Fire Season (19 page)

“Uh-oh.”

“Right? So when she's done she zips him up, puts his hat back on his head and out the door he goes with the suitcase—he's so goofy on fancy vodka, coke, and endorphins he can't think straight.”

“This is not going to end well, is it?”

“Gold star for Sergeant Winters. Rizzuto rides down in the elevator figuring he's got it made. The doors open up and there's six agents from the FBI corruption task force, shields out and guns drawn. They've got the whole thing on tape.”

“Bye-bye, Rizzuto.”

“Bye-bye is right. He's
still
in prison—they sent him out to Hazelton in West Virginia and he's been there ever since.”

“So that's it? That's why you stayed clean? You were worried about the FBI?”

Coffin made a sour face. “The FBI? Of course not,” he said. “Rizzuto was an idiot. And it's not like I was some kind of avenging angel out there. I turned a blind eye to a lot of stuff I probably should have reported. But I was never on the take—I have a hard enough time sleeping at night.”

“What a great and ultimately pointless story.”

“I know, right?”

*   *   *

Monica Gault peered into the black gym bag sitting on her desk. “Good God,” she said. “Is that what I think it is?”

Kirby Flint, the town attorney, stood next to her. He was trim and muscular. His shaved head gleamed in the fluorescent light. “I believe it's heroin,” he said. He was, Coffin knew, very active in Provincetown's leather scene.

“We haven't tested it,” Coffin said, “but that'd be my guess.”

Each of the plastic-wrapped bricks was sealed with a red stamp that bore a faint image of a mosque surrounded by a wreath, with a squiggle of Arabic script at the top. Flint reached into the bag, hefted one of the bricks. “Roughly a pound, I'd say. So, a half kilo?”

“About that,” Coffin said.

“If this were a film,” Gault said, “this gym bag would be the MacGuffin.”

“The ma-what?” Lola said.

Gault looked at Lola over the tops of her glasses. “MacGuffin. It was Hitchcock's word for the otherwise meaningless object around which the plot of a thriller revolves. You know—the diamond necklace, or the stolen microfilm.”

Flint unpacked the gym bag onto Gault's desk. “Twelve pounds,” he said. “Any idea of the value?”

“A lot,” Coffin said. “Over a million, if it's any good. Maybe two. Maybe more.”

“You'll want a receipt, I suppose,” Flint said.

“I will,” Coffin said.

“Mr. Flint,” Gault said. “May I trouble you for a moment?”

“Certainly,” Flint said, brushing a speck of lint from the lapel of his suit jacket.

“Can you explain to me why Acting Chief Coffin has brought this large quantity of heroin to my office?”

Flint pushed his black, rectangular glasses onto the bridge of his nose with his index finger. “He wants to establish a clear chain of custody, but he doesn't trust the state police. That would be my guess, at least.”

“Bingo,” Coffin said.

“But you're not going to leave it here, surely?” Gault said, her voice rising, almost plaintive.

“I suggest we place it in the safe until such time as a representative of the appropriate state or federal agency can pick it up,” Flint said.

“We have a safe?” Gault said.

The Tax Assessor's office on Town Hall's second floor was equipped with a 1,200-pound safe, manufactured in 1915 by the Diebold Safe and Lock Company, of Canton, Ohio. The safe had been acquired originally to protect tax receipts and vital town records in case of fire or attempted theft; no one had ever thought it necessary to replace it with a newer model. Without the combination, Coffin guessed, you'd need a direct hit from an artillery shell to get it open.

“I'd suggest calling the FBI in Boston,” Coffin said. “The less we have to deal with DEA the happier we'll all be. I was going to request FBI assistance with the fires tomorrow anyway. It'll be a twofer.”

“A twofer,” Gault said. “How wonderful.”

*   *   *

After Gault and Flint had finally locked the gym bag away in the big safe—with Lola, Coffin, and Filson, the town clerk, as witnesses—and handed Coffin a notarized receipt, Lola practically dragged Coffin back upstairs to his office.

“Sit,” she said, pointing to his desk chair.

“Yes, ma'am,” Coffin said.

Lola pulled an Apple laptop from her briefcase and opened it on Coffin's desk. “I've uploaded the video files from the fires, but I haven't had a chance to really look at them, things have been so crazy. Do you mind? I need your eyes.”

