Caleb dropped into the hall.
In the reflection, Limardi darted for the door and slammed it shut.
Caleb said, “Wellman’s in there.” He started crawling toward the cops.
“Come on out, Limardi,” Thinnes shouted.
“Go away or Wellman’s a dead man!”
Standoff.
“Now what?” Oster said.
“Now we wait,” Thinnes said. “Call in the SWAT team and hostage negotiators.”
“Wellman will die,” Caleb said, “if he doesn’t get treatment immediately.”
“I’m open to suggestions. Doctor?”
“We’re not dealing with a rational individual.”
“What gave you your first clue?” Oster said.
Thinnes’s radio crackled as the SWAT team commander announced they were coming up. “Don’t shoot the civilian in the hallway,” Thinnes told him.
“He’s being awfully quiet in there,” Oster said. “Doc, can you talk to him?”
Caleb nodded.
“Stay out of the line of fire,” Thinnes said.
Caleb moved to the corner at the end of the hall and called out, “Edward. Edward, you need to come out now.”
There was no answer. The absence of gunfire was the only hopeful sign. The SWAT team slithered into the room and deployed themselves. The leader came up behind Caleb with a bullhorn and said, “Edward Limardi, put down the gun and come out.” Moments passed. Caleb retreated to the reception area. Thinnes looked over and saw Oster ease himself into a sitting position on the floor and begin to rub his chest. The SWAT team conferred among themselves in whispers.
Then all hell broke loose. They smelled smoke at the moment an alarm began to sound. Smoke began pouring out above Wellman’s office door. Caleb suddenly charged past the SWAT members in the hall and started kicking in the door. “Cover him!” Thinnes shouted.
The door gave. Caleb fell into the office as choking smoke poured out. He crawled into the smoke-filled room and disappeared.
Thinnes charged after him, past the SWAT team. Smoke filled all but the lower two feet of the room. There was no light, not even from the fire. He dived under the smoke. The alarm vibrated through the choking atmosphere, filling the room with panic. Automatic sprinklers added water to the chaos.
As Thinnes dropped his face to the floor to breathe, his face met with Caleb’s foot. Thinnes was forced to back up as the foot came toward him. He grabbed it and hauled as he scrambled back into the hall. Caleb was pulling someone out by the shirt collar. Both were gasping and wheezing. In spite of the confusion, Thinnes was aware of the SWAT team moving closer to cover them. He hacked and lurched forward to help Caleb. As they dragged the body toward the fresh air, Thinnes realized that it was Wellman. “Offender’s still in there,” he managed to gasp. He and Caleb kept backing up. The SWAT team stepped over them, into the smoke.
Dr. Morgan was waiting in the reception area, hovering over Oster. When they dragged Wellman in, Morgan transferred his attention to the developer. He and Caleb moved Wellman out near the elevators and began doing CPR without missing a beat.
As Thinnes located his radio to call for paramedics, the SWAT team came gasping back down the hall. “He’s gotta be done for,” one of them said. “Nobody can breathe in there.”
It took sixty seconds for them to strike the fire, once they got the hoses in place, and another fifteen minutes to evacuate the smoke. They found no trace of Limardi. “He was in there,” Thinnes insisted. But after they’d gone over the entire office suite he began to wonder.
“Detective,” one of the firemen said. “Here’s where it started.” He pointed to the charred remains of a matchbook under Wellman’s pool table. “The old cigarette in the match-book device.” The fireman shook his head. “Simple but effective. Gotta give this guy credit. He started it where the sprinklers wouldn’t put it out right away.”
Thinnes shook his head. “All I want to know is how he got out of here.”
“Probably through there.” The fireman pointed to the dropped acoustical tile ceiling from which several squares were missing. “If he was in good shape, he just hoists hisself up and waits ’til the fire gets going good, then drops down on the other side of the wall and walks away in the confusion.” He led the way back out of Wellman’s office and down the hall to a point in the reception area opposite the missing ceiling panels—the door to the washroom.
