Fire Season (14 page)

“Right,” Coffin said.

“So how much does a guy like that make, would you say?”

Coffin shrugged. “Maybe a hundred—hundred fifty, tops.”

“A hundred fifty grand a year, but he's got a trophy house on the bay and a Ferrari convertible. How does a guy pay for all that?”

“Powerball?” Coffin said. “Inheritance?”

“Sure, Powerball. Good one, Coffin.”

“Did you see any car keys in the house?”

Willoughby raised his eyebrows. “You thinkin' about taking a spin?”

“I was wondering what's in the Lexus's trunk,” Coffin said. He tried the door, aimed his flashlight in the window. “But it's locked up.”

“Shouldn't be too hard to find the keys, if we had some light.”

“It can wait. Whatever's in there isn't going anywhere.”

“Ha.” Willoughby grunted. “That's for damn sure.”

*   *   *

A set of broad wooden steps led up to the garage's second floor. In recent years, as the housing bubble swelled and it seemed that the supply of well-heeled renters was limitless, the typical garage apartment had evolved from a small, modestly appointed living space into a miniature luxury vacation home, complete with gourmet kitchen, master suite, and a Jacuzzi overlooking Cape Cod Bay. That's what Coffin was expecting as he climbed the stairs—something gleaming, with a marble-tiled master bath and a view to die for.

The door at the top of the stairs was slightly ajar. Willoughby and Coffin exchanged looks—Coffin touching a finger to his lips. Willoughby took a deep breath, then pushed the door open and swept the room with his flashlight, while Coffin stepped forward with the shotgun mounted, its barrel following the spot of light around the room.

“Whaddya know,” said Willoughby. “It's a wood shop. Must be where the ducks came from.”

He was right—instead of a lucrative summer rental property, Branstool had built himself a deluxe wood shop. It was equipped with woodworking tools of all sorts: there was a lathe, a drill press, a jigsaw, a table saw, a radial arm saw, racks of chisels, screwdrivers, mallets, a belt sander, what might have been a computer-controlled carving machine (Coffin's knowledge of woodworking began and ended with his eighth grade wood shop class), routers, drills, planers—it all looked like top-of-the-line stuff, Coffin thought, new or practically new.

Coffin pointed. “Put the light back on the radial arm saw,” he said. “I saw something over there.”

Willoughby panned the light slowly back to the big, table-mounted saw. “Oh, shit,” he said. “I thought it was just shadows. Son of a bitch.”

It was true, Coffin thought. In the pale beam of Willoughby's flashlight, all that blood did look like shadows—but of course there was too much of it. Dried or drying blood was everywhere: pooled on the floor, spattered in a dark, indefinite strip across the ceiling. Blood on the saw—the blade, the steel legs, the saw bed. Blood on the lathe and the drill press, six feet away. Blood on the walls, the cabinetry, the pegboard loaded with hand tools, the workbench. More blood, Coffin thought, than you'd think a person could possibly contain.

Willoughby cleared his throat softly. “You said they cut off his head, right?”

“Yep.”

“So they brought him in here and did it with the radial arm.”

“Looks that way.”

Willoughby whistled a low note. “Holy
shit,
” he said. “These are some bad boys we're talkin' about.”

For a moment neither of them said anything. The flashlight quivered slightly in Willoughby's hand. “You think he was still alive,” he said, “when they, uh—”

“I think so,” Coffin said.

Willoughby nodded. “I guess you wouldn't get spurting blood on the ceiling if he was already dead. Although that could be mostly tissue up there. Probably the Crime Scene Services boys can tell us.”

Coffin was sweating. His head felt light, inflated—like a balloon that might float away. He looked at Willoughby. “I need some air. Better get hold of your dispatcher, have her give Mancini a call.”

“Mancini,” Willoughby said. He was still staring at the radial arm saw.

“Come on,” Coffin said. “Let's go find the breaker box and then see if we can't dig up Branstool's car keys.”

“Son of a bitch,” Willoughby said. “This is
my
homicide, isn't it?”

“Yep. Unless all that blood came out of something other than a person.”

“Son of a bitch,” Willoughby said. “Son. Of. A.
Bitch
.”

