Fire Season (6 page)

“You're wet,” Kate said.

“Getting there,” Lola said, kissing her again.

Kate smiled. Her teeth were very straight and white. “Me, too. But maybe we should have dinner first. Seared tuna—your favorite. Shame to let it go to waste.”

“I brought wine,” Lola said, offering the bottle. “It's red, though.”

“Perfect,” Kate said. She held the bottle at eye level, looked at the label, did a wide-eyed little double take. “Wow,” she said. “Sea Smoke. Where'd you get this?”

“My sister lives in Santa Barbara. We went in on a few bottles a couple of years ago.”

Kate smiled again. “A special evening, then. Let me hang up your jacket.”

Lola shrugged it off, handed it over.

“Whoa,” Kate said. “Heavy. Are you packin' heat, Sergeant?”

“Sorry,” Lola said. “It's kind of a reflex these days. I can leave it in the car from now on.”

Kate shook her head, put a slim hand on Lola's cheek. “After what you went through last spring,” she said, “you can bring it to bed if you want to.”

 

Chapter 7

The big man squirted a generous squiggle of charcoal starter onto the pile of paper and cardboard he'd gathered, and the plywood subfloor around it. He hit the walls, too—there was no hurry, and the damage had to be extensive or the insurance might not pay. He knew that if he got the ground floor cooking, the fire would take care of the rest. Heat rises—the physics were simple. He'd gone through the building and opened a few windows, figuring they'd act like the vent holes in a charcoal grill. He'd been careful not to let anyone spot him. He was dressed in jeans, ball cap, sweatshirt—even if someone did see him, what would they see? Anyone. No one.

Open some windows, squirt the lighter fluid, do a thorough job. It didn't matter if they knew it was arson—as long as they didn't know who set it.

He kept low, squirting a trail of charcoal starter out the back door and onto a concrete patio, hidden from the street. There was no one around. No cars moved on Brewster and most of the windows in the neighborhood were dark. He found the lighter in the pocket of his sweatshirt: one of those long ones people use for grilling out. He pressed the child safety button, clicked the trigger, and a long tongue of flame squirted out, curling upward at the end—
heat rises
. He lit the trail of starter fluid and watched for a second as it burned blue and orange, the fire chasing itself into the half-finished building like the famished animal it was. He turned quickly, walked away through the muddy backyard, and then made a quick right onto Brewster. He heard a kind of roaring whoosh as the charcoal starter on the ground floor caught and the fumes ignited but he didn't look back—he just kept walking at normal speed toward the little junction Brewster made with Pearl Street before dipping downward sharply for thirty yards and butting into Harry Kemp Way, where his car was parked, out of sight of the burning building.

*   *   *

Something whacked Coffin's ear—once, then again. Softly at first, then hard enough to wake him up from the dream he'd been having—a blurred image of naked breasts, the dream still hovering in the room like a whiff of perfume. But whose? Jamie's, he hoped, although part of him thought the dream might have been about Lola, or maybe Gemma, his uncle Rudy's girlfriend. The thing whacked him on the ear a third time: the back of Jamie's hand, the edge of her ring scraping the cartilage a bit.

“Fire,” Jamie said, her back to him—her voice hollow, as though it came from the bottom of a well.

“Ow,” Coffin said, sitting up, rubbing his ear.

“Fire,” Jamie said. “The house is on fire.” She waved a slender arm, went back to sleep.

Coffin sniffed the air and smelled nothing—just the damp of October, the faint scent of dust, maybe, a whiff of decay from the taxidermied owl glaring down from the big walnut wardrobe. Coffin stood, walked to the window. More rain. In his neighbor's garden the black skeletons of three sunflowers leaned, left over from summer, their big heads long ago picked clean by the birds. He noticed a strange orange glow on the eastern horizon: it seemed to rise and expand as he watched. The digital clock by the bed said 2:43. Then he heard sirens.

