by Jon Loomis
Chapter 25
Why don’t you go sit down, Frank? Why don’t you come outside with me and get some air?”
“The other one,” Coffin said. His hands are shaking. “The one in the bathroom.”
“I don’t think you should go in there, Frank. You really don’t look so good. I think you should come outside with me and get some air.”
But Coffin pulls away and walks down another short hallway to the bathroom. His legs seem too long, like he’s walking on stilts—the floor keeps falling away in front of him. The bathroom door is open and at first he doesn’t see the body, just the big clawfoot tub, the floor still tracked with dirty water. “Oh boy,” Coffin hears himself say. “Oh boy. Oh boy.” The tub is half full of gray water. A naked child, a girl maybe eight years old, rests just below the surface, her long blond hair streaming around her narrow shoulders, around her face, which is angelic, intact.
Oh boy. Oh boy.
Rashid comes in. Coffin is on his knees by the tub, clutching the drowned girl in his arms. Her head and arms flop as he cradles her against his chest. He keeps patting her back. “Oh boy,” he says, over and over. “Oh boy. Oh boy. Oh boy.”
“Frank, man,” Rashid says, putting a hand on Coffin’s shoulder. “Easy now. Easy now, Frank.”
“Frank.”
“No . . .”
“Frank.”
“Lights. Bad.”
“Frank,” Lola said, “it’s Louie Silva. They found him in the marsh. You need to get up.”
Coffin opened his eyes, then closed them again. The lights in his bedroom were unbearably bright. Lola, in uniform, was shaking his arm.
“Okay,” he said. “Enough with the shaking already. What time is it?”
“It’s 5:00 A.M.”
“Louie’s dead?”
“Yes. I’m sorry, Frank.”
“I think I’m naked,” Coffin said, looking under the sheet.
“I’ll wait in the car.”
The Rescue Squad had already arrived. They stood around the ambulance in big rubber waders, smoking cigarettes.
Tony was wrapping everything in sight in yellow police tape.
“He’s still out there, Frankie,” Tony said. He was pale; his lips were pressed into a tight line. Louie was his first cousin. “It’s pretty bad.”
The roof of Louie’s car was just visible, a gleaming silver dome emerging from the marsh’s green, muck-clotted surface. There were tire tracks on the bank and a clear trail through the cattails and duckweed, leading out to the all but submerged Mercedes.
Coffin borrowed a pair of waders from one of the rescue boys; they were enormous, like rubber clown pants. He slogged into the marsh, fighting the edge-tangle of cattails and the deep muck on the bottom. His heart felt huge and heavy in his chest. He was light-headed, the walking-on-stilts sensation strangely complicated by the marsh’s sucking goo.
The Mercedes’s passenger compartment was half-filled with water; Louie’s silver titanium briefcase floated lazily behind the passenger seat. Louie sat belted into the driver’s seat, his head slumped forward. The inside of the windshield was streaked with blood. Louie’s forehead was missing. Blood and brain matter covered his face. Gently, Coffin turned Louie’s head to the right: There was a scorched entry wound in the back of his skull, just above the spinal juncture.
Coffin turned and vomited into the waist-deep water. “Fucking Christ,” he said when he was done. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve. On an impulse, he reached into the car and fished out Louie’s briefcase. Then he slogged back to the ambulance, stepped out of the ridiculous waders, and sat down heavily on the bank.
“I’m sorry, Frank,” Lola said, sitting beside him.
“He’s got three kids, you know,” Coffin said. “Three girls.” His mouth tasted sour; his eyes hurt.
Lola put an arm around his shoulders. Its weight surprised him.
The roof of Louie’s car glowed like a crashed UFO in the aqueous half-light. Tony found them after a while and sat down next to Frank. Mosquitoes whined around them. For a long time, no one said anything. Then Vincent Mancini’s black Lexus rolled to a stop on the dirt road.
“Shit,” Coffin said. “The briefcase.”
“I was waiting for the right moment to ask you about that,” Lola said. “Are we removing evidence from a crime scene?”
“Yes.”
Mancini and Pilchard climbed out of the Lexus.
