Fire Season (3 page)

“What color hoodie?”

“Gray.”

“What about the ball cap? Did it have a logo or anything?”

Szabo thought for a few seconds, then shook his head. “I didn't notice. It was dark. Black or navy blue.”

“Facial hair, tattoos you could see?”

“I don't think so. No.”

“Didn't wait for change, so he paid with cash.”

“Right.”

“You didn't see anybody outside, hanging around the Dumpster?”

Szabo held up the book again. “No.”

“See or hear anything unusual—anything we should know about?”

Szabo frowned and shook his head again. “Sorry,” he said. “Not much help, right?”

Coffin tapped the cover of Szabo's book. “I didn't know Jung wrote about UFOs,” he said. “He was the archetypes guy, right?”

“Archetypes, collective unconscious, complexes—all Jung. He was one of the fathers of modern psychiatry.”

“So why UFOs?”

“Jung wrote the book during the big UFO craze in 1950s,” Szabo said. “Thousands of UFO sightings all over the world. Front page stories in newspapers, everything. People freaking the fuck out. Jung said there's two possibilities.”

Coffin raised an eyebrow. “Weather balloons? Swamp gas?”

“First possibility is they're real—there's hundreds of flying saucers buzzing around and people are seeing exactly what they think they see. Second possibility is people
want
them to be real, and so anything they see in the sky that seems strange is alien spacecraft.”

Coffin grinned. “So that second thing, then.”

“Probably.” Szabo shrugged. “But interesting question is why? Why, all of a sudden after the end of World War II, thousands of people want flying saucers to come to Earth from outer space?”

Coffin rubbed his chin. “Because God was dead. After World War II, with all the carnage, people couldn't believe in a merciful God. So they believed in little green men instead.”

“That's what Jung thinks,” Szabo said. “Me, I don't know. Ever seen the Herring Cove lights?”

The Herring Cove lights were an occasional local phenomenon. On clear nights, maybe two or three times a year, strange clusters of white lights seemed to float above Herring Cove beach, moving slowly, apparently at random. “Sure,” Coffin said. “We get calls about them sometimes, so I finally drove out there to see for myself.”

“And?”

“We tell people it's commercial air traffic, backed up from Logan. The lights are the planes' headlights.”

“That's what you tell people. But what do you
think?
”

Coffin shrugged. “Didn't look like planes to me,” he said. He paused. “But that's what I
wanted
it to be.”

 

Chapter 4

Coffin parked the big, unmarked Crown Victoria in front of his house and climbed out. The Crown Vic was another perk of the acting police chief's job: in his usual role as Provincetown's only police detective he mostly drove his own car, a cantankerous 1984 Ford Fiesta. Coffin hated the Fiesta: its floorboards were rusting out, its steering wandered, its clutch slipped, its wipers didn't wipe, and its engine gagged and farted on even the slightest incline. He would have enjoyed shooting it, or setting it on fire, or driving it into the ocean—but between the taxes on the house, technically his mother's, and the cost of her nursing home care, it was the best car he could afford.

The house was a small, two-story Cape Cod–style, in Provincetown's old working-class neighborhood, down the hill from the inland side of Bradford Street, at the edge of the town cemetery. In Coffin's neighborhood the streets were narrow, the houses packed close together. His house had no water view; it looked out on the weathered cedar shingles of the houses next door, their tiny gardens and postage-stamp yards. If you leaned a bit as you looked out of his bedroom window, you could see Valley View Nursing Home, where his mother lived.

The waterfront homes along Commercial Street still sold in the millions, although they no longer sold as quickly as they had five or six years ago, and prices were down by half, maybe, from their peak during the height of the Bush-era real estate madness. Coffin knew he'd never be able to afford his own private water view unless he won the lottery: and if he did win the lottery, he thought, he'd be gone—quit his job, move someplace warm. Jamie, his girlfriend, had been talking about Tuscany, maybe going to cooking school. He shook his head. He didn't play the lottery—it was, as his uncle Rudy liked to say, a tax on stupid people—and Tuscany was a long way away from the damp fog of an October night in Provincetown.

Meanwhile, if he wanted to look at the water he could walk down to the town beach and stand at the high tide line, small waves sloshing, gulls giving him the stink eye. Meanwhile, it had started to rain.

