Vapor Trail

by Chuck Logan

  “Maybe you were a little too casual about nudity, but you seemed to be a good father.”

  “I guess I should say thank you very much.”

  Annie walked past Drew without a response. She went to the bathroom, shut the door behind her, and knelt at the side of the tub. Laurie was pink and shiny with several Band-Aids on her fingers and gauze wrapped around her knuckles. Because of the dressings, her hands were marooned on the sides of the tub. Otherwise she was perfectly formed. Three Barbies surrounded her, floating facedown, arms and legs extended, hair adrift like miniature drowning victims.

  That’s when Annie noticed the Nokia cell phone lying on the wet floor. She picked it up. “Is this your dad’s?” she said.

  Laurie clammed up and pursed her lips tight together. But she bobbed her head affirmatively. Annie slipped the phone into her purse. “This shouldn’t be in here on the floor where it can get wet,” she said.

  “I really need my dad to wash me. My hands hurt if I get them wet,” Laurie said.

  “Okay, I’ll tell him. But right now I have a present for you,” Annie said.

  “Oh—thank you,” Laurie said apprehensively.

  Annie took the medallion from her purse and carefully draped the chain around Laurie’s neck. Then she gently patted Laurie on the cheek, stood up, and left the bathroom.

  Chapter Forty-one

  Drew puttered in his cramped kitchen area, getting an ice tray from the small refrigerator. He dropped some cubes into two glasses and added ginger ale. In the bathroom, Laurie began to sing a lackadaisical lyric of her own invention. Annie stood very still in the middle of the room with her purse slung over her shoulder. She had her right hand stuffed into its depths.

  “You know what the really hard thing is?” she said.

  Drew carried the two glasses of ginger ale to his round coffee table. “What’s that?” He indicated one of the chairs, then sat in the other one.

  “My father started making sexual advances toward me and my sister when we were not much older than Laurie in there,” Annie said.

  Drew’s head came up abruptly. “That’s horrible.” He watched her for several beats. Annie had the feeling he was making some great male discovery about her and sex. “It must be difficult to talk about,” he said, leaning forward, looking genuinely concerned.

  Smooth.

  “It is, but right now I need to,” Annie said.

  Drew nodded. “I’m a good listener.”

  “I guess what set me off was seeing you and your daughter and you being naked. That’s like my dad; he’d wash us and then he’d show us how to—wash him.”

  Drew winced. “You mean . . .”

  Annie nodded and studied his face. “Right, I mean.” An edge hardened in her voice that Drew hadn’t heard before. “By the time we were eleven, he had progressed to actual intercourse with Angela, my twin sister. Angela had always protected me. She convinced Dad to do it to her and leave me alone. I’d lie in bed and pray to God to help me. But the only person who helped me was my sister. I pretended I was invisible.”

  Drew studied her face. Annie thought the story fascinated him. Just as he’d seemed to be excited by making love behind a curtain while his daughter watched TV fifteen feet away.

  But his voice was serious. “Makes sense, denial as a cloaking mechanism. It’s one of the ways kids cope. Jeez, Annie, I’m really sorry . . . how long did this go on?” He removed an ice cube from his glass and slid it in little melting circles on his sweaty chest.

  “Until we were fifteen; that’s when Dad had a heart attack and died.”

  “What about your mom?”

  “She denied it right up until her death. Angela tried to stuff it, too. She worked hard as an attorney, but she had to take meds for depression.” Annie paused and set her jaw. “The meds didn’t work for the cancer.”

  Drew winced. “Cancer? On top of . . . Jesus, Annie, what happened to you?”

  Annie shrugged. “I went to college in Madison. I floated from library to library and wound up back here. But when Angela died, something just . . . snapped. That was just about the time Ronald Dolman was acquitted.” Annie leaned forward. “You remember Dolman?”

  “Sure,” Drew said, “the child molester last summer. He was . . . wait a minute.” Drew sat up, thinking out loud. “On the news last night, the prosecutor who committed suicide; they hinted she might have killed that guy last summer as well as a woman yesterday—that she was . . . ?”

  “The Saint.”

  “Yeah, the Saint.” The indulgent afterglow dropped from Drew’s face. He narrowed his eyes. “What are we talking about here?”