“You two go and distract Mancini,” Lola said, shoving the briefcase under her jacket. “Keep him busy till I get to the car.”
“Well, well,” said Mancini, standing next to Coffin’s discarded waders. “I see the local constabulary has once again taken it upon themselves to fuck up a perfectly good crime scene.”
“He was my cousin, Mancini.”
“I don’t care if he was your goddamn grandmother, Coffin. You and your Keystone Kops have got no business tracking up my crime scene.”
“Or harassing witnesses,” said Pilchard.
Mancini leaned toward Coffin. His cologne smelled like cedar shavings. “Detective Pilchard raises an interesting point, Coffin. You’ve been interviewing witnesses before we get to them. You’re not supposed to do that.”
“Jeeze, Frankie,” Tony said. “The briefing—remember?”
“Professional curiosity,” Coffin said. “We live here, you know.” He saw Lola out of the corner of his eye, picking her way around the marsh, thirty yards from the car.
Mancini stuck out his chin. “Your curiosity is bordering on criminal misconduct, Detective. If you don’t stop fucking up my crime scenes and tainting my witnesses, your next job in law enforcement will be security guard at a 7-Eleven.”
“That’s a very nice suit,” Coffin said, fingering Mancini’s sleeve. “Is that rayon or what?”
“Rayon? It’s wool, for God’s sake. This is Italian.”
“If he gets fired,” Tony said, “can he still collect unemployment?”
Pilchard scratched his head. “Fired or laid off?” he said. “If he’s fired, it depends on why he was fired.”
“For Christ’s sake,” Mancini snapped, snatching his sleeve out of Coffin’s grasp. He pointed a manicured finger. “Keep away from my crime scenes and my witnesses, Coffin,” he said. “You only get one warning.”
Lola was standing next to the car. She waved, opened the driver’s door, and got in.
“No more crime scenes,” Coffin said, patting Mancini’s shoulder. “It’ll be my pleasure.”
Tony bent close to Mancini’s ear. “Dead people freak him out,” he said as Coffin walked off, heading for Lola and the car.
“Hey, Frank,” Tony called. “If you get fired, who gets your office?”
Chapter 26
Cupcakes and a gun,” Lola said. “Care to guess what’s in the envelopes?”
“What the hell was he up to?” Coffin said. They were leaning over his desk in the dank basement office, peering into Louie’s open briefcase. It contained three fat manila envelopes, a black and silver Montblanc pen, a yellow legal pad, a Glock nine-millimeter semiautomatic pistol, and a package of two cellophane-wrapped, cream-filled Hostess chocolate cupcakes.
Coffin wasn’t used to wearing latex gloves. They made his hands feel sweaty and swollen. He reached into the briefcase and took out one of the manila envelopes. It was sealed. He slid a letter knife under the flap and looked inside, then passed it to Lola.
“Wahoo,” she said. “Can we keep it?” She turned the envelope upside down, and five rubber-banded bundles of hundred-dollar bills flapped onto the oak desktop.
“If only,” Coffin said, dumping ten bundles of hundreds out of the second big manila envelope.
“God, I love that sound,” Lola said.
Coffin picked up a bundle of bills and riffled it with his thumb. It was nearly an inch thick. “Probably a hundred hundreds in each bundle,” he said.
“Times fifteen is a hundred and fifty grand.”
“Good Lord,”
Coffin said, peering into the third manila envelope, which was bigger than the other two and stuffed to the top. He dumped it, too, and counted the bundles. “Plus two hundred fifty thousand.”
“What on earth was he doing with this much cash?”
“I smell bribes,” Coffin said. “I’ll bet Louie was on his way to buy a little influence.”
“Jesus. What are we going to do with it? We can’t exactly turn it over to Mancini.”
“For now, it goes home with me. You never saw it. If it’s Louie’s, I’ll give it to his wife.”
“What if it’s the town’s?”
Coffin grinned. “I’ll make an anonymous donation to the policeman’s ball.”
“You’re doing this to protect Louie.”
“His family. They’re going to have a hard enough time as it is.” Lola picked up the legal pad. Several of its pages had been torn off. “Check it out,” she said.
