Mating Season

by Jon Loomis

  Coffin stood and hitched up his chinos. “Yep.”

  “Gah,” Lola said. “The sacrifices we make while in the line of duty.”

  Chapter 5

  On Friday and Saturday nights, even in the deserted depths of the off-season, the Captain Alden was usually crowded and loud. The bar was almost always busy, the pool tables in contentious use, the jukebox blaring the best of Led Zeppelin or the Stones, the window seats full of drinkers enjoying their fine view of Commercial Street and the foot of MacMillan Pier. The Alden offered many enticements on weekend nights: somewhat more than the usual amount of illicit drug dealing, as bars in Provincetown went; a fair number of single straight women between the ages of thirty and fifty with whom almost any reasonably ambitious male, regardless of age or appearance, stood a decent chance of hooking up; and frequent bar fights, which had a way of spilling out onto the sidewalk shortly before closing time, given a bit of expert, pants-hauling assistance from the two large bartenders, for whom “take it outside” was the one cardinal rule. There was, during the off-season, the added attraction of Friday night drag karaoke, which drew a large and raucous crowd. Sunday lunchtime, though, except at high season’s manic zenith, was generally pretty dead.

  “More flies than customers,” Lola said, settling onto a bar stool. “Not a good sign.” Except for Ticky, one of Provincetown’s semi-homeless drunks, Coffin and Lola were the only patrons.

  “That’s cause most of the flies ain’t tried the food,” the bartender said, shoving a couple of greasy menus across the bar. He was a tall man with a considerable gut and a long, greasy ponytail. One of his front teeth was missing.

  “That bad, huh?” Coffin said. He flipped the menu open. There was the usual array of Provincetown tourist food: burgers, lobster rolls, fried clams, Portuguese kale soup.

  “I don’t eat it,” the bartender said, grinning, “and the boss gives it to me free.”

  Coffin nodded, closed his menu. “I’ll drink mine,” he said. “Walker Red, on the rocks. Pour one for yourself, if you want.”

  “Hey,” the bartender said. “If the cops can drink on duty, why the hell can’t I?”

  “Just a Diet Coke for me,” Lola said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” the bartender said. He took a pint glass from the rack, scooped it half full of ice, and spritzed it to the top with soda from the carbonated drinks gun. Then he dropped a few ice cubes into a pair of rocks glasses and poured triple shots of scotch into each of them. “Soda’s on the house,” he said.

  “Thanks,” Lola said, wiping a brown smear of lipstick off the glass with a bar napkin.

  “So, who was working Friday night?” Coffin said. “You?”

  The bartender nodded. “Me and Fat Tony,” he said. “Big crowd Friday night. Kind of rowdy. Decent tippers, though.”

  “Do you know a guy named Stan Carswell?” Coffin said.

  Lola took Carswell’s picture from her breast pocket and slid it across the bar. “This is him.”

  The bartender shrugged. “He looks familiar,” he said. “Sure. I’ve seen him in here a few times.”

  “Was he here on Friday night, for drag karaoke?”

  The bartender rubbed his chin stubble. “Maybe,” he said, gazing at the picture. “Me ’n’ Fat Tony were both trippin’ our balls off by about ten o’clock, so I couldn’t say for sure. He would’ve been in drag, right?”

  “Chartreuse wig and fake boobs under his shirt,” Coffin said. “Singing ‘Blue Suede Shoes.’”

  “Maybe.” The bartender looked at the picture again, head tilted, eyebrows raised. “I can’t rule it out. I’d probably remember a chartreuse wig, though. A thing like that would be pretty intense if you were on acid.”

  “Got a number where we can reach Fat Tony?”

  “Sure,” the bartender said, retrieving a worn address book from behind the bar, “but I doubt he’ll remember much. He was even more fucked up than I was.”

  Stan Carswell’s psychiatry practice was in a newer building off Harry Kemp Way, a street named after a poet, novelist, and local fixture who lived much of his adult life in various shacks in and around Provincetown. Carswell’s building was a low structure done in cedar shakes, just beginning to turn gray; its parking lot was surfaced with crushed oyster shells. In addition to Carswell’s offices, the building housed a masseuse (Swedish, shiatsu, hot stone, and aromatherapy) and an acupuncturist/herbalist’s called Feng Shui for the Soul.

