Fire Season (7 page)

“He sure seems happy,” Kotowski said. “What's up with his hair? It looks like molded fiberglass.”

“Somebody ought to set fire to this place,” Coffin's mother said. “Put the drooling idiots out of their fucking misery.”

She looked at Kotowski. She wore a blue housecoat. Her hair was brushed and her teeth were in. She smiled with them, her face a bit lopsided. Kotowski wondered if she'd had a small stroke.

“It's nice of you to come visit. You're a good son.”

“We've been through this, Sarah. I'm not your son. Frank's your son.”

Coffin's mother scowled. “Frank? Who the hell is Frank?”

*   *   *

“Jesus,” Jamie said, sitting up in bed, scowling at her copy of
What to Eat When You're Expecting.
“These people are Nazis. Brown rice and broccoli, my ass. Do you know what I want right now?”

Coffin shook his head, retying his tie for the third time. “No idea. Banana split? Fried calamari?”

“Fried calamari at”—Jamie glanced at the clock on the bedside table—“seven twenty-three in the morning? Don't be a goofball. I was thinking pork chops with onion rings. That banana split sounds pretty good, though.” She Frisbeed the fat book across the room; it flapped into the corner like a dying grouse.

“Excellent choice,” Coffin said, frowning into the mirror as he untied the tie again. “Crap.”

“Trouble?”

“Can't get the knot right. Too loose, too tight, too crooked.” Coffin slid a finger into his shirt collar and tugged. “Plus, this fucking collar is strangling me. Must've shrunk in the wash.”

Jamie was sitting cross-legged in bed, chin resting on her elbows. “You know, Frank,” she said.

“You know, Frank,” Coffin said, after a long beat.

“Never mind.”

Coffin turned for a moment. She seemed stunningly beautiful—hazel eyes set wide, bed-tousled hair. Her face a bit rounder now, the cheekbones less pronounced. “No fair with the never minds,” he said. “Say what you think.”

“Well…” Jamie paused.

“Oh, for Christ's sake.”

“I'm a little worried about your health. You're going to be a dad, you know.”

Coffin grimaced into the mirror. “You're saying I'm getting fat.”

“Not fat. Stout, maybe. Husky. It's cute.”

“Husky,” Coffin said, finally getting the knot right. He looked down: The inside end of the tie was three inches longer than the outside end. “Great.”

Jamie stood, put her arms around him from behind. “See, now your feelings are hurt.”

“No,” Coffin said. “You're right. I'm a little out of shape. I need more exercise.”

“And a checkup,” Jamie said. “Cholesterol, the works. I'll even make the appointment for you.”

“Have you and Lola been conspiring?”

Jamie kissed his ear, and Coffin felt goose bumps rise on the back of his neck.

“I want you around for the long haul,” Jamie said. “You have to live to be eighty, at least.”

Coffin caught one of her wrists, tasted the fine, pale skin where her pulse beat. “Good luck with that,” he said. “No Coffin man has ever lived past seventy, as far as I know. We have a genetic disposition to drowning.”

“Be the first.” Jamie slid a hand down to Coffin's groin, gave his stiffening penis a squeeze through his uniform pants, then another. Then she stopped. “Uh-oh,” she said.

Coffin caught her reflection in the mirror. She was wide-eyed, pale. “Uh-oh,” he said. “You okay?”

Jamie bolted for the bathroom, slammed the door. Coffin could hear her retching, spitting. The toilet flushed. Water ran. She emerged a minute later, wiping her mouth on a hand towel. “It's not you,” she said, meeting Coffin's eyes. “You know that, right?”

*   *   *

The property tax assessor's office was on the first floor of Town Hall; it had two narrow windows looking out toward Bradford Street and the Pilgrim Monument. The assessor was a tall, heavy black man named Marvin Jones. He wore a maroon sweater vest, pale blue Oxford shirt, khaki pants, and bifocals with tortoiseshell rims. He looked much too big for the small task chair parked in front of his desk.

“It's 376 Bradford Street?” he said.

“That's what it says on the mailbox,” Coffin said.

“Which unit?”

“How many are there?”

“Two.”

“Different owners?”

“No.”

“Both, then.”

