Mating Season

by Jon Loomis

  Coffin shrugged. “Been there, done that,” he said. “When they did my sperm count. They actually had quite a variety of magazines. Playboy. Penthouse. Field and Stream.”

  “Field and Stream? That’s just sick.”

  Coffin laughed.

  “How long has it been now?” Kotowski said. “A year?”

  “Almost two. I still dream about it—all that blood.” Coffin shivered and took another drag of the cigarette.

  “You should really be seeing a shrink, you know,” Kotowski said, climbing onto the dented Honda. “You’re completely crazy.”

  “This is news to you?” Coffin said.

  Kotowski blew out his lips like a horse. “Don’t be ridiculous. Your mental illness is what makes you interesting. To the extent that you’re interesting at all.” On the third kick-start, the motorcycle backfired like a small cannon, then roared to life. Kotowski cranked the gas and popped the clutch, burning rubber as he pulled out onto Shank Painter Road.

  “I don’t usually do this on the first date,” Lola said. She took a long drink of water from the bottle on the nightstand. A young woman lay next to her. They were both naked. All the lights were out. A tall pillar candle burned on the dresser; it smelled like vanilla.

  “Don’t usually do what?” the young woman said, brushing a strand of blond hair from Lola’s eyes. Her name was Kate Hanlon. She was tall and slender, dark-eyed, very pretty. “Cook a fabulous late supper? Open an outrageously expensive bottle of wine? Seduce a younger woman?”

  “All of the above,” Lola said. Then, after a pause, “You’re not that much younger.”

  Kate traced a fingertip over the scar on Lola’s belly. “This is really something,” she said.

  “It’s ugly, I guess,” Lola said, “but I feel like I earned it.”

  “What happened? An accident?”

  “Job-related,” Lola said. “A couple of years ago. Guy with a knife.”

  “Wow. That’s so crazy. You weren’t wearing one of those protective vests, I guess.”

  “No,” Lola said. “I should, but they’re kind of bulky and hot.”

  Kate sat up, eyes bright in the candlelight. “Okay, look,” she said. “If we’re going to be in a relationship, that’s got to be a rule. You have to wear one of those vests.”

  Lola smiled and kissed her hand. “Are we in a relationship?”

  “After what you just did to me?” Kate said. “We’d better be.” Just over a mile away, Coffin and Jamie lay awake in their bed, listening to the slow rush of the wind through the neighbor’s cedar trees.

  “Tired, Frank?” Jamie said, propped up on one elbow.

  “Very,” Coffin said. He reached across Jamie’s hip, took a cigarette from the pack on the nightstand, and lit it with a plastic lighter. The taxidermied owl on the wardrobe stared at him with what looked like startled outrage, ear tufts awry, amber eyes glowing in the light of the votive candle on the windowsill.

  “Bad day,” Jamie said, patting his arm.

  “Terrible day. I thought I’d probably retire before I had to investigate another homicide. I sure as hell didn’t think we’d have another one so soon. I mean, what are the odds?”

  Jamie put her hand on Coffin’s bare chest. “I wish you didn’t have to deal with this,” she said. “You forget, sometimes, living out here—how awful people can be.”

  “I’ve been thinking about Stan Carswell and Ed Ramos,” Coffin said. “Boy, have they fucked up their lives. One day you’re a married guy with a couple of cute kids, reasonably content, and the next day along comes Kenji Sole.”

  “She must have been like something out of a Greek myth,” Jamie said. “Irresistible. Men all over town jumping out of their wrinkle-free Dockers, ditching their families and groveling at her feet. For what? A little bit of fucking?”

  “She made them feel desired,” Coffin said. “Here they were, these basically ordinary schlubs with their wives and kids and mortgages, pretty much resigned to a houseful of plastic toys and kids yelling and utilitarian sex with the wife three times a month. Kenji Sole was the possibility of something more exciting. Not to mention the fucking.”

  “A tad too much empathy there, mister,” Jamie said, tweaking Coffin’s nipple.

  “Ow! No fair. You asked.”

  “Well,” Jamie said, pulling the sheet up to her breasts and turning her back to Coffin, “you didn’t have to get all wistful about it.”

