Through the Flames (10 page)

“Yeah. Here’s what a person might do to get them to move on. . . .”

For the next hour, Judd took notes. Tom Fogarty told story after story of pranks, ruses, and tricks that had worked on stubborn cases. His favorite was the time the police sent notices to several known felons, informing them they had won expensive gifts, prizes, and trips in a special sweepstakes. All they had to do was come to the ballroom of a swanky downtown hotel to claim them. About 80 percent of the targets of the sting showed up and, at the appropriate and surprising instant, were arrested on their outstanding warrants.

That wasn’t something Judd and his friends could pull off without a lot of money and help, but several others of Fogarty’s suggestions seemed right up their alley.

I
T FELL
to Judd, who believed he was the only one of the four kids who had never been seen by LeRoy Banks, to keep an eye on Lionel’s house. Fortunately, his mother’s minivan was also in the garage, and he was able to use that and not risk LeRoy recognizing the car that had backed into his brown and yellow monstrosity a few nights before.

The first couple of days Judd tooled around the neighborhood, occasionally passing Lionel’s house. The only thing he noticed was that nothing seemed to be going on. He saw neither the old van nor the roadster Lionel had told him about. Maybe LeRoy was lying low for a while, more concerned about keeping out of sight than trying to eliminate the one person who could implicate him in the arson and murders: Lionel.

Finally, though, Judd caught a break. He saw the old brown and yellow van, only it didn’t look so old anymore, and it wasn’t brown and yellow. It had been spruced up, the rust spots filled and the whole thing painted a muted cream. It looked pretty good. Judd checked in with Sergeant Fogarty, who found out that LeRoy had ordered new plates too. They were for an off-white van in Talia Grey’s name, but Fogarty said the van had the same vehicle ID number as LeRoy’s. What had not changed, however, were all the city stickers on the far right side of the front windshield. That was the one thing Judd remembered from the van that flashed so close to him in the alley the weekend before. At first all he had seen were the headlights. At the last moment that windshield came into view for the shortest instant, and Judd remembered wondering where in the world they would put another sticker.

When he saw the “new” van, it all came back to him. Someone had had the nerve to park the thing right in front of Lionel’s house, as usual. Eventually they would have to get a Mount Prospect city sticker. On the other hand, Judd knew, that would be the last priority of the local police department. If the Chicago PD didn’t even care to investigate suspicious deaths in the black community, Mount Prospect might let a few delinquent city stickers slide during a season of international chaos.

Judd could only wonder what type of trouble Talia had been in with LeRoy when LeRoy found out she had borrowed his roadster and taken Lionel, of all people, to see André. Clearly, it seemed LeRoy was intent on doing away with anyone who knew anything about the first murder. That likely included Lionel.

Judd hadn’t seen Talia while staking out the area, but one day something showed up on the front porch that made Judd squint, shake his head, and wonder. It was a duffel bag with Lionel’s name on it, plain as day. Someone had set it on the top step. To normal passersby, perhaps it wouldn’t even catch their attention. But to Judd, and to anyone who knew Lionel and his situation, this seemed some kind of a signal.

Judd drove to a nearby elementary school, closed since the disappearances, and parked in the deserted staff lot. He then walked idly through the neighborhood, passing Lionel’s house on the other side of the street. He still had seen no occupants of the home in all the time he had spent spying on it, but that bag and that repainted van meant someone had to be there.

That evening he mentioned the bag to Lionel.

“That’s the bag I used to take on my sports and Y trips,” he said. “I thought it was stuffed way deep in my closet. I have no idea what it means. I want to see it.”

“I suppose if we go at night we’ll be safe,” Judd said. “Anybody else want to go?”

“Not me,” Ryan said.

“I thought you were getting brave on us all of a sudden,” Lionel said. “Don’t fall back to being a chicken now.”

“I’m not! But I don’t care if I never get chased by a van again—I don’t care what color it is—as long as I live.”