  In Carswell’s outer office Coffin flashed his shield for the receptionist, a young Eastern European woman. She buzzed Carswell on the intercom. “Dr. Carswell,” she said, in an accent that reminded Coffin of the Gabor sisters, “the police is here. Yes. Okay.” Less than a minute later a nervous-looking client shuffled out of the inner office. “You can go in now, okay?” said the young woman. She was, Coffin thought, stunningly beautiful: dark hair and black eyes set deep above astonishing cheekbones. Such girls were everywhere in Provincetown, suddenly.

  Carswell’s office was better furnished than his house. A sectional sofa filled one corner; a mahogany desk dominated the center of the room. A leather armchair and an ottoman-style coffee table finished the seating arrangement. The rug was chocolate brown with a pattern of big pastel rings. It all looked to Coffin as though it had been ordered from the latest Pottery Barn catalog. The window overlooked a sunlit garden: scotch broom and beach rose, rampant.

  “So,” Carswell said, hands folded on his desktop. “You’re back. How can I help you today?”

  He looked nervous, Coffin thought. Dark circles of sweat were beginning to form under the arms of his shirt, a pale blue button-down worn with chinos, loafers, and no tie. A small faux stone fountain sat on an end table near Coffin’s chair, its cord plugged into a wall outlet. The fountain gurgled in a way that was supposed to be soothing, but it sounded to Coffin like someone peeing down a shower drain.

  “You lied to us, Stan,” he said. “It doesn’t look good, frankly.”

  Carswell’s mouth opened, then closed. “There was someone there,” he said. “I knew it.”

  Coffin shrugged. “Why didn’t you tell us you were there the night before she died? Did you think we wouldn’t find out?”

  “I wasn’t thinking,” Carswell said. He blinked, then swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing. “I was afraid it would make me look crazy.”

  “Stan,” Coffin said, shaking his head. “Stan. When you lie to the cops, it makes you look guilty.”

  “Sorry,” Carswell said. “I should have told the truth. I was scared, I guess.”

  The fountain tinkled companionably. “Nice fountain,” Coffin said. “Very relaxing.”

  “Thanks,” Carswell said. “My patients seem to like it.”

  “Does it ever make you feel like you have to pee?” Coffin said. Carswell laughed, then squeezed his hands together, making a soft farting sound between them. “No,” he said. “Not so far, anyway.”

  “Okay, so you went to Kenji’s house Thursday night. Why?”

  “To ask her to marry me. Again.”

  “Again? How many times would that have made?”

  “Two.”

  “What did she say the first time?”

  “She laughed.”

  “That’s it? She laughed?”

  “She told me not to be ridiculous. She said she had no intention of marrying anyone, but if she did it wouldn’t be me.”

  “Who would it be? McCurry? Ed Ramos?”

  “She didn’t say.” The fountain tinkled. Carswell made the little farting sound between his hands again.

  Coffin frowned. “You thought you’d ask her to marry you again, just in case?”

  “I was drunk. I convinced myself she’d been kidding the first time. Pathetic, I know.”

  “So you went to her house. Then what?”

  “I let myself in the side door, through the kitchen.”

  “Why not the front door?”

  “The side door’s hidden from the carriage house. I didn’t wa
nt that creepy Cavalo guy to know I was there.”

  Coffin looked at Lola. “He went in the kitchen door,” he said.

  “It’s hidden from the carriage house,” Lola said.

  “Why did you care if Cavalo saw you?”

  Carswell frowned, hands making rapid farting noises. “I’m not sure,” he said. “It just seemed like he was always hanging around the periphery, watching. You’d walk out the door and he’d be sitting out there on his steps, pretending not to look at you. Creepy.”

  “Okay, so you went in the kitchen door.”

  “I went in the kitchen door. She wasn’t downstairs that I could see, so I called her name.”

  “Kenjiiiiii!” Coffin called, doing his best Brando imitation. “Like that?”

  “Probably not far off,” Carswell said, smiling a tight little smile. “I was pretty looped.”

  “So then?”

  “So then she came downstairs in this little see-through nightgown. God, she looked beautiful.”

