Fire Season (31 page)

Lola shot him a look through her sunglasses. “So you dreamed about this Maurice guy?”

“Not at first. I've been having these dreams about fire. In the dream I'd wake up and there'd be smoke and flames everywhere. Jamie had had the baby already, and I had to save it. The baby was crying, so I'd run down the hall through all the fire and smoke and reach into the crib, and that's where the dream would end.”

“Nothing too weird about that,” Lola said, pursing her lips. “Pretty much your basic anxiety dream. Were you wearing any pants?”

Coffin laughed. “After a week or so it got a lot weirder. I'd reach into the crib and the baby would be a seal. The Seal Baby. I had to save the Seal Baby, and not let it die in the fire.”

“Yep,” Lola said. “That's definitely weird.”

“And then last night the Seal Baby turned into Maurice. It looked at me, and it had Maurice's face.”

“Dude. Paging Dr. Freud.”

“Exactly. So then I started wondering if my subconscious hadn't made some kind of connection, you know?”

“Okay, like what?”

“Fuck if I know.” Coffin shrugged. “He seemed like a nice young guy. No apparent motive. Early twenties. Not real bright. Lives with his mother…”

Lola turned and stared at him for a second, then fixed her gaze on the road again. “So he fits the profile, is what you're saying. Am I remembering right? Would he bit a bit less than medium height, thick through the chest and shoulders?”

Coffin nodded. “He would indeed.”

*   *   *

Maurice Duval's mother lived in Orleans, her run-down cottage stuck in the middle of a strip of small businesses along the Cranberry Highway: Captain Elmer's Seafood on one side, JoMama's New York Bagels on the other. Her yard was scraggly and brown; a rusted rake lay on top of a loose pile of leaves. A dirt brown pickup truck was parked crookedly in the driveway: it looked to Coffin as though it had been painted with a brush, sometime around 1990. As Lola pulled up behind the truck, a black and white Orleans police cruiser slid silently up to the curb. The door swung open and a uniformed officer popped out: a square-jawed, barrel-chested young man who appeared to be about five feet tall.

“Bangs,” the officer said, sticking out his hand. “You must be Chief Coffin.”

Bangs's hand was small, almost like a child's. Coffin shook it. “This is Sergeant Winters. Thanks for meeting us.”

“Thanks for calling ahead,” Bangs said. “Chief likes it when our neighbors observe the standard protocol.”

“Who doesn't?” Coffin said. “I'm the same way. Watch the back, would you, Bangs? And try to keep out of sight.”

“That's why I'm here,” Bangs said. He picked his way through the tufted, unmowed yard to the back of the house.

Coffin knocked lightly on the front door. Over time, he'd learned that the heavy cop knock almost never produced good results: People panicked, jumped out the windows, went to the bedroom to fetch their guns. Keep the uniforms out of sight and knock softly—that was almost always the way to go.

A woman answered the door. She was around Coffin's age, stocky, not very tall. Her hair looked slept in: It was cropped very short, dyed an odd, artificial auburn color. She wore a pale green bathrobe and bright red lipstick, freshly applied. Her eyes were bagged, the lids reptilian. She was smoking a cigarette. Coffin showed her his shield. “Mrs. Duval? May we come in and talk for a minute?”

The woman took a long drag from her cigarette, blew it out. “
Ms.
Duval. What's this about?” Her voice was gravelly. It made Coffin want to clear his throat.

“We'd like to talk to your son, ma'am. I understand he lives with you?”

“He's not here.” There was a rustling commotion inside the house—just out of Coffin's line of sight.

“It's getting a little chilly out here, ma'am,” Coffin said. The wind had picked up, and a light rain had begun to fall. “Could we come in for just a minute, please?”

“I don't have to let you in without a warrant,” the woman said. “You got a warrant?”

Coffin held up his hands. “We're not here to search your house. We're not here to arrest anybody. I've just got a couple of questions to ask your son, and then we'll be on our way.”

“I told you. He's not here. He don't live here anymore. I told him he had to help with rent and groceries or get out. I can't feed us both on what I make.”

Lola took out a notebook and a pen. “Do you have his current address, ma'am?”

“He's stayin' with friends in Hyannis. I don't know the address. It's near the bus station.”

“How about a phone number?”

“He's got a cell phone, but I think it got cut off.”

