Vapor Trail

by Chuck Logan

  “What about the Santa Claus angle?”

  “That came later, after his legend got mixed up with our German ancestors who wouldn’t let go of their damned evergreen.”

  “Well, this guy isn’t tossing bags of gold.”

  “We’d always assumed the Saint was a guy. Now we got this witness throwing in a twist: was it a woman, or a guy in drag? And in case we’re slow with the medallion—the suspect was wearing a Saints jacket.”

  Broker came forward in his chair again, but slower this time. He leaned his elbows on the table and gave John his full attention. “John, did you drive out here to suggest that Harry Cantrell got drunk and dressed up like a woman to go shoot a priest?”

  John raised his arms and scratched at his sweaty hair with both hands in an exasperated gesture. “When Dolman got off, a lot of people in the county said, ‘I ought to shoot the sonofabitch’—including me. Then somebody did. Some people think Harry was the Saint. Like I said, I’m not one of them. But he knows something. I always figured the Saint was a soccer mom who reached her bullshit limit, and she’d be damned if Dolman was going to come back to school and teach her kid. I always thought we should have looked closer at all the parents at that school. But we didn’t have the resources.” John shook his head. “Now I’m not so sure. I’m worried it could be someone in the county.”

  “Slow down. What if your witness talks to a reporter, the neighbors? There goes your breathing room,” Broker said.

  John smiled quickly. “Not likely. He’s sweating a possession charge. He’s an aging biker who sold a bag of grass to one of my undercover guys. Which put him over the line on points. He’s looking at going inside. We can deal him up. He’ll stay quiet.”

  “So who knows about the medallion?”

  “The Stillwater cop who answered the call. And the Stillwater mayor and his police chief. My investigator, Lymon Greene; his sergeant, Maury Seacrest.” John paused. “You know Maury.”

  Broker winced. “So every cop in the metro east of the Mississippi knows. What about the secretary who found the body?”

  “She’s cool; she didn’t see the medallion. We took her statement, and she and her husband agreed to go on vacation up to Mille Lacs a few days early.”

  “What about the Ramsey County ME and the BCA Crime Lab guys? They processed the scene.”

  “They don’t know. It stays quiet until I get back,” John said.

  “Back?” Broker sat up in his chair, skeptical. “The Saint just blew into town, and you’re leaving?”

  “My wife’s dad just died. So the funeral’s in Seattle.”

  “That’s not immediate family, John.”

  “Sorry, gotta go.”

  Broker gave his old friend the barest smile. “What the hell are you doing?”

  John’s expression was clearly conflicted. “I’m understaffed. My top investigator is drunk on his ass and a total embarrassment; my other sergeants are tied up in court. I’m going to a funeral. My deputy chief is doing the course at the Southern Police Institute.”

  “Bullshit. You got Art Katzer in charge of Investigations,” Broker said.

  “He took off for SWAT training.”

  “When? At midnight when he heard about the priest and the medallion and Harry falling off the wagon?”

  “Okay—I’m throwing the dice on this one. If I’m right and Harry knows who the Saint is, I’m betting you can get him to cough it up. If I’m wrong . . .” John shook his head.

  “Yeah, right or wrong you bring in somebody expendable, who isn’t part of your department, so it can’t blow back on you,” Broker said.

  John grinned tightly. “I wouldn’t put it that way, but, ah, yeah. So is that a yes or a no?”

  “You’re asking a lot,” Broker said.

  “I know, but I figure you can handle it. Look, there’s a national scandal about the Church, and I got a dead priest with a radio-active clue stuck in his mouth that identifies him in the popular mind as a child molester. I gotta know if this priest was dirty.” John paused. “We’re not set up to handle a high-profile murder investigation. I don’t want the state guys moving in on this before we know what we’ve got. And I don’t want a media high carnival—the archdiocese in St. Paul doesn’t need that kind of grief on top of everything else. I need someone to check out Moros’s background without making any waves. I mean like invisible. I got Maury, but he doesn’t exactly have the contacts you do.”

