Mating Season

by Jon Loomis

  “I guess it’s just not really my idea of fun—too much drama. Can you imagine? Trying to keep up with all those men? For what?”

  “I don’t know,” Coffin said. “Maybe the drama was part of the kick. Maybe her ego demanded it—you know, being the center of attention.”

  “Then she must have been very insecure.”

  “How well did you know her?”

  “Not, except to say hi, but she was kind of famous,” Jamie said. “Or infamous, maybe.” She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “There was whispering.”

  “What kind of whispering? Like gossip?”

  “Definite gossip. All true, apparently. About her thing for other people’s husbands.” She lowered her voice again. “Shameless.”

  “Did she talk to you much?”

  “Not a lot.” Jamie kicked off her sandals and put her feet in Coffin’s lap. They were elegant feet, Coffin thought—narrow, with high arches and long, almost prehensile toes. Jamie’s toenails were painted sparkly red, like an electric guitar. “She wasn’t one of the needy ones, and she didn’t have a crush on me. She’d say thanks after class, but that was about it.”

  “Businesslike?” Coffin said.

  “Superficially friendly,” Jamie said, “but not ever going to invite the yoga instructor out for lunch or home for a cup of tea.”

  “Competitive with other women?”

  ”Well, duh,” Jamie said, “but not toward me, that I was aware of.” Jamie lowered her feet, leaned into Coffin’s chest, and plucked one of the olives from his martini and ate it. “Yum,” she said. “Somebody should sell olives soaked in vodka. They’d make millions.”

  “You may be onto something there,” Coffin said, finishing his drink.

  Jamie sniffed at his shirt and looked up at him. “Have you been smoking?”

  “Only a little,” he said.

  “Frank. You promised. Nicotine’s not good for your sperm.”

  “Sorry. It was a stressful morning.”

  “Frank?” Jamie said, nuzzling Coffin’s neck.

  “Mm?”

  “I’m ovulating like crazy, you know.”

  “Really?”

  “When did you say you had to go back to the office?”

  “Soon.”

  “How soon?” Jamie tugged at Coffin’s zipper. “Damn thing,” she said. “Ah—here we go.” She bent down and took his flaccid penis in her mouth.

  “Jamie?” Coffin said.

  “Hm?”

  “Didn’t we just do this, like, six hours ago? Shouldn’t I have some time to recharge?”

  There was a wet, popping sound. “Are you complaining?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Because it sounded like you might be.”

  “No, no.”

  “Good. Now shut up and take your pants off.”

  “Jesus, Frank,” Lola said, looking up. She sat at Coffin’s beige metal desk, phone book open in front of her, foam cup of coffee at her elbow. “You look like something that just washed up on the beach. Everything okay?”

  “Don’t laugh,” Coffin said. “Jamie’s ovulating.”

  Lola laughed. “We’re going to have to put you on a high-protein diet or something,” she said. “That girl’s about to wear you out.”

  “Ordering a pizza?” Coffin said, sitting in the hard visitor’s chair opposite Lola.

  “Just getting numbers and addresses of our boyfriends,” Lola said. “Mancini called.”

  “And?”

  “He got the prelim report from the ME’s office.”

  “Wow. That was fast.”

  “Your friend Shelley Block sends her regards. You used to date her, right?

  “Briefly,” Coffin said. “She’s a very nice woman, but I couldn’t stop thinking about what she did for a living.”

  “You and your corpse phobia,” Lola said.

  Coffin leafed through the report. “Any surprises?”

  “Nope.” Lola glanced at her notes. “She was stabbed seven times in the chest and abdomen, once—the last one—in the heart. A couple of knife wounds on arms and hands indicate she tried to defend herself. Blood tests and toxicology report won’t be back from the lab for a few days. Time of death around eleven o’clock last night.”

  “Sexual assault?”

  “No physical indication of rape, but the ME did find semen in her vagina.”

  Coffin’s eyebrows went up. “I thought you said there were no surprises.”

  “Sorry—it didn’t surprise me. She was sexually active. To say the least.”

  Coffin frowned. “Can they tell how old the semen is? I mean, compared to the time of death?”

  “Funny you should ask that,” Lola said. She looked at her notes again. “Looks like the sexual activity happened shortly before she was killed. An hour or less.”

