Fire Season Read online

  “The other bad news is that only about fifteen percent of arson cases are resolved in arrest. Fire destroys evidence, so even if your arsonist is sloppy as hell he’s likely to be hard to catch. He could drop his wallet in the middle of the crime scene, but if it’s a hot fire you’d never find a trace of it.”

  “What about a profile?” Lola said. “Any help there?”

  Wells shook his head. “The profile’s pretty broad: typically you’re talking about a white male between seventeen and twenty-six, probably unemployed, probably grew up in a dysfunctional or abusive family, socially awkward, bad at relationships with women—maybe even lives with his parents. Probably resides within a mile or less of most of the fires he sets.”

  “Sounds like half the townie kids between here and Orleans,” Coffin said.

  “Told you it was broad,” Wells said, grinning. “Your typical excitement arsonist sets fires because it makes him feel powerful: the damage, the chaos, the fear. But there’s a catch.”

  “A catch?”

  “These profiles are compiled from interviews with the fifteen percent—the dumb-asses that get caught. We don’t know anything about the eighty-five percent that get away.”

  Lola squinted. “So they’re all straight? The fifteen percent?”

  “Pretty much,” Wells said. “Or at least they think they are. Back in the day most serial arsonists would’ve been classified as latent homosexuals, which is another way of saying a kid that hates his dad and jerks off a lot, which is pretty much everybody. If you look at the national stats on arson, gay men don’t even show up on the graph. They’ve got other ways of getting attention, maybe. Of course, your guy could be the exception.”

  “Perfect,” Coffin said. His head had begun to throb. The craving for a cigarette was powerful; it was all he could do not to snatch the pack of Camels from Wells’s shirt pocket.

  “You want the other other bad news?” Wells said.

  Coffin looked at Lola. “The other other bad news.”

  Wells picked a tobacco flake from his tongue, flicked it into the bushes. “Serial arson is all about rage. You look at the files on these guys, the needle on the rage meter is pegged every time—arson is a way of acting out, getting revenge. Which means your guy may not be all that concerned about hurting people. The real pyros usually aren’t. That’s the part that would keep me up at night.”

  “Yep,” Coffin said, rubbing his temples. “That would do it.”

  * * *

  In the Crown Vic, heading back toward Town Hall, Coffin asked, “Okay, what was that crack about me getting ‘healthy’?” He mimicked Lola’s finger quotes.

  Lola grinned, glanced at Coffin, then back at the road. Compared to the summer crush of tourists, Commercial Street was calm. A few stout retirees ambled past the library, now housed in a deconsecrated church and home to a sixty-six-foot, half-scale wooden schooner, the building of which had been overseen by a distant cousin of Coffin’s in the late 1980s. The harbor rumpled in the sudden breeze. The sun was going down, invisible behind a thick ceiling of pink-tinged clouds. A cluster of Tall Ships wobbled across the street in front of them, muumuus billowing like spinnakers. “Well,” Lola said, “it’s just that maybe you’ve put on a few pounds. Either that or your uniform shrank.”

  “It’s made of freaking petrochemicals,” Coffin said. “It can’t shrink. Hell, it can’t biodegrade.”

  “Okay, then,” Lola said.

  “Look,” Coffin said. “I quit smoking, okay? Do you know how hard that is? I should never have to give up anything else, ever. Besides, food tastes really good now. And I’m hungry. Feed me, Seymour.”

  “I was really proud of you back there,” Lola said, “when Wells offered you that cigarette. But, Frank, it’s not enough to just quit smoking. You’re going to be a dad—you’ve got to take care of yourself. I mean, how’s your cholesterol? Aren’t you almost fifty? Shouldn’t you have a colonoscopy?”

  “So, what—you’re saying I look fat?”

  “Oh my God,” Lola said. “You’re such a girl.”

  Coffin laughed. “So what’s the plan for tonight? Got a hot date?”

  Lola gave him a sideways glance. “Dinner and Netflix at Kate’s. If it’s any of your business.”

  “Excuse me—were you not just expressing an interest in the state of my colon?”

  “Okay, okay. I’m just a private person. Comes from growing up a lesbian in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.”

