Incendiary Designs

by Michael Allen Dymmoch

  “Can you tell us anything about her boss?” Oster said. “Did she get along with him?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “And the man she was seeing the night she died?” Thinnes said. “Did she ever mention him?”

  “Edward?” Thinnes waited. “She said he wanted to marry her. When her divorce was final.”

  “How serious were they?”

  “He’d given her a ring. She showed it to me. It was quite beautiful, quite large. She had it appraised. It was worth ten thousand dollars.”

  “Had she ever mentioned any fights with him, or a disagreement?”

  “No.”

  When Thinnes got back from escorting Mrs. Seely to her car, he told Oster, “Get hold of that waiter—see if he remembers Morgan flashing a big ring.”

  Oster scowled as he nodded. “Why are we bothering with all this? It’s almost always the husband.”

  “Too obvious.”

  “Well, in all the books and movies, it’s real estate developers that did it, so why don’t we just go snatch up Wellman, read him his rights, and get it over with?”

  “No, Carl. In this case, I think O.J. did it.”

  Fifty-One

  Violent crimes detectives went to a lot of funerals—to see who seemed sorry, who acted indifferent. Thinnes had seen every sort of reaction except the one favored by TV writers. He’d never seen anyone get overcome by guilt and confess, but he was always open to the possibility. You never knew. You could never safely say, now I’ve seen everything. He figured Helen Morgan’s funeral was pretty standard for a white, upperclass, Catholic funeral. It was held at Sacred Heart Church, in the north suburb of Winnetka, and was what his family—who weren’t Catholics—would’ve called “High Church,” with vestments and candles and a Mass. He recognized the music—Mozart’s Requiem—from the movie Amadeus that he’d seen to pacify Rhonda and had liked in spite of himself. There were a surprising number of people—many of the same he’d seen at the wake the night before. He was also surprised to see Jack Caleb. Even though both Caleb and Morgan were MDs, Morgan practiced out of Evanston Hospital and was an internist, not a shrink. He would have to ask Caleb about him later.

  During the service, at opposite ends of the church, Martin and Caleb stood and knelt and sat with the rest of the congregation, but neither took communion. Thinnes didn’t think Caleb was Catholic, but he wondered if Morgan held off because he had something on his conscience—like murder. His kids were a girl who looked about fourteen and a boy of seven or eight. The girl was red-eyed and stiff, the boy spaced out. Morgan was stone-faced through the service, caring for the kids—handing out Kleenex or hugs like a robot—reminding Thinnes of O.J. He wondered what other parallels there were to the Simpson case.

  Thinnes buttonholed Caleb out beside his car. “I didn’t know Morgan was a friend of yours.”

  “I was referred to him after the incident in Lincoln Park last spring. We’ve met socially on a few occasions since.”

  “I’m surprised you’re talking to me about it.”

  “He’s not a patient. And I’m not revealing anything told to me in confidence. On the other hand, you have a job to do, and you’d be remiss if you didn’t consider the victim’s husband.”

  “You think he had anything to do with his wife’s death?”

  “No.”

  Thinnes was glad there was no trace of righteous indignation in his answer, no ‘Of course not!”—just no. “Did you know they were splitting up?”

  “Martin told me.”

  So they were on a first name basis. “Did you know the wife?”

  “I met her once.”

  “What was your impression?”

  “She seemed ferocious.”

  “As in man-eater or bitch?”

  “Either. Both. She thought her husband was seeing me professionally and wanted something she could use against him.”

  “And if he was, you wouldn’t be mentioning it to me now.”

  Caleb raised and dropped his eyebrows as he said, “Precisely.”

  “How’d she know about you?”

  “Martin had my business card. Apparently it never occurred to her that I might be his patient.”

  “Morgan talk about her much, or about the divorce?” He could see that Caleb was uncomfortable, but he wasn’t going to let him off the hook.

  “He mentioned that they were divorcing.” Thinnes waited. Caleb finally said, “Martin is my friend. If I come across evidence that he was involved in his wife’s death, I’ll call it to your attention immediately. Barring that, I prefer not to discuss him with you.”

  Thinnes felt a flash of emotion. “Is he gay?”

