The next morning, the police still couldn’t locate Kevin Teehan. I had a few ideas, first stopping off at the Home Depot and then continuing up Route 1 to Saugus and the Riverside Cemetery. I’d found an obit of Teehan’s mom on the Globe site. An old teacher of Teehan’s I’d spoken with told me he’d been prone to sit at her grave. She’d found it a little unsettling.
I parked along a low stone wall on Winter Street for most of the day. I took a few breaks to check in with Susan, eat a chicken pie at Harrow’s, and to use the bathroom. I drank Gatorade and watched people come and go to the cemetery on a hot summer afternoon. A man running a Weed Eater and a push lawnmower worked around the headstones. He wore coveralls and protective earphones, and after what seemed liked hours, packed up his gear onto a trailer and drove away in a pickup truck.
As he exited the cemetery, he passed Kevin Teehan in his vintage Crown Vic. Aha.
I watched Teehan drive deep in the cemetery, park, and then get out with flowers in hand. He had a mattress and some furniture tied down in the trunk.
I drove into the cemetery and parked next to him with my nose facing Winter Street. I got out, placed a GPS tracker under the open trunk, and walked toward him. He was kneeling at the grave but peered up as I got close.
He got to his feet. He squinted and scowled at me simultaneously.
I help up a hand.
“Police have Ray Zucco,” I said.
He didn’t say anything. He had on cargo shorts and flip-flops. If I hadn’t seen the furniture, I’d think he was going on vacation.
“You headed to the Cape?” I said. “I was just there. Lovely time of year.”
“I’m not going nowhere,” he said. “You can’t just follow me.”
“Cops are looking for you.”
“You’re not a cop,” he said. “Just try and stop me.”
“It would be my pleasure, Kevin,” I said. “But I’d rather just talk.”
“This is a special place,” he said. “Don’t fuck up my special place.”
His pasty, pockmarked face flushed bright in the sun. I could not help but notice that there was a scorched piece of earth by the grave. Paging Norman Bates.
“I don’t think your mom would like what you’ve been up to,” I said. “She supported the firefighters up here. Isn’t that right? She was dating one when she died.”
“You don’t know shit about my mother,” he said.
“I know she got sick and died when you were fifteen,” I said. “And I know you latched on to a real piece of work in Johnny Donovan when you dropped out of high school. Although you told me that you and Johnny never met.”
“I don’t know him that good.”
“Or that well,” I said. “Perhaps you should have continued with your studies. Did you know he was fired from his job at a school for stealing televisions and computers? And that he once slapped a young boy there? Tough guy. When the kid’s parents pressed charges, their house burned. The reason the Sparks wouldn’t allow him to join was because they found him mentally unstable.”
“Johnny’s a good guy,” he said. “He taught me a lot about being a firefighter and a man. You don’t know shit. He’s the real deal. He’s a friend.”
“Yeah, sure,” I said. “Ray Zucco says he killed Rob Featherstone and set fire to Holy Innocents as payback for something that happened to him as a kid.”
“Bullshit,” he said. “Ray never said Johnny burned that church. Because it didn’t happen.”
“But you three burned other places,” I said. “You guys burned about eighty buildings this year. I’m only curious as to your reasons.”
“Go screw yourself.”
“You guys sent several firefighters to the hospital last week,” I said. “You knocked me and dozen or so people out of their homes on Marlborough Street. I don’t like to tie myself to possessions, but I’d rather not lose everything. Do you know how hard it is to find a black leather trench coat this day and age?”
Teehan looked to me with mild curiosity. He dropped the flowers near the headstone. His mother’s name was Barbara Ann. She’d been only thirty-six when she died. He noticed me staring and turned his eyes on me. They were small, beady, and black.
“What happened?” I said.
Teehan lowered his head and scratched his neck. Now my hair was as short as his. I hoped the bald look looked better on me.
“She got real sick,” he said. “Fast. Took about a year. It sucked.”
The cemetery was as still and quiet as it should be. Few cars passed out on Winter Street. Birds zipped past us and crickets chirped along the stone wall and from behind headstones. Somewhere far off, a dog continued to howl. I wiped my sweating brow with the tips of my fingers. Patience was key.
“Why’d you guys do it?”
“We didn’t do nothing,” he said. “Ray is a fucking liar.”
“They got you, Kevin,” I said. “Cops are looking for you. Nowhere to run to. Nowhere to hide.”
“So what,” he said. “What are you gonna do? Pull a gun on me and force me to leave with you.”
“Nope,” I said. “I’m going to let you run. It’ll only make you look worse at your arraignment. They won’t be able to set bail high enough.”
“You and the cops got nothing.”
“Everyone is turning,” I said. “Johnny’s next.”