  “What,” Coffin said, nuzzling the back of her neck, “are you mad at me?”

  Jamie sighed and rolled her hips against his groin. “Yes,” she said, “but that doesn’t mean you’re off the hook, pal.”

  “Frank!” Jamie was in the bathroom.

  Coffin could barely hear her. The bathroom seemed very far away, down a long, narrow corridor. The door was open a crack, and a wedge of yellow light fell out. Otherwise the house was dark.

  “Frank, oh my God—!”

  Coffin couldn’t move. His arms and legs felt as though they were tied to the bed with big rubber bands. He tried to sit up but fell back again.

  “Frank! Oh, God, it happened again.”

  Then Coffin was in the slanted hallway outside the bathroom door. Jamie stood at the sink, wiping at the blood with a white towel. Blood on her bare legs. Blood in the toilet and on the floor. The towel dark with blood . . .

  “Frank,” Jamie said, looking up at him. “Frank, it’s okay.”

  Coffin opened his eyes. He was in bed. Jamie was sitting up beside him.

  “It’s okay, Frank,” she said.

  Coffin drank water from the plastic bottle beside the bed, wiped a hand over his mouth. “Jesus Christ.”

  “Bad dream?”

  “How could you tell?”

  “You were yelling,” Jamie said, stroking Coffin’s hair. “Sort of.”

  “What did I say?”

  “I don’t know. Not really words, but you sounded upset so I woke you.”

  “Sorry,” Coffin said. “Me and my freaky subconscious.”

  Jamie yawned and nestled her shoulder into Coffin’s armpit. “Can you tell me about it? Might make you feel better.”

  The stuffed owl glared from the top of the wardrobe. Coffin shook his head. “Nope,” he said, lightly rubbing Jamie’s back. “It’s gone now. I can’t remember a thing. Let’s go back to sleep.”

  “Okay,” said Jamie, eyes flickering shut. She patted Coffin’s chest. “Everything’s okay . . .”

  Chapter 3

  Coffin woke up at 6:57 A.M., three minutes before the alarm was set to go off. He was alone; Jamie had evidently gotten up early. He hoped briefly that she was downstairs, drinking coffee and reading the paper—but the house felt empty; the only sound was the slow drizzle outside. Coffin sat up and looked out the window. His neighborhood of gray-shingled houses was wreathed in mist. The small rain dripped from the telephone wires and puddled in the street. Coffin lit a cigarette, pulled on a pair of sweatpants, and went downstairs.

  There was a note from Jamie on the kitchen counter.

  Mister Wistful,

  Sorry I couldn’t stick around till you dragged your ass out of bed. I’ve got an early class and there’s nothing in your fridge except pickles and beer. If you’re not too tired tonight, let’s have dinner and maybe some of that utilitarian sex you were talking about. Does it involve actual utilities, or is that too much to hope for?

  xxx J

  When the coffee was ready, Coffin poured a cup and stirred in sugar and half-and-half. He sat at the kitchen table with a legal pad and a pen, lit another cigarette, and wrote:

  1. Cap’n Rory—why so nervous?

  2. Tommy McCurry

  3. Nick Stavros

  4. Talk to Mrs. Ramos

  5. Check Carswell’s alibi—anybody see him?

  Then what?

  Coffin tapped the legal pad with his pen. He picked up the phone, dialed Lola’s number, and got her voice mail. He hung up and called her cell.

  “Hi,
Frank,” she said, on the fourth ring. She was breathing hard. Coffin could hear music in the background, and a whirring sound.

  “Where are you?”

  “At the gym,” Lola said. “On the treadmill. What’s up?”

  “If you were robbing someone’s house, which would you take—the computer or the fifty-thousand-dollar watch?”

  There was a blast of static, then silence. Then Lola said, “Frank? You still there? A seagull must have landed on the cell tower.”

  “Kenji’s computer. The one the killer took. What do you think was on it?”

  “Something embarrassing,” Lola said. Then, after a static-filled pause, “Something incriminating.”

  “Like what? For who?”

  “She was into porn and married men. You tell me.”