  Lola looked up from her notebook. “What color was the nightgown?”

  “White, I think,” Carswell said. “Very sheer, like I said. She wasn’t wearing any panties underneath. She’d do stuff like that, just to drive you crazy.”

  “Then what happened?” Coffin said.

  “I tried to kiss her, but she pushed me away. That’s when I figured out she was probably with somebody.”

  “Did that make you angry?”

  “Sad. I wept. I begged her to marry me. She patted my hand like I was a hysterical schoolgirl. Told me to buck up. Buck up! Can you believe that?”

  “Not quite what you wanted to hear,” Lola said.

  “No,” Carswell said. “Not quite.”

  Coffin scratched his ear. “So then what?”

  “I went down to the Old Colony. I stayed until closing time and drank a lot of Bushmills. I vomited twice, walking home. I woke up with a screaming hangover.”

  “Did Kenji like to dominate you, Stan?”

  Carswell’s ears turned bright pink. His hands made several rapid farts. “What do you mean?” he said.

  “You know what I mean, Stan. Did she ever tie you up, or spank you?”

  Carswell looked down. “Once in a while, she liked to play little games,” he said. “Why not? It’s a normal variation, you know. All in fun.”

  “What about the strap-on? Was that all in fun, too?”

  Carswell looked up, meeting Coffin’s eyes. “Whatever Kenji wanted to do was fine with me,” he said. “She liked to try different things. So what?”

  “You never felt humiliated?”

  “I was ecstatic. She was with me, she had chosen me. So whatever she wanted to do beyond that point was fine.”

  Coffin leaned back in his chair and tilted his head. “Did you go to Kenji’s house Friday night and kill her, Stan? Because that’s what it looks like to me.”

  Carswell blinked, then swallowed. “No,” he said. “It wasn’t me. I was at drag karaoke, like I said. Ask the bartender—Rick.”

  “We did. He was a little unclear about whether he’d seen you or not.”

  “Oh, Christ,” Carswell said. “He must have been tripping.”

  “Was Kenji filming you?” Lola asked.

  “Filming?” Carswell said.

  “The things she liked to do to you—did she film them?”

  Carswell composed his face carefully and took a deep breath. “It’s possible,” he said.

  “Possible? You don’t know for sure?”

  “There were times I felt she was posing me, almost. As if there were a hidden camera, maybe, and she wanted to make sure it had a good line of sight. There were times I felt as though we were being watched, somehow. I thought I was just being paranoid.”

  “You never saw a camera? Never saw any video?”

  “No.”

  “Would it have upset you if she had been filming you?”

  “No,” Carswell said. “It would have turned me on.”

  Coffin stood. Lola was already waiting by the door, adjusting the tilt of her uniform hat.

  “There’s one other thing,” Coffin said.

  “Yes?”

  “If you’re planning on taking any trips out of town, you’ll want to let us know ahead of time.”

  Coffin and Lola stepped into the outer office; Lola shut the door quietly. The receptionist was gone—probably worried INS was going to show up, Coffin thought. He stood and listened for a moment: Carswell fumbling with the phone, dialing, mumbling urgently for a minute or two. Coffin looked at Lola, who raised one eyebrow but said nothing.

  “Who do you think he was calling?” Lola said, steering the Crown Vic out of Carswell’s office parking lot. “His lawyer?”

  “Unless he’s a total idiot,” Coffin said.

  “As opposed to just a partial idiot?”

  Coffin grinned. “Let’s stop at the Yankee Mart,” Coffin said, “and get a cup of coffee. Then I want to take another look at Kenji’s house. This whole filming-of-the-boyfriends thing is getting interesting.”

  Lola put the turn signal on and turned left on Conwell Street. “Do you think Carswell did it?”

  “It’s possible,” Coffin said. “He was acting pretty crazy around the time she was killed.”

  “Whenever you say something’s possible, it means you don’t really think it is.”

  Coffin grinned and rolled down the window. The town was filled with the musty scent of Scotch broom. “Okay, fine. I don’t think he did it.”

  “You just want him to think you think he did it.”

  “Right.”

  “Because if he thinks he’s a suspect he might be more inclined to come forward with information on the other boyfriends.”