  “So if we can find out who she had sex with—”

  “We might find the killer,” Lola said, putting her notebook away. “Or not.”

  Coffin stood up. “Let’s see if we can get Boyle to authorize DNA testing for the boyfriends,” he said. “In the meantime, let’s go shake a few trees and see if anyone falls out.”

  Ed Ramos stood on his front steps, cringing a bit in the yellow glow of the porch light. He was a handsome man in his early forties, muscular and tanned, just under six feet tall. His hair was wavy and jet black. Coffin wondered if he dyed it.

  “For Chrissakes, Frank—could you keep it down?” Ramos said. “The wife and kids are right inside.”

  Coffin rubbed his chin. It was bristly; he hadn’t shaved in sixteen hours. He could feel his own hair getting grayer by the minute. “How many kids you got now, Ed?”

  “Four by my first wife,” Ramos said. “They’re all grown and moved away, except for Nicky. And three with Sophie. They’re eight, six, and two.”

  “Sophie doesn’t know about Kenji Sole?”

  “Jesus, Frank,” Ramos said, glancing back at the house. The door was shut, but the front windows were open to the night air. “Keep it down, will you? Hell no, she doesn’t know. I’d be divorced if she did.”

  “Why don’t you come sit in the car with us?” Lola said. “Nobody’ll hear us if we talk in there.”

  Ramos glanced over his shoulder again. “Bad idea,” he said. “She’s already getting suspicious. I can feel it.” He shivered and looked at his watch. “Look, are we about done? Can we wrap this up?”

  “Just a couple more questions,” Coffin said. “How long had you been seeing Kenji?”

  “I don’t know,” Ramos said. “A few months. Since January, I guess.”

  “Were you with her last night?”

  “Last night?” Ramos looked scared, eyes suddenly wide. “No. Not last night. I was here at home, watching TV with the kids.” He glanced at his front windows. “Look, Frank—I’m sorry, but I gotta get back inside.”

  Coffin put a hand on Ramos’s arm. “Hang on a minute, Ed. When was the last time you saw her?”

  Ramos looked down. “Yesterday. Around lunchtime. She came down to the job site.”

  “Did you have sex with her?” Lola asked.

  “Yeah,” Ramos said, nodding slowly. “We drove out to Herring Cove and had a quickie in her car. Kinda threw my back out.”

  “Did you ejaculate inside her?” Coffin asked.

  “Jesus, Frank,” Ramos said. “That’s getting pretty fucking personal, isn’t it?” A large moth flew out of the darkness, circled the porch light twice, and bounced off of Ramos’s forehead. It lay on the top step, throbbing its pale green wings. “Fuck,” Ramos said, recoiling. “Look at that thing. It’s the size of a fucking 747.”

  Lola picked the moth up gently by its thorax. “It’s a luna moth,” she said. “You almost never see them.” It perched on her thumb for a moment, wings slowly pulsing. Then it flew at Ramos’s face again.

  “Jesus fucking Christ!” Ramos cried, waving his arms. “It’s like a fucking vampire bat! Get it away from me!” The moth circled
the light again and flew away.

  “Ed,” Coffin said. “They’re going to find out. They’re going to do DNA testing—the whole deal.”

  Ramos took a deep breath, let it out. “Yeah,” he said, glancing back at the windows again and dropping his voice to a whisper. “I came inside her. She’s bouncing up and down on my joint, yelling, ‘Fill me up, baby!’ What can you do?”

  “Did you know you weren’t the only guy she was having sex with?” Lola said.

  Ramos made a wry little mouth. “Duh,” he said. “Of course I knew. It’s not like she tried to keep it a secret. Kenji was a very horny girl. Hell, that’s why I liked her.”

  “How did you feel when you heard she was dead?” Coffin asked.

  “How the fuck do you think I felt?” Ramos said. His eyes flashed in the yellow porch light. “Terrible. It’s a terrible fucking thing. What kind of animal could do a thing like that?”

  “Any idea who she was with last night?” Lola said.

  “Nope. No idea. She didn’t tell me much about her plans.”

  Coffin watched Ramos’s face closely. “Any idea who might have wanted to kill her?”