Coffin peered at the pad. The lined pages had nothing written on them. “What?” he said.
“What are you, blind?” Lola said. “Look at these indentations on the top page—you can sort of make out what was written on the page above this one.”
Coffin held the pad under his nose, then at arm’s length. “My, my. You’re a regular Nancy Drew.”
Lola laughed. “When I was in sixth grade, my best friend wanted to be Nancy Drew. I wanted to do Nancy Drew.”
Coffin pointed at the legal pad. “Put your young eyes on that word and tell me what it says.”
“Kotowski.”
“Ha. Thought so. What’s this below it?”
“Looks like capital E, capital D, then the word ‘test’ with a question mark. Who’s E-D?”
“Beats me. What does it say under E-D?”
“Phipps. Circled a few times.”
Coffin wiped a hand over his face. “Ed,” he said. “Who the hell is Ed? Eddie Myers? Ed Ramos?”
“They could be initials. E-something, D-something.”
“Early Detection?”
“Eggplant Dalmatian?”
“Emphatic Dropcloth?”
Coffin sat down in his desk chair. The sewer pipe rumbled overhead. “How much of a Nancy Drew fan are you really?”
“The biggest.”
“Good. Because tonight we’re going to break into Louie’s office.”
“Cool.”
“If we get caught we’re up shit creek, you know.”
“So let’s not get caught.”
The phone buzzed, and Coffin picked it up.
“Get up here right away,” Boyle said. “I’ve got some news for you, and you’re not going to like it.” The line clicked and went dead.
Coffin put the phone back in its cradle. His head ached. He wondered how much sleep he’d gotten—two hours? Three? Lola looked tired, too. “I’ve got to go talk to Boyle,” Coffin said. “Why don’t you take a break? Take a nap. Get something to eat.”
“Are you sure? I’ll come with you if you want me to.”
“I’ll be okay,” Coffin said. “I mean, how much worse can it get?”
Chapter 27
Sorry about your cousin, Coffin,” Boyle said. He stood beside his office window, looking down at Commercial Street. “He was a decent guy.”
“He would have sold his own mother for dog food, if the price was right,” Coffin said, “but he was family.”
“That’s a hell of a way to talk,” said Boyle, turning to glare at Coffin from beneath his beetling eyebrows.
“Yes, it is.”
Boyle scowled and sat down in his leather chair. “All right—since we’re apparently done with the eulogizing, let’s cut to the chase. Two things, and you’re not going to be happy about either of them. First, we had to release Plotz.”
“Wonderful,” Coffin said. “Perfect.”
“His lawyer pointed out that the restraining order he was supposed to have violated was expired. Said lawyer also seems to think that you and Winters illegally pursued Mr. Plotz into his apartment and used excessive force in arresting him. Mr. Plotz is weighing the possibility of a formal complaint and a lawsuit against the town.”
“Mr. Plotz shouldn’t press his luck. Any progress on the pickup?”
“Nope. Unless Plotz is a complete idiot, he’s either dumped it or had it repaired by now. Ready for the bad news?”
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
“That would just be sadistic, Coffin.” Boyle smiled, leaned back in his chair, and laced his fingers on top of his speckled bald spot. “The bad news is that Mancini and that prick Pilchard have arrested your buddy Kotowski for all four murders. He’s sitting downstairs in a holding cell, waiting to be transported down to Barnstable.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Coffin said. “Those idiots.”
“Yeah, you keep saying that. Mancini thinks it’s a no-brainer.”
“Then he’s just the guy for the job. What a fucking moron.”
“Come on, Coffin. Kotowski’s the obvious call. The guy’s a nutcase. He attacked Silva right here in this building, in front of Mancini and a dozen witnesses.”
“He attacked him with a fish—not a gun. Not a knife. A fucking fish. Serial killers don’t attack people with fish.”
“Okay—he also had a beef with the Hench woman, who was involved in the Moors project, which fits your own damn theory.”
