Fire Season Page 9

  Hump pursed his lips. “Yep,” he said. “Unless we’re forgetting something.”

  “I’m hungry,” Bitters said, climbing into the Mustang. “Let’s put the flashers on and see how fast we can get to Denny’s in Hyannis.”

  “There’s no Denny’s in Hyannis,” Hump said, squeezing his broad bulk into the passenger seat. “You’re thinking Friendly’s. There’s a Friendly’s in Hyannis, but it ain’t open now.”

  “The hell there isn’t a Denny’s in Hyannis,” Bitters said.

  “Bet you twenty bucks,” Hump said. They shut the doors. The Mustang’s engine rumbled to life, and they disappeared around the corner on Standish Street.

  The coroner pulled up in a gleaming white van with SHERMAN FUNERAL HOME painted on the side in gold script. The coroner, Sherman, was an undertaker in Chatham. He and his assistant climbed out of the van. Sherman was sixty or so, thin and saggy-faced. Coffin had never seen him without a Pall Mall stuck in the corner of his mouth.

  Sherman whistled softly, peering at the head submerged in the lobster tank. The lobsters had nibbled away some of Branstool’s lower lip. “My oh my,” he said. “Someone’s had a very bad day.”

  Coffin’s vision swam, refocused. “This doesn’t get to you?” he said. “Even a little?”

  “Sure it gets to me.” Sherman lit a fresh cigarette from the smoldering butt of his old one, then flipped the butt out the door and into the gutter. “Just ’cause I’m a funeral director don’t mean I’m not human.” He pulled on one long, black rubber glove, then the other. “Where’s the giblets?”

  “Haven’t turned up yet,” Coffin said.

  Sherman sent his assistant to the van for a large Ziploc bag and a folding stepstool. When the assistant returned Sherman climbed up onto the stepstool and reached into the tank with a gloved hand.

  Lola winced. “Oh shit,” she said. “Here we go.”

  “I ain’t got nobody,” Sherman sang, slapping a couple of hungry lobsters aside. “Nobody, nobody cares for meeeee!” He grabbed a fistful of Branstool’s hair and hauled the dripping head out of the tank. “Who does this remind you of?” he said, holding the head aloft, something like triumph on his baggy face.

  Coffin and the assistant stared blankly. “Perseus, you ignoramuses,” Sherman said. “Brandishing the head of Medusa! Jesus Christ—don’t you people read?”

  * * *

  As Sherman and his assistant climbed into their van and drove off, Roz O’Malley oozed up to the curb in her green Cadillac. She was small, olive-skinned, Coffin’s age. She wore rubber duck boots, a fur coat thrown over a flannel nightgown. She was Coffin’s distant cousin on his mother’s side; they’d gone to school together, even dated briefly as high school juniors. Roz had gone on to marry Johnny O’Malley, owner of the Fish Palace. He handled the money and she worked the hostess podium—the last line of defense against the lowing herds of summer tourists, waiting in long lines for their early bird specials. Then Johnny died and left the place to her. She popped out of the Cadillac like a cork out of a bottle.

  “What the fuck,” she said, looking up at the Fish Palace’s peeling façade, the neon lobsters hanging dark in its front windows. “It’s not on fire.”

  “It’s not quite as bad as that,” Coffin said.

  Roz turned on him. The top of her head came up to his sternum. “Bad? You think a fire would be bad? Do you have any idea how much work it is, running this dump?”

  “Well—”

  “I’ve got a heart condition, Frankie—an arrhythmia. On account of the stress—that’s what my cardiologist says. You ever had an arrhythmia?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, it sucks. You think you’re gonna freakin’ die, but you don’t—you just feel like crap. But do I get a day off from the work and the worry? No, I do not.”

  “Why not sell the place?” Coffin said.

  Roz laughed, a sharp little bark. “Don’t think I haven’t tried. Know what the profit margin is in the restaurant business?”

  Coffin shook his head.

  “Two percent, Frankie—two percent! And you make it all on liquor—you give the food away at break-even. You’d have to be a freaking masochist to get into it, especially now with all the taxes and regulation. No smoking! No trans fats!” She paused, shook her head. “Then you got your hepatitis outbreaks, your health inspectors with their hand in your pocket, your food poisoning lawsuits, holy shit! One bad clam could put me out of business, Frankie—one bad clam! The place is eating me alive with repairs—the roof leaks, the plumbing’s shot—and I suddenly got freakin’ immigration agents crawlin’ up my ass, and now I gotta pay them off. If I thought I could get away with it, I’d burn the fucker down myself.” Roz spread her arms—an elaborate shrug. “So if it’s not on fire, what the fuck am I doing here at three in the freakin’ A.M.? I get a call says there’s a situation. What’s up?”