  Annie withdrew her hand from the purse and dropped the medallion and chain on the table.

  He pushed the chain with his finger. “What’s this?”

  “St. Nicholas, he’s the patron saint of children. That’s why I gave one to Laurie just now.”

  Drew sat up and looked at the bathroom door. “Wait a minute, you what?”

  “Hung it around her neck, to protect her.”

  Drew began to breathe more rapidly.

  Here comes the first fear, Annie thought. “Do you know how Ronald Dolman died?”

  Drew tensed forward in his chair. Instinctively, he measured distances: the distance between himself and Annie, the distance to the bathroom, the distance to the telephone on his drawing table.

  “Someone shot him,” Drew said slowly.

  Annie nodded. “With a thirty-eight-caliber Colt Detective Special revolver with a two-inch barrel. Would you like to see it?”

  Drew’s chair banged on the floor as he startled and planted his feet, pushing away from the table when Annie smoothly pulled the revolver from her purse.

  “Oh my God,” Drew muttered. His eyes fixed on the bathroom door. “Laurie,” he said.

  “Laurie has nothing to fear. She’s going to be safe. Now she is, I mean,” Annie said. “You sit very still. I’m not through talking.” She thumbed back the hammer and steadied the barrel at Drew’s chest. “You don’t know much about guns, do you?”

  Drew shook his head. His eyes were riveted to the bullet tips he could see inside the pistol’s cylinder.

  “Well, I do. Harry taught me. This is a double-action revolver. Cocking the hammer makes the trigger pull smoother,” Annie said.

  It was silent in the room for a few beats. Just the faint sound of Laurie singing in her bath.

  “Please, take it easy with that,” Drew said.

  “Settle down, drink your ginger ale,” Annie said. “See, my sister had just died, and I was going through her things. She had this wig—well, that’s a long story—but the thing was, I was going out with Harry, and he’d go off all weekend with that Gloria Russell. We used to do a lot of things together until . . . he bought her a gun and taught her to shoot.” Annie brandished the pistol. “This gun.”

  Drew squirmed against the back of his chair, seeing the hate come to Annie’s face.

  “He’d have me over and get his kicks; then he’d stick me in front of the TV and go down in the basement and load bullets for her to practice with. So I started watching her, when she left her apartment, when she came back. It was last summer, so she left her windows open. There was a perfect tree under the window. I climbed up, slit the screen, went in her bedroom, and took the gun.”

  Annie drew herself up. “Then Gloria let Dolman get away. Harry came over drunk and said how she was raving about wanting to kill the guy. I even drove him over to her place so he could take the gun off her.” Annie smiled. “But the gun wasn’t there.” She moved the pistol out of line long enough to give it an admiring look.

  “Maybe Gloria failed, but her gun didn’t. And the bullet casings left with the body could be traced back to her. All I had to do was return the gun to her apartment, hide it, and tip the cops.” Annie’s smile jerked on her lips. “But I kept . . . putting it off . . .”

  The gun barrel wavered off his chest, and Drew started to rise in his chair
. The gun snapped back. “Sit,” Annie commanded. Drew sat.

  “It was you, last night,” Drew said. “The woman up the hill, the teacher. You—”

  “Oh, she was easy. Now Gloria, that was hard,” Annie said.

  But as Harry always says, if you never take the long shots, you never win big.

  So she bets it all that Gloria will be home. And it’s just like she has Harry’s lucky arm with the three 7s hugging her. Gloria opens the door and sees bedraggled Annie all beat up from ducking through the bushes.

  “Help. This guy jumped me.”

  Barge past her, going into the apartment. Track dirt, shed bits of shrubs. Feigning shock, mumbling after the phone, compassionate Gloria tags along, does not notice the latex gloves. Wrong turn into the bedroom, return with the pillow. One hand stays in the pack on the Ruger, but the silencer is back at the storm sewer.

  More shock, stumbling into the bathroom—then the one moment of cruelty. Face-to-face.

  Harry sends his love, bitch!