  “Or tell us something about Kenji we don’t already know. Or both.”

  “Maybe,” Lola said.

  Coffin looked for a long moment at Lola’s profile: the straight nose, the firm chin. “What?” he said, finally.

  “You hate it when people lie to you,” Lola said. She turned in at the Yankee Mart and put the car in park. “You know that, right?”

  Coffin got out of the car and stretched. He thought for a moment about the thin blue strip of harbor, just visible between the houses. Then he shrugged. “Who doesn’t?” he said.

  Chapter 6

  Coffin and Lola stood in Kenji Sole’s bedroom suite. Nothing moved except the slow drift of dust motes in the window light. The room was an even greater shambles than it had been; Crime Scene Services had taken patches of carpeting, cut square samples of upholstery from chairs, and removed the sheets, blankets, mattress pad, and pillows from the bed and taken them all to the state crime lab in Sudbury for processing. Black fingerprint powder had been dusted onto every flat surface and smudged around light switches and doorknobs. The only sounds were the wind and an occasional car passing by on 6A.

  “So,” Lola said. “If you were Kenji Sole, where would you hide a video camera?”

  “Could be almost anywhere,” Coffin said. “You can get those little nanny-cams now that come inside teddy bears and clock radios.” He picked up a potted ivy plant from the top of the dresser, peered into it, and set it down.

  Lola shook her head. “What a world,” she said.

  “Tell me about it,” Coffin said. He took off his shoes and climbed onto the bed. “We had a guy in Baltimore—murder victim—had his whole house wired with little spy-cams.” He stood on the bare mattress, reached up, and began to unscrew the frosted glass bowl from the ceiling fixture.

  “Anything?” Lola said.

  “Not here,” Coffin said, replacing the shade. “How many wires are coming out of that clock radio?”

  The clock radio was small and white, with a blue LED. Lola picked it up. “Just one. Nothing on the face that looks like a lens.”

  “Maybe the smoke detector,” Coffin said. He climbed down from the bed and picked up a wicker chair that had been toppled onto its side. He put the chair on its feet under
the smoke detector, which was mounted high on the wall near the door.

  “The smoke detector? Really?”

  “Great place for a camera,” Coffin said, stepping onto the chair. Its wicker seat crackled under his weight. “Completely invisible unless you’re looking for it.”

  “Careful, Frank,” Lola said.

  “Let’s just have a look,” Coffin said, eyeing the smoke detector, then pulling it out of its white plastic bracket.

  “Anything?” Lola said.

  “Sometimes a smoke detector is just a smoke detector.” Coffin stepped carefully out of the groaning wicker chair. He turned and rubbed his chin, then gazed at the dune-and-sunset print hanging crooked on the wall. “What do you think of that picture?” he said.

  Lola followed his gaze. “The generic sunset-with-lighthouse print? I think it’s godawful.”

  “Weird, isn’t it?” Coffin said. “All the great ab-ex and color-field stuff in this house, and this is what she hangs in the bedroom?” He walked up to the print and peered at it closely. “Here we go,” he said, pointing to the top of the lighthouse. “See that?” A tiny black lens glinted a half inch from his fingertip.

  Lola stood beside him. “Wow,” she said. “That’s the lens?”

  “They just need a pinhole,” Coffin said. He lifted the print from its hanger and turned it around. A small white plastic box was mounted on its back, level with the lens; a six-inch wire dangled from the box.

  “Battery pack, wireless transmitter,” Lola said.

  “Wireless,” Coffin said. “Shit.”

  “I wonder what the range on this thing is,” Lola said. “Fifty feet? A hundred?”

  “Who knows,” Coffin said. “If it’s a hundred, the receiver and DVR could be anywhere in the house.”

  Lola sat on the bed. “If I were a DVR, where would I hide?”

  “It would depend on what you were being used for,” Coffin said. “We’ve got homemade porn in the bedroom and a missing computer in the study. Maybe you’d be in between?”

  “Worth a shot,” Lola said. “What’s between us and the study?”

  “Well, there’s the Taj Mahal of bathrooms,” Coffin said, “and a hallway.” He poked his head out of the bedroom door and looked down the hall. “With what looks like a linen closet.”