by Jon Loomis
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.
“He didn’t do it himself, of c
ourse,” she said, touching a finger to her temple. “Too smart for that.”
“Right,” Coffin said. “Way too smart.”
“It was that accountant he’s running around with. Huggybear.”
“Loverboy?”
“Who?”
* * *
After he’d left his mother’s room—patting her hand, kissing her temple—Coffin paused outside the director’s office. The door was open. Ms. Haskell, the patient’s advocate, was sitting at Branstool’s desk. She waved Coffin in.
“Detective Coffin,” she said. “Have you got a minute?”
“Just,” Coffin said.
“Thanks, I know it’s a busy time for you. But I wanted to let you know we’ve decided to consider your mother’s appeal of the relocation decision.”
“Her appeal?”
“We were contacted by her attorney this morning. She pointed out that under Massachusetts law, there’s a ten-day window during which an appeal must be heard, if requested.”
“Her attorney? She has an attorney?”
“She’s retained an attorney, yes. A Ms. Sarah Baldritch of Baldritch, Torkel, Nash. Of Boston.”
Coffin touched his mustache. It was spiky, needed trimming. He thought again about shaving it off. “Has my uncle been to see her? Rudy Santos?”
“Not to my knowledge, no, sir,” Ms. Haskell said. “But feel free to check the visitor log.”
On his way out, Coffin glanced through the log—a yellow pad on the day-nurse’s desk, next to a small printed placard that said “Please Sign In.” Rudy’s name wasn’t on it—but Coffin already knew it wouldn’t be.
* * *
Kotowski lived in a ramshackle old house near the breakwater, at the far west end of Commercial Street. The house had a small insignia above the door—a blue rectangle with a white house floating on white waves—which meant that it had, in its earlier form, been one of the houses floated across the harbor from the old Long Point salt works, an abandoned settlement of fishermen and salt workers once known as Hell Town. He’d bought it for almost nothing in the seventies, had weatherized it himself, built crazy additions without permit or license, almost lost it to unpaid taxes and greedy developers multiple times. Somehow he was still there, still making his strange paintings—the dusty living room crammed with poorly mended furniture he’d picked up at the dump: the armchairs repaired with duct tape, the three-legged coffee table supported by a cinder block. A large outboard motor lay in pieces on the living-room floor, in a state of greasy and perpetual disrepair.
“You want me to do a what?” Kotowski said. They were sitting at Kotowski’s warped and tippy kitchen table, peering at the screen of Lola’s laptop.
“I want you to do an artist’s rendering of the guy standing behind the guy in the big poofy dress.”
“An artist’s rendering? That’s what you get when you melt down an abstract expressionist, right? Or when Thomas Kinkade takes a crap.”
“He’ll be here all week,” Coffin said.
“I thought it was funny,” Kotowski said. “Hell, I can’t even see the guy. Can you make him any bigger?”
“Nope.”
“Any clearer?”
“Sorry.”
“Does he ever come out from behind the guy in the dress?”
“That’s as good as it gets.”
Kotowski closed the laptop with a definitive snap. “Forget it,” he said. “It’s not dignified. I’m an artist—not some police technician working with composites on a computer. I went to RISD, for Christ’s sake.”
“Fine. I thought it might be kind of a challenge—putting together a whole face from the fragment. Plus, you were doing the crime theme for awhile.”
“Doing the crime theme?” Kotowski said, making finger quotes. “Are you talking about the Frog Marches? Those were deeply subversive paintings, Coffin. If you think they had anything to do with your conventional little arsonist, you’ve entirely missed the point.”
The Frog Marches were a series of life-sized, photo-realist paintings Kotowski had done in 2008 and 2009. Frog March 1, depicting a weeping George W. Bush being led away in handcuffs by FBI agents, had sold immediately for a price that even Kotowski thought ridiculously high. He’d done several more: Frog March 2 showed Dick Cheney being dragged into a courtroom in an orange jumpsuit; in Frog March 3 Donald Rumsfeld was tarred and feathered; Frog March 4 imagined the prison strip-search of Condoleeza Rice, complete with latex-gloved matron; and Frog March 5 showed Alberto Gonzalez, strapped to a table, cloth wadded into his mouth, eyes wide behind his glasses as a large man in camouflage poured water over his face. All had been sold to the same anonymous collector.
“Good series,” Coffin said. “Very lifelike.”
“Very lifelike?” Kotowski said. “Is that all you can say? What about the content, Coffin?”
Coffin shrugged. “They were terrible people. I’m glad they’re gone. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want their pictures in my living room.”