  “I got lots of ideas,” Ramos said, lowering his voice even more. Coffin could barely hear him over the sound of the slight wind in the trees. “Could be, one of the wives found out. Could be, not all the guys she was humpin’ were as laid-back about it as me.”

  Coffin looked at Lola.

  “Are you thinking of anybody in particular?” Lola said.

  “Wives—I don’t know, except that mine was here all night last night. Claudia Stavros has got a hell of a temper on her, I can tell you that.”

  Lola looked at her list. “Claudia Stavros? Wife of Nick Stavros, I assume?”

  “Bingo,” said Ramos. “Selectwoman Stavros, to you.”

  “Yikes,” Lola said. “What about jealous boyfriends?”

  “I don’t know anything for sure,” Ramos said. “Just what Kenji told me, and the fact that he’s been giving me dirty looks for about a month now.”

  “But . . .” Coffin said.

  “But keep an eye on Stan Carswell,” Ramos said. “Kenji was getting worried about him. I guess he fell in love with her or something—he was getting all possessive. Kenji said he was turning into a royal pain in the ass.”

  A curtain moved in the front window, and Coffin saw Ramos’s wife, Sophie, looking out, half silhouetted against the inside light. “Eddie?” she said. “What’s going on out there? Is everything all right?”

  “I’ll be right in, hon,” Ramos said. “Everything’s fine.” He turned to Coffin and ran a hand over his thick, black hair. “There’s no way she’s not going to find out about this, is there?”

  “Sorry, Ed,” Coffin said. “She’ll have to confirm that you were both home last night. We don’t have to talk to her right now, but we will in the next day or so.”

  Ramos blew a slow stream of air out between his pursed lips. “Well, I’m fucked, then. No way Sophie’s going to let this go.”

  “You’re not going to be the only one, if it makes you feel any better,” Lola said.

  “Actually, no,” Ramos said, opening the screen door and stepping inside. “It doesn’t.”

  Stan Carswell’s house was a faux Cape Cod McMansion, built on the site of a teardown above Bradford Street. It was three stories tall and shingled in cedar shakes that shone silvery pale in the moonlight. A broad deck ran the width of the top floor. When Coffin knocked, a shrill fury of barking erupted inside, and two furry bodies hurled themselves at the inside of the door.

  “I hate little yappy dogs,” Lola said. “They give me the creeps.”

  Coffin smiled and knocked again. The little dogs barked even more furiously. “My dad had a pug when I was a kid,” he said. “Named Oscar. Totally ferocious. He’d hide behind a chair and jump out and bite you, just for the hell of it. Horrible little dog, but Dad loved him. Even took him fishing sometimes.”

  A light went on inside. Coffin looked at his watch; it was almost eleven. “Maybe we woke him up,” he said. The dogs barked madly.

  “Shut the fuck up, you little monsters,” said a man’s muffled voice.

  The dogs shrieked with bloodlust and hurled themselves at the door.

  “Get back, for Christ’s sakes,” said the voice. The door swung open. A tall man in yellow pajamas and two tiny white dogs stood blinking in the beam of Lola’s flashlight.

  “Stan Carswell?” Coffin said.

  The man squinted. His hair stuck out at odd angles, and he appeared to Coffin not to have shaved for several days. His pajamas had pictures of smiling monkeys on them.

  The little dogs twinkled out onto the porch and sniffed Coffin’s ankles.

  “Yeah,” Carswell said. “That’s me. You’d be the cops, I guess. Come on in.”

  The inside of the house was almost completely empty. Soft track lighting glowed on pictureless walls. No rugs concealed the buttery-smooth hardwood flooring. There was no furniture in the cathedral-ceilinged living area except for two green plastic lawn chairs.

  “Wife moved out last week,” Carswell said, walking through the echoing room into the kitchen. The two small dogs trailed behind him. “Took the kids with her, and all the furniture, while I was at work. All she left was my clothes and Winkin and Blinkin here. Want a drink or anything? Coffee?”

  Coffin looked at Lola, then shrugged. “Sure. Coffee sounds fine.”

  “What happened to Nod?” Lola said.