  Coffin pointed at Pinsky. “The officer here was checking on a possible break-in. The front door was pried open.”

  “That’s right, ma’am,” Pinsky said, lightly pinching the brim of his hat. “When I entered the premises”—he hesitated, searching for words—“I found a … body part.”

  “I’m sorry,” Roz said. “You found a body part? What the fuck does that mean?”

  “A human body part, ma’am,” Pinsky said.

  “He found a guy’s head in the lobster tank,” Coffin said.

  Roz’s eyes widened. “Holy shit,” she said. “Who was it? Anybody I know?”

  “Dr. Branstool—the guy that runs Valley View.”

  “That little weasel? Why was his head in my lobster tank?”

  Coffin shrugged, hands in his jacket pockets. “Good question.”

  Roz scratched her earlobe. “Lobsters are carnivores,” she said. “Did you know that?”

  Coffin nodded. “Yep.”

  “They mostly eat crabs and stuff, whatever they can catch on the seafloor.”

  “If you say so,” Coffin said. A faint, reddish glow had risen just above the horizon to the southeast. Not dawn, Coffin thought, checking his watch—it was too small, too close, and too early.

  “What’s-his-name’s head,” Roz said. “Was it—intact?”

  “Mostly,” Coffin said, after a beat.

  Roz closed her eyes. “Aw, shit, Frankie,” she said. “Do you have any idea what those fucking crustaceans cost me? What am I supposed do with a tankful of lobsters that ate some guy’s head?”

  “Maybe you could sell ’em as souvenirs,” Pinsky said.

  “Do you smell smoke?” Coffin said. Just then the wail of a siren pierced the wind and the darkness—a fire truck roaring east on Bradford.

  Pinsky’s shoulder radio crackled. He thumbed the button. “Yeah, Marge.”

  “You done at the Fish Palace?” the dispatcher said. “Big fire at St. Mary’s.”

  Roz threw up her hands. “St. Mary’s? St. Mary’s? What kind of God would burn his own house down and leave this place standing?”

  Pinsky looked at Coffin.

  “Why don’t you tape off the door here and then head home,” Coffin said. “Ask Marge to call Tony and tell him to get his ass in to work—leave’s canceled. Lola and I are heading for St. Mary’s right now.”

  Chapter 12

  St. Mary’s of the Harbor was a pretty, 1970s-era Episcopal church that sat on the harbor side of Commercial Street in Provincetown’s east end, commanding a broad view of the water, from Wood End to the long sweep of beach at North Truro. Coffin had never been inside. He’d been raised nominally Catholic; his parents had dragged him off to mass at St. Peter’s at Christmas and Easter, but neither his mother nor his father had been particularly interested in religion.

  Like most of the buildings in town, St. Mary’s was a wood-frame structure finished in cedar shingles—a satisfying meal for the fire that roared like a hungry animal in its sanctuary, gnawed its windowsills, and licked the edges of its roof. The church was not yet fully e
ngulfed, but Coffin knew there was little hope of saving it, even with outside help. Both of Provincetown’s working pumpers were in the parking lot, delivering their measly spritzes to the flames with little effect, aside from a lot of hissing and steam.

  Walt Macy was there, along with Provincetown’s full contingent of volunteer firefighters. The crew of EMTs Coffin had just seen at the Fish Palace rolled up behind the Crown Vic, lights flashing.

  “Busy night,” Macy said. He stood in the parking lot, thumbs in the suspenders of his big fireman’s pants.

  “No joke,” Coffin said. “What are the odds here?”

  “Lousy.” Macy shook his head. “We’ve got a pumper inbound from Truro, and another on the way from Eastham, but these frame buildings go up like torches—especially when you pour gas on ’em.”

  “Another one, then? You sure?”

  Macy shrugged. “I’m no expert in this stuff—I mean, I’m a pharmacist, right? But just judging from how much of the building was involved by the time we got here, and how fast the fire’s grown since then, you gotta figure there’s an accelerant involved.”

  “He’s escalating,” Lola said. “Jesus, what’s next?”