“Ha,” Jones said, clicking with his mouse. “You're going to like this.”

“Whenever you say I'm going to like something,” Coffin said, “I don't.”

“It's not my fault you're so hard to please.”

“Marv?”

“Marvin.” Marvin's pale blue eyes flickered up from the screen, met Coffin's. “Not Marv.”

“Marvin. What am I going to like?”

“Maybe ‘like' is too strong a word.”

“Marvin!”

“The building belongs to a company—R. S. Investments. Title transferred two years ago from another company, Outer Cape Properties, which I happen to know is now defunct.” Marvin looked up from his screen and smiled brightly. “R. S. Investments is owned outright by an individual whose initials also happen to be—
so
original—R. S. Care to take a guess?”

Coffin closed his eyes. “Oh, Christ. Uncle Rudy.”

“Ding, ding, ding!” Marvin grinned. “Former chief of police and man of mystery, Rodolfo Santos. Give the detective a Kewpie doll.”

*   *   *

Twenty minutes later, Coffin sat in one of Monica Gault's leather guest chairs. Somehow a spot of grease had appeared on his tie.
Christ
, he thought.
I'm turning into Tony.
Vincent Mancini, the Cape and Islands district attorney, sat with one haunch propped on Gault's broad desk. A pair of state police detectives lurked near the door—Pilchard in his brown suit, and a new one whose name Coffin hadn't caught. Pete Wells sat in the other guest chair, and Monica Gault, the new town manager, stood by the window, gazing out at the harbor.

“Well, it's very bad news,” Gault said. “
Very
bad news.”

“Which part?” Mancini asked. “The escalation, or the possibility there's a copycat?”

Gault frowned. “I just don't
believe
there's a copycat,” she said. “Not in Provincetown.
Two
psychopaths setting fires?
Here
?”

“You haven't lived here very long,” Coffin said.

“Probably just one psychopath,” Wells said, “and an outside chance there's also an opportunist trying to get out from under some debt.”

“You need to talk to your uncle, Coffin,” Mancini said. “Stat.”

“I'm not sure he's in town. He doesn't keep a residence here, I don't think. I haven't seen him since May.”

“What about his son? He's one of your patrol officers, right?”

“Tony, yeah. He might know. Rudy has a girlfriend in town, too. Or had. I think I can probably locate her.”

“This uncle of yours,” Gault said, still peering out at the harbor. The clouds had lifted, finally, and the day was bright. A herring gull sailed past the window, a small green crab in its beak. “He used to be police chief, right? Left under a bit of a cloud?”

“Right,” Coffin said.

“A
bit
of a cloud?” Mancini said. “Ha. You could call it that. The guy had a finger in every drug deal and rent-boy operation in town. And that was just for starters.”

Mancini had his trying-not-to-look-too-out-of-place-in-Provincetown outfit on: pressed jeans, tassel loafers, pastel polo shirt. His hair gelled into an artful rumple. A pair of blue-mirrored sunglasses parked on top of his head.

“You could have prosecuted,” Coffin said, “but you passed.”

Mancini narrowed his eyes. “What are you implying, Coffin?”

“Gentlemen,” Gault said. “If you must mark your territory, you must. But please don't do it in my office.”

Pete Wells snapped his fingers. “You just reminded me.”

Everyone turned to look at Wells.

“In forensic terms, most serial arsonists have signatures—a very specific way of going about things. Sometimes even down to the pour patterns for accelerants, or the ways they try to disguise—or not disguise—the fact that it's a set fire, even down to using specific kinds of batteries in electronic timing devices. Darker stuff, too, speaking of marking your territory. Thrill arsonists sometimes leave DNA at fire scenes—”

“DNA?” Gault said. “I don't understand.”

“They masturbate,” Mancini said. “Or they take a crap.”

“Or both,” Wells said. “If they're having a
really
good time. The point is that if you know what to look for, you can read an arsonist's signature, even if his methods evolve somewhat over time.”

Gault ran a bony finger under her nose. “And?” she said.

“And—the shed fire and the condo fire have very similar signatures. Use of liquid accelerant, line of accelerant out the door, no matches or containers left on the scene, all pretty deliberate and organized, no apparent DNA, nothing too weird or pathological, beyond the fires themselves. Simple—arson 101—but very similar. The probability that the two fires are set by the same person is pretty high. Unless.”