  Broker shrugged. “I never was a straight-ahead investigator, John. You know that.”

  John let a cynical smile play across his face. “C’mon, Broker. You tell people you retired because you invested wisely in real estate on the north shore years ago. And you own a resort up there. But I know that five years ago you and Nina smuggled several tons of buried gold bullion right under the noses of the Hanoi politburo, on through Laos and Thailand and into Hong Kong.” John paused, got no denial, then began again.

  “You live off credit cards. Banks in Bangkok and Hong Kong pay the bills. Last year your credit card totals were twice your declared income. The FBI keeps the IRS off your back because you helped the bureau penetrate the Russian Mafia three years ago.”

  “You’re being dramatic, John,” Broker said. “But I’ll admit I’m just a little curious about where you got the stuff about the credit cards.”

  John rolled his eyes. “I sit on task-force planning sessions with all this alphabet soup: FBI, ATF, DEA, IRS. People have a few drinks, and they talk. C’mon, you pirate. Do me this favor, okay?”

  They went silent, and then the silence became awkward as John started to speak and wound up chewing back false starts until finally he said, “There’s a card inside on the table. It’s your birthday, right?”

  “Fuck you, John.”

  John chewed some more silence, then spoke. “Nina and Kit, you . . .”

  “Don’t,” Broker said sharply.

  John sat back and folded his heavy arms across his chest and waited. Twenty seconds. Thirty.

  “Who would I report to?” Broker said.

  John grinned. “Nobody. Your kind of play, totally on your own. I hire you as a Special Projects consultant.”

  “No paperwork, no office, no desk,” Broker said.

  John held up reassuring hands. “No paperwork, no desk. We can stay in touch by phone. You said your license was current?”

  “Yeah, no problem there.”

  “So I’ll get you an ID and a badge. You need a gun?”

  “I still have the old forty-five. That’ll do, if it comes to that.”

  John gave Broker a direct fatal look and said, “You know me, I don’t go in for dramatics, right? But we’re talking you and Harry here. If he’s drinking, you wear the gun. Okay?”

  Broker nodded. “Gotcha.”

  John nodded. “Okay then. We’re on. Just keep it mostly legal.”

  Broker smiled thinly. “I won’t alienate any voters, John. I understand you have to get reelected.”

  “Good. But we have to put it together fast. Like this morning. I have to go home and pack.”

  Broker shrugged. “Let me grab a shower and get dressed. I’ll meet you at the Law Enforcement Center in half an hour.” He pointed at the medallion. “What about this?”

  John put it back in the envelope. “It’s going in my safe until I get back.” They walked down the steps toward John’s truck. John shifted from foot to foot and pursed his lips. “Another thing . . .”

  “What?”

  “Keep an eye on this young cop who’s working the case, Lymon Greene. Give me a gut read on him.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Sometimes the sheriff is the last to hear what the troops are saying down in the trenches. I want to know why Lymon and Harry are always about an inch from fist city.”

  John Eisenhower got in his Bronco, fastened his seat belt, put both hands on the steering wheel. “You know what the troops call rumors about Harry being the Saint—they call it ‘the elephant in th
e living room.’” He started the truck, then leaned forward feeling with his hand for the cold air to start coming through the A/C vent.

  Broker shook his head. “Too hot to go elephant hunting.”

  “Broker, the guy needs help. Somebody has to have a Come-to-Jesus with him. I wish it wasn’t you. But he’s got most everybody else either dazzled or buffaloed.” John shook his head. “I never liked Harry, going all the way back to the rookie school in St. Paul. He’s got the best instincts of any cop I ever knew and the worst methods of acting on them.” John paused a few beats and then stared directly at Broker. “And you know that better than anyone.”

  Chapter Five

  Broker watched John Eisenhower’s Bronco disappear up Milt’s driveway and then stood soaking in the heat as he calculated Harry Cantrell’s influence on his life.

  Which had been in the nature of huge.

  Broker knew that Harry Cantrell had trouble with the first half of July because his wife, Diane, had been murdered on a July 7 at seven o’clock.