  “Coyote got him,” Carswell said, popping a white filter into the gleaming stainless steel coffeemaker. “Crunch, crunch. Nothing left but a few tufts of hair and a bad attitude.”

  Carswell scooped ground coffee into the filter. He rinsed the carafe in the sink, filled it with water, and poured the water into the machine. “There,” he said, flipping the switch. “That ought to do it. I hope.”

  “New coffeemaker?” Lola said. “Yeah. It’s about all I’ve had time to replace. Or money. She cleaned out the bank accounts, too.” He gestured toward the lawn chairs. “Have a seat.”

  “No thanks,” Coffin said. “I’m fine.”

  “Me, too,” said Lola. She leaned a hip against the kitchen island, equipment belt creaking. Coffin caught himself staring at the curve of her hip through her uniform pants and shook his head.

  “Your wife found out about Kenji Sole?” Coffin said.

  “Linda didn’t find out,” Carswell said, opening the enormous stainless steel fridge. “I told her.” The fridge was empty, except for a carton of eggs, a twelve-pack of Heineken, and a container of half-and-half. Carswell retrieved the half-and-half and shut the door.

  “Why tell her?” Lola said. “Did you want her to divorce you?”

  “I wanted to be honest with her,” Carswell said, shrugging. “I wanted her to know how I felt.”

  “Which was how?” Coffin said.

  Carswell opened a cupboard and took out three mismatched mugs. He handed one to Coffin and one to Lola. Coffin’s had the old New England Patriots logo on a white background: a man in breeches and a tricornered hat, hiking a football.

  “I loved Kenji Sole,” Carswell said. He looked at Coffin, then Lola. “She was beautiful and exciting, and I fell in love. I couldn’t just stay with Linda and pretend everything was okay.”

  “An honest man,” Coffin said.

  “After the fact,” Carswell said, pouring a careful measure of half-and-half into his mug before filling it with coffee, “and we all know that doesn’t count.” He opened another cupboard, produced a tall, square bottle of Irish whiskey, and glugged a triple shot into his coffee mug. Then he walked into the living room and flopped down in one of the green plastic chairs.

  “How did you feel about Kenji’s other boyfriends?” Lola said.

  “How do you think I felt?” Carswell said. His eyes widened, and he ran a hand over his hair, which stuck out even more erratically than it had before. He looked to Coffin as though he’d just stuck a fork
into a short-circuiting toaster. “She was making >me crazy. I wanted to marry her, but every time I brought it up she’d laugh.”

  One of the little dogs—Coffin wasn’t sure if it was Winkin or Blinkin—jumped up into Carswell’s lap.

  “Get off me, you little freak,” Carswell said, patting the dog on the head.

  “What do you do for a living, Mr. Carswell?” Coffin said.

  “I’m a psychiatrist,” Carswell said. “I used to practice in Boston, but I got tired of my patients.”

  “How come?” Coffin said.

  “I had a very wealthy clientele,” Carswell said. “You wouldn’t believe how boring rich people are. Everything’s about me, me, me. After a while you just want to kill them.”

  Coffin and Lola exchanged looks.

  “Figuratively, I mean,” Carswell said.

  “So you moved to P’town,” Lola asked, “because you wanted more interesting patients?”

  Carswell’s face reddened. “It’s a long story,” he said.

  “We’ve got time,” Coffin said.

  Carswell took a slurping sip of his Irish coffee. “A few years ago,” he said, “Linda got involved with a woman. We had kind of an unconventional relationship for a while.”

  “What, like a ménage à trois?” Lola said.

  Carswell nodded. “I was all for it at first. I thought what most straight guys would think—you know, woo hoo! But after a few weeks it was mostly a ménage à them, while I tried to sleep on the couch. It didn’t work out.”

  “P’town just seemed like a good place to give it a shot?” Coffin said.

  “Linda was worried about how the gossip might affect the kids if we stayed in Boston,” Carswell said. “In P’town, all in all we were a pretty uninteresting alternative lifestyle.”

  “It doesn’t really seem fair,” Lola said. “Your wife got to have her affair, and you stuck around.”

  Carswell shrugged. “When I gave Linda the ‘her or me’ ultimatum, she picked me. She thought about it, mind you, but ultimately she wanted a life with me and the kids.”