Vapor Trail pb-4

by Chuck Logan

  As he thought back over that lousy day, he told himself it had been a case of bad timing. He’d run a red light on Summit Avenue on his way to the dentist’s house. If he had stopped for that light, by the time he arrived at the house the dentist might have been dead.

  There would have been questions, sure. But Harry would have bluffed his way through. And even if he had been brought up on charges, Diane would still be alive. That’s what Harry had meant when he told Broker to leave and come back in five minutes.

  Broker had talked this over many times with his old partner, J. T. Merryweather. J. T. compared it to the war. It was friendly fire. It went with the territory. You always assumed that friendly fire would hit somebody else.

  In the middle of this meditation his stomach growled like a reminder that life goes on. He hadn’t eaten today. He pulled off at the next exit, went into a Perkins, and ate a late breakfast of sausage, pancakes, and eggs.

  When he arrived back in Stillwater, he parked in the LEC front lot, went in, buzzed into the sheriff’s office and the nearly deserted unit. Summer. Everybody found reasons to get out early. Lymon was not in sight.

  Marcy flagged him and handed him a sheaf of paper. “Lymon’s interview with the secretary who found the body,” she said.

  Broker took the report to the empty cube, sat down, read it, and stared at the telephone. Probably he should call Milt’s voice mail to see if he had any messages. He smiled cynically. Nina calling from Italy, perhaps. All is forgiven.

  First he entered the voice mail number. The recorded voice told him to tap in Milt’s number, then asked for the security code. Finally, the computer voice informed him he had one new message. He pressed 1 to hear it.

  One new message left today at 1:34.

  “Broker, this is Janey. .”

  Broker took a deep breath. Wonderful. It was old home week.

  “I know this is sudden, but I really need to talk to you.”

  He thumped 3 twice, speeded up the message, deleted it, and sank back in the chair.

  Janey.

  Jane Carli Hensen, maiden name Halvorsen, Norwegian-Italian ancestry. Whatever she’d once been, now she was a stay-at-home mom. Her daughter, Laurie, would be six now.

  Broker, Janey, and her future husband, Drew, had known each other when they all worked at the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. She was in public relations, Drew was a police artist, and Broker was a field agent who was seldom seen in the bureau’s offices on University Avenue in St. Paul.

  She probably still read two or three mysteries a week. In the old days investigators used to run cases by her and only stared at her legs as an afterthought.

  She’d had flings with various cop types, including a long, serious one with Broker; then she married the quietest guy around, Drew, who quit BCA and became a successful commercial illustrator who specialized in children’s books. Now she had settled into a monstrously gabled and turreted house on Stillwater’s South Hill.

  He remembered her standing in the grocery store. She’d looked hollow-cheeked, physically haunted. Excessively lean.

  Sort of the way he looked, actually.

  Broker shared the Norwegian connection on his mother’s side. Given to dark edges, sometimes moody, possessing a thread of melancholy that tied his inner thoughts in a tightly controlled bundle. And always the potential for storms of repressed emotion.

  Speaking of threads. . it would be sensible to avoid Janey, because she used to have this knack for unraveling his little carnal loose ends and giving them a tug.

  He stood up and lost his train of thought when he stared down the rows of deserted cubes at a bulletin board that hung on the wall. In huge rushed letters someone had printed: THE SAINT LIVES: HARRY 2, PEDOPHILES 0.

  Broker was not amused. He went to the board, erased it, left the office, walked through the lobby and out the revolving doors to the parking lot. He took the Ithaca.12-gauge out of the trunk, stuffed in shells, racked the slide to put one in the chamber, set the safety, and tucked the shotgun in the passenger-seat foot well within easy reach.

  In case Harry came flying out of the shadows.

  He just wanted to go back to the river, eat a microwave dinner, drink a couple of beers, and put an ice pack on his head. And think of ways to get even with John.

  And this was only day one.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Okay. Showtime.

  Angel removed her sunglasses, tilted her hat low over one eye, and concentrated on making herself look like a poster girl for mindless sex. She willed a victim aura into her face; she imagined a neon sign blinking on her forehead: Beat Me; Fuck Me; Blow Your Nose in Me and Throw Me Away.

  Angel could move real nice when she wanted to. She moved real nice across the hot sand, stood over Aubrey with one hand plopped on a hip. “Nice camera,” she said.

  Aubrey looked up, brightened, and spewed language like spatters of grease. “Hi. Dig you. You like cameras?”

