Robert B. Parker's Slow Burn (15 page)

P
earl barked and circled as I entered with bags from Whole Foods and set them on the upstairs kitchen counter. Susan had on a loose linen skirt and a navy silk tank, her hair piled in a messy bun on top of her head.

“How bad is the apartment?” she said. She stood in front of me, placing both hands on my face. She wanted to look into my eyes.

“Do you remember that fantastic white suit I used to wear?”

“Do I?”

“Whoosh,” I said. “Gone.”

“Oh, thank God,” she said. “And the black leather trench coat?”

“All the old wardrobe is gone.”

“Hmm,” she said. “Maybe there is an upside.”

“If I don’t go shopping or do some laundry, I may have to dip into your closet.”

“There’s a little give in some of my wrap dresses,” she said. “But not that much.”

“How about I cook dinner and we can discuss?”

“A roomie with benefits?”

I rolled my chambray shirt up to my elbows and started to wash the greens. They were local and very fresh. I let them drain in a colander and laid out the rest of the salad: a carrot, a purple onion, red pepper, and some candied walnuts. I mixed some Creole mustard with some olive oil and balsamic vinegar as requested by Susan and placed the baguette in the oven to warm.

As it heated, I opened a beer and began to stir up some pimento cheese. I grated a nice hunk of smoked cheddar from American Provisions, added a bit of cream cheese, some Blue Plate mayo, and pimentos. I liked to use a lot of black pepper and some spices from Boudreaux’s.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll stop by Ball and Buck tomorrow for some shirts. I’ll need some new workout gear, too.”

“And pants, socks, shoes, new furniture, and a place to live.”

“Oh,” I said. “And that, too.”

I made the salad and set the table. I sliced the bread for sandwiches from the hot baguette. She turned off the television and joined me in the dining room. I continued on my Narragansett kick while eating two large sandwiches and a side salad. I had yet to tell her about the lemon meringue.

“Have you learned anything new?”

“After two days of watching video at the TV station, we turned up a couple of suspects.”

“That’s promising.”

The sandwiches were so good, I immediately began to make
more. I set two small ones out for Susan while I let Pearl lick the bowl.

“Both of them have ties to the fire department,” I said. “One of them is just a kid. He wants to be a Boston firefighter.”

“Starting off as an arsonist won’t look good on his application.”

“If it’s who I believe, I can’t figure out what they hope to accomplish,” I said. “I’m going to talk to the younger one tomorrow. He seems the most promising.”

“And the other?”

“Not so much,” I said. “Other than the fact that he is a frustrated wannabe firefighter and the Sparks Association people thought he was a total nutjob. And he once screamed at a man who’s now been murdered.”

“Haven’t we all?”

“There’s a third man who was seen with them. But no one knows who he is.”

“Harry Lime?”

I lifted an eyebrow and drank some beer. Pearl had finished with the bowl but continued to nose it around the kitchen floor. I picked it up and set it in the sink to wash.

“We believe there’s three of them,” I said. “If I can get just one to talk, it’ll all come apart.”

“If one out of three isn’t a complete sociopath,” she said. “After all they’ve done.”

I nodded. “I can’t imagine they wanted it to go this far,” I said. “Three firefighters dead.”

“And a man who supported the department.”

“Any recommendations on talking with the kid?”

Susan poured some Riesling from the refrigerator. She leaned against the counter. “It’s pretty much the same as you did with Z,” she said. “Find the person he looks up to and destroy the image.”

“This creep is no Jumbo Nelson,” I said. “And Z had a heart. And brains.”

“The power of three,” she said. “There’s always one who might feel ostracized. The trick is finding out who.”

“And why.”

I
found Kevin Teehan working in the garden section of a Home Depot in Somerville. I’d spent the morning learning as much as I could about him. He was twenty-two, a high school dropout, had earned two misdemeanor charges for assault, and he was a longtime volunteer with the fire department in Blackburn. I recognized him from a Facebook photo I’d found online. He posted a lot of photos about firefighting and his mother, who I gathered had died when he was young.

Teehan was a little guy, short and skinny, with a wisp of a beard like Shaggy on
Scooby-Doo
. The closer I got, I saw he’d buzz-cut his dark hair and had quite a collection of acne scars on his face. He wore small studs in each earlobe. Hip.

He watered several flats of white and pink impatiens. The impatiens were now on summer sale.

Teehan stopped watering as I walked close, smiled, and asked
if he might help me. I introduced myself and the smile lessened a bit. “I understand you help out Boston Fire sometimes,” I said. “I’m hoping you might be able to help me.”

“Who are you?” he said.

“I’m working on the fire at the Holy Innocents last year.”

