Vapor Trail

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Vapor Trail Page 19

by Chuck Logan


  Dogs?

  Broker took the address, headed out the door, and got back in his car. For a moment he studied the Mobile Data Terminal grafted onto the dashboard like an unplugged R2D2. He picked Harry’s hat off the passenger seat, the one that announced “I Am Not Like the Others,” and placed it on top the computer.

  Then he drove down Main Street, through downtown, and ran an amber light on Myrtle. Horns blared behind him. He glanced in the rearview and saw a dusty green Volvo had run the red light, skewing the crossing traffic.

  He continued on north with an eye to the mirror. The Volvo kept pace. At the north end of town he speeded up on Highway 95. The Volvo paced him, staying four car lengths behind.

  Okay. So who was following him? In his general experience, threatening people did not drive Volvos. Soccer moms drive Volvos. People who shop at the food co-op drive Volvos. Volvo owners listen to Minnesota Public Radio. They love wolves; they hug trees.

  He squinted into the rearview. And this person didn’t believe in car washes, because the dust on the windshield was as good as a tint; he could not make out the driver.

  Broker scratched his chin and went with his gut: Volvo owners do not usually tail cops unless they are psychos.

  Or reporters.

  North of town the highway dipped and rose through a turn in a raw cut in the limestone river bluff. Heading into the incline, Broker floored the gas. When he lost the Volvo in the shoulder of the turn, he gained the top of the hill going almost eighty, braked sharply, and turned into a blind intersection on the left. Spitting gravel, he swung around and punched the accelerator as the Volvo raced to catch up. He pulled back on the highway and flashed his lights on and off, pulled alongside, and looked over at Sally Erbeck, the Pioneer Press reporter.

  Emphatically, he held up his badge and pointed to the side of the road. She rolled her eyes and pulled over.

  Broker parked behind her and approached down the shoulder trying to keep a straight face. He hadn’t gone through the motions of a traffic stop in over twenty years.

  “You should wash this car, lady,” Broker said. “I can’t see your brake lights.”

  “Oh c’mon,” Sally said.

  Broker put on a stern expression and said, “You ran a red light back there in town.”

  She sat up straighter and hung her head, mostly getting her defiant voice under control. “I’m sorry, officer; I thought I had the amber,” she said, and Broker could almost hear her dad instructing her as a teenager. Even if the cop is a total asshole, always show respect; always call him sir or officer.

  Struggling to maintain his stern expression, Broker continued. “Plus you’re driving erratically. I could write you up for operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of journalism. That’s a pretty serious offense in Washington County.”

  Sally stared at him.

  Finally, Broker couldn’t hold back the grin. “So what’s up?” he asked.

  Exasperated, she shot him a sidelong glance. “Not much. Just that the whole Catholic Church is under siege, and you got a dead priest, as in shot-in-the-head dead, in his confessional to boot.”

  Broker squinted at her. “Has somebody been tipping you, like anonymously?”

  Sally batted her eyes. “You mean, like calling me up at odd hours?”

  “Yeah.”

  “C’mon, that only happens in bad novels and B movies.”

  Just then a dark blue Stillwater squad and two white county cruisers zoomed past and headed north with their flashers turning but no sirens.

  Sally didn’t even say good-bye. She dropped the Volvo in gear and left Broker in a shower of gravel as she pulled back on the road and headed out after the cops.

  Broker turned into the driveway right after Sally. He saw at least five other police cruisers, a couple unmarked Crown Vics, and a green ambulance from Lakeview Hospital.

  Several cops were fanning out in the densely wooded area around the house, which was a basic St. Croix River place: basement built into a slope, one upper story, wraparound deck. Broker watched Sally get out of her car and approach the house. Several cops saw her but didn’t stop her, so she continued around to the back. Broker saw Mouse standing in the shade of a basswood tree. He got out and walked over.

  “Hey Mouse, what’s up?”

  “Go look.”

  “Is this a crime scene or a county fair?” Broker said.

  “I’m, ah, relaxing the rules a little,” Mouse said. Sweat soaked his face.