  Angel made her eyes enlarge with wonder. “Is that real, around your neck?” she asked.

  Aubrey fingered his gold chain, shrugged, then curlicued his finger up in the general direction of her chest. “What about those. Are they real?”

  Angel put on her best lip-drooping bored smile. “For me to know.”

  Aubrey was up on his knees now, eager; clearly, this was a guy who loved to connect. He fingered the gold chain. “You know how you test to see if gold is real?” he said.

  “Not a clue,” Angel said.

  Aubrey grinned. He had excellent teeth, healthy gums, and a tongue that jerked around like it could use a shot of Ritalin. His face had been handsome once, before he got soaked in fat. It reminded her of someone.

  He was saying, “You bite it.” He winked. “See if it dents.”

  Angel folded her arms protectively across her chest but couldn’t quite manage to stifle a grin. “You keep your teeth to yourself.”

  “So what’s up?” Aubrey asked, the voice more reasonable. Curious. And distancing. “Do you always talk to total strangers on a beach?”

  Angel shrugged. “Just thought I’d tell you. . that stuff you’re loading into the Camels. I can smell it clear down the beach. So can they.” She jerked her head at the lifeguards. “I wouldn’t be doing it in plain view if I was you.”

  Aubrey studied her. “What’s your name, honey?”

  “Angela.”

  He reached up and patted her calf. “Thanks for the heads up. Now, why don’t you run along.”

  Feigning a vast indifference, Angel shrugged, turned, and walked back to her towel. Okay, now don’t look over there. Nothing obvious. Let him think. Let him look up and down the beach. Is he bright enough to realize that he’s just talked to the nicest little piece of chicken at Square Lake today?

  Angel watched Aubrey stand up, dust off sand, and pull on a pair of baggy shorts. Then a T-shirt, flip-flops, and a long-billed cap. She almost approved of the way he folded his towel, taut square corners. He tucked the towel away, shouldered his bag, and started up the beach to her left and disappeared from the corner of her peripheral vision.

  She was careful not to turn and follow him with her eyes. There were always other days. Maybe she’d come on too forward, walking over there and striking up a conversation. Maybe the dope angle wasn’t the most effective gambit. Too overt.

  Wrong.

  A thick shadow fell across her legs.

  “So Angela, what’s your story?” Aubrey asked. He had circled around in back of her and come up on her right.

  Angel lowered her eyes. With more clothes on, he doesn’t look half bad. In fact he has this cleft chin in his deeply tanned face that bears a resemblance to. . what’s his name? The actor who’d been married to Bo Derek. Or maybe it’s his manner, which is less intense and is, well, curious. “My story?” she repeated, working to make her voice self-conscious.

  He laughed. “I mean, who are you and where are you from, you know. .”

  “Oh.” Angel man
aged to raise a blush to her cheeks. “I’m a teacher; I teach in an elementary school up in Thief River Falls. It’s summer vacation, so I’m down here visiting my sister in Stillwater and” — Angel raised a hand to her lips as if to stifle a giggle- “well, actually, she’s pretty straight.”

  “How straight is straight?” he asked.

  “Born-again, Evangelical washed-in-the-blood, baptized-in-the-Holy-Ghost straight.” Angel arched her eyebrows and showed the whites of her eyes.

  Aubrey squatted down on his haunches, his forearms braced on his quads. “So you’re not exactly picking up on any dope smoke wafting through your sister’s house?”

  “You got that right,” Angel said.

  “Do you come down here much?”

  “Not much. We’re originally from South Dakota.”

  Aubrey nodded. “Where about?”

  “Rapid City.”

  “Sure, Interstate Ninety. Mount Rushmore. I did a shoot at the Sturgis rally and in Wall, you know, tracing the famous bumper sticker back to the source: Wall Drug, South Dakota.”

  Angel nodded. “The Badlands. I find the Badlands distinctly creepy.”

  Aubrey bobbed his head in agreement. “Theodore Roosevelt said the Badlands look like Edgar Allan Poe’s poetry sounds.”

  Looking impressed, Angel said, “That’s sort of nice.”

  “Actually, I heard David McCullough say that on C-SPAN, he wrote a book about TR.”

  Suddenly Angel blurted, “John Derek.”

  “Huh?”

  Angel became animated. “The actor. He’s who you look like, I mean your face, here.” Her finger drifted out and up and hovered, almost touching the cleft in his chin. It was very difficult for Angel to actually touch a man’s body anywhere. The funny thing was, in her other life she had to contend with physical cravings that went in the exact opposite direction.