*   *   *

Coffin stepped on to his screened porch, pushed open the front door. The house was full of light and music—Queen Latifah singing “I Put a Spell on You,” slow and soulful. The savory smell of roasting chicken drifted from the kitchen. Jamie lay curled on her side on the uncomfortable Victorian sofa, shoes kicked off, eyes closed. She was five months pregnant and very pretty. She was also very pale.

“Uh-oh,” Coffin said. “You okay?”

“Thought I was gonna barf,” Jamie said.

“What did it this time?”

“Ginger. I was slicing ginger, and the smell made me feel like I was about to hurl. Or pass out. Or both. I love ginger—it's so unfair.”

“Last time it was shrimp.”

“No, last time it was rhubarb. Time before that was shrimp. All things I love. What's next—ice cream?”

“That would be weird.” Coffin sat in one of his mother's strict straight-backed chairs. It still felt like his mother's house. The low ceilings and narrow doorways, the punitive antique furniture upholstered in wool and stuffed with horsehair, the unexpected taxidermy, including the big stuffed goat's head that leered down from above the mantel, yellow-eyed, dust in its long beard—it all seemed like a metaphor for her Alzheimer's, which was a disease of disorder and anachronism, of closed doors, blocked corridors. “Ice cream's in the cravings column,” Coffin said. “It would be a first if something went from the cravings column to the aversions column. Unprecedented.”

“Whatever,” Jamie said. She sat up. The color had returned to her face. “It's my sense of smell. It's turned up to eleven suddenly. You smell like cop car, for instance—like pine air freshener with piquant undertones of vinyl and adrenaline sweat.” She yawned. “Now I'm hungry again. Freaky.”

Coffin went to the kitchen, poured a glass of water from the Brita pitcher on the counter, and brought it back for Jamie. “Great. Me, too.”

“You're a nice man,” she said, sipping the water. “I never see you anymore, but you're a nice man.”

Coffin made a face. “Paperwork. Budgets. Requisitions. Payroll. Blah. Being police chief sucks.”

“Except for the office,” Jamie said. “And the car.”

“And the paycheck. It's gone up since last time I was chief.”

“That's my man,” Jamie said, patting her belly. “Bringing home the bacon for little fatso here. Mmm, bacon.”

Back in the kitchen, Coffin opened the liquor cabinet and took down the bottle of Famous Grouse. “Time for a predinner beverage,” he said. He dropped a couple of ice cubes into a highball glass and poured a big double.

“Wow,” Jamie said.

Coffin sipped. “I'm drinking for two,” he said. “Actually not the most boring day ever, paperwork notwithstanding.”

“No?”

“Dumpster fire over at Rossi's. Apparently it was exciting for a little while. The fire and rescue boys put it out before I got there, though.”

“Another one? Was it a prank, like last week?”

“Skillings thinks so. Whoever did it was pretty bold. Or maybe just dumb. Could have easily been spotted from the road, or inside the store.”

“Bold and dumb—sounds like kids.”

Coffin shrugged. “Probably.”

Jamie opened the oven to check on the roasting chicken. From the back she looked the same as ever—a view Coffin had always enjoyed—but from the side she was definitely showing. “‘Notwithstanding' isn't a word, you know,” she said.

“How can it not be a word if we both just used it?”

Jamie poked the chicken with a long fork, then picked off a bit of white meat and ate it. “It just isn't. Look it up—it won't be there.”

“If it's not a word, what is it?”

“A nonword.” Jamie grinned at Coffin. “Don't argue with the pregnant lady.”

“Should I kiss her instead?”

“Yes, but I'm warning you—I have zero apparent sex drive. My need for you in that department is evidently over. Sorry!”

Coffin kissed her anyway. She responded with brief enthusiasm, but it was true—the old zero-to-sixty acceleration wasn't there.

Jamie took a step back, picked another bit of breast meat and chewed it, eyes narrowed.

Coffin sipped his drink. “So what's for dinner besides chicken?”

“You want something besides chicken, you're on your own.”

Coffin looked at the cutting board. Jamie had chopped a clove of garlic, and started to slice a small chunk of ginger. A bag of raw spinach sat on the counter, and a slick of olive oil was beginning to smoke in a wok on the stove. “Looks like you were doing something with spinach, garlic, and ginger.”