  Seventh month, seventh day, seventh hour: 777.

  Harry had the numbers tattooed on his right forearm.

  The story passed by word of mouth. It was never written down. It did not appear in the reports. It had become a quiet police legend that followed Broker through his career.

  Harry and Broker were baby cops together. They’d sat next to each other at the academy. They’d partnered in patrol. Neither of them seriously thought of being coppers for the long haul. They’d both seen action in the latter days of the Vietnam War and looked on police work as a way of extending the tour of duty and the adrenaline rush.

  They’d both liked the clash and sting of the street, but Harry was always the more willing to mix it up. He’d slap the cuffs on extra tight; he’d choke to subdue; he’d break wrists and dislocate arms. On his third month on the job he shot a drug dealer who’d had the bad sense to pull a gun. An investigation ruled it a righteous shoot.

  Then came that perfect night for a domestic. Hot, no moon; cruising the streets, you could feel people’s blood starting to steam up the lighted windows.

  At least this time it was in a nice neighborhood, on Summit Avenue, which was just about as nice as you could get in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1985.

  They went together, two sergeants advancing fast in rank. Comers. They were filling in for patrolmen who were taking vacation time.

  And that’s the night Harry met Diane.

  She was, like her house, very well maintained except for the swelling under her eye and the trickle of blood coming from her nose.

  Hubby was a dentist who was a meticulous success at everything except, apparently, living. He was given to rages over cobwebs and dust balls. He’d found lint in his underwear drawer, and so he beat his wife.

  That night she’d decided not to take it anymore and had picked up the phone. Broker and Harry took one look, then came in fast and split them up. Broker shoved the husband in one room, while Harry sat with Diane in another and persuaded her to file charges.

  Harry continued to advise her through injunctions, restraining orders, and the divorce. A storybook courtship followed.

  But there were some, with an eye toward Harry’s dossier of brutality complaints, who said discreetly that Diane had traded one batterer for another.

  Others in those racially more dubious days scoffed at the notion. Harry, they pointed out, only thumped on young black males.

  Broker stood up in a Lutheran chapel as best man on the day Harry and Diane were married.

  Now he thought back to being young and moist-eyed sentimental on the cathedral light pouring through stained-glass windows, getting dizzy on the fragrance of fresh flowers.

  Here and now he remembered the birthday card inside on the kitchen table. He’d just broken up with his first wife, Caren, and he’d brought a new girl to the wedding. A girl he’d met taking evidence over to the BCA.

  Janey.

  But the dentist husband turned out to have deeper issues than anyone suspected. He held old-fashioned ideas about his marriage vows. He interpreted the death-do-us-part clause literally, and he began to harass Diane. He studied Harry’s shift schedule, and he caught Diane alone in the backyard on a hot July afternoon. He went after her with his fists.

  Diane was lucky; she got away with just her eyes blackened. She’d fought him off with a barbecue fork until her screams brought the neighbors. Word got out over the radios, and Broker met up with Harry in the Ramsey County emergency room.

  He’d watched as she told Harry how crazy the ex had been.

  Crazy, she’d said. Really crazy.

  In a cold fury, Harry left the ER, got in his squad, and drove away.

  Broker followed in a separate car. He knew that the ex-husband was still in his old house which was up for sale as part of the divorce settlement. So he headed for Summit Avenue and found Harry’s squad parked in the driveway. He gave the address over the radio and called for backup. The front door was locked, so he went around the back and kicked through the kitchen door and found Harry in the living room beating the dentist’s head against the marble fireplace.

  They talked it over:

  Harry said, Go away and come back in five minutes.

  Broker said, I can’t let you do this.

  Harry said, He’s going to resist arrest. He’s going to attack me with that fireplace poker right there. He didn’t leave me any choice.

  Broker said, I’m going to cuff him and put him in the car. Step away.

  Harry said, Make me.

  So they faced each other across six feet of space, with a semiconscious man between them, dripping blood on the Persian carpet. They both carried .38-caliber revolvers; their right hands were poised at hip level above their pistol butts.