“Yeah?” he said. “Don’t know how I can help. I work in Blackburn.” He looked at me for a long moment and then continued his watering duties. He’d moved on from the impatiens to buckets of lantana. If I hadn’t been a gumshoe, perhaps I could’ve been a botanist.

“But you’re sometimes at fire scenes in the city?” I said. “Working with the Sparks?”

He shook his head. “I’m not with the Sparks.”

“Why not?”

He craned his head, openmouthed, and shrugged. “Sometimes I’ve been to some fires around Boston. I like to watch those guys work. You know, to learn stuff.”

Teehan’s eyes were set too close together. The wispy beard on his chin looked ridiculous. I wanted to grab some pruning shears and do the kid a favor. “What do you learn, Kevin?” I said. Mr. Friendly.

“You see how they work as a team,” he said. “It’s like a ball game. All fires have a strategy. These guys are top athletes, really.”

“What about setting fires?” I said. “Have you learned much about arson?”

He didn’t turn to me this time, just kept on running the water over the flowers, nice and easy. “What do you mean?”

“You might have seen something or someone at one of the fires this summer,” I said. “You weren’t fighting the fire, but you
were an educated spectator. You might have noticed a very important detail.”

Teehan set down the hose; the nozzle shut off, but water continued to leak on the concrete. The department smelled strongly of soil and fertilizer and the soft sweetness of roses. He brushed some dirt off his orange vest as he studied my face and looked as if he’d decided I was all right. I wondered if he might ever drive a white van.

“How’d you get my name?”

“I interviewed several members of the Sparks,” I said. “Rob Featherstone.”

Teehan nodded along, playing a bit with the wisps on his chin. “He’s dead,” Teehan said. “Got fucking carjacked or something. It was on the news. They had a big thing for him at the museum.”

“Did you go?” I said.

“No,” he said. “I had to work. But he was a good guy. One of the Sparks who actually took time to talk to me.”

“I bet you’ve seen some big fires.”

“I’ve been watching fires since I was a kid,” Teehan said. He smiled big. “I always wanted to be a fireman. My mom used to take me to fires when I was a kid. All she could talk about was that someday I’d be on the job.”

“You were close?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Still are. I bring her flowers every week. Keep her grave fresh like she’d want.”

“So why’d you join the department all the way in Blackburn?” I said.

“I took a test for Boston,” he said. “I did real good. I’m on the
list. But I don’t have no family in the department. And I’m not a freakin’ woman or black.”

I nodded as if I could really identify with his plight of being a young white man in America. “So did you happen to be at the Holy Innocents?”

Teehan actually placed two fingers on his lips, seeming to think on that name. He slowly shook his head. “Nah,” he said. “I don’t think so.”

“You know, the big one?” I said. “Three Boston firefighters died? Dougherty, Bonnelli, and Mulligan? They got trapped in the church basement.”

“Yeah, I know. But I wasn’t there. I didn’t see it.”

Although I hadn’t seen him on that video, it would be easy enough to check. That morning, I’d culled some of the screen grabs from the footage. I had Z crop some of the faces from different fire scenes, most notably Johnny Donovan. I pulled out a 4x6 with a decent shot of Donovan’s face and showed it to Teehan.

“Know this guy?”

Teehan craned his head to study the picture a bit. He did a little more method acting, biting his lip before shaking his head. “Nope.”

“You’ve never seen him?”

Teehan shook his head. “No,” he said. “Why?”

“Oh,” I said. “Just another onlooker. I think he had a pretty good vantage point at the fire. I hoped he might be able to help me, too. If his name comes to you, just let me know.”

“What are you looking for?” he said. “You hearing something?”

I took a deep breath. A curly-headed woman in a pink shirt headed down the aisle pushing a shopping cart. She rested her beefy arms on the cart handle, moving slowly and checking out her seasonal options. She stopped and picked up a pot of blue hydrangeas.

“What about the fire the other night on Marlborough Street?” I said.

He stopped pulling on the thin beard and scratched the back of his neck. “You mean by the Public Garden?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Right by the garden. Two firefighters got hurt. Whoever is setting this stuff is getting really reckless. You know?”

I stared at him and I saw fear in his narrow eyes. But he just shook his head and looked away from me, unable to keep contact. “I can ask around,” Teehan said. “You got a card or something?”

“You know, Kevin,” I said. “For you, I just might.”

I pulled one from my wallet and handed it to him. This time I wished I really had the one with the skull-and-crossbones logo.

Y
es, I know Johnny Donovan,” said a guy named Mark Schultze. “Wish to God I could say I didn’t. My experience with him wasn’t pleasant.”

We sat in his office at a very tony private school in Watertown called Oak Grove. Outside his window, children were conducting some type of summer science camp in a marsh. A table had been set along a boardwalk with microscopes. I imagined summer camp at Oak Grove cost as much as yachting at Martha’s Vineyard.