  “You’ll have to ask him. It’s not something I could tell you.”

  Thinnes thought of Dean Olds—who’d never been charged with killing his wife, though his male lover had been tried for it. There wasn’t any suggestion of a woman in Morgan’s life, but no one had thought to ask about a man. And it would suggest a beauty of a motive. In a custody fight, a straight woman—even an adulterous one—would get the kids over a gay man. The courts were funny that way. Which left him wondering where Caleb came in. If they were just colleagues, Thinnes knew Caleb would do the right thing, even if he made himself a huge pain in the ass in the process. But if they were lovers…

  Thinnes suddenly felt ashamed. Caleb wouldn’t cover for a murderer, no matter how attracted he might be to him, any more than Thinnes would if the killer were an attractive woman. Would he?

  Fifty-Two

  After the Mass the funeral cortege proceeded to Calvary Cemetery on the border between Evanston and Chicago. The drive gave Caleb time to think.

  His friend Manny was buried at Cavalry. He’d died the day before Easter a year ago. His friends had taken up a collection for the gravesite and the stone and had collaborated on the epitaph, a variation on Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem, “The First Fig.”

  Caleb’s belief in God had been formed in Vietnam. The childhood edifice inherited from his parents, to which he’d paid lip service in his youth, had been blown away by the first hostile fire, when an enemy round tore a life-ending hole in the chest of the first comrade. But a journalist he’d subsequently been pinned down within a foxhole had given him a kind of palliative substitute for his lost naïveté.

  “If He follows His own rules,” the writer had said, “God’s as powerless to stop this as we are.”

  “How can you say that?”

  In his mind’s eye, Caleb could see his sardonic grin.

  “God gave us free will. You’re not really free if you’re not free to fuck up. And He gave us history and Machiavelli to learn from. You’re also not free if you’re not allowed to forget, or to ignore the lesson in the first place. So don’t blame God. We fuckin’ did this.”

  Caleb thought of that whenever something occurred that seemed senseless or ironically tragic.

  Free will.

  Free will and accident could account for all the misery laid at the feet of God. In the beginning, God had created accident. It was an oversight that it wasn’t mentioned in Genesis, but the authors probably hadn’t been as thoughtful or as imperiled as Caleb’s journalist. And God was stuck with it.

  The insight made Him fairly irrelevant for Caleb, but it also made him stop blaming God for things, let him stop hating Him.

  The graveside service was brief—mercifully—because of the heat. Caleb was surprised to be invited to the house afterward. As he’d already rescheduled his afternoon patients, and hadn’t anything urgent to do, he accepted. Curiosity, he told himself. In fact, an excuse to be near Martin, no matter how unaware he was of Caleb. After the cemetery, the limo took the family back to the house; Caleb followed in the queue.

  The house was east of Sheridan Road and was far more ostentatious than Caleb would have expected of Martin. Parking restrictions on the street had been suspended, and Cadillacs, Mercedes, and Lexuses crowded the curbs on both sides. Caleb’s Jaguar seemed in its
element as he eased it between a Lincoln and a BMW.

  Inside you could see the lake from the antiseptic living room. There was an open bar, and people who’d pressed around the grave at Calvary stood in aimless groups as caterers passed hors d’oeuvres and white wine. Caleb recognized a few of the guests—mostly overlapping medical staff from Northwestern Memorial and Evanston Hospitals. Martin’s lawyer was there, and Helen’s. They seemed on friendly terms. There was a large contingent in real estate, and a few whose occupations and avocations never came up. Caleb introduced himself to others as he circulated unobtrusively, eavesdropping. Almost everyone was talking shop. No one mentioned the divorce. He felt like a spy.

  When he was introduced to Helen Morgan’s mother, he thought immediately of the adage, To know all is to forgive all. Eileen Seely perfectly explained her daughter. She worked the room like a politician and accepted condolences like a queen. She spent a good deal of time supervising the caterers, though—to Caleb’s mind—they were performing competently. And she seemed to seek out Martin and the children frequently to offer comfort that they seemed to find unhelpful.