  “I guess . . . you just let Sally Erbeck go traipsing through. I thought the general idea was you don’t want civilians messing it up.”

  “We may have caught a lucky break here in a ghoulish sort of way. Appears this guy had a heart condition and caught the Big One in his yard. The neighborhood dogs were roving in a pack and found the body, probably twenty-four hours ago. There’s no way to mess this one up any more than it already is. Go look. But, ah, watch your step.”

  Broker walked around the house and down the lawn to where a knot of Stillwater and county patrol coppers had gathered to direct traffic around points of interest strewn in the grass. Sally backed away from the group, walked over to a lawn chair, and sat down. Her face was pale and queasy.

  Then Broker got a whiff of the rotten-meat stench plumped up on a platter of heat. A few more steps, and he glimpsed literally flesh and blood on the grass and what could be a gut pile. His first impression was: the cadaver of a road-killed deer.

  But they were a long way from the road.

  He took a few more steps and saw that the remains were human. One of the cops walked stiffly away, ducked into the bushes, and lost his breakfast.

  The corpse lay on its back and was distorted by the mutilation of genitals, belly, and face. Entrails had been chewed and jerked out in red, white, and purple ribbons across the grass. Eyes gone, no mouth. The face had been gnawed down to the bone. All the exposed meat was coated with a glistening swarm of green flies that hummed like a small hardworking motor.

  “Dogs,” said one of the cops. “Regular old Rover and Spot.”

  He pointed through the trees at a house over two hundred yards away. “The neighbors had been up north on vacation. They came home last night and heard dogs scuffling in the woods, didn’t think much of it. Then this morning they heard them again and the man came to investigate. He thought maybe the dogs had run down a deer.”

  “Wild dogs?” said Sally Erbeck. Like a good soldier, she had returned.

  “Nah, just your everyday faithful Fido. They’re probably at home nuzzling the kids.” The cop, a husky sergeant, smiled at Broker. He was enjoying his moment with the white-faced reporter.

  “And all those flies?” Sally said.

  “Bluebottles, they show up fast in the heat, when a body starts to release gas and fluids. Now if this guy hadn’t been chewed on by dogs, the flies would settle into the orifices; eyes, nose, mouth, and the genital anal region—but as you can see, there ain’t no eyes, nose, mouth, or . . .”

  “I get the picture,” Sally said, walking away.

  “What’s going on?” Broker said to the sergeant.

  “Mouse said to let the press take a good look, no restrictions, long as they don’t actually step in it,” the sergeant said quietly. Then his heavy features composed into a swoon of pure delight. “Oh my,” he said.

  Broker turned and saw a blond television reporter in a lime green pants suit striding toward them with her cameraman in tow. Her perfect features were clenched in an enamel Botox smile.

  “Margo Shay, Channel . . .” She got a look, and her smile clotted into a gag reflex.

  “It ain’t exactly ashes to ashes, dust to dust, is it?” the sergeant said, striking a thoughtful pose.

  Broker left the sergeant to his forensic epiphany and went back toward the house, where he found Mouse facing another camera crew and several print reporters. Mouse shifted from foot to foot like an old lion gathering himself to jump through yet another ring of fire.

/>   “We’re still waiting on the medical examiner, so anything I say is strictly off the record and for background. But we found a whole cabinet full of medication, so we speculate this person might have suffered a heart attack in his yard at least twenty-four hours ago,” Mouse said.

  “What kind of medication?” a reporter said.

  “Lessee.” Mouse consulted a small spiral notebook. “Lasix, Bumix. Some digitalis and, ah, I think it’s Coumadin—that’s a blood thinner, basically rat poison is what it is.”

  “Rat poison?”

  “Yeah, really thins out the little fuckers’ blood so when they squeeze through itty-bitty cracks they start really gushing inside,” Mouse said.

  “So the dogs didn’t kill him?” another reporter said.

  “Highly doubtful. Almost certainly not. Usually, domestic dogs will feed on a corpse only if there’s fresh blood. So maybe he had a nosebleed or something; that might explain the pattern of mutilation from the face down the front of the torso,” Mouse said.