“Sautéing. About to. Prenausea. Not so much anymore. I don't even want to look at that damn ginger right now—I have my suspicions about the spinach, too.”

“Okay,” Coffin said. “How about some rice? Should I make some rice?”

“Feel free, but I'm not interested. I will, however, wrestle you for a chicken thigh.”

“Sounds good to me,” Coffin said.

Jamie kissed him on the cheek. “Hope springs eternal,” she said.

*   *   *

Later, Coffin lay asleep in the big four-poster his parents had slept in. Jamie lay beside him. The night was quiet—there was no sound except for a low wind outside, the slight patter of drizzle on the windowpanes.

“Fire,” Jamie said.

Coffin opened one eye, then closed it and went back to sleep.

Jamie reached out with a slender arm and whacked him loosely in the chest. “
Fire,
” she said, eyes closed. “The house is on fire.”

Coffin sat up and sniffed. “I don't think so.” He got out of bed, walked to the top of the stairs. He smelled nothing. The smoke alarm in the hall ceiling displayed its little “ready” light. Coffin padded back into the bedroom. “There's no fire. You must have dreamed it,” he said, but Jamie was sound asleep. Coffin climbed into bed, stretched out, and closed his eyes. He could feel his mother's stuffed owl staring at him from the top of the wardrobe, outrage in its glass eyes, ear tufts awry. Then, coming from the east, he heard the sound of sirens.

 

Chapter 5

The fire seemed larger than it was, but in Coffin's experience that was the way of fire. Leave the frying pan on the burner while you answer the phone, Coffin thought, come back to foot-high flames and feel the adrenaline rush that skydivers and mountain climbers risked their goofy necks for. Clap a lid down on the skillet and the fire's out, nothing to it—but still your heart's pounding and the hair on your arms is standing up like you've just been chased by a bear. And this was no skillet fire: the flames would have been visible from Truro, most likely, roaring twenty or thirty feet into the night sky, completely engulfing a garage-sized shed by the time Coffin got there. The shed was down a dirt track—just a path, really—on the east end, up the hill from Bradford Street, jumbled in among a clutter of summer cottages and artist's studios built back in the 1950s, where the western fork of Atkins Mayo Road petered out, maybe thirty yards from the nearest house. The fire crackled and popped like a small-caliber gun battle. Burning shingles and sheets of flaming tar paper rose in the column of flame and smoke, then wheeled off on the breeze, sailing toward town center like demonic kites.
Lucky it's raining
, Coffin thought,
or the whole town could go up
.

Walt Macy was there, and the fire and rescue boys with their shiny new truck. They were struggling with the big hose; the Italian pumper was acting up, revving and slowing, and every time the engine raced the hose bucked out of control—the fat stream of water firing over the shed and into the neighbor's garden, knocking over bird feeders and Adirondack chairs. The grass had been torn up by tires and boots, and the path was turning into a shallow river of cold, soupy mud. The rain fell, a morose drizzle.

Lola was there, too, and Coffin's cousin Tony—trying to keep a small knot of onlookers out of the way. Tony had surprised Coffin by staying on the force, despite all the money he'd made during the real estate boom, despite having inherited another small fortune—almost two million dollars—from his mother-in-law back in July.

“Not 'til my twenty years,” he'd said, when Coffin had asked him whether he planned to retire. “I've earned the full pension—I want every cent that's coming to me. Besides, what would I do all day?”

“What do you do all day now?” Coffin had said.

Tony had laughed. “Always the kidder, Frankie,” he'd said. “Just like your old man.”

Coffin stood beside Lola, who was watching the fire with arms crossed, uniform hat planted squarely on her head. “This isn't good,” she said. “Two in one day.”

Coffin nodded. “I don't think it's a prank anymore. Kids or not.”

“Whoever it is,” Lola said, “they're getting more ambitious.” She was 5' 10", 155 pounds or so of solid muscle, slim and fit beneath the bulky Kevlar vest she always wore under her uniform shirt. She could outlift, outrun, outfight and outshoot any man in the department, Coffin knew. She could also kill a man, if it came to that. Her blond ponytail was beaded with raindrops. Coffin made himself look at the fire.