 

Chapter 13

It took ten minutes to find the breaker box—it was in the furnace room, which was behind the laundry room, which was off the exercise room, which was equipped with a treadmill, Nautilus machines, and a big flat-screen TV. Coffin had retrieved two pairs of latex gloves from the box in the Crown Vic: one for him, one for Willoughby.

The breaker box's metal door was standing open: Coffin flipped the main switch and the house seemed to come to life—the furnace kicked on, the chest freezer and basement fridge hummed into action.

“Why do you think they shut off the juice?” Willoughby said.

“Don't know,” Coffin said. “They did it after they killed Branstool, though.”

Willoughby snapped his gloved fingers; they made a soft, rubbery pop. “Right—the saw. Weird.”

“They flipped a breaker where we found his head, too, but not the main—just one circuit.”

“Go figure,” Willoughby said. “Just fuckin' with the cops, maybe.”

“Could be,” Coffin said. “Could be they wanted to disable the alarm system or any surveillance cameras that might be around. Just a guess.”

They found the car keys dangling from the beak of a meticulously painted, life-sized wooden Canada goose that crouched on a stand in the foyer. Coffin wondered how he'd missed them earlier—he'd passed through the foyer three times in the dark. Funny what you saw and didn't see when the only light was a flashlight's narrow beam.

When Coffin and Willoughby emerged from Branstool's house for the second time, they found Tony's blue Chevy pickup truck idling in the driveway. Tony sat in the passenger seat, smoking a cigarette. Doris, Tony's wife, waited beside the truck, arms crossed over her breasts. She had always seemed unhappy to Coffin: a small, sour, cylindrical woman who managed to walk without any apparent movement of her hips. Coffin had wondered more than once how she put up with Tony's goofiness—she was a woman with no apparent sense of humor.
And now this,
he thought.

“Oh, Frankie,” she said. “Thank God. Thank freaking God
you
found him, and not some criminal.”

“Criminal? I'd be more worried about the cops picking him up,” Coffin said. “How's he doing?”

Doris lowered her voice. “Not good, Frankie. I don't know what to do here. I mean, he's crazy, right?
Completely
crazy. He thinks he was abducted, Frankie. By aliens.”

“Uh-oh.”

“I know, right? I mean, what do you say to a man who says he was abducted by
aliens
, Frankie? I feel like I'm married to a stranger all of a sudden.”

The St. Mary's fire wasn't visible from Branstool's driveway, but Coffin could see its deep orange glow reflected on the cloud cover. He imagined the flames rising a hundred feet into the sky, and for a moment wanted very much to go back and watch St. Mary's burn. The gathering fog smelled like smoke.

“Well,” he said, “I guess the first thing I'd do would be to have him see a doctor—try to rule out anything physical. You know—seizure, stroke, early Alzheimer's. Then get a referral.”

“To a shrink, you mean?”

Coffin nodded.

Doris looked down at the ground. “Well, I guess that makes sense.” She paused. “Frankie?”

“Doris, I've got to get back to work here.”

“Frankie, can you talk to him? He loves you. You're his oldest friend.”

“Doris—”

“Frankie, please? He's not going to go see some doctor, you know that.”

Coffin pursed is lips. “Yeah,” he said. “You're probably right. But talking to me isn't going to help him, either.”

“Just try, Frankie.”

“Okay.” Coffin took a deep breath, let it out. “I've got to finish up out here. Then I'm going home and get some sleep. How's tomorrow? I'll come out for breakfast.”

“You're a good man, Frankie,” Doris said, climbing into Tony's truck. “No matter what people say.”

*   *   *

To Coffin's considerable relief, the trunks and interiors of both cars were empty. No decapitated bodies, not so much as a lost shoe or stray button to indicate that the cars had been involved in any way. Still, Coffin knew, the state police would impound the Ferrari as evidence.

Outside, the paling sky smelled like wood ash. The glow over Provincetown had dimmed: It was possible that the firefighters had gotten the upper hand, Coffin thought, though it seemed more likely that the church had simply burned to the ground and now the fire was running out of fuel. The firefighters would be watching the neighboring structures now, keeping an eye on the drift of burning embers in the wind. More than anything, Coffin wanted to go home and sleep for a day, or a week, or however long it would take until all the fires finally stopped burning.