  Harry’s eyes were too bright, eager for it. He said, I always wondered what this would be like.

  Broker said, Maybe you could have got away with doing him, but you’ll never be able to explain both of us.

  The opposite of Harry, Broker had centered in a deadly calm, working the problem. He knew that he had to keep Harry talking.

  Harry said, I know what this guy’s like. He’ll keep coming back on her until somebody stops him permanently.

  Broker said, We’ll lock him up.

  Harry said, What do you mean? She has a black eye; he’ll be out in a week. I’m telling you, he’s going to kill her.

  Broker said, No he isn’t; he’s going to jail.

  And then it was sirens forever as the black-and-whites swarmed the house like metal hornets with blue flashers.

  And Harry said, You fucker. This is your call, and it’s on your head.

  Fine, Broker had agreed.

  They put the cuffs on the man and took him into the station and booked him for assault.

  The next day they were handing out traffic tickets on University Avenue when the call came in. Diane was back in Ramsey ER in a coma. That morning a judge who suffered from haughty extremes of robes disease and who tended to be lenient about domestic abuse and who was impressed with Summit Avenue addresses had let the dentist out on bail. He had gone directly back to Harry’s house and beat Diane with a claw hammer he’d found on the back porch. Harry had been using the hammer to repair a loose rain gutter. By the time they got to the hospital, she was dead.

  This time a different judge refused bail for the unrepentant dentist.

  Six months after Diane Cantrell was married, she was back in the Lutheran chapel; this time she didn’t see the light filtering through the stained glass. She didn’t smell the pyres of flowers.

  And Harry met Broker at the church door and said, I don’t want you here.

  It changed Broker’s life. His dad had always figured he’d go to law school after tiring of the police. His mother wished for something more whimsical, something to develop the intuitive talents she saw in her son.

  Broker remained a cop. But a detached and then a remote kind of cop. He told himself he’d sought ou
t the deep undercover work to anticipate crimes before they happened. Then his current wife, Nina, came into his life. She looked at his undercover routine and said, What are you hiding from, anyway?

  Broker and Harry tried but failed to put the friendship back together. They both left the St. Paul department. Broker went to the BCA; Harry to Washington County. Broker departed on his undercover pilgrimage. Harry found refuge in excesses of hard work and binges of drinking and gambling.

  And every time they met it was instant time machine—they were back in that living room on Summit Avenue. Their voices were civil and professional, but their eyes were locked as if their hands were poised three inches away from their holstered pistols and each was waiting for the other to make the first move.

  So the story passed by word of mouth, and it wasn’t written down or reported, and some people said that Harry had put it all behind him. Others were convinced that Harry had never recovered from the events surrounding Diane’s murder and it was only a matter of time before he took revenge on Broker.

  And Broker understood that it was Harry’s style not to be in any particular hurry.

  Chapter Six

  Broker drove the ten miles from Marine on St. Croix, where Milt had his river house, toward Stillwater, the Washington County seat. He was heavier by thirty-eight and a half ounces of steel slung in a nylon hideout rig behind his right hip. John was right. If Harry had gone off the deep end, it could get nasty. So after he showered and shaved, he loaded the Colt .45 Gold Cup National. Then he put on faded jeans, cinched the holster to his belt, and pulled a loose gray polo shirt over the pistol’s bulk. Scuffed cross trainers and a pair of sunglasses completed his casual attire.

  Never a big fan of sidearms, he had always preferred to deal with trouble inside the reach of his arms. But he was fond of the .45 for its usefulness in close as a steel club.

  Broker breathed in, breathed out. Don’t get ahead of yourself. Take it one step at a time. Stay professional; it’s a job.

  Bullshit. It was Harry.

  He turned off 95 to bypass the business district and eased on back streets to the Law Enforcement Center at the south end of town. He parked in the visitors’ lot by the front door. The red brick building housed the sheriff’s office and the jail and looked like one half of a deserted shopping mall. The other half was the county offices next door.