  “Are we talking regular dogs, house pets?” a reporter asked.

  “The neighbor who found the body this morning chased off five or six dogs, two of which he recognized,” Mouse said. Then seeing Broker, he waved off the reporters. “I think it’s better to wait on the Ramsey County medical examiner.”

  Mouse took Broker by the arm and walked him into the shadows under the deck. “Lookit this. We put the dog stuff over the radio, and there’s sheriff deputies here from St. Croix County, Wisconsin, Forest Lake, Cottage Grove. And, ah, it must be a slow day in St. Paul because the ‘A Team’ from BCA just arrived.” Mouse pointed at two guys in suits who were striding down the driveway.

  A Stillwater cop and county patrol sergeant Patti Palen were standing a few feet away. The Stillwater cop said, “The tall guy in the blue suit with the dark hair, is that . . . ?”

  Patti said, “You mean the guy in the thousand-dollar blue suit.”

  The Stillwater cop said, “Yeah. So that’s him, Davenport?”

  Patti said, “That’s him. He bailed from Minneapolis, now he’s with the state.”

  The Stillwater cop said, “I hear he cuts notches in his gun.”

  Patti’s face was deadpan, her timing perfect. “The way I heard it, he cuts notches in his dick.”

  The Stillwater cop said, “BCA ain’t gonna be the same.”

  Patti said, “No shit, looks like the Sears catalog is out and GQ is in.”

  Broker rolled his eyes and turned to Mouse. “This is a circus. You know what you’re doing?”

  “Orders. I been on the horn to John E. He said throw it wide-open. I got guys keeping an eye out so the press doesn’t disturb anything. But how can you contaminate a scene like this? There’s pieces of this poor pilgrim spread out for a hundred yards in every direction,” Mouse said. “The point is, it takes the heat off our dead priest for a news cycle.”

  “Gotcha. Who was this guy anyway?” Broker said.

  Mouse scratched his flattop. “His name was Scott. Some kind of photographer.”

  “Our boy called again last night. It sounded like he was in a casino,” Broker said.

  “Don’t worry, they’ll spot him,” Mouse said. “In the meantime, prepare yourself to hear, see, and read a lot about the dogs of Washington County this weekend.”

  Then Broker spotted Lymon Greene walking uncertainly up from taking a look at the body.

  “Lymon,” he called out, “you got a minute?”

  “I’ve never seen anything like that before,” Lymon said.

  “About time you got wet,” Broker said.

  “Is that some kind of joke?” Lymon said. He was clearly upset; sweat dotted his skin like BBs of mercury.

  Broker shook his head. “No joke. Part of the job is protecting the public from seeing stuff like that. The civilians live up on top the water. We get to see what swims under it.” Broker paused a beat. “Like the Saint.”

  Lymon nodded and motioned Broker to follow him up the driveway. They counted three TV vans. Cops from other jurisdictions were coming down the drive three abreast.

  “It’s like a circus sideshow,” Lymon said.

  “You got the sideshow part right,” Broker said.

  When they reached Lymon’s car, he reached in the open window, took out a manila folder, and handed it to Broker. “Benish said you were out here, so I thought I’d bring these,” Lymon said.

  The folder contained several glossy black-and-white photographs of Victor Moros lying in a small pool of blood on the carpet of his confessional. He was a stocky, strong-featured man, more Indian than Spanish, with longish black hair. His eyes were closed in death, but his mouth was open in a grimace of even, white teeth.

  Lymon tapped a sheaf of faxes that were in the folder along with the photos.

  “Cause of death, a .22 long fired point-blank into his temple. The two other wounds, one in the neck and in the cheek, would not have killed him if he’d received medical attention promptly. So they speculate the killer lured Moros close to the screen, shot twice, then came around and put one in his head. They found plastic residue in the wounds, like from a commercial container. A pop bottle. They think the killer might have used a homemade silencer.

  “No cartridges found on the scene. No latent prints, no blood or body fluids. They’re still running tests on fibers and residue on the carpet.

