caleb had finished answering and noting the information in a kind of shorthand before asking the next question. Even allowing for professional courtesy, Caleb thought this extraordinary. He didn’t miss, either, that when the doctor asked if he was HIV positive, he didn’t record Caleb’s response. “It’s something I need to know for proper diagnosis and treatment,” he told Caleb when he commented. “But if I put it in your chart, it becomes a matter of public record.”