Thinnes took out his gun and aimed at the door, then jerked it open. The room was empty. But there were ceiling panels missing in there, too. “Damn it!” He backed back into the reception area and looked out into the outside hall.
Caleb and Morgan had relinquished care of Wellman to the paramedics, who were strapping him onto a stretcher. Oster was sitting on the floor against the wall, looking gray, breathing as if it hurt. Firemen and cops were coming and going; two security guards were standing by, gawking. Any number of people could have passed through since the fire was struck. “Somebody got a working phone?” he asked. Caleb did. Thinnes called Evanger and got Limardi’s description out.
As he handed the phone back, he saw Morgan go over and kneel next to Oster. Morgan took hold of Oster’s wrist. Oster made a half-assed attempt to pull away, but the doctor persisted. “You’re having a heart attack, Detective.” he said. “You need to go to a hospital immediately.”
“You don’t get it,” Oster said. “I check into a hospital with a bad pump, I’m finished as a cop.”
“There is life after the department, Carl,” Thinnes said.
“Yeah. Move to Wisconsin and open a bait shop.”
“Or become a consultant,” Thinnes said. “And make three times as much for what you’re doing now. You gonna check out and leave Norma to deal with the mess?”
Oster glared at him. “Damn you, Thinnes.” His expression softened. “At least we ID’d the SOB”
“And we’ll get him.”
Oster looked from Thinnes to Caleb. “Fuckin’ three musketeers.”
“Look at the bright side, Carl.” Thinnes said.
“There’s a bright side?”
“This’ll get you out of the paperwork.”
Sixty-Nine
While they were loading Oster in the ambulance, Thinnes noticed Caleb giving Morgan a hug. For the briefest moment, he envied them—straight men made do with handshakes; hugs were only tolerated at wakes and funerals—barely. Caleb met his gaze, then looked away. The moment passed leaving Thinnes feeling—as he had before—that the doctor was a step ahead of him.
Morgan went with Oster to the hospital. Thinnes kept Caleb with him. “We have a little paperwork to do, Doctor,” was the closest he came to giving Caleb a piece of his mind.
Thinnes was sure Limardi was long gone, so they didn’t wait around for a complete search of the building. They left it to the uniforms and building security. Thinnes called the Area to report to Evanger and sent patrol units to Limardi’s apartment and Mrs. Ori’s house. They were halfway back to headquarters when Caleb’s cell phone rang—Dr. Morgan calling from the hospital.
“Detective Oster insisted that I call with information he’d forgotten in the excitement. He asked me to tell you that Limardi owns the storage building south of the factory where you found Dino Ori. He said it’s a long shot, but you need to know anyway.”
“Thanks, Martin.” Caleb hung up.
Thinnes borrowed the phone to relay the information to Fuego at home. “We’ll meet you there.”
Fuego was waiting for them outside the warehouse. Thinnes hadn’t paid much attention to it before. Now he got out of the car and studied it carefully—old, solid brick and masonry, two stories, the top floor disappearing into the darkness above the reach of the streetlights. It was closed up tight, with iron grills covering high, grime-coated windows on both upper and lower stories. It had two overhead garage doors and a standard door facing the street. In back, a metal door opened outward into the alley, where an unmarked car was parked in the shadows.
The two tactical cops in the car made Thinnes for a detective as soon as they spotted him. “What’s happenin’, man?”
“We’ve got a search warrant coming. When it gets here, how ’bout you back your car up against this door so it won’t open?”
“Yeah. Meanwhile, we’ll just prowl around, keep an eye on things.”
Thinnes strolled casually to the end of the block as if walking an invisible dog. The only sign that Oster’s hunch was on target was a Mercedes convertible with dealer plates parked around the corner in a residential block. Even surrounded by other cars, it jumped out at him.
He went back to his car and alerted patrol, asking for a car to come out and watch it. Then he called Evanger to expedite the paperwork on the search warrant.
“Now what?” Fuego asked. He was sitting in the front, next to Thinnes. Caleb sat in back.
“Now we sit on the hole and wait for the rat to show his nose.”