  “I talked to Albuquerque, and they say Moros was a solid, old-fashioned plodder. Nothing remotely in his past that suggests he’s anything other than what he was. They put the whole incident down to media-induced hysteria.

  “The father and mother who accused Moros out there have been in town all summer. No vacations to Minnesota.”

  Broker reached in and put the folder back on the front seat of Lymon’s car. “This is your kind of stuff, not my kind of stuff,” he said.

  Lymon’s face was unusually candid. “Your kind of thing is Harry, right? Fast and loose, high risk, and no rules. Benish just told me about what happened between you two back in St. Paul. About Harry’s wife.”

  “Let’s get out of here, walk a little,” Broker said. He pointed toward the highway. They walked the rest of the way up the drive, crossed Highway 95, and followed an asphalt bike trail that meandered under the shade of the trees.

  “So how do you handle what happened with Harry’s wife?” Lymon said.

  “You don’t handle it. It’s always there, walking beside you, like we are now,” Broker said.

  “I hope I never get put in that situation.”

  “Chances are you won’t. A big part of living is believing that bad stuff happens to other people. Usually it works that way.”

  “Up on top of the water.”

  “There it is. But you’re right. Harry is my kind of thing.”

  Lymon studied Broker carefully. “Explain your kind of thing.”

  “Sure. Start with fundamentals. What was the world’s first recorded murder?”

  “You’re patronizing me,” Lymon said, guarded.

  “Uh-uh. C’mon. Answer the question.”

  “Cain kills Abel. God asks Cain where his brother is, and Cain says, ‘I know not. Am I my brother’s keeper?’” Lymon quoted.

  “God interrogates his suspect.” Broker nodded. “The suspect denies the crime. But Cain gets busted. That’s a fairy tale. What’s missing that would make it real?”

  Lymon stared at him.

  Broker continued. “What’s missing is the tip that put God onto Cain. Once you add the snitch, you have the world’s first solved crime.”

  “And you think Harry’s the snitch on the Saint.”

  “There it is. My job is getting Harry to talk.”

  They walked in silence for thirty seconds. Then Broker said, “The gossip says you’re sleeping with Gloria. Are you?”

  Lymon avoided Broker’s eyes and looked into the trees. “I might have strayed a little . . .” He held up his left hand, palm inward, and stared at the gold band.

&nb
sp; “Bad question. Nobody tells the truth about sex. Or the Saint,” Broker said.

  Lymon made a face.

  “So what’d she do, take you like an antidote to Harry? She’s still in love with him, isn’t she? Must be hard on her, being stuck on a guy who shouldn’t have his ticket punched into the twenty-first century,” Broker said.

  “The human heart is . . .” Lymon said.

  “Dog food, remember?” Broker nodded back toward the house. “Was Harry protecting her?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Let me put it a different way. Where was Gloria the night Moros got killed?”

  “Down in the gym, working out.”

  “Anybody see her who can vouch for the time?”

  “Me.”

  “Anybody see the two of you?”

  “No, we were alone.”

  “So you could have been somewhere else.”

  “Prove it.”

  Broker squinted at the younger man. “That’s what Harry used to say when people suggested he killed Dolman.” Broker turned and walked back toward all the cop cars lining the driveway. He was about ten feet from his car when his cell phone rang.

  It was Janey Hensen, and she was crying.

  “Broker, I need some help. Drew and I had this fight, and he totally lost it, says he’s moving out, and the thing is, Laurie is—she took it kind of hard and she hurt herself. . . .”

  Hurt herself? “Did you call nine-one-one?” Broker said.

  “It’s not like that exactly. I need some help talking to her,” Janey said.

  “Okay. I’ll be right over.”

  Chapter Thirty-one

  You will regret this.

  Broker did not play games with women. And one of his basic rules was not to meddle in other people’s marriages, especially when an old girlfriend was involved.

  Janey and Drew lived in a Victorian on the South Hill that looked like a three-layer wedding cake. From their front porch you could look over the town and see north down the river valley. Drew had kept Restoration Hardware in the black when he rehabbed this tusker.

 

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