“I need a drink,” Coffin said.

“Soon—there's only about fifteen minutes of video altogether.” Lola opened a video editing program, which showed six video clip icons arranged in a neat grid. “Okay, here's clip one of the shed fire.” She clicked on the first icon, and the clip began to play in a window about half the size of the laptop's screen.

“Hard to make out much detail,” Coffin said. “The faces are all pretty blurry.”

“Well, duh,” Lola said. “It was dark. But you can see body size and shape, posture, clothes, attitude. That's something.”

“It's something, but it's not much,” Coffin said, staring at the smeared faces of the gawkers as the camera panned slowly to the left, then back to the right again. The lens bounced upward a bit, pausing for a second on a grainy figure on the hillside, deep in shadow, before returning to the crowd closer to the fire. “Wait a minute—” Coffin said, pointing at the top of the screen. “Who's that guy? Up there on the hill. Go back.”

Lola rewound the clip until she found the figure on the hill, then paused it. “Huh,” she said. “I don't remember seeing this guy, but I must have, right?”

“You sure it's a guy?”

Lola squinted. “Nope, too blurry. Could be kind of a bulky woman, I guess.”

“Sure doesn't want to be seen, whoever he is. Or she.”

“Jeans and a hoodie,” Lola said.

Coffin pushed a hand through his hair. “Jeans and a hoodie. Could be your guy.”

“Yep. But there's what,” Lola said, rewinding the video again, “three guys in jeans and hoodies in the crowd? It's like it's frickin' jeans and hoodie season. What about them?”

Coffin touched a fingertip to the dime-sized bald spot on the top of his head. Was it getting bigger? “There's definitely something going on with the guy on the hill. What's he even doing up there?”

“Could be somebody that's staying in one of the cottages,” Lola said. “Or maybe somebody that wants to watch but doesn't want to get too close.”

“It's his body language,” Coffin said. “Go back again. See how he reacts when the camera turns his way? He hides himself behind that tree a little bit more.”

“Huh,” Lola said. “Good eye.” She clicked on the second clip of the shed fire, but the camera did not return to the figure on the hill.

“Let's see if he shows up at the condo fire,” Coffin said.

“Way ahead of you,” Lola said, clicking on the first of three clips of the condo crowd. The camera panned from right to left—maybe thirty people, Coffin thought, hands in their pockets, little puffs of breath vapor visible in the cold night. The fire's glow was much brighter than in the clips of the shed; its roar and crackle clearly audible.

“Two guys in jeans and hoodies,” Coffin said.

“That one's a girl,” Lola said, touching the screen with a fingertip.

“Right. Sorry. So what about the guy—same one?”

Lola squinted again. “The light's better,” she said. “I can see his face, sort of—narrow features, looks like. Skinny.”

“The first guy was stocky, though, right?”

Lola clicked on the clip of the shed fire again, still paused at the ghostly figure on the hill. “Yeah,” she said. “I think you're right. Could be a thinner guy in big, floppy clothes, maybe. Or he might look bigger because of the blur. But I don't think it's the same person.”

“What about the girl?”

“Skinny jeans. The character on the hill's wearing baggies.”

Coffin rested his chin in his hands. “What about the guy that hit you over the head? Any video of him?”

Lola shook her head. “I don't think so—not unless Jeff took some. I handed him the camera as soon as I saw sweatshirt guy walking away.” She clicked on the single, short clip from the church fire.

Maybe twenty people, Coffin thought. It was late, so not much of a crowd. “There's skinny jeans girl again,” he said. “What's her deal?”

“Are there fire groupies?” Lola said.

The camera turned suddenly to the left, and for a moment it focused on a man's back as he walked away from the lens. He was bulky, but not tall. Hands in his pockets, hood up. The picture wobbled, swung to the right and turned on its side, blurring as the camera tried to focus on the front of Jeff Skillings's uniform jacket. Then the clip ended.

“Wow,” Lola said.

“Got him,” Coffin said.

“Yeah, but is it hill guy?” She clicked on the shed fire clip again.

“Same build. Same posture. Hands in his pockets the same way. Could be…”

Lola closed her eyes, rubbed her temples. “I just want a look at his face. Is that too much to ask?”

