Vapor Trail

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Vapor Trail Page 10

by Chuck Logan


  Mouse twisted his lips in a sour expression. “Hey, I gotta work here in this glass house. John E. brought you in to throw the stones.”

  “Mouse, there’s a dead priest with a Saint’s medal in his mouth.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Mouse made placating gestures with his palms. “So what do you want?”

  “You going to help me with Harry, Mouse? You were playing hard to get this morning.”

  “That’s before you got hit in the head and maybe handcuffed. Harry’s a great guy when he’s sober, and I love him. But he can be dangerous when he’s drinking. I mean”—Mouse carefully looked Broker in the eye—“he could kill somebody, right?”

  Broker nodded. “Yep. If he’s drunk and you get in the way of the wrong mood swing— Harry could kill you.”

  Mouse leaned forward and squinted. “Cut the shit, Broker; it’s the Mouse you’re talking to . . .”

  “Okay, Harry could put one right here.” Broker tapped his forehead.

  Mouse nodded. “So you want us to put a Bolo on him for whatever it is he did to you, which you ain’t saying? Drag his ass in?”

  Broker caught a whiff of cigarette smoke gliding from the bar and all these vampire air sacs in his lungs sat upright in their coffins. “Nothing so obvious,” he said. “Picture somebody chasing him down the street and he’s blacked-out drunk. He took one of his favorite toys when he left his house—the one with the target knobs on the scope that’s registered out to twelve hundred yards. He could climb up in a building, and it could bounce strange.”

  “I hear you,” Mouse said.

  “Or less dramatic, he could seriously disappear, and we need him. So we use him and then we trap him.”

  “And drag him off to the hospital in a net like a wild animal.” Mouse grinned.

  “Exactly,” Broker said. “Remember what you said about checking every casino in a one-hundred-mile radius?”

  “That was a joke,” Mouse said, a little alarmed.

  “No joke. Can you do that? Quietly, like, don’t let your buddy Benish know. Fax Harry’s picture around to the security officers. I mean, we’re talking about a high roller who’s drunk, who looks like a skinny Johnny Cash, who has three red sevens tattooed on his right forearm. How hard is that?”

  Mouse nodded. “Maybe I can do that. I know a retired state patrol copper who runs security in the Grand Casino up in Hinckley. Maybe he can flog the network.”

  “We might get lucky. If I was Harry crashing and burning on my last hurrah, I’d hang in the casinos where it’s dark and cool and anonymous,” Broker said as he stared across the room at Gloria Russell in profile. She leaned forward, chatting intently with her colleagues. Her teeth flashed in a smile like crisp punctuation. She looked incredibly healthy and vital, as though she breathed better air, took better vitamins.

  “Okay, I’ll get on the casinos.” Mouse took a last swig at his coffee and set the glass down. “When do you talk to the archdiocese?”

  “Meet my guy in the morning,” Broker said.

  Mouse nodded. “When you get back, we’ll sit down and run everything we’ve got on Moros. You, me, and Lymon.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Maybe everybody was invisible down deep.

  Or were they just hiding what they were thinking?

  All the people she passed during the day. People she knew, went on break with. Even the man she’d let into her body. She couldn’t really see the pictures moving in their minds just behind their eyes.

  Windows to the soul?

  Hardly. More like the two-way mirror in the hard interrogation room. You could see out at them, but they couldn’t see in. They looked at you and saw their own reflection.

  But they knew you were there, watching.

  So more like—windows to the game.

  Angel was through with games.

  She was playing for keeps.

  And right now she was daydreaming in the heat. Driving from Herberger’s Department Store up on 36, she passed a digital sign on a bank marquee. The time, then: 102 degrees.

  The heat made her light-headed.

  Floaty.

  So get serious.

  Specifically, this afternoon she would be playing for keeps with Aubrey Jackson Scott. Aubrey was a freelance photographer. He lived in a river cottage on the St. Croix north of Stillwater. He was divorced. He drove a 1995 Accord. He had no police record. Just the one complaint.