  “Fine,” Coffin said. “Two can play at that game. From now on, my personal life is a closed book. We’ll keep it strictly professional from here on out.”

  “How’s Jamie?”

  “Incredibly sexy. Her boobs are huge. It’s like they’re everywhere, suddenly—I can’t take my eyes off them, and I’m not even a boob man, really. But.”

  “But?”

  “She’s not interested. Nada. Zip. Zilch.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Doctor says it’s totally normal. Basically her body just wants food and sleep—the desire hormones are turned off. Could reverse itself in a week, or could go on like this for a year or so, depending on how long she breast-feeds. A year!”

  Lola laughed. “Poor Frank,” she said, pulling into the chief’s reserved parking space behind Town Hall. “Boobs everywhere you look, but they’re not for you.”

  Coffin climbed out of the Crown Vic and stretched. He looked up at the looming stone phallus of the Pilgrim Monument, imagined it toppling over, destroying Town Hall as it went down. “Well,” he said, “that’s Provincetown. You’d think I’d be used to it by now.”

  * * *

  After Coffin had spent an excruciating hour or so at his desk reviewing reports and working on the duty roster for the coming week, he decided to call it quits and drove the Crown Vic over to Billy’s for a drink. As he pulled into the potholed parking lot—his potholed parking lot—across from the Stop & Shop, he wondered if Kotowski would be there. Coffin had hired him to manage Billy’s when he realized he could no longer run the place himself—it was that or sell it off to some developer who’d turn it into a condo complex, or some godawful minimall selling T-shirts and cheap, Chinese snow globes with lighthouses or fishing boats inside them.

  Inside, Billy’s was surprisingly busy. All of the bar stools were taken, and several of the booths were full. A young Eastern European woman was feeding quarters into the jukebox. It was thumping out a blues song by Albert King, “Born Under a Bad Sign.” Coffin felt a tingle of dread: customers were good, but why so many? He had learned not to trust apparent good news where Billy’s was concerned. On Kotowski’s first day as manager, he’d hand-lettered a large sign that said FREE BEER, and propped it up in the parking lot. It was a hot Saturday afternoon in July, and the place filled almost immediately—Kotowski giving out tickets for one free beer per customer at the door.

  “What in the hell are you doing?” Coffin had said, driving over in the rattling, backfiring Fiesta after a patrol officer had called him about the sign.

  “Business!” Kotowski had crowed. “When was the last time you saw this many people in here?”

  Kotowski had him there, Coffin had to admit. “Never. Not even close. There’s just one problem.”

  “Problem? This isn’t a problem—it’s a brilliant promotional scheme. Look at them—they’ve had their free beers and now they’re buying drinks and ordering food. I don’t know why every bar in town isn’t doing this.”

  “Because it’s illegal,” Coffin said. “I could lose my liquor license. You can’t advertise free drinks. Ever. Period.”

  “Fucking fascists,” Kotowski had grumbled, bringing in the sign. “Whatever happened to free enterprise? Whatever happened to getting the government off our backs?”

  But now there was no sign in the parking lot—just a decent happy hour crowd of mostly young, attractive people. But then Coffin remembered: they’d hired Yelena, the pretty Croatian barmaid Coffin had met back in May. She said she’d try a few shift
s, see how it went. Coffin caught a flash of her dark hair between standing room customers at the bar. That was it—she must have just started. And apparently she’d told a few friends.

  Coffin squeezed between two tall, Eastern European men and found Kotowski sitting at the bar. Kotowski was wearing patched corduroys, a paint-splattered T-shirt, and flip-flops, even though the temperature outside had dropped into the midforties. His two-day beard was shot through with gray, his hair stringy and uncombed. He looked the way he always looked.

  “Wow,” Coffin said.

  “Not bad, right?” Kotowski said. He was sipping a Newcastle ale and smoking a cigarette, despite Provincetown’s nonsmoking ordinance.

  Coffin waved to Yelena, who was busy pouring pints of Guinness.

  “Hello, Frank!” she called out.

  Billy’s regular bartender, Squid, was busy shucking oysters and arranging them on paper plates in their half-shells, with lemon wedges and little paper cups of cocktail sauce. “Hey, Frank,” Squid said, looking up from his work. He was hunched over a large tub full of ice and very fresh oysters. His long, spatulate fingers worked the oyster knife with surprising dexterity. “Some crowd, right?”