“Go back to the condo fire,” Coffin said. They looked at all three clips of the condo fire, which together produced a kind of evolutionary timeline of the crowd as people came and went. “Wait,” Coffin said, when they'd gone back to the first clip again. “Back up a little.”

Lola rewound the clip a few seconds, then hit
PLAY
.

“Pause it,” Coffin said, pointing at the screen. “Check him out.”

The same bulky man was caught in freeze-frame, standing just behind another, taller spectator in the crowd—a man wearing a billowy chiffon gown and a fur stole, who stood well over six feet in spiked heels. Coffin squinted: one of Hill Guy's eyes and part of his cheek and forehead were visible on the grainy video. The rest of his face was either obscured by the hood of his sweatshirt or hidden behind the shoulder of the tall cross-dresser. When Lola backed the video up, Hill Guy's head was turned, his face entirely obscured by his hood. When she hit the forward button, he disappeared completely behind Chiffon Man. He was not present in the second clip, or the third.

“Shit,” Lola said. “One eye? That's all I get? One frickin' eye?”

“It's kind of an interesting eye,” Coffin said, face close to the laptop screen. Hill Guy's one, visible eye was wide, bright in the firelight, fierce. Only part of the eyebrow was visible—it was dark, arched. “Probably got dark hair,” Coffin said. “Not old, I don't think.”

“He doesn't hit like an old guy,” Lola said. “Wait a sec…” She increased the film clip's window-size to full screen.

“That just makes it grainier,” Coffin said.

“I'm going to remember that eye,” Lola said, feeling the back of her head. “Guy hits me with a brick, he'd better hope I don't spot him on the street.”

Coffin nodded. “Yep,” he said. “Still sore?”

Lola winced, then grinned. “Nah,” she said. “Sore is for wussies.” She paused. “What about one of those drawings? You know, an artist's composite.”

“Like a pencil drawing of the suspect? Who'd do it?”

“What about your friend, what'-s his-name? He can draw, right?”

“Kotowski?” Coffin thought for a second. “So he draws a picture of sweatshirt guy, then what? We put up posters? Put it in the
Banner
?”

“Sure. Isn't that what cops would do in a situation like this?”

“It's going to take some extrapolation,” Coffin said, pointing at the laptop screen. “We've got one eye and a sweatshirt.”

“He's an artist. He can't extrapolate?”

“If you were a serial arsonist,” Coffin said, smoothing his mustache, “and you saw a sketch of yourself on a poster or in the newspaper, what would you do?”

“Change the way I look,” Lola said. “Cut my hair, wear different clothes. If I was a guy maybe I'd grow a mustache, or shave one off.”

Coffin nodded. “To fool the cops,” he said. “But it wouldn't fool your friends, or your family.”

“They'd say, dude, what's up with the mustache?”

“It's worth a shot,” Coffin said. “I have to run over to Valley View. I'll stop by Kotowski's place before I go home.”

“Jamie doing okay?”

“She says she's nesting,” Coffin said. “Why don't you come by for a drink in a bit? With any luck, I'll have a sketch to show you.”

*   *   *

Coffin sat beside his mother's bed, the volume turned down on her big TV. His mother stared straight ahead at the bright but silent screen, her features feral and sharp, hair the color of galvanized steel.

“They tell me somebody killed what's-his-name,” she said, gesturing loosely at the nurse's station down the hall. “They're acting all upset about it.”

“They probably
are
upset, Ma. I'm sure it was a shock to everyone.”

She turned and stared at him for a moment with her bright crow's eyes. “Not to me,” she said.

“No? How come?”

Her lip curled—a tight half-smile. “'Cause I had him whacked.” She drew a slow finger across her neck. “Ha! The dirty little prick had it coming.”

“Ma. You didn't have him whacked. Don't say that in front of people, okay?”

The remote lay on the coverlet. She picked it up, flipped through a few channels, settling on a home shopping show. “You don't believe me? Ask your uncle.”

“Uncle Rudy?”

“Who? No—the one who's a crook.”

Coffin shook his head. He knew it was pointless arguing with her. The deeper the Alzheimer's dug its tentacles into her brain, the less she resembled the woman he remembered—warm, but with a deep ironic streak, ferociously loyal, beautiful,
like a movie star
, his father had always said. She hardly recognized him now, but the feeling was mutual—Coffin's mother was all but gone, and this strange old woman had taken her place.