  A neighbor couple had griped that Aubrey invited their eight-year-old daughter into his house to give her a new bathing suit. They suspected, but could not confirm, that Aubrey had taken photos of her when she put the new suit on.

  A Washington County deputy had talked to the parents. He’d signed off when he learned that the child refused to give back the suit. County, understaffed, had let it slide.

  The back-and-forth facts didn’t really matter. What mattered was that Aubrey’s name was number two on the list.

  Angel parked her car, gathered her shopping bag, and went into her apartment. Just as with Moros, she took time to prepare herself mentally. She sat down in her living room and stared at the face in the picture framed on the bookcase across the room.

  You told me I had to be strong.

  Then, methodically, she laid out her gear: the latex gloves, the medallion, and the wig. She kept two pistols in her desk drawer. She loved the .38. Its heft and bulk. But it was a revolver, and when she’d used it the first time she was damn near as scared as that creep Dolman when she heard it go off. She’d turned the volume on his sound system way up, and still she worried people would hear.

  So this time around she’d decided to do a little research on-line that took all of ten minutes.

  She typed HANDGUN and HOMEMADE SILENCER into Google.com and got hundreds of sites.

  The book she bought with her sister’s VISA card cost fourteen bucks and was titled Homemade Silencers Made Easy. Used automobile oil filters were the favorite home item recommended by the right-wing crazy who wrote this slim volume. But Angel couldn’t see lugging around a dirty, oily hunk of metal in her purse.

  Uh-uh. Angel preferred something clean.

  Like a twenty-four-ounce plastic Mountain Dew pop bottle. No complicated threading device. Just a big plug of duct tape attaching the bottle to the barrel housing of a .22-caliber Ruger Mark II target pistol.

  She bought the Ruger at a chain-store gun department using her sister’s driver’s license—same height, around the same weight, same eye color. And she’d worn her sister’s wig for the first time outside of the apartment.

  In her sister’s glasses, and the wig, the resemblance was uncanny, although her sister’s face in the license photo was much thinner than her own. So the salesman had perused the license, taken her sister’s name and social security number, and submitted them to a computer background check.

  Two weeks later Angel was the owner of a new pistol, which—according to the author of Homemade Silencers Made Easy—was a perfect fit for the clumsy but effective pop bottle taped to its barrel housing.

  And, as the visit with Father Moros demonstrated, the silencer system worked just fine. The main thing was she had to get in close.

  Angel slipped out of her working clothes and her underwear. She removed the new bathing suit from the shopping bag, held it up in front of her, and pitched a sidelong glance into her full-length mirror.

  Close would not be a problem.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Broker drove around the back of the LEC, parked in the underground garage, and took an elevator up to the sheriff’s offices. Going into Investigations, he checked Lymon’s cube. Empty. He ignored the sullen nongreetings from the other cops, continued down the row of cubicles. “Narcotics,” he sang out.

  “We got a hell of a going-out-of-business-sale on Ecstasy right now,” a young voice replied.

  “Where are you?”

  “Other side of the cubes.”

  A young investigator stood in the aisle. He was dressed in filthy b
lue work trousers, a soiled T-shirt, steel-toed shoes. A pair of bulbous ear protectors was slung around his neck.

  “What are you supposed to be besides bright-eyed and bushy-tailed?” Broker said.

  The young cop shrugged. “Working a UC gig; right now I’m a tree trimmer. Got a chain saw and everything.”

  “You are . . . ?” Broker said.

  “Pete Cody. Narcotics.” Cody did not offer to shake hands. “But I heard about you. You’re the loneliest guy in the world, right?”

  Broker was not amused. “How’d a shrimp like you manage to grow up instead of being beaten to death on the playground?”

  Cody smiled. “Musta been all that mediation counseling, I guess.”

  Broker said, “You know anything about a guy named Ray Tardee?”

  Cody shrugged. “Sure, one of our perennials.”

  “Who’s prosecuting?”

  “Russell.”

  “Thanks.”

  Broker went to an empty cube, sat down at the desk, got out the county phone directory, called the county attorney’s office, and asked for Gloria Russell.