*   *   *

The shed fire had seemed impressive at the time, Coffin thought, but this one was enormous in comparison. The entire two-story structure on Brewster Street appeared to be engulfed—flames roared from the upper windows and danced in the night sky, throwing a lurid orange glow against the low cloud cover. Sparks and bits of roofing rose above the building on a powerful thermal, then drifted out toward the waterfront, carried by the offshore breeze. The fire and rescue boys were struggling again with the idle speed on their new pumper: Walt Macy had a control panel open and was fiddling with knobs and buttons while a tall, bony firefighter held a flashlight on what appeared to be the owner's manual. To Coffin, it looked like the building was already a total loss.

“Well,” Lola said, yawning. “This is exciting.” She was in her off-duty clothes—jeans, boots, leather jacket. Her hair hung loose around her shoulders—Coffin couldn't remember ever having seen it down before—dark blond and a bit tousled.

“Wonder who owns it,” Coffin said. “Seems like it's been under construction off and on for months and months. Mostly off, lately.”

Lola yawned again, rubbed her eyes. “God,” she said. “I'd just gotten to sleep when I heard the sirens.”

“Total hot date,” Coffin said.

“Is there any other kind?”

Coffin grinned, said nothing. The rain had stopped, finally. The breeze was picking up, though the sky showed no sign of clearing.

“Wait a minute,” Lola said, peering at Coffin. “I know your ‘what if' tone when I hear it.”

“It's just a thought,” Coffin said.

“You have a dark view of human nature, Frank Coffin,” Lola said.

Coffin shrugged. “It's possible, that's all I'm saying.”

“So, okay: What if you've got a building under construction but you've burned through your loan and it's still unfinished.”

“The market's tanking, even prime, waterfront condos aren't turning over…”

Lola held up a finger. “But
your
building's fully insured!”

“Coincidentally, somebody's been setting things on fire.”

“That somebody might even be the owner of a half-finished building.”

“Might be, or maybe it's a different somebody,” Coffin said. “Either way, the other smaller fires appear to be the work of a serial arsonist.”

“Which could represent an opportunity,” Lola said, thumbing a strand of hair behind her ear. “If you happened to own a building you wanted to get rid of.”

“That happened to be fully insured,” Coffin said.

Lola took a deep breath, let it out. The fire was growing more intense. The pumper was working, finally, and the firefighters were aiming a heavy stream of water into one of the downstairs windows. “I don't know how you look at yourself in the mirror,” she said. “Thinking the way you do.”

“It's not easy, living on the dark side.”

*   *   *

A crowd of forty or fifty sleepy-looking spectators had gathered in a loose, L-shaped cluster at the corner of Brewster and Bradford streets, well below the muddy rise on which the burning building stood. Lola held up a camcorder and started to film them.

“It's not going to be easy making an ID with this,” Lola said. “Lots of hats and hoods.”

“Chilly out,” Coffin said, and it was—the damp October wind was picking up, and Coffin felt himself gritting his teeth. He'd worn only an old suede jacket over his jeans and flannel shirt: time to get out the winter coat. “Nothing you can do.”

Lola nodded, peering into the camcorder's view screen. “It also occurs to me that we're likely to keep seeing the same people over and over, it being the off-season and all.”

She had a point—even in October, Coffin began to feel that he was seeing the same faces over and over, day in and day out: Jamie, Lola, Tony, and the rest of his co-workers, the new town manager Monica Gault, the beautiful Haitian girl behind the counter at the Yankee Mart, where Coffin usually stopped for coffee on the way to work. Kotowski, maybe. Squid. Captain Nickerson. The stuffed goat in his mother's house. By the time the winter nor'easters began to blow, half the town seemed to be in hibernation: it was as though the locals—year-rounders, they called themselves—stayed in their burrows as much as possible, emerging only to forage now and then at the Stop & Shop.

“Maybe we're looking for the guy who only shows up once,” Coffin said. “The guy who looks uncomfortable being filmed.”

“So don't be subtle about it,” Lola said.

“Right.”

Lola paused the camcorder, walked up to within ten feet of the crowd of onlookers, pushed the record button again and slowly panned the camera across their faces.

Coffin watched. No one walked away. No one pulled their hat brim over their eyes. A pair of Tall Ships in faux mink primped their wigs for the camera.

“Okay,” Coffin said when Lola was done. “It was worth a shot.”

“I hate this,” Lola said. “I want some freaking evidence to think about.”