  Coffin’s phone blooped. “Hang on,” he said. “I’ve got another call.” Coffin hated call waiting; it seemed like a symptom of some great American rudeness, further proof that Western civilization was in precipitous decline. He pushed the TALK button.

  “Coffin,” he said.

  “We’ve got a situation here, Coffin.” It was Chief Boyle. “And its name is J. Hedrick Sole.”

  “Kenji’s father,” Coffin said.

  “I know that, Coffin. He just spent the last ten minutes threatening to sue me, you, and everyone else he could think of. He’s demanding to know who killed his daughter.”

  “Tell him we’ve got it narrowed down to ten or fifteen people,” Coffin said. “Maybe.”

  “Very funny, Coffin. He wants to talk to you. He’s sitting in my outer office with some crazy woman and a monkey. A fucking monkey, Coffin. Get your ass down here, pronto.”

  Coffin hit the TALK button again, but Lola was gone—nothing on the line but a low, dismal whooshing sound. The stuffed goat’s head leered from the living room wall.

  “God,” Coffin said, “I love this job.”

  After she’d run three miles on the treadmill, Lola checked her pulse, wiped her face with a towel, and took a long drink from her plastic water bottle. She took her time stretching, then working her way through the circuit of weight machines. She did a light free-weight workout: dumbbell curls—less weight than usual because the bone chip in her elbow was giving her trouble; three sets of butterflies; three sets of light bench presses—only 190 pounds, since she had no spotter. Then a long, hot shower in the busy locker room.

  For Lola, public showers had always been a kind of test. In high school, when they’d all showered after gym or basketball or soccer practice, Lola had found herself looking at the other girls’ bodies with what she guessed was more than the usual curiosity. It was normal, she’d been told, to register how those bodies were shaped and compare them to her own. Normal. It was not normal, though—and she’d been told this also—to catch oneself glancing at their erect nipples, admiring the way the water coursed over the curves of their buttocks; not normal to find them beautiful, to want to touch them and have to make herself look away. Yet she did these things, and ached for those girls, and knew that whatever she was, she wasn’t quite what she was supposed to be, wasn’t quite normal—not by the narrow standards of her Wisconsin high school, at least.

  Not that she hadn’t been attracted to boys, too, sometimes—although not much lately, and maybe she’d never really been attracted to them as much as she felt she should be attracted to them. Still, mostly it was girls that filled her dreams, girls she wanted to kiss, girls she fell in love with, desired, longed for alone in her narrow bed.

  Now, Lola knew, she could have all the girls she wanted. The trouble lay in finding someone real, someone who wasn’t looking for a mother or big sister or, worse, a safe, substitute father, or something even weirder, even less about her, Lola, the person—I’ve been bad, Officer Lola; are you going to arrest me? Maybe that was Kate: There was promise there, certainly. She touched her scar and let the hot water stream over her shoulders and back. She felt the gazes of the other women in the locker room—one, a pretty blonde with pierced nipples, naked under the next shower head, meeting her eyes for a moment, then again. Good, Lola thought, gazing back. Let her look.

  J. Hedrick Sole was, Coffin thought, a scary old fucker. He was tall—at least six feet four inches—and very thin. He had long white hair and pale gray eyes that bulged as though they were about to squirt napalm. His suit was charcoal gray and very well cut, a perfect quarter inch of white shirt cuff extending beyond the sleeves. He wore a tie made of raw indigo silk and Italian shoes the color of saddle leather, which, Coffin guessed, probably cost a thousand dollars. The effect was impressive, until Coffin noticed that J. Hedrick Sole’s fly was open.

  Boyle sat at his desk, scowling. “Detective Coffin,” he said, “this is Mr. Sole.”

  The old man levered up from his chair and stuck out a bony paw. A chunky gold Rolex hung loosely on his wrist. “Jerry Sole,” he said, gripping Coffin’s hand with surprising strength. “Great pleasure meeting you. Hope we didn’t get you out of bed.”

  “I was up,” Coffin said. “Where’s the monkey?”

  Sole grinned. His teeth were yellow and sharp—not dentures, Coffin thought. “My companion—Priestess Maiya—has gone out in search of a cafe latte. She’s taken Gracie with her.” Sole’s voice was low and modulated, like an undertaker’s.