  “No joke,” Coffin said. “It’s like a real bar, almost.”

  Squid laughed. “Yelena showed up with, like, five of her girlfriends. I gave them a round on the house—hope that’s okay. They sat around looking bored for about fifteen minutes. You know, the way a hot girl would in a dump like this.”

  “I’ve seen it myself,” Coffin said. “Every time I bring Jamie here.”

  “Yep,” Squid said. “That’s the look. Their eyes kind of glaze over, and they start fiddling with their cell phones. But then Cap’n Nickerson spoke up.”

  Captain Nickerson was a moldering green Amazon parrot that Coffin had inherited, indirectly, from his father. No one knew how old he was, but he’d acquired a large and salty vocabulary in his years aboard the Nora Jean, the old man’s fishing boat. Captain Nickerson’s cage hung behind the bar; he bobbed his head in time with the music and swung manically on its little swing.

  “Uh-oh,” Coffin said. “What’d he say?”

  “What he always says when he sees a pretty girl.”

  “Show us your tits?”

  “Bingo.”

  “So?”

  “So they all cracked up. And then they did.”

  Coffin shook his head. “I’m not following.”

  “They all showed their tits. Then they got out their cell phones and took pictures of each other showing their tits. Then about ten minutes later, like, fifty people showed up. Me and Yelena can hardly keep up.”

  Coffin turned to Kotowski. “He’s making this up, right?”

  “Nope.” Kotowski held up three fingers—Scout’s honor. “It’s the gospel truth. Cap’n Nickerson to the rescue.”

  “Holy crap,” Coffin said. “What’ll they do if he says ‘eat me’?”

  Squid grinned. “Hadn’t thought of that. Things could get ugly. We’re dealing with a highly literal crowd here, evidently.”

  Yelena handed three pints of Guinness across the bar, took the money, made change. When she was done, she poured a short Newcastle for herself and sauntered down to Squid’s station at the end of the bar.

  “What’s up, boss?” she said.

  “I’m impressed,” Coffin said. “These are all your friends?”

  “Some,” Yelena said, sipping her beer. “Not all. Some friends of friends. Some just people who come in.” She was small and a bit angular, with high cheekbones and a strong nose. She wore her black hair in a long ponytail. Her eyes were blue, but so pale in the dim light they seemed almost silver. She was, Coffin thought, one of the most strikingly beautiful women he’d ever met.

  Captain Nickerson emitted a loud wolf whistle, and much of the crowd wolf whistled back.

  “You know,” Coffin said, “we might actually be making money.”

  “There’s just one problem,” Kotowski said.

  “Don’t tell me,” Coffin said. “Yelena doesn’t have a work visa?”

  Yelena frowned. “Of course I have,” she said. “All papers in order. Good to go.” She brushed her hands together twice, first the left on top, then the right—that’s that.

  “Then what?” Coffin said. “I don’t get it.”

  “I can’t hang out here anymore,” Kotowski said. “It’s too fucking crowded.”

  * * *

  Kate Hanlon lived on Alden Lane, a cross-street between Bradford and Commercial in what the travel Web sites liked to call Provincetown’s “quiet east end.” The sun had set, the clouded sky was half-dark. The rain had started again.

  Lola climbed out of her Camaro and stretched, arms overhead. She’d gone to the gym after her shift, had a good workout, showered and dressed in jeans, loose cotton sweater, engineer boots, and a black leather jacket. She retrieved a bottle of wine from the passenger seat—a nice pinot noir. Then, out of habit, she took her personal use .38 from the glove compartment and put it, in its clip-on holster, into her jacket pocket.

  As usual, Kate was waiting for her in the open door. A shaft of buttery lamplight fell out onto the front steps. Kate was lanky and dark-eyed. A full-time pilot for Cape Air, the commuter airline that flew ten-passenger Cessnas between Boston and the Cape and islands, she barely made enough money to afford her year-round rental. She was barefoot, dressed in jeans, a snug white T-shirt, no bra. The house was warm. Lola stepped inside, rain dripping from her jacket onto the braided entry rug. They kissed.

  “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-f
inished 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.