Coffin's cousin Tony came bounding toward them from behind the burning building, struggling a bit in the mud. He'd probably been taking a leak, Coffin thought.

“Yo, Frankie,” Tony said. He was in uniform, holding a big policeman's Maglite. “I think I got something.” He pointed to the backyard. “Looks like fresh boot prints back there.”

Coffin had scheduled him for the graveyard shift at Tony's own request. Things hadn't been going so well at home, Tony had said. Doris, his small, frowning wife, wanted to leave the Cape, move closer to Boston, send the kids to private school. Tony would only leave the Cape in a box, Coffin thought—he was local to the core. What would big, sloppy Tony do with himself in some upscale Boston suburb? What would Tony's kids—five little versions of Tony in graduating sizes, like Russian matryoshka dolls—do in a private school?

“Tony?” Coffin said.

“Dude.”

“Are you sure they're not
your
footprints?” Coffin was looking down at Tony's muddy boots.

“Frankie—for fuck's sake,” Tony said. “Do you really think I'm that dumb?”

Coffin raised his eyebrows, said nothing.

“Okay,” Tony said, waving his hands. “I admit it—I fuck up sometimes. But here's how I know: I got kind of small feet for my size—just an eleven. This guy's feet are bigger. Plus, his boots have a different tread.”

Coffin and Lola exchanged glances. Coffin inclined his head a bit and Lola nodded. “Okay,” Coffin said. “Let's see the boot prints.”

*   *   *

Incredibly, Tony seemed to be right. A trail of boot prints led from the back of the burning building, through the hedge and out to Brewster Street, which was a narrow one-way for most of the block. Coffin also wore a size eleven—not that big for a man his height (
you know what they say
, he thought)—the boot prints leading out to the hedge appeared to be at least a size or two larger than his own.

“What would you guess?” he said. “Thirteen?”

“Sounds about right,” Lola said. “You're a what? Ten?”

“Eleven,” Coffin said, trying not to sound defensive.

“Eleven?” Tony said. “That's it? What are you, six-two?”

“For Christ's sake,” Coffin said.

“So we're looking for a fairly big guy,” Lola said, kneeling down, pointing Tony's flashlight at the scorched trail across the patio. The fire leaped from the second-storey windows into the night sky. It was much too hot to get close, but the scorch marks were unmistakable. “Long stride, too—not a small guy with big feet, or a small guy wearing big boots.”

“Definitely not a woman,” Coffin said. The prints were reasonably clear, and bore a distinctive tread design—the interlocking chain that, as far as Coffin knew, was unique to L.L. Bean duck boots.

“A really big woman, maybe,” Lola said. “But yeah, probably not.”

“Well, there you go,” Coffin said. He patted Tony on the back. “Good find. You're a regular Sherlock Holmes.” The fire seemed to be gathering strength, burning hotter and faster—the flames shooting from the windows maybe thirty feet into the night sky. If you watch a fire long enough, Coffin thought, it becomes beautiful: malevolent but lovely, a dancing, many-armed Shiva, bent on destruction.

“I always hated that guy,” Tony said. “You know, as a kid? What a freakin' know-it-all. I kept hoping Dr. Watson would get fed up and punch him out.”

Coffin said nothing. A section of the roof collapsed, throwing a shower of bright cinders into the air. Big sheets of burning tar paper rose on a column of smoke and sparks, and wheeled toward town center on the breeze.
Like something out of Dante
, Coffin thought.
Like the souls of the damned.

 

Chapter 8

The next morning all of Provincetown smelled like a doused campfire, smoky and damp. Kotowski sat with Coffin's mother in her room at Valley View Nursing Home, watching the big, flat-screen TV Coffin had bought for her at Best Buy in Hyannis. Kotowski often stopped in to see her before the “art for seniors” class he'd been teaching at Valley View for the past eight years.

Film of the condo fire played over and over on the Boston FOX affiliate. A banner scrolled across the screen that said,
P 'TOWN FIREBUG STRIKES AGAIN
. A blond news model was interviewing a TV minister from South Carolina, who seemed to think that God's judgment was finally being visited on Provincetown.

“Look at that fat dickwad,” Coffin's mother said, black eyes glittering, bright and empty as a doll's. “What's he grinning about?”