“How long did you know him?” I said.

“He was here when I took the job four years ago,” Schultze said. He was a smallish guy with brown hair and an expanding belly. He wore a red gingham shirt that looked like a tablecloth at an Italian restaurant and blocky black eyeglasses. “His official title was security, but he turned out to be more of a fix-it
guy. He took care of the heating and cooling, basic maintenance of the property.”

“Tell me about the problems you had with him,” I said.

“Should I speak to my lawyer before I do?”

“Do you wish to look out for Donovan’s interests?”

“Of course not.”

I smiled big. “Well, then.”

“Six months after I got here,” he said. “A few computers disappeared, an iPad or two, and then a large-screen television.”

“Did you confront him?”

“Oh, yes,” Schultze said. “He was incredulous. Donovan claimed he was part of some witch hunt and blamed some of our landscapers who did not speak English nor had access to the classrooms. He kept on saying it was those rotten Mexicans.”

“Did you fire him?”

“Not at first,” Schultze said. “He threatened us with a lawsuit if he was reprimanded. That’s how the whole adventure started. I should have followed my instincts. I should gotten rid of him immediately.”

I raised my eyebrows. I sometimes did this in place of saying “Please continue.”

“Are you in contact with anyone in the media, Mr. Spenser?” Schultze said.

“If you’re concerned about school privacy, this conversation is between us,” I said. “I’m doing a background check on Mr. Donovan. He’s a suspect in some other crimes.”

“More thefts and bullying?”

“Of a sort,” I said. “Let’s just say his behavior has warranted my attention.”

Outside the windows, the day campers were dipping gallon buckets into the marsh and sorting through the muck. Some of the children carried long nets. They wore rubber boots and sloshed about, seeming to have a great time. All in all, I would have invested in sailing at Martha’s Vineyard. You could have cocktails while the kids frolicked.

“My relationship with Mr. Donovan remained icy,” Schultze said. “We didn’t speak for almost a year. He did his job. And then he had an altercation with one of our tenth-graders. He accused a boy of breaking into the maintenance shed and took matters into his own hands.”

“What did he do?”

“He pushed the boy and slapped him hard across the face,” Schultze said. Schultze’s own face colored a bit as he spoke. “We fired him immediately. The parents, rightly so, were horrified. As were we.”

“How’d Donovan take being fired?”

“Not well,” Schultze said. He rocked back in his padded leather chair and folded his hands across his belly. “He blamed several young boys of plotting against him, even saying they’d been the ones who’d stolen the electronics. He threatened to sue the school when the parents of the boy filed charges. And he threatened me with violence. We had to have the police escort him from campus.”

“What exactly did he say to you?”

“He claimed I’d ruined his name,” Schultze said. He removed the stylish eyeglasses. He blew a warm breath on a lens and cleaned it with a tissue. “And that he wished to kick the crap out of me.”

“Subtle.”

“He’s a sick man,” Schultze said. “There’s an aura of meanness about him. He wouldn’t speak to you or look you in the eye. The only time I ever saw him animated was when he’d talk to some of the instructors about firefighting. He claimed to have been a volunteer firefighter.”

“Which is not true.”

“He said a lot of things that turned out not to be true.”

“What else?”

“He said he was a decorated Marine.”

“Did he have a military record?”

“None,” he said. “Were you in the service, Mr. Spenser?”

“Army,” I said. “For a few years.”

“I was in the Air Force,” he said. “You and I probably have similar feelings about those who lie about their service.”

I nodded. I didn’t do much in the Army, but I wasn’t overly fond of liars of any type.

“His stories on firefighting and his time in the Marines were very detailed,” Schultze said. “He put a lot of thought into his imaginary life as a hero of some sort.”

“So what ever happened to the assault charges against our Walter Mitty?”

Schultze leaned his elbows on his desk. I heard buckets being tossed back into the marsh, lots of laughing, and more sloshing. The muck bubbled up and turned the surface water a deep brown. A sign above his desk said
GIFTED MINDS NEED CREATIVE INSTRUCTION
. The school was brick and stately, with numerous state and national awards displayed in the halls.

I bet a free pony probably came with the price of tuition.

He threw up his hands and shook his head. “The boy’s family decided not to press charges,” he said. “I was very disappointed. But our board of directors were privately pleased. If this had made the news, we would have lost so many students. We are much, much better about our new hiring process.”

“Any idea why they dropped the charges?”

“The family has had some personal hardships,” Schultze said. “There was a terrible fire at their home. They lost everything and they had to move. I believe they let go of the case because of all the pressure.”

“Aha,” I said.

“You don’t think—”

“I’m not a fan of coincidence,” I said. “Where did the family live?”