  Martin, Caleb noticed, had drinks pressed on him from every side, which he accepted graciously but put down untouched. He seemed exhausted, but he didn’t fail to notice when Linny helped herself to a glass of wine. He made excuses to the couple he was speaking with and hurried to relieve her of it. There was no anger in his body language. He might have been taking a lighter from a toddler. Sitting across from the little skit, Caleb could tell from their gestures that the girl wasn’t angry with her father, just bored and unhappy.

  Caleb looked around for Josh. The boy was sitting cross-legged in the space between the huge windows that faced the lake and the heavy drapes that partially covered them. Caleb walked over and squatted next to the boy, saying nothing.

  Josh turned. “Oh, hello. I forget your name.”

  “Jack.”

  Josh nodded; Caleb waited. “I wish I was grown up. Then I wouldn’t have to come to stuff like this.”

  Caleb nodded. “Bored?”

  “I guess. What are these for, anyway? Funerals?”

  “When someone dies, people are very hurt and unhappy. They often hurt so much they can’t think. They forget how to act. So there are customs to tell them what to do until they start thinking straight again.”

  Josh looked dubious. “I miss my mom.” Caleb agreed that he should. “And I’m bored.”

  “I doubt if anyone would mind if you read a book or played a game.”

  “Games are no fun by yourself. And there’s no kids here except my sister.” His tone spoke volumes about how much fun his sister was. “Would you play with me?”

  “Sure.”

  “Checkers?”

  “If you like.”

  “No. Monopoly. I’ll go get it.” He looked around. “This wouldn’t be a good place.”

  Caleb pointed to an open door—off the living room—to an unoccupied office. “How ’bout in there?”

  “That was my mom’s office.”

  “Do you think she’d mind?”

  “I’ll go ask my dad.”

  They played for an hour. Linny joined them. With the door open, Caleb could hear people making excuses and saying their good-byes. The caterers made a final circuit, gathering up trash and empties.

  Linny said, “It’s weird, playing a game in my mom’s office when she’s dead.”

  Caleb understood her to mean she wanted absolution for going on with life without her mother. He gave it as best he could. “Your mother loved you?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Then she’d want you to get on with your lives.”

  “I guess.”

  “It’s hard now. It’ll get better—”

  He was interrupted by Eileen Seely appearing suddenly in the doorway. “There you are, children—” She stopped with her mouth open, then she shut it. “I thought everyone had gone.”

  Josh said, “Jack’s not everyone. He’s our friend.”

  “Oh.” Mrs. Seely clearly did not know what to say to that. “Where’s your father?”

  From the room behind her, Martin’s voice said, “I’m here, Eileen.” As she turned to face him, he came within Caleb’s line of sight. He looked exhausted and depressed.

  “I was just going to collect the children and take them home with me,” she said, “so you can get some rest.”

  “That was thoughtful of you,” Martin said. “But unnecessary. You’re welcome to stay here with us if you like.”

  “No. I have to go. The children really should come with me. They need a mother.”

  Caleb looked at the children. Josh slid out of his chair and came over to cling to Caleb’s arm. Linny’s face hardened and she played with her Monopoly piece—a silver dog—without looking at her adult relatives. Caleb looked up at Martin, who was oblivious to him.

  Martin’s expression mimicked Linny’s as he said, “Their mother is dead, Eileen. But they still have me.”

  She started as if she’d been slapped.

  Martin said, “If you don’t want to stay, let me walk you to your car.”

  As soon as they were out of the room, Josh said, “I have to go to the bathroom,” and slipped away.

  Linny turned to Caleb and said, “My father said it was an accident, but I know better. My mom was murdered.”

  There was no analgesic for the sort of pain she was feeling; he didn’t try to offer one. “If someone caused your mother’s death, he’ll pay.”

  “How can you be sure? They never caught who killed Helen Brach.”

  “I know the detective in charge of the case.”

  “Detective Thinnes?” Caleb nodded. “He was at the wake. He made me feel like my dad does when I try to lie to him.”

  “You see? And he’s relentless.”

  “Like Lieutenant Gerard?”

  It took Caleb a moment to place the reference—the Fugitive’s pursuer. He nodded. But as the girl turned away, Martin’s words echoed in his memory: I’d die for my children.