  “What’s bigger than the Episcopal church?” Coffin said.

  A crowd of about fifty onlookers had gathered—neighbors, insomniacs, and police-scanner junkies, Coffin thought. They looked cold—the night was damp and unseasonably chilly—and, for the first time, afraid. It was one thing to watch a shed or an empty developer’s folly burn to the ground, another thing entirely when a structure as central to the community as St. Mary’s was on fire.

  A lime yellow, 1960s-vintage pumper sirened to a rattling halt less than a foot from the parked Crown Vic, and a team of yellow-coated volunteers from Truro jumped out. There was a shouted conversation between Truro’s chief and Walt Macy about where the next closest hydrant was—the pumpers from Provincetown were hooked up to a hydrant across the street—the two chiefs pointing this way and that before coming to a decision and sending a couple of firemen scurrying off with a hydrant wrench and a thick black hose.

  A small, slender man dressed in a raincoat and pajamas rode into the parking lot on a bicycle. A stocky woman firefighter tried to wave him away, but he let the bike fall with a clatter and elbowed past her. “Oh my God,” he said, pushing his hands through his hair—it was sandy, thinning. “What in the hell have you done?”

  “Father Brian?” Macy said. “I almost didn’t recognize you.”

  The man turned, smiled a weak smile. “Yes, it’s me.” He looked down at the pajama legs sticking out from under his raincoat. “Out of uniform, I suppose. How bad is it?”

  “Honestly?” Macy said. “I don’t know. We’re going to try to get a hose inside, see if we can put some water on the base of the fire. If it’s not too far along already, we may be able to save the structure.”

  Father Brian nodded glumly. “Please tell your men to be careful. And women.”

  “Well,” Macy said, “if it’s too hot, we won’t go in. We’re talking volunteers here.”

  “What in the hell has who done?” Coffin said.

  The priest jumped a little bit. “I’m sorry, what?”

  Coffin took his shield out of his pocket, held it up. “You said ‘Oh my God, what in the hell have you done?’ I’m curious who you were referring to.”

  “I said that? Out loud?”

  Coffin nodded.

  Father Brian turned pink. “I was referring to God. We haven’t been getting along lately.”

  A couple of firemen in full breathing apparatus had dragged a canvas hose toward St. Mary’s front door. They threw the door open, knelt down, and pointed the hose at the base of the fire. At their signal, the tall, skinny fireman standing next to the pumper opened a gleaming brass valve. Water gushed from the pumper, thoroughly dousing Walt Macy before the skinny fireman could turn it off and connect the canvas hose to the proper valve.

  Coffin shook his head—he half expected it to rattle. “Who hasn’t been getting along?”

  “God and I. I’ve been very angry at him.”

  “You’ve been angry at God?” Lola said. “Are you allowed to do that?”

  “I’m thirty-eight years old and I’ve got a prostate the size of a softball,” Father Brian said, eyes magnified behind thick glasses. “My wife left me for a bass player in Chatham. My fourteen-year-old daughter just got her boyfriend’s name tattooed on her neck. Know what his name is?”

  Coffin and Lola shook their heads.

  “Jeremy. Want to guess how the genius tattoo artist spelled it?”

  “J-E-R-M-Y?” Coffin said.

  “Bingo!” Father Brian cried.

  “Ouch,” Lola said.

  Father Brian spread his arms. “So I think I’m allowed to be mad at God, thank you very much.” He waved loosely toward the flames billowing from St. Mary’s belfry. “I mean, look at this. Just look at it!”

  Coffin looked. The fire was strange and beautiful, roaring from the windows, speaking in rough tongues. It was as primal and fierce as anything he could imagine, a lovely animal, alive and hungry. He felt an odd almost-memory beginning to surface—something like déjà vu: the burning church, bare trees, harbor gleam in low moonlight. He tried to imagine himself inside the dark sanctuary—gas gurgling from the can, the fumes, the soft scritch of the lighter—but the image wouldn’t solidify. It hung in the air for a moment like an interrupted dream and then vanished. Coffin shivered. From the cold, he wondered, or from teetering just on the edge of some kind of discovery?

  “You know what’s going on at Saint Peter’s right now?” Father Brian said.

  Lola raised her eyebrows, shook her head.