To pass the time, they compared notes. “What happened up there, Jack?” Thinnes said, “What did he tell you?”
“More than he would have if he thought I’d get away. He let his mask of sanity slip, going on about controlling fire and being more powerful than God. I gather killing Arlette Banks was a mistake. He sent Brian Fahey and Maria Cecci to kill Officer Nolan, but I’m sure he never revealed his real agenda. When I intervened, they murdered the cop they had at hand because Fahey thought they were just avenging Brother John.”
“Maria Cecci’s dead, by the way,” Thinnes told him. “Suicide, with a little push over the edge.”
“Why Nolan?” Fuego asked.
Thinnes answered. “So Nolan’s widow would be free to remarry. Limardi. He signed her yearbook, ‘Your kissing cousin.’ ”
Fuego thought about that. “I can see why he had to get rid of Fahey, but what about the others?”
“Ronzani was his maternal uncle,” Thinnes said. “Limardi must’ve found out how the property was left—maybe from Helen Morgan. Once his mother inherited, it was just a matter of time before the property came to him.”
“But why kill Ronzani? He was an old man. Why not wait and let nature take its course?”
“Control,” Caleb said. “He can’t leave anything to chance.”
“And he may have worried that Ronzani would change his mind and sell to Wellman, or change his will. The old man didn’t know his sister was still alive. He could’ve left his money to the church—he was a practicing Catholic—or to some charity. Limardi couldn’t risk it.
“He killed the Koslowskis to keep them quiet,” Thinnes continued. “My guess is he got Terry Koslowski to kill Morgan, then killed him and his sister to keep them from talking. Linda must’ve put it together. That’s why she tried to contact me. And Limardi paid a gangbanger to off Mackie for the same reason. I’m sure it was no oversight that the chump got a look at a white Mercedes—made it more likely we’d look at Morgan for the killer if the trigger man ever tried to cut a deal.”
Fuego nodded. “Which is just what happened.”
“Speaking of Helen Morgan,” Caleb said, “where does she fit in?”
“She was one of the gang from the old neighborhood,” Thinnes said. “Nolan’s wife loaned me her high school yearbook and I looked her up—Helen Kerrigan back then. She wasn’t much to look at, and if you can believe Angie Nolan, Helen, being Irish, might as well have been black as far as Limardi was concerned. But over the years, she fixed up her looks and came into money. I think Limardi may have been telling the truth when he said he met her when she came in to buy a car. It probably did look like a chance for ‘safe sex’ and, of course, there was the real estate angle. I’ll bet we weren’t out of the building before she was on the phone to tell him we were asking about his old buddies.”
“Limardi told me she expected him to marry her,” Caleb said.
“Her mother told us he bought her a ring. We checked. At dinner the night she died she had on a rock the size of a pigeon’s egg. There wasn’t a trace of it on the remains.”
“Where does this nutty church come in?” Fuego asked.
Thinnes shrugged and looked back at Caleb.
“Another way to manipulate people,” Caleb said. “His original plan may have been to set up Brother John as some new messiah—he had the charisma—and in a few years, he’d have been the man behind the curtain. The Wizard of Oz.”
“I don’t like all the coincidences,” Fuego said.
Caleb shook his head. “The only real coincidence is my meeting Martin and befriending him. The others were all connected since childhood.”
Thinnes said, “Everything that gets done in this city depends on who you know or how much clout you have. What makes this whole thing seem complicated is that it’s hard to see the connections if you’re not part of the game. Limardi killing his uncle and cousin for money, or trying to bump off a rival for the woman he’s after isn’t any more unlikely than the sordid domestic murders we handle every day. It’s just more sensational when the offender wears a Rolex and drives a Mercedes.”
“How the hell did he expect to get away with it?” Fuego demanded.
“People tend to repeat behaviors they see as successful,” Caleb said. “Limardi killed at least four times without being suspected.”
“But what about his method?” Thinnes asked. “Pyromania’s way off the deep end.”
“Some obsessions are an attempt to get control of what’s feared.”
“Which is?” Thinnes said.
