Through the Flames Page 9

  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.’ ”

  “Perfect,” Judd said. “Talia tells us LeRoy will be home late morning. I’ll let you know when to expect him.”

  At eleven-thirty the four kids finished a prayer meeting, piled into Judd’s minivan, and drove to Ryan’s house. The plan was to call LeRoy from there, just in case he grew suspicious and tried to trace the call.

  Ryan let them in, and he and Lionel and Judd sat quietly while Vicki dialed. She threw on a very adult-sounding voice. Cornelius Grey answered the phone.

  “Mr. Grey, this is Maria Diablo from the law offices of Thomas Fogarty in Chicago. Mr. Fogarty is representing the
insurance company handling the settlements in the destruction by fire of your apartment building last week.”

  “Yeah, what do we get?”

  “Well, sir, I’m not at liberty to discuss the amount over the phone, but I can tell you it is substantial. Unfortunately, the payout must go to the payer of the rent over the last several months, and our records indicate that it has not been you.”

  “No, the rent’s been paid lately by a friend of mine, helpin’ me out. Name is LeRoy Banks.”

  “Would I be able to speak to him?”

  “Sure!”

  Judd and the others heard Cornelius Grey quickly filling in LeRoy on their huge stroke of luck. “Let me have that phone,” LeRoy said, clearly doubtful.

  “Who is this?” he demanded.

  Vicki went through the same routine with him, in its entirety, just the way Judd had scripted it. Rather than let LeRoy build on his doubts, she made the prize a little harder to get.

  “Of course, sir, we would not be able to issue a check of this magnitude unless you were able to prove to us that you are the same LeRoy Banks who has been paying the rent on Cornelius Grey’s apartment.”

  “Oh, I’ll be able to prove it all right. What time did you say Mr. Fogarty could see me?”

  On the way back to Judd’s house, Lionel and Ryan congratulated Judd for his idea and Vicki for her performance. When they arrived, Judd went to call Sergeant Fogarty to fill him in on how things went. Not only did he want to tell Fogarty when to expect to see LeRoy Banks and Cornelius Grey, but he also wanted to beg to be there himself to see the big arrest. It was only fair that Vicki be allowed to be there too, but he couldn’t imagine the Chicago Police Department risking having civilians so close to what could become a dangerous situation.

  Still, he would ask. He wanted above anything to see the look on LeRoy’s face when he found out he was not getting a check but rather getting arrested for murder. When he reached for the phone, however, it rang.

  “Are you watching channel nine?” Bruce Barnes asked Judd.

  “No, we’re in the middle of—”

  “Turn on nine,” Bruce insisted. “I’ve got a hunch the guy they’re interviewing could be the one we’re supposed to watch out for.”

  “You mean the Antichrist?” Judd asked, grabbing the remote control. He wanted to tell Bruce the story of the sting, but that would have to wait until he talked to Fogarty.

  He thanked Bruce and turned on the television, watching in fascination. “You’d better call the sergeant,” Vicki suggested.

  “Yeah!” he said, turning down the volume and dialing the number.

  Fogarty was ecstatic, and he wasn’t closed to the idea of Judd and Vicki being there when it all happened. “We have a one-way mirror at the back where my backups will be. That’s where they’ll come from to surprise these two when I give the signal. I think if you two agree to stay there until it’s all over, you could have a great view and stay safe. I think it’d be too risky to have your young friend there, and we don’t want the murder victim’s nephew in the neighborhood at all that day, just in case.”

  “But Vicki and I can come, really?”

  “Sure. Just be sure you’re an hour early and park far away.”

  Judd couldn’t wait. As he hung up he looked at his watch and decided he and Vicki would have to leave within the hour to be downtown in time to be in place. He turned up the TV and watched more of the interview with the man Bruce now suspected could be the Antichrist.

  Boy, would he and Bruce have a lot to talk about the next time they got together!

  About the Authors

  Jerry B. Jenkins (www.jerryjenkins.com) is the writer of the Left Behind series. He owns the Jerry B. Jenkins Christian Writers Guild, an organization dedicated to mentoring aspiring authors. Former vice president for publishing for the Moody Bible Institute of Chicago, he also served many years as editor of Moody magazine and is now Moody’s writer-at-large.

  His writing has appeared in publications as varied as Reader’s Digest, Parade, Guideposts, in-flight magazines, and dozens of other periodicals. Jenkins’s biographies include books with Billy Graham, Hank Aaron, Bill Gaither, Luis Palau, Walter Payton, Orel Hershiser, and Nolan Ryan, among many others. His books appear regularly on the New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and Publishers Weekly best seller lists.

  Jerry is also the writer of the nationally syndicated sports story comic strip Gil Thorp, distributed to newspapers across the United States by Tribune Media Services.

  Jerry and his wife, Dianna, live in Colorado and have three grown sons.

  Dr. Tim LaHaye (www.timlahaye.com), who conceived the idea of fictionalizing an account of the Rapture and the Tribulation, is a noted author, minister, and nationally recognized speaker on Bible prophecy. He is the founder of both Tim LaHaye Ministries and The PreTrib Research Center. He also recently cofounded the Tim LaHaye School of Prophecy at Liberty University. Presently Dr. LaHaye speaks at many of the major Bible prophecy conferences in the U.S. and Canada, where his current prophecy books are very popular.

  Dr. LaHaye holds a doctor of ministry degree from Western Theological Seminary and a doctor of literature degree from Liberty University. For twenty-five years he pastored one of the nation’s outstanding churches in San Diego, which grew to three locations. It was during that time that he founded two accredited Christian high schools, a Christian school system of ten schools, and Christian Heritage College.

  Dr. LaHaye has written over forty books that have been published in more than thirty languages. He has written books on a wide variety of subjects, such as family life, temperaments, and Bible prophecy. His current fiction works, the Left Behind series, written with Jerry B. Jenkins, continue to appear on the best seller lists of the Christian Booksellers Association, Publishers Weekly, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and the New York Times.

  He is the father of four grown children and grandfather of nine. Snow skiing, waterskiing, motorcycling, golfing, vacationing with family, and jogging are among his leisure activities.