“I’m not afraid of the van,” Lionel said. “But I wouldn’t want to run into LeRoy right now.”

“I want to go,” Vicki said, “but I want to stay out of sight until we know no one is watching us.”

“Promise,” Judd said. “That’ll go for you too, Lionel.”

“Yeah, I guess I’d be pretty conspicuous in my own neighborhood when everyone knows I don’t live there anymore.”

“I’m stayin’ here,” Ryan repeated.

“It’s all right with me,” Judd said. “As long as you think you’ll be all right alone.”

“I’ll feel safer here. Anyway, like I said, I’m not a chicken anymore. I just don’t want to push my luck too far with those murderers.”

“I can’t blame you,” Judd said. “Let’s go.”

Judd left Ryan with the car phone number, just in case. Several minutes later, with Vicki ducking down in the front passenger seat and Lionel lying out of sight across the backseat of the minivan, Judd drove past Lionel’s house. “What do you see?” Lionel wanted to know.

“Nothing. Not a thing. I mean nothing on the porch anyway. The cream van is out front, and there’s a light on in a back room.”

“That’s where Ryan said he heard Talia talking on the phone the other day,” Lionel said. “I wonder how she feels about André.”

“Wait,” Judd said. “I just saw someone! It’s a woman, and she’s coming from that back room into the hall. The light just went out in that room and on in the hall.”

“Park somewhere!” Lionel said. “I want to see if it’s Talia.”

Judd pulled off to the side, several houses past Lionel’s. “You see anybody on the street?” Lionel asked. “Can I sit up?”

“Yeah, but don’t do anything stupid.”

Lionel sat up. “What, like jumping out of the car and telling everyone in the neighborhood I’ve come home? Whoa! I can’t see anything from here. Back up closer to my house.”

“I don’t think that’s smart,” Judd said. “We’re going to start drawing attention to ourselves if we do a lot of moving back and forth.”

“Then I’m going to sneak up closer and get a look through the window.”

“No you’re not!” Vicki said, sitting up herself. “We came close enough to losing you the other night. What if LeRoy or Cornelius or whatever his name is in there?”

“Why don’t we find out?” Lionel said.

“Not by going up to the house!” Judd said.

“Let’s call ’em,” Lionel said.

Judd and Vicki looked at each other. “We need to keep this phone open for Ryan,” Judd said.

“Ryan will be fine for a few minutes,” Vicki said. “No one there will recognize my voice. How about I call?”

“Do it!” Lionel said.

Judd showed her how to dial.

“What if they have caller ID?” Vicki said.

“They don’t,” Lionel said. “It’s my phone, and we don’t have it. Unless they added it, and why would they?”

“Even if they do, it’s going to trace to this mobile phone,” Judd said. “And there’s no way the mobile phone company will give out any information on the number. Even if they did, it’s listed under my mom’s name. Those guys wouldn’t have a clue.”

“Shh!” Vicki said. “It’s ringing.”

Judd told her to leave the phone in the cradle so the speakerphone would come on. A female voice answered.

“Who am I speaking to?” Vicki asked.

“Who’s askin’?”

“That’s Talia!” Lionel mouthed.

“A friend,” Vicki said.

“A friend of who?”

“André.”

“Oh, oh!” Talia wailed. “Who is this? You know he’s dead, don’t you? Started a fire, shot himself, and burned himself up in a fire the other night.”

“Who told you that?” Vicki said.

“A friend of his.”

“The same friend who gave him the gasoline?”

“What’re you talking about? Who is this?”

“Someone who knows you were with André before he died.”

Silence.

“Are you there, Talia?”

“How do you know my name?”

“I told you. I’m a friend. A friend of a friend. A friend you’ve been looking for and trying to communicate with.”

“I’m going to hang up now.”

“Wait! Don’t! Don’t you want to talk to Lionel?”

“Yes! Put him on.”

“I’m here, Talia. What’d you put my duffel bag out for?”