“Oh, for Christ's sake,” Mancini said. “Unless
what
?”

“Unless,” Coffin said, “the person who set the second fire knew how to read the signature of the first fire.”

“Right,” Wells said, “and you'd probably have to have at least a little training in forensic fire investigation to be able to do that.”

“And who gets this kind of training?” Gault said.

“Firefighters,” Coffin said. “Professional and certified volunteer. Some law-enforcement people. Academics in the field.”

“Ah,” Gault said, swallowing. “I see.”

“But like I say, the odds are very good that we have a single firebug, and not a copycat,” Wells said.

“I'd feel better about those odds if Rudy fucking Santos wasn't involved,” Mancini said.

You and me both, Coffin wanted to say, but he kept his mouth shut.

 

Chapter 9

Coffin leaned back in his office chair, loosened his tie and unbuttoned his collar. His neck felt sore and constricted, as though a noose had been cinched around it. He rubbed it, cradling the phone in his other hand. “Dr. Sengupta,” he said. “Four forty-five. Right.”

“Labs anytime before noon. You're supposed to fast for twelve hours. Have you eaten anything yet?”

“Nope,” Coffin said. “Just coffee.”

“They're squeezing you in. Don't be late.” Jamie's voice sounded distant, thin. The phone made a faint whooshing sound that seemed to get louder whenever the wind blew particularly hard against the windows.

“What happened to Dr. Frankel? I liked her.”

“She left,” Jamie said. “Five years ago.”

“I hope it wasn't something I said.”

Jamie laughed. “It's good that we're doing this. You need to be in tip-top shape if you're going to chase a toddler around, you know.”

“Right,” Coffin said. “Tip-top.”

“Listen, it's getting late. If you're going to get your blood drawn in time, you'd better go now.”

“Right-o,” Coffin said. “I'll run right over.”

“Love you, Frank.”

“Love you, too.”

Coffin hung up, punched the intercom button. “Arlene?” he said.

Arlene was the secretary Boyle had brought in. She was very skinny and very tan, and smelled of menthol cigarettes. She looked slightly scorched, as though she'd been overroasted in a big oven; Coffin guessed that she spent a lot of time in tanning salons.

“Yes, Chief,” she said.

“My cousin Tony's the desk officer today. Ask him to come up, would you?”

“Will do.”

Ten seconds later the intercom beeped. “He's on his way,” Arlene said.

*   *   *

“I ain't seen him, Frankie,” Tony said, standing just inside Coffin's office door. “Like I said.”

“He hasn't been in touch with you? No phone calls? Nothing?”

“Nope. Nada.”

Tony seemed nervous. Frightened, even. He was wide-eyed, sweatier than usual.

“What's up, Tony?”

“What's up with what?”

“You look like someone's been chasing you.”

Tony turned, opened the door a crack, peeked out, then shut the door again as silently as he could. He looked like a frightened bear. He shambled across the rug, lowered himself carefully into a leather guest chair. Outside, in the hallway, workmen started banging on something metal. There was a brief barrage of drilling.

“Frankie,” Tony said, when the noise subsided for a moment. “They're back.”

“Who's back? You mean Rudy?”

Tony shook his head so hard that his jowls flapped like a basset hound's. “Not Rudy. I told you I ain't seen him.”

“Who, then?”

“You're gonna think I'm crazy.”

Coffin raised an eyebrow.

“The saucers, Frankie. I saw 'em again this morning as I was driving in. Over Pilgrim Lake.”

Tony lived in Eastham, about a half-hour drive from Provincetown on Route 6.

“Saucers,” Coffin said.

“Three of 'em, Frankie. Big silver ones. Hovering in formation over Pilgrim Lake as I'm coming down the hill there. Then when I get almost underneath 'em, they zoom off, like
that.
” He snapped his fingers. “Out toward the Atlantic. Gone. Just like the last time.”

“What last time?” Coffin said.

Tony rubbed a hand over his face. His forehead was sheened with sweat. “I shouldn'a said nothing. Forget it.”