Coffin heard a door close somewhere inside the house. “Who else is in the house with you right now, ma'am?” He resisted a powerful impulse to push
Ms
. Duval out of the way and chase down whoever was crouching in the dim interior rooms. He glanced at Lola: Her hands hung loose at her sides, but her jaw muscles were tensed.

“That's none of your business,” the woman said, taking another drag from her cigarette. “Is there anything else? I'm in the middle of something important right now.”

“That's your son's truck, isn't it?” Lola said, pointing at the listing hulk in the driveway. They'd run a records check on Maurice Duval before leaving the office, looking for outstanding warrants, arrest records, history of mental illness, firearms registration. The vehicle check was part of the routine. There hadn't been much: an outstanding speeding ticket, an old DUI. An '82 Ford pickup, formerly green but now a patchy, uneven brown.

“That piece of shit?” the woman said. “It ain't running. I told him to get it outta here, but he's too busy partying with his boys.” She raised her eyebrows. They appeared to be tattooed on. “Is there anything else?”

“Does Maurice have a job? Maybe we can catch him at work.”

“Yeah, he's got a part-time gig at Petzapawlooza in town. It's across the street from the CVS.”

A man's voice called from inside the house. “Connie? Where the fuck didja go? I'm getting lonely in here.”

Connie rolled her eyes, shook her head. “Look,” she said to Coffin. “I don't mean to be rude, but this is a bad time. You want to leave me a card, I'll make sure to tell Maurice you're lookin' for him.”

A man waddled down the hall in a sleeveless T-shirt and sagging boxer shorts. He was tall, with a big paunch and skinny, hairy legs. He had a black mustache, and was trying to ignite the butt of a green cigar with a Bic lighter. “Hey,” he said. “It's that cop from Provincetown. Coffin.”

Coffin nodded. “Mr. Stecopoulos. Nice seeing you again. We were just on our way over to Petzapawlooza to talk to your son.”

Stecopoulos scowled at Connie. “You
told
him?”

Connie heaved an exasperated sigh. “No, dumb-ass—he
guessed
.
You
told him.”

Stecopoulos puffed at the cigar, held it at arm's length, glared at it, tried to light it again with the sputtering Bic. “Well,” he said, after a minute, “I guess the freaking cat's out of the bag.”

*   *   *

The inside of Connie Duval's house was more orderly than the outside. The dishes were washed, the kitchen linoleum dingy but clean. The living-room carpet, the color of bread mold, had been recently vacuumed—the little parallel lines from the vacuum cleaner's wheels were still visible.

Coffin and Lola sat at the kitchen table, across from Connie and Stecopoulos. Bangs stood near the back door, warming his tiny hands on a cup of instant coffee. A pair of goldfish swam in a large bowl on the blue Formica counter.

“What can I tell you?” Stecopoulos said, looking down at the floor. “I lead a double life. My wife, if she found out? This would kill her.”

“It's true,” Connie said, tapping a fresh Virginia Slim from the pack. “She's not in good health. She's physically and emotionally very frail.”

Coffin shrugged. “We can be discreet,” he said. “Right, Bangs?”

“Righty-o,” Bangs said. He sipped his coffee, made a face.

“But you want something in return, is that right?” Connie said. “Information. About Maurice?”

“It's about the seals, isn't it?” Stecopoulos said. He shook his head again. He'd put on a bathrobe, to Coffin's relief. It hadn't been easy, looking at his hairy shoulders.

Connie patted Stecopoulos's arm. “Donny loved those freakin' seals. He cried like a baby after they got shot. He came home and put his head in my lap and cried like a three-year-old, no fucking joke.”

Stecopoulos crossed himself in the Greek Orthodox manner—three fingers, right-to-left across the chest. “Hand to God,” he said, “Maurice had nothing to do with killing them. He's a good boy, he loved those seals—he had names for them, even. Clarabelle and Dawn and Sammy—I can't remember the other two. He didn't do it, I promise you.”

“Okay,” Coffin said. “How do you know that?”

“He was here with me,” Connie said. “All night. We sat on the couch and watched TV 'til about eleven. Then he went to bed—he had to get to the restaurant early every morning.”

Coffin looked at Stecopoulos. The goldfish hovered in their bowl, staring, faces enlarged by the curved glass wall. “Is that true?” he said.

Stecopoulos frowned, shook his head. “No,” he said. “He was out that night. He had a girl in Eastham for a while—he was out with her.”

“Then how do you know he didn't kill the seals?” Coffin said.