  One beat, two. Let it sink in. Then the gun comes out. Shove the pillow in her face to muffle the scream of protest, the sound of the shot. Make sure the angle of the barrel is credible for a suicide, jam it in, and . . .Gloria’s dead, open eyes watch her enjoy a cool shower on a hot night.

  Take the time now to be careful. Arrange the pistol just so in the lifeless hand. Scuff her up with the dirty clothes and shoes, leave them strewn on the bathroom floor. Even thought to bring a small branch to gouge her shin and knee. Then a moment of quiet celebration in the bedroom, slow tour of Gloria’s closet to find a fresh change of clothes. Leave the pack in the closet; Angel’s cheap wig, the bodysuit, medals, the Saints jacket.

  One last touch. Send the world’s first wireless suicide note. To her weightlifting buddy. The cop. His address is right in her queue. Message him on Gloria’s Palm Pilot. A trained detective, and he comes running because he sees a dead woman’s name printed on his gadget.

  No one sees her go in or out. Perfect. Gloria Russell is the Saint. Harry’s theory comes true. All she has to do is leave the .38 along with the Ruger.

  But here it is, in her hand.

  Annie stared at Drew, almost fondly. “Like I told you, I can’t stop. Just like I couldn’t resist coming over this morning because you were the last name on my list.”

  Drew balled his fists, desperate and angry, getting ready to fight. “You’re crazy, really fucking crazy.”

  “DON’T SAY THAT!” Annie yelled. Her hand began to shake now, and Drew half rose, gathering himself.

  “Crazy . . .” he said again, but he looked past Annie. She extended her arm, pointing the gun at his face, but she turned slightly and saw Laurie standing naked and dripping in the bathroom doorway.

  “Daddy, I’m scared,” Laurie sobbed.

  Annie looked back and forth between them. She couldn’t stop the shaking.

  “Go back in the bathroom, honey,” Drew said, finally finding his voice. He steadied, gathering himself. “Listen to Daddy.”

  “DON’T SAY THAT!” Annie shouted.

  Laurie screamed and ran to the bathroom. When Laurie slammed the door, Annie jerked around at the sound. Drew made his move, coming over the table. Annie swung back and yanked the trigger. Drew’s momentum carried him forward into her as the gun went off.

  The loudness of the explosion shocked her. She was used to the silenced Ruger. She watched Drew’s eyes go wide, then he toppled against her, and they both rolled to the floor. Annie was up quick. Drew lay facedown, leaking blood.

  Annie staggered to get her balance. She blinked her eyes and swallowed to clear her hearing. Now what? She pushed through the door and entered the bathroom with the pistol hanging in her hand.

  “I’m trying to help you,” she explained. She reached out to grab Laurie by the shoulders, to reassure her. Laurie twisted away like a wet fifty-pound wildcat and screamed, “I WANT MY DADDY!”

  “DON’T SAY THAT, GODDAMMIT!” Annie screamed back and grabbed at the girl to restrain her.

  Chapter Forty-two

  Broker and Janey sat on the deck sipping coffee and watching the clouds roll in. A grumble in the distance prompted Janey to turn her head. “Was that thunder?” she said.

  “I think it was,” Broker said. He could feel a cool shadow insinuate into the air, compressing the humidity like a spring.

  Their eyes met, and they laughed, just as they’d laughed last night when they couldn’t get past mild petting. Janey had slept in the guest room.

  After a few beats, Janey said, “Well, look at us; so much for weak moments.”

  Broker shrugged and said, “Maybe weak moments are like straight-leg jeans; you gotta be young to be comfortable in them. We’re pretty much padded with baggage, you and me.” He briefly revisited his “weak moment” last year with Jolene Sommer, which had been pretty awful.

  “I guess Drew doesn’t let it bother him,” Janey said.

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” Broker said.

  “Maybe it’s his men’s group . . . we go to this Unitarian church sometimes, and they have . . . don’t laugh,” Janey said, seeing the smile curl at the corner of his lips.

  Broker held up his hands in a surrendering gesture. “Hey, I can dig it. I was in this big men’s group once. Cut my hair short, wore green all the time, ate shitty food, and slept in the woods. No drumming, though, and no campfires.”