  “Miz Russell took the rest of the day off,” the receptionist said.

  “Tell her Phil Broker, Special Projects on Moros, called. We need to talk ASAP about one of her cases, Ray Tardee.” Broker gave his cell phone number.

  Broker raised his voice. “Anyone,” he sang out loud enough to carry over the cubicle walls, “is Gloria Russell married?”

  “Happily?” someone asked back. That caused a few titters.

  “Is she married?” Broker repeated.

  “She was married. BH. Oh yeah. For sure.” Several voices replied from the cubes.

  “BH, Before Harry,” someone added.

  “Her life is currently complicated by a dietary situation. She developed this craving for chocolate. That’s why she works out so hard.”

  Then a more serious voice overrode the guffaws. “Her marriage went in the toilet. She separated. She’s getting divorced.”

  Broker mulled it over, drew it out: Miz . . . Russell. That tingle on his neck hairs brought him around. A blond, balding, horse-faced guy stood behind him. One of the white-shirt potbellies.

  “Who are you?” Broker asked.

  “Benish. Fraud.”

  “What do you want?”

  Benish glanced around the barren cubicle. “We were wondering if you’re going to set up in a cube, you know, hang family pictures? Or maybe you won’t be here that long?”

  “Benish, in your professional opinion, do I need a coffee taster?”

  “Not my department. You need General Investigations for poisoning cases.”

  “Thank you, Benish.”

  “Have a good day, Broker.”

  A secretary in her early sixties manned the gatekeeper desk at the entrance to Investigations. She had a smoke-cured bingo parlor face, frosted hair, and the trim body of a ballroom dancer.

  “Marcy, right?” Broker said.

  “You got it,” Marcy said.

  “So where’s Lymon?”

  “Lymon’s doing Goths.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “You don’t have kids in high school?”

  “No kids in high school.”

  “Goths are to the left of slackers and grunge,” Marcy explained. “Goths wear black all the time, dye their hair green, and insert cuff links in their pierced tongues.”

  A voice sounded in back of Broker. “Lymon thinks they also worship the devil. And, in their spare time tip over tombstones, deface and burglarize churches—stuff like that.”

  Broker swung around. Benish continued, “So Lymon’s asking the little Satanists if they’ve, you know, whacked any priests lately.”

  “So Lymon has a theory about the case,” Broker said.

  “Two theories. His first all-purpose theory is Harry did it. If that doesn’t work, then his second theory is the devil did it,” Benish said.

  Broker turned back to Marcy. “Has anything come in from the BCA crime lab yet?”

  “Not yet,” Marcy said.

  “Okay, I’ll be in touch,” Broker said, walking down the length of the room. As he keyed open the locked door, he heard Benish snicker, “He’ll be in touch.” He took the elevator and paced back and forth as it descended, then left the elevator and started for the garage thinking . . .

  So, if you want to know what’s really going on, get away from the guys with the suits and ties and the big guts who take the long lunches. Maybe it’s time to check in with the flat-belly street grunts.

  Abruptly Broker turned away from the corridor leading to the garage, went up a flight, and walked into the patrol division. He cut through the deserted muster room past rows of folding chairs and a lectern. A yellowed pistol target taped to the bulletin board featured Osama Bin Laden’s bullet-punched face.

  He went into an alcove off the muster room where a statuesque brunette patrol sergeant named Patti Palen sat at an administrative desk. She had a full-service belt strapped over her regulation beige-on-tan county uniform. An HT 1000 portable radio sat on the desk and hiccuped static.

  “Surprise, surprise,” she said in a grudging voice. “I heard you were in the area.”

  “Hey, Patti, how you doing? Yeah, I’m around for a few days,” Broker said. “Thought I’d drop down here belowdecks and see how the galley slaves are doing.”

  “You never were any good at small talk, Broker. So what do you want?”

  “Hey, how’s your kid doing? It’s Alex, right? He must be, what—twenty-three, twenty-four now?” Broker said casually, avoiding the sight of Patti’s face tightening as his eyes roved the small room.