“Maybe fire. His sister died by fire. Maybe rage. Anger’s one of the most common and normal emotions accompanying the death of a loved one—the least acknowledged. It’s almost always proportional to the loss, and if it’s not addressed, it can go underground and smolder like a fire deprived of air.”
“ ’Til something gives, and you get a backdraft,” Thinnes said.
Fuego turned to Thinnes. “How long before it starts getting light?”
Thinnes looked at his watch. “About an hour.”
“Hey! Something’s up!”
They all looked at the building. One of the overhead doors was going up. Beyond it they could see a delivery dock with a large truck backed up to it. Thinnes started the engine. “Fasten your seat belts.” As he maneuvered the Caprice to block the truck, the door started back down. A shadow dodged under it—one of the tac cops.
Fuego was out of the car before Thinnes could figure out what he was doing. Caleb was right behind. The doctor made it under the door by ducking; Fuego dived under in a forward roll.
“Shit!” Thinnes pounded the steering wheel in frustration, then reached for the radio to bring their backup up to speed. He turned off the car and got out. A beat car pulled up with all its lights flashing.
Caleb didn’t slow to think what he was doing until the overhead door cut them off from Thinnes. It cut off all the light, too. He didn’t want to consider why he’d done it.
He heard Fuego yell, “What the hell are you doing?” Then there was an explosion of gunfire, shockingly loud in the enclosed space. For a moment the muzzle flashes were the only light—Limardi firing from the dock, Fuego and the tac cop firing back. Caleb tried to count the shots. Limardi was firing wildly, the cops returning one shot for three. He heard a gasp, and an unfamiliar voice cried, “I’m hit.” He heard the body fall. Then there was the odor of fuel oil and the deafening scratch of a flare igniting. A neon-red glow blossomed, throwing Limardi’s face into infernal relief. Then the flare arced overhead, reflected from a growing pool of diesel…
“Shots fired! Officer needs assistance!”
“Holy shit! Somebody started a fire!”
No time to think. Thinnes started the Caprice and aimed for the door next to the one with the truck behind it. What’s behind door number two?
Firelight burst into being the instant the flare hit the fuel oil. Almost simultaneously, the truck lights came on. Someone dropped out of the driver’s side. It was too fast, and the flames too frightening for more than
an impression: the loading dock with fifty-five-gallon drums; the trickle and splash of leaking fuel oil; liquid fire racing across the floor, under the truck, reflecting in the liquid before igniting it; a man lying just beyond the flaming pool; a HAZMAT placard with the word EXPLOSIVES; Fuego dragging the injured man in the flickering light; and Limardi, gun at his side, standing transfixed by the fire, eyes reflecting it.
Fuego’s movement caught him, and he raised the gun. Caleb shouted. The gun pointed his way. He dived behind the truck, heard the explosion of the shot, the thunk when it hit. A fire alarm sounded. Smoke seemed to be settling down like black fog, meeting the dancing orange flames and inky rising soot. Caleb peered around the truck and saw Limardi fire again, heard the metallic snap of a misfire.
Limardi threw the gun at Fuego and turned to the door behind him on the dock. He went through it, slammed it shut.
Smoke settled beneath the ceiling to waist height. Caleb dropped to his knees. The very air was burning. There was a beast of fire hunting beneath the truck, sniffing the explosives. Fuego screamed, “Doctor!” The only way out was blocked by fire.
The way out.
Caleb squatted down and took a breath. And ran.
Déjà vu. Pain. Heat. A dark form striking him to the ground, rolling him.
Thinnes had to hit the door twice to break it.
Then salvation! The wall—no it was an overhead door—split as the front of a car broke through. Smoke and fire rushed out. Men came rushing in.
Beat coppers climbed into the breach before Thinnes could even back the car away. Fuego came staggering out, bent over, heaving for breath. Someone shoved a body through the breach and shouted. Thinnes jammed the car into park and ran to pull the tac cop free. A beat cop dodged out after him, singed and soot-black. Then Caleb came tumbling after, then the beat cop’s partner.
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