Stecopoulos looked down, then back up at Coffin. “Because I did it,” he said. “I shot them.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Connie said, leaning back in her chair. “Smooth move, Adonis.”

“Adonis?” Coffin said. “Really?”

Stecopoulos shrugged. “I was a cute baby,” he said.

“Why would you kill your own seals, Mr. Stecopoulos?” Lola said.

“They were hurting the business,” Connie said. “The food, the vet bills. And the animal rights whackos—people would say terrible things to Donny. The local PETA chapter organized a boycott, even. They were a burden, those seals.”

Stecopoulos thought for a long minute. “That's part of it,” he said at last. “I kept those seals a long time—their parents, too. I loved seeing them every day, swimming in their pool, playing, sunning themselves on the deck. They were a good draw for the business, at least until the last few years. But zoo stock or not, they're wild animals, you know? They'd sit by the fence at high tide, looking out at the harbor with their big, sad eyes. I'd look at them huddled up at the fence like that and it'd break my heart a little more every day. People think it's cruel, keeping seals. Maybe they're right.”

“Why not just turn 'em loose?” Bangs said.

“They'd have starved,” Stecopoulos said. “They never caught a fish in their lives. You can't just release a tame seal into the wild like that. They'd die a terrible death.”

“What about aquariums or research centers?” Lola said.

“I tried Mystic, Woods Hole, the Franklin Park Zoo, New England Aquarium—they all said the same thing: budget cuts, recession, layoffs, yada yada. I must've called twenty places—no takers.”

“So you just shot them,” Lola said, hands flat on the table.

“He was impaired,” Connie said. “He'd been drinking ouzo and listening to the soundtrack from
Zorba the Greek
over and over. It's enough to make anyone crazy.”

“What about Maurice?” Coffin said. “Does he know you killed the seals?”

Stecopoulos scratched his chest through his T-shirt. “No. He looks up to me. I couldn't tell him a thing like that.”

“Where is he now?”

Connie stared at Coffin for a second, then stubbed out her cigarette in a ceramic ashtray. “At work, like I said. He had a dog to groom.”

“You still want to talk to him?” Stecopoulos said. “How come? I told you—I shot the seals, not him.”

“It's regarding another matter,” Coffin said.

Stecopoulos stared at Coffin, then at Lola, heavy brows knitted. “So I just confessed for no fucking reason?”

There was a long pause. Connie stood up, opened a cabinet, produced a bottle of Jim Beam and two glasses. “I need a drink,” she said, pouring a hefty double. “Anybody join me?”

“Sure,” Coffin said. “Why not?”

Connie poured him a double, too, and they clinked glasses. “Here's to the last thirty years of my life, fucking the dumbest motherfucker on the Cape,” she said. “What d'ya think about that?” She downed her shot, poured another.

“Hey!” Stecopoulos said.

“Here's to love,” Coffin said, raising his glass.

Stecopoulos nodded. “That's more like it,” he said.

*   *   *

Petzapawlooza was wedged in between a garden store and a low-rent law firm, across the street from a large CVS drugstore, not far from the Super Stop & Shop and the Nauset Fish and Lobster Pool, an excellent seafood market that stayed open year-round.

There was only one car parked in front of Petzapawlooza: The shop windows held the usual assortment of caged birds and roly-poly puppies of dubious origin. A bell rang softly when Coffin and Lola stepped inside, but no one greeted them. The store smelled like hamsters. Bright fish swam in bubbling tanks. “Want a free lizard?” Coffin said, walking up to a large terrarium that held two green iguanas. “Now's your chance.”

“I had a housemate once that had an iguana,” Lola said. “All he did was hide behind the sofa. Somehow he got inside the walls and we never saw him again—we just heard him slithering around in there sometimes. His name was Walter.”

Soothing Muzak drifted from hidden speakers. Neon-colored parakeets chirped and whistled in their cage. Faintly, Coffin could hear the buzzing of grooming shears coming from a back room. He put a finger to his lips, and he and Lola moved quietly, quickly past the caged rabbits, the green python in its tank, the cat toys and dog collars, cat litter and dog food, until they stood just outside the swinging door that led to the back room. A sign on the door said
EMPLOYEES ONLY
. Lola pushed the door open silently with one hand, and Coffin stepped inside. A cocker spaniel stood patiently, muzzled, tethered to a grooming table, most of the fur sheared from the left side of its body. An electric grooming clipper lay buzzing on the concrete floor. The back door was open. A cool, damp breeze was blowing in. Maurice Duval was gone.