Coffin started to speak, but Boyle raised a hand, palm out. “Talk to the hand, Coffin. You’re too close to this thing. You’re not seeing it clearly. Mancini thinks there’s an easy conviction here, and I happen to agree with him. Why don’t you go home, take a couple of days off, and get your head clear. It’s over, Coffin. Case closed.”
“Is that what we’re doing here?” Coffin said, standing up. “Going for an easy conviction? And here I had this naive notion that we were trying to catch a serial killer.”
“Of course Mancini’s going for the conviction, Coffin. I mean, this is the biggest thing since Tony Costa chopped up those girls and buried ’em out in the woods in Truro.”
Coffin paused in the doorway. “You’ve been reading up on local history, I see.”
Boyle smirked. “I try,” he said.
“Then you remember what Costa said after they sentenced him.”
Boyle looked at Coffin blankly.
“Keep digging,” Coffin said.
Coffin rode Kotowski’s bike to Wymynwerx, the two-story, cedar-shingled gym on Shank Painter Road where Jamie was teaching her two o’clock advanced class. Traffic was heavy; a carful of young women honked and laughed at his unsteady progress. Then, a few minutes later, a passing Winnebago almost clipped him with its bumper, forcing him into the ditch. By the time he got to the gym he was soaked in sweat.
Inside, Coffin nodded to the short, muscular girl behind the desk. She looked up from her magazine and nodded back but didn’t smile.
Coffin poked his head into Jamie’s class, a roomful of very thin women posed with hands and feet on their purple mats, butts high in the air. He caught Jamie’s eye, and she winked at him. Coffin crooked a finger, and Jamie whispered to one of the women in the front row, who took over the class.
When they’d stepped out into the hallway, Coffin nodded at the roomful of women. “Downward-looking dog,” he said.
Jamie hugged him hard, then kissed him on the lips. Coffin wasn’t sure, but he thought he saw the girl behind the desk frown slightly out of the corner of his eye.
“Facing. Downward-facing dog,” Jamie said, wiping sweat from her forehead with a white gym towel. “Horrible about Louie. Jesus.”
“Thanks,” Coffin said. “News travels fast.”
Jamie hugged him again. “You okay?”
“No. I don’t know. There’s something else.”
Jamie looked at him, head tilted a bit. The sun streamed through the gym’s big front window, backlighting her hair.
“They let Plotz out of jail,” Coffin said. “I don’t want you staying by yourself.”
“Duffy? That wimp? I can handle Duffy Plotz, Frank.” She flexed her arm. “Feel that bicep.”
“He had a shrine, Jamie, remember? Pictures of you all over his apartment. I didn’t tell you this, but he’d sliced a couple of them up with razor blades. And now he’s probably really pissed.”
Jamie squinted. “Okay, slicing up the pictures is pretty creepy, but I’m not—”
“Look, I really need you not to argue with me about this—”
“Ask me again.”
“There are dead people piling up all over town, for Christ’s sake—”
“Frank. Just ask me again.”
“—which is why you’re moving in with me for a few days at least, till we figure out what to do about the son of a bitch.” Coffin frowned. “What are you grinning at?”
“You have to ask me three times.”
“What?”
“You’ve asked me to move in with you twice. Three is a magic number—I thought you knew that.”
“Well, it’s just until—”
“That’s not asking.”
“Will you move in with me?” Coffin said.
Jamie kissed him, slowly and with considerable concentration. “You know what?” she said when the kiss was over.
“Uh, no, ma’am.”
“You’ll be glad you asked. Yes indeed, I do believe you will.”
When Coffin passed the girl behind the desk on his way out, she was intent on her magazine. He pushed the door open, and just before it swung shut behind him he heard her say, “Breeders. Ew.”
The jail shared the second floor of Town Hall with the police dispatcher, the squad room, the day officer’s desk, and the men’s locker room. It had three cells in a row along an outside wall, and a small common area with a metal table and four metal chairs bolted to the floor. Each cell contained two cots one above the other, a small stainless steel sink, and a stainless-steel toilet. Kotowski was the only prisoner; he sat on the edge of his cot, dressed in an orange jumpsuit and rubber sandals, smoking a cigarette.