  “Very funny. What I mean is, Drew and these guys get very involved in discussing their evaporating testosterone or something . . . their vigor. I think getting older scares him.”

  A long muted crackle snaked across the sky. If his daughter were here, Broker would tell her that, far away, a thunder lizard was uncoiling his spiked ozone tail.

  “I don’t know. Sometimes a marriage comes down to basic triage. When things get ugly and bloody, you have to figure where you’re headed—to emergency or the morgue,” Broker said.

  “Now there’s a quaint—” Janey stopped in midsentence as two phones rang at the same time in the kitchen: the house phone and her cell phone on the table. “That’s . . . weird,” she said.

  They got up and went to their respective phones.

  Broker picked up and heard the familiar voice start in, “It’s Jeff; first of all, everything’s all right so don’t worry, you hear me?”

  The caller was Tom Jeffords, the Cook County sheriff. His neighbor on Lake Superior’s north shore.

  “What the hell? Is it the folks?” Broker said, bracing himself.

  “No, it’s Kit,” Jeff said.

  Instant Tilt-a-Whirl in his chest. “Kit?”

  “She’s all right. She’s fine. It’s just that she turned up in a motel room in Langdon, North Dakota, with a baby-sitter who had instructions to call me today.”

  Broker sat down as the edges of his vision came tunneling in. “Where the hell is her mother?” His voice shook between incredulity and real anger.

  “Nina left her with this baby-sitter yesterday. Just the instructions to call. No other message,” Jeff said. “I called the Cavalier County Sheriff’s Department, and they’ve got deputies on it up the wazoo. Nothing to worry about. She’s fine, so stay cool.”

  “Where the hell is Langdon?” Broker said, trying to stay cool.

  “Up in the northeast corner in the middle of nowhere. Grand Forks is the nearest air link. Take these numbers.”

  Broker wrote down the numbers for the Cavalier County Sheriff’s Department. And the Best Western where Kit was found. He listened while Jeff counseled him not to bother his parents until he had Kit in hand. Jeff said call anytime; he was there night or day. They said good-bye.

  He immediately started to punch in the motel number when Janey appeared in front of him. She pressed her phone to her chest, and her face was cold with restrained fury. “That was Laurie, calling me on Drew’s cell phone. He left her stranded in the bathroom, and he’s got some woman there.”

  Broker held up his hand. “Wait a minute
,” he said. He had to think. Better to make his calls from the county office. He had to return Mouse’s car, anyway. No sense troubling Janey with this new information. “Go down to the car. I’ll be right there,” he said.

  Broker went fast through the bathroom and the bedroom; threw his toilet articles and a change of clothes in a duffel bag, locked the house, and jogged to the car.

  Driving between eighty and ninety, he barely heard Janey’s screed against Drew as he tried to stay focused. When they hit the north end of town, he was reassuring himself that Jeff was a strictly no-bullshit cop. If he said Kit was all right, she was all right.

  Okay. So what . . . ?

  Then he stopped and double-parked in front of Drew’s building, where a small crowd of people stood on the street nervously pointing up the steps toward Drew’s studio. Janey stepped out of the car, spoke briefly to someone in that crowd, and immediately sprinted up the steps.

  Broker jumped from the car and raced after her.

  “ . . . gunshot up there . . . ,” someone yelled as he rushed past.

  Now what? Taking the steps three at a time. Going in cold, nothing in his hand. Nothing. Just going in.

  Now screams.

  The kid. Laurie in there screaming.

  He was in and . . .

  Drew, naked with a towel trailing off his butt, leaking bubbles of blood from his chest and his lips. He left a slick red smear on the hardwood floor as he crawled sidestroke toward the bathroom. Broker dropped to one knee, to check Drew, and Janey shot past him into the bathroom.

  “LET HER GO!”

  Broker leaped over Drew, threw his shoulder against the door, and shoved it against the recoil of struggling bodies on the other side. He set his stance and forced his way in. Inside the small room, Janey grappled with a woman who had just taken her hands off Laurie. Laurie was screaming and crouched waist-deep in a bathtub full of water as she swung her tiny bandaged fists.

  Broker had seen this woman before.

  Lunging, he thought with his hands. The woman was reaching down to the wet floor . . .