  Father Brian’s lip curled into a sneer. “Nothing, that’s what. Not a godda—” He stopped himself, took a deep breath. “Gosh darned thing. Saint-freaking Peter’s isn’t burning to the ground while a bunch of guys in big rubber pants trip all over themselves trying to squirt water at it.” He pointed an accusing finger at the sky. “Play favorites much?”

  Lola shrugged. “I’m one of those people that thinks God is kind of a universal energy. You know—nature. I don’t think I could get mad at nature.”

  Father Brian laughed—a couple of loud barks. “Nature,” he said. “Must be nice.”

  The two firefighters at the church door managed to get their hose working and were advancing slowly into the building, one heavy step at a time. A loud hissing and a cloud of steam escaped from the open door just before the big, east-facing stained-glass window shattered and fell in bright, glinting shards into the parking lot. A thick tongue of flame shot from the window’s empty socket, blackening the eaves.

  “Nice move, God,” Father Brian said, under his breath.

  “Excuse us, Father,” Coffin said. “Sounds like you and God have some things to work out.”

  “You’re telling me,” Father Brian said.

  There was a great clanging crash from inside the church, an eruption of sparks from the blown-out window. The two firemen came stumbling out, dragging the bucking, squirting hose behind them.

  “What the hell was that?” Macy shouted.

  The shorter of the two firefighters took off his breathing apparatus—he was red-faced and sweaty. “Pipe organ down,” he said. “Frickin’ thing just missed us.”

  “Oh thanks, God,” Father Brian muttered. “Thanks a lot.”

  Coffin tilted his head toward the street and started walking. Lola followed. When they were out of earshot, Coffin said, “Listen, can you handle things here? Let’s call in Skillings to help secure the area. I’ve got to follow up on Branstool—find out if there’s family to notify, run over to his place and, you know—”

  “Find the rest of him?”

  “Bingo.”

  “No problem. Jeff can handle the traffic, I’ll fire up the video camera.” She paused. “You sure you’re okay? I mean, if you find the body and all?”

  Coffin grinned, not sure a
t all. “Yes, dear,” he said. He glanced at his watch: 3:45. “Where the hell is Tony?”

  * * *

  When the two cops went back to their car—the pretty girl cop rummaging in the trunk, the tall one with the mustache talking on the radio—the man in the gray hoodie decided he’d seen enough. He knew what was next: they’d videotape the crowd like they had at the condo fire, and he didn’t want any part of that. He turned and walked away from the cops, casual, hands in his pockets, heading east on Commercial Street. Just another guy in a guy suit, walking home after a night at the bars.

  He concentrated on walking slowly, keeping to the inland side of the street where a tall hedge threw a shadow over the sidewalk. He must have been nearly invisible, he thought. Another fire engine roared past—a big red and white one from Eastham—siren howling, lights a dizzying whirl of color. All good, he thought, the more noise and commotion, the less chance anyone will notice me. But a few seconds later, when the fire truck had pulled up at the church and killed its siren, he heard a voice behind him.

  “Excuse me,” it said.

  A woman’s voice. He kept walking, hood up, head down. Footsteps coming up behind him.

  “Sir? Excuse me!”

  The lady cop! The lady cop was following him! He didn’t turn around. He tried not to speed up. He was almost at the corner of Atkins Lane, a dark, block-long private way that connected to Bradford Street. Footsteps quick behind him—closer. He turned into Atkins Lane and broke into a run, sneakers crunch-crunching on the pale road surface—crushed oyster shell, gleaming faintly in the dim trickle of streetlight. He ducked left again between a couple of darkened houses, staying low, hidden in deep shadow. He stopped, flattened himself behind a shed, then crouched down, watching the road, listening.

  * * *

  Coffin yawned. It was very late—and more than anything, he wanted to go home, crawl into bed next to Jamie and go to sleep, untroubled by dreams of fire. Instead he was driving out to Pilgrim Heights in North Truro, to the house where Dr. Branstool had lived until sometime that evening.

  The good news, if you could call it that, was that Truro’s police chief would be waiting at the house when Coffin got there. The thought of going in alone had made the hair on the back of Coffin’s neck prickle, though he couldn’t have admitted it to Lola. The bad news was that while Chief Willoughby had a great depth of experience in handing out traffic citations, settling domestic disputes, and responding to off-season burglar alarms (99 percent of which were false, Coffin knew), he was unlikely to be much use in the event that Branstool’s murderer had chosen to stick around. The chances were slim, Coffin thought, but still—he would have been happier if Lola had come along.