  “Gracie is the monkey,” Boyle said.

  Sole tilted his head. “I’ve been reading about you, Detective. Excellent work on those serial murders a couple of years ago. Very impressive.”

  “If you say so,” Coffin said. Sole’s way of speaking reminded him of a bad television actor; the inflections seemed arbitrary, purely for effect.

  “Taciturn,” Sole said, still gripping Coffin’s hand. “Modest. I like that. Good old Yankee reserve. People talk too much these days. Talk, talk, talk.” He chuckled, but then his face grew serious. “Tell me, Detective. What progress have you made in investigating my daughter’s murder?”

  “None whatsoever,” Coffin said.

  Sole’s bushy eyebrows shot up. He released Coffin’s hand as though it had given him a shock.

  “Which is about what you’d expect,” Boyle said. “Considering we’ve had the case for just over twenty-four hours.”

  “Surely you have suspects,” said Sole. “Some sort of unifying theory.”

  “Not yet,” Coffin said. “Nothing as defined as that. We’ve interviewed a few people, picked up a little gossip. The forensic specialists might be able to give us more information, but that’ll take time. You’re an attorney, right?”

  “Indeed. I specialize in corporate law, with a bit of estate work on the side. Though these days I’m mostly retired.”

  “Then maybe you haven’t had much experience with the way a homicide investigation typically works.”

  “Only in a very limited way.”

  Boyle raised a warning hand. “Coffin—”

  “Around thirty-six percent of homicides nationally go unsolved,” Coffin said. “Of the ones that are solved, about a quarter turn out to have been committed by strangers. The rest are committed by family, friends, and acquaintances.”

  J. Hedrick Sole nodded his craggy head. “I see where you’re going,” he said. “Probability.”

  “Exactly,” Coffin said. “Unless the killer feels immediate remorse, calls 911, and waits quietly for the police to arrive—which happens more often than you’d think—we usually start by interviewing the victim’s family and friends, neighbors, coworkers. We try to establish a timeline of the victim’s movements before the murder. At the same time, we look for inconsistencies or contradictions in their statements, which may lead to things like search warrants and further forensic investigation.”

  “Looking for bloodstained clothing in the suspect’s hamper, that sort of thing,” said J. Hedrick Sole. “Chemical swabs and ultraviolet lights.”

  “Right. Anything that might link the suspect to the crime. Occasionally it works the other way around, and we find some bit of physi
cal evidence that ends up driving the investigation, instead of just reinforcing what we already suspect. When I was a homicide detective in Baltimore, we once found a glass eye under a victim’s sofa.”

  “Not the victim’s, I take it.”

  “Exactly,” said Coffin. “Turned out it belonged to the guy down the hall.”

  “He was the killer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Either he was very stupid or you were very lucky.”

  Coffin nodded. “We were lucky he was so stupid.”

  “I see.” Sole sat down, slowly. “I take it you found no glass eyes in my daughter’s house.”

  “No, sir,” Coffin said. “It’s possible the forensic specialists may have found something interesting—we’ll get their report in the next few days—but I wouldn’t hold my breath.”

  “So, assuming Kenji’s murder is not one of the thirty-six percent that go unsolved, how long is the investigation likely to take?”

  “Several days if we’re very lucky. Several weeks if we’re not.”

  “Pray for luck, then, Detective,” Sole said. “Several weeks is unacceptable. I shall do all in my power to see that your investigation moves forward in a timely manner.” His eyes bulged ominously.

  Thyroid problems, Coffin thought. Either that or he’s doing speed.

  “I explained to Mr. Sole that the Cape and Islands DA’s office is leading the investigation, along with the state police,” Boyle said, “and that you’re only a consultant on the case.”

  “And I explained to Chief Boyle that I’ve met Mr. Mancini and found him a preening imbecile.” Sole shook his head. “If this case is to be solved, I doubt very much it will be solved by Vincent Mancini.”

  “Since we’re in the process of interviewing family and friends,” Coffin said, “I wonder if you’d mind coming down to my office. I have a few questions I’d like to ask you about your daughter.”

  “By all means, Detective. Anything I can do to help.”