Kotowski poked Coffin in the chest with a long, bony forefinger. “But they’re not gone,” he said. “That’s the point. You can drive out the Devil with a pitchfork, Coffin, but he always comes roaring back again. Just look at Cheney—he was in the fucking Nixon administration, for Christ’s sake.”
“Whatever,” Coffin said, rubbing his chest. “Will you do it, or not?”
Kotowski tapped a filterless Camel from the pack and lit it. “I told you—no. N-O. I don’t work for the cops, even if they’re my best friend.”
“I’m touched, Kotowski. Sort of.”
“Well, don’t be. It’s all relative. You’re just the person in this town I dislike the least. Want a beer? I stole some Newcastles from the Oyster Shack.”
“Sorry,” Coffin said. “I can’t. I have to get home.”
“All right, all right, twist my arm. I’ll do your fucking rendering. It’ll take a few minutes. The beer’s in the fridge.”
Coffin opened a Newcastle for Kotowski, and one for himself. They were very cold. Kotowski fetched a large sketch pad and a stick of charcoal, opened the laptop and started to draw.
“So,” he said. “Are you going to take my advice and leave town?”
“Jamie doesn’t want to,” Coffin said. “She likes it here.”
“What about you? What do you want?”
“Does it matter?”
“Nope,” Kotowski said, sketching. “Not in the least.”
Coffin sipped his beer. “I like it here. I like the seasonal change. It’s too crowded in the summer and too cold and deserted in the winter, but maybe that’s better than living someplace that never changes. Sometimes the streets seem too narrow. I don’t know—you’d leave?”
Kotowski curled his lip. “Provincetown isn’t the same anymore. It’s too cute. It’s like a fucking theme park. Welcome to Queerland! Come and gawk at the quaint and lovable locals in their fanciful homosexual garb!” He made a loud retching sound. “I was getting drunk at the Vault a few nights ago and a guy walks in with his wife and a couple of bored teenagers. Teenagers, Coffin! The guy said he wanted them to get a look at a real alternative lifestyle.” Kotowski made finger quotes again, rolled his eyes. “He said, ‘It’s all about recognizing each other as human beings, right?’ I had to stop myself from caving his head in with a bar stool. What the fuck is the point of having a leather bar if you can’t shock the yokels with it?”
“The whole gay thing is so twentieth century,” Coffin said.
“Exactly! We’ll have to come up with something new—something completely vile. Then, in a few years, they’ll accept that, too, and we’ll have to come up with something else—it’s like a freaking arms race. I’m telling you, Coffin, all this accepting you breeders are doing—it’s taking the fun out of being homosexual.”
“Maybe you should move to Texas, or Uganda,” Coffin said.
“I like a challenge,” Kotowski said. “But get serious—Texas?”
Coffin drained his beer. “O
kay,” he said. “Nice chatting, but I’ve got to get going.”
“Don’t you want your rendering?” Kotowski said. “All done—free of charge.” He turned the sketch pad around. It was the man in the gray hoodie, stocky, hands in his pockets—except that all of his features had been squashed together in the upper-right corner of his face: eyes, nose, mouth, ears.
“What the hell is that?” Coffin said.
“It’s cubism, you philistine,” Kotowski said. “Jesus, don’t you know anything?”
* * *
Lola pulled up in front of Coffin’s house in her new Camaro just as Coffin was climbing out of the Fiesta. The two cars were a study in contrasts, Coffin thought: the Camaro was shiny, black, and powerful—a decent contemporary take on a classic muscle car. The Fiesta was salt-faded, rusty, and sagging. Kind of like me, Coffin thought.
“Jamie will be happy to see you,” he said, when Lola had eased herself out of the driver’s seat.
She glanced at her watch. “It’s mutual,” she said. “I haven’t seen Jamie in, like, a month.”
“You’ll be amazed. She’s out to here.” Coffin held his hand a few inches in front of his belly.
“Can’t wait,” Lola said. “Did you get the sketch?”
Coffin shook his head. “No dice,” he said. “He wasn’t in the mood.”
The sound of R&B music filtered through the front door as they stepped onto the screen porch. It was a CD Jamie had just bought: Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, the horn section chugging through the minor-chord progression of “100 Days, 100 Nights.”
Coffin pushed the door open.
“Dude,” Lola said.
“Whoa,” Coffin said. The living room was empty. There were no strict Victorian chairs, no lumpy Victorian sofas stuffed with horsehair. There were no glass-fronted cabinets full of his mother’s knickknacks, no clutter of end tables, no doilies, no threadbare Persian rugs. Except for the Bose CD player thumping away on the floor and the taxidermied goat’s head leering down from above the fireplace, the living room had been cleared out.
“Jamie?” Coffin said. “Anybody home?”