*   *   *

When Coffin pulled up outside his house it was almost 5:00
A.M.
Thick fog had settled over Coffin's neighborhood—you could hardly make out the gravestones in the cemetery a hundred yards away. It was still mostly dark, though the few birds brave enough to stick around for the New England fall were waking up, making their small sounds from the red cedars that separated Coffin's house from Mrs. Prothero's place next door.

Coffin climbed out of the Crown Vic, stepped into his scruffy, postage-stamp yard, and stopped in his tracks. Someone was sitting on his screen porch. The cat funk of marijuana smoke hung in the air.

“Isn't it a little early in the day for that?” Coffin said.

“Early, late—it's all in how you look at it,” his uncle Rudy said.

Coffin stepped onto the screen porch. His uncle was parked in one of the decomposing wicker chairs. Loverboy was swinging slowly back and forth in the porch glider. Its chains creaked ominously.

“Why is it,” Coffin said, “that you always show up at the worst possible times, but when I want you I can never find you?”

“Kind of like a cop,” Loverboy said.

“You should always fuck with people's expectations,” Rudy said. “It's how you build a mythology, Frankie.” He took a long hit from the joint he was holding, then pinched it out between his thumb and forefinger and pocketed the roach. “I figured I'd save you the trouble of looking for me. Figured you'd have some questions.”

Coffin leaned his back against the wall. He was utterly exhausted—if he sat down, he wouldn't be able to get back up. He felt a tight little ache behind his eyes; his ears were ringing faintly. “Okay,” Coffin said. “Tell me about Branstool. Who did him?”

“That's the thing,” Rudy said. “I don't know. When I said I'd take care of him, I didn't mean I was gonna have him whacked. That was just a crazy coincidence.”

“Unbelievable,” Loverboy said, shaking his lion-sized head.

“Okay,” Coffin said. “Let's go with that for now. So what
did
you mean?”

“You dig into any life, Frankie, you're gonna find some dirt. Sometimes it's hidden, sometimes it's real close to the surface. Branstool's was lying around in plain view, pretty much.”

“Like what?”

“Well, when you suspect somebody's making money illegally, where do you look first?”

“Bank records.”

Rudy nodded. “Bingo.”

“How'd you get his bank records?”

Rudy waved a hand. “It's a long story. Boring. You look tired—let's just cut to the chase. Loverboy?”

The big Tongan stopped swinging for a moment. “He had an interesting deposit history. Eight thousand here, nine thousand there. Sometimes once or twice a month, sometimes more than that. Never quite ten thousand, though. It was a dead giveaway.”

“Over ten K, the bank has to report it,” Rudy said.

“Of course,” Coffin said. “So where was the money coming from?”

“More than one place, probably,” Rudy said. “Did you know there's a big-time audit underway at Valley View?”

Coffin shook his head. “He was skimming? What a weasel.”

“Mostly laundering,” Loverboy said. “There were no cash deposits to his account. It was all checks from the nursing home for ‘expenses.'”

“So what will the nursing home auditors find?”

“They'll find a history of lots and lots of cash deposits to some side account—some little slush fund started by Branstool. It'll be called something like the ‘bingo account,' or the ‘cash donations' account. And lots of checks in that eight or nine K range written by Branstool to Branstool. So the books would always balance, more or less, and the main accounts would be untouched. Not a bad system, but it assumes nobody's paying attention.”

“Who was paying attention?” Coffin said.

“I've been watching that little weasel for years,” Rudy said, pointing a thumb at his chest. “In the business world, Frankie, nothing's more valuable than information.”

“So you tipped the auditors?”

Rudy stood. “You should see Loverboy in a suit. He's very daunting.”

“Oh my God,” Coffin said. “You've been posing as state auditors?”

“You're not asking the big question,” Rudy said. “You're getting a little slow in your old age.”

Coffin yawned, closed his eyes. “Okay, the big question: Whose money was Branstool laundering?”