“You saw that? Oh, thank God! Ooh, boy, I got in trouble for that. Connie come flyin’ in here in LeRoy’s roadster and saw that bag before I got a chance to get rid of it, and he told LeRoy. My own brother, tellin’ on me. LeRoy liked to kill me.”

“The way he did André.”

“LeRoy didn’t kill André!”

“’Course he did, Talia. You were there with me. You know André didn’t have any five gallons of gas. And if he wanted to kill himself, why did he have to set a fire?”

“LeRoy went to see him later that night, Lionel. Said he found him shot and his place burning.”

“It’s a lie and you know it. LeRoy did it, don’t you see? My friend and I heard a shot and an explosion. We saw the fire and went back. LeRoy almost ran us over in the van. Why do you think he got it painted? Huh? My friend and I dragged André out of there, but it was too late. LeRoy shot him in the neck, blew open some kind of artery—”

“Carotid,” Judd whispered.

“Yeah, the carotid artery.”

“I don’t want to hear this.”

“’Course you don’t. Truth hurts. You loved André. I know you did. I loved him too. That’s why we have to face the truth.”

Judd and the others heard Talia crying. “Why did you want me to see my duffel bag?” Lionel asked.

“I just wanted you not to come around here for a while. LeRoy’s been blamin’ you for André shootin’ himself. Says it must’ve been something you said when you saw him. He knew I wouldn’t upset André, but he was mad at me for goin’ anyway, and especially for taking you.”

“You’ve got to get away from LeRoy,” Lionel said. “He’s bad news.”

“I know,” she said. “You know what LeRoy wants to do now? He wants to see if there’s any insurance on Connie’s apartment that burned, or any life insurance on André.”

“You’re kidding.”

“It’s true. They’re acting all sad about André and all, but LeRoy and Connie both are talking about checking into some kind of insurance payoff.”

“That’s sick. Anyway, André never had any life insurance, as far as I knew.”

“LeRoy thought he might have had some through his work, you know, before he got laid off from the city.”

“Why didn’t he try to get that when it looked like André had killed himself before?”

“He was going to. Said he was gonna split it with André and the rest of us. But then he found out you were nosing around and he figured you told somebody that that wasn’t André’s body.”

“I didn’t.”

“I know. But he didn’t know that then. But that was for sure André the other night, wasn’t it?”

“For sure.”

“So, LeRoy’s going after the money.”

“How’s he going to do that?”

“Call the landlord I guess. Or the city about the life insurance.”

“Sick.”

“I know. Anyway, stay away from here for a while. I’m sure glad you saw my message. And I sure hope you’re wrong about LeRoy.”

Lionel shook his head and said his good-byes. Judd called Sergeant Fogarty on the way home. There had to be a way to use LeRoy Banks’ greed against himself.

“I have an idea,” Judd told Fogarty. “I want to come downtown and tell you about it.”

“I’ll meet you halfway,” Fogarty said, and he set the meeting at an all-night restaurant in Des Plaines.

By the end of their meeting, it was clear to Judd that Fogarty liked what he heard. “I took you for a sharp kid,” the cop said, “but who knew you had a mind like that? Let’s hope you always use it for the right side of the law.”

“Oh, I will,” Judd said. They laid their plans, and on the way back home to Mount Prospect, Judd smiled at the thought that, just a few weeks before, he was using for his own gain the brain Tom Fogarty admired so much.

The next day, while Judd coached Vicki on what to say over the phone, he knew what Tom Fogarty was doing. After assuring his bosses that he would deliver a known killer right into their hands within a block of the precinct station house, Tom would run a few errands. He would rent a storefront office, move in some rented furniture, have his name painted on the window, “Thomas M. Fogarty, Attorney at Law,” and would wait there for one LeRoy Banks to present himself.

When Judd got the call from Sergeant Fogarty that everything was in place, the cop told him of his own bit of creativity. “I set up a messy secretary’s desk all covered with work and a cardboard sign that says, ‘In the law library. Back in 30 minutes.’ ”