  Seven years ago Broker bumped into Alex Palen, then seventeen, in an entry-level position fencing stolen televisions and VCRs in the electronics division of a biker gang Broker had a relationship with. He’d given the kid a break, steered him clear of a felony bust, and hounded him into the Coast Guard.

  Patti drew in a sharp breath, composed herself, exhaled, looked up into Broker’s eyes, and said, “Alex is doing just fine.” Her gaze then moved off and became seriously involved with the linoleum pattern on the floor. “Why don’t you cut me some slack and talk to somebody else.”

  “Nah, you owe me. So what’s making the rounds, Patti?”

  Patti exhaled again. “Harry Cantrell got suspended for coming in drunk. And we aren’t supposed to know, but a priest got shot in St. Martin’s and they found a St. Nicholas medal in his mouth. The sheriff worked it out with the union so Harry has to go to treatment or he loses his job.” Patti took a breath. “So Investigations is down one body, and we got a Saint’s panic coming on like a storm surge.”

  “Anything you left out?”

  “Yeah, last I heard, you, of all people, were gonna take Harry to the hospital. So, is he in the hospital?”

  “Not yet. Tell me, Patti— you think Harry is the Saint?”

  Patti shook her head. “Me personally? No. The coppers are pretty evenly divided on this. There’s a third that think he is, there’s a third that think he isn’t, and the rest don’t really have an opinion.”

  “One last question: what’s the story on Harry and Gloria Russell?” Broker said.

  They stared each other down. Second by second Patti’s face filled with gravitas until it weighed about a ton. “Some people say they were like crossed live wires on a tin roof from the minute they started working together on the Dolman thing. It got so bad, it deep-sixed her marriage and was interfering with her work. So she talked to John E. and got him to take Harry off the case. Replaced him with Lymon Greene.” Patti sat deeper in her chair and folded her arms. “Which really pissed Harry off.”

  “Yeah, go on.”

  “Apparently, Lymon replaced Harry in more ways than one. According to this version, that’s why Harry pulled his Mark Fuhrman number. You know, the famous N-word scene.”

  Broker lifted his eyebrows.

  “I give you one last thing, and then you le
ave me alone. Okay?” Patti said.

  Broker nodded.

  “The only thing I know for sure is Gloria and Lymon spend lunchtime together lifting weights downstairs in the gym.”

  “Thank you, Patti.”

  “Fuck you, Broker.”

  Broker continued to the basement motor pool and was going down the lines of marked and unmarked cars when he encountered Cody, the narcotics cop, and his partner, both wearing the tree trimmer costumes. Cody was carrying a black plastic bag. Seeing Broker, he held up the bag and grinned.

  “We’re going through garbage. You want to join us?” Cody called out in a sardonic voice.

  Broker smiled and kept going, got into Harry’s car, started it up, and drove from the underground garage into the ash-white sunlight.

  He turned south on Osgood, crossed Highway 36, and stopped at the Holiday station, went in and bought several packs of Backwoods cigars. Back in the car, he fired up one of the rough-looking stogies with Harry’s casino matches. As the raw but calming smoke meandered from his mouth, he caught himself automatically doing a terrain field scan. A pre-cop habit from a shooting war. He was checking the surrounding area by breaking it into quadrants, then stopping, reversing field to overlap the last quadrant before moving on and repeating the process.

  Broker shook his head. What do you expect? Harry’s going to follow you in your own truck? The one he stole from you?

  With the windows down and the cigar clamped in his teeth, he put the car in gear and continued north through Oak Park Heights, past the quaint shady residential streets. Then, off to the left, the Oak Park Heights Correctional Facility hid in a fold of open field. The maximum security prison was sunk four levels deep in the ground, like a buried battleship.

  The worst dudes in the state were entombed here like bad canned meat. Ten years ago, Diane Cantrell’s murderer was on his way here for his own protection—but they didn’t move him fast enough, and he was knifed to death in Stillwater Prison. Washington County was host to the state’s two serious prisons, Stillwater and OPH, located within a few miles of each other. The county could boast more killers and rapists per capita than any other jurisdiction.

 

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