  Caleb wondered if he would also kill for them.

  Fifty-Three

  The green Ford van had no plates. Its paint was weathered, with little patches of rust and smudges of fingerprint powder everywhere. There were strips of rust around the lower edges of the doors, and shiny spots where fresh paint had been sprayed over gang graffiti. The rear bumper had a sticker: HANG UP AND DRIVE! and a Z Frank Chevrolet license plate holder. Each of the back windows had a bumper sticker, too: LET A UNION ELECTRICIAN CHECK YOUR SHORTS; and UNION ELECTRICIANS DO IT BETTER.

  It was parked near the office of the central impound, where it had been towed from the alley it was blocking. Ferris was leaning against the hood of his department-issue Caprice, sucking pop from a Taco Bell cup through a straw. In deference to the unreal temperature—ninety-eight degrees—he and Thinnes had both ditched their suit jackets and ties.

  “What’s the story on this?” Thinnes asked.

  “According to the DMV, it’s titled to a Sean Fahey, though he hasn’t had plates on it for two years. We asked. Said he sold it to his brother-in-law two years ago. Guess he didn’t bother to change the registration.”

  “Let me guess. The brother-in-law’s name is Terry Koslowski.”

  “Bingo! He reported it hijacked yesterday. Claims to be a private electrical contractor. The description he gave of the hijacker sounded like a shithead I’m looking at on a previous beef. So I thought I’d come over and take a peek.”

  More like get out of the squad room before Evanger gave him something useful to do, Thinnes thought. What he said, was, “So why am I here?”

  “Weren’t you looking for Mr. Koslowski?”

  “Yeah. You contact him yet?”

  “No. I thought you might like to take it from here.”

  If Ferris would put half as much effort into his cases as he did into getting others to do his work for him, he’d be a crackerjack detective. Thinnes didn’t say so,
though. “What about the hijacker?”

  “Doesn’t look like he left any clues. All the prints are Koslowski’s. The alleged offender took his tools—if you can believe he’d really leave anything valuable in his vehicle in that neighborhood—and battery and ditched the van. So, you want to take it from here?”

  “I’m not going to get involved with processing any auto theft, but I’ll notify Mr. Koslowski for you that we’ve recovered his wheels.”

  A District Nineteen beat car pulled up and let Oster out. He was also in shirt sleeves and tieless. He nodded at Thinnes and frowned at Ferris.

  Ferris said, “Well, if it isn’t our ten-o-clock scholar.”

  The frown became a scowl. “It figures you’d still be reciting nursery rhymes.”

  “Carl, you hear what O.J. said when the glove didn’t fit?”

  Oster looked at Thinnes. “If I shoot Ferris, can I plead temporary insanity?”

  “I don’t think so. The trial’s been going on six months.”

  “Give up, Carl?” Ferris asked? “Maybe I didn’t do it.”

  “See that, Thinnes?” Oster said. “A stopped clock’s right twice a day, and Ferris finally got something right for once. He didn’t do it.”

  Thinnes played along. “What?”

  “Anything. He didn’t do anything.”

  Ferris laughed.

  “He never does anything!” Oster added.

  “He’s managed to get under your skin.”

  Thinnes didn’t want to spook his prime suspect, so instead of going to pick Koslowski up, he left a message on his answering machine: to contact Detective Thinnes at Area Three about his van. While he waited for the fish to take the bait, he went on digging, by phone, into Helen Morgan’s life and work.

  Before she married Morgan, she’d been an RN, a good one according to former colleagues. Morgan had been a resident at the hospital where she worked. She’d made sure she caught his eye, to quote a former rival. She and the doctor had married a year later. The first child, Linet, had arrived close enough on the heels of the wedding to cause malicious speculation. Helen had quit her job two weeks before the baby was born and had gone from housewife/mother to society matron by the time the second child, Joshua, was two. She’d begun selling real estate when he entered kindergarten, three years after that. Most of the people Thinnes talked to were dazzled by her. Michael Wellman was unique in not being impressed, though based on his own run-in with her, Thinnes was inclined to favor the developer’s assessment.