  Aubrey grinned and slapped his stomach. “I should drop a few pounds, I know.” He squirmed closer on his sandals and extended his hand. “Aubrey Jackson Scott. But they call me A. J.”

  “Howdy, A. J.,” Angel said. She managed the handshake without grimacing, but just beneath her skin she imagined all the capillaries writhing like blue maggots.

  “So. . life’s pretty dull around the old sister’s house, huh?” A. J. mused.

  In a self-conscious reflex, Angel let one of her hands wander up and fluff her hair, then she toyed with a curl near her forehead. And she thought how things had never been exactly dull around her sister’s house. Actually, things at her sister’s house had been terrifying, and very very sad.

  His voice brought her back to the present. “So, ah, do you like to get high, Angela?”

  “I’ve been known to imbibe,” Angel said.

  Encouraged, he sidled a little closer. “Tell you what. How about we go someplace and smoke a joint, then go to a nice dark air-conditioned sports bar and get a burger?”

  “I saw you taking pictures of the scuba divers. Are you really a photographer?” Angel knit her brow and put a wary lilt in her voice.

  “Hey, absolutely. I string for the Pioneer Press and the Star Tribune. And I do a lot of stuff for the weeklies in the valley.”

  “And you have, like, a studio and equipment and everything?”

  “Of course.” He reached in his bag and withdrew the heavy Nikon D1. “This is not exactly kid’s stuff I have here.”

  And Angel thought, Oh, I bet it is exactly kid’s stuff, you greasy fat fuck. But she smiled, lowered her eyelids, and said, “And so? What. .you’re going to invite me over to your studio under the pretense of taking my picture and get me stoned, huh?”

  A. J. shook his head and held out his hands in a genial protest. “Hey. No pressure on this end. Don’t believe in it. You want to hang for a while and smoke a number, fine. If you don’t, that’s fine, too.”

  “Well, I guess you don’t look too much like Charles Manson,” Angel said.

  A. J. stood up and held his hand out to help her to her feet. “Okay, c’mon.”

  Angel put her hand out to him and shut her eyes tight when she felt his grip on her fingers. As he hoisted her up, she repeated to herself, Just remember, kiddo, you’re not here.

  She folded her towel around her sun lotion. She’d left her beach bag in the car for obvious reasons. He asked where she’d parked, and she pointed up the grassy slope in back of the beach. So they walked side by side through the picnic tables and barbecue grates and up the stairs made of green treated timbers.

  Near the top of the steps he smoothly cupped her elbow, to steady her balance, and she did not recoil because she was almost totally invisible now.

  Angel had seriously, desperately asked God to help her when she was eleven years old. She had called on God-she’d never say Him again, not ever-with all her heart. And God must have been somewhere else, or maybe God was deaf or asleep, because God had not done a single thing to help her.

  So she had learned to make herself invisible, lying rigid with her wrists crossed over her heart like thin iron bars.

  Sometimes she’d pretended she was the wall next to the bed.

  As they walked to the parking lot and he continued to steer her with his hand on her arm, she moved smoothly with his touch. Hold up a mirror, you wouldn’t see her. Uh-uh.

  Gone girl gone.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Angel disliked being closed in, so she drove with the windows open, and the air slicked her skin like hot oil. She caught herself drifting, involved in the fact that A. J. owned a blue 1995 Honda Accord. Not exactly a flashy car but a dependable performer. The Accord had rated high on Consumer Reports’ reliability chart, and also held its resale value.

  But lately it had been losing ground to the Volkswagen Passat.

  She reminded herself to get more serious and focus.

  She leaned forward and gripped the steering wheel with both hands as she followed his car back toward town. Then she reached down for the fifth time and confirmed that the automatic, the silencer, the pair of latex gloves, and the medallion were under a towel in her beach bag.

  The wig clamped down, trapping sweat, broiling her skull. Wearing the wig in this heat was like torture. But necessary. And apt. She let her hand glide up and twisted a finger in a light ginger curl. Then, softly, she stroked the wavy hair over her ear. Soft, the honey color of champagne.

  It was her sister’s hair, expertly crafted into a wig. She had helped harvest it to be made into this wig, when the doctors told her sister that chemo had moved from among the options to mandatory treatment.

  She dropped her hand back to the wheel. Stay the course, Angel; that’s what her sister would say.

  So she continued to drive south, toward Stillwater, and on her right, the western sunset was almost biblical in its intensity. It must be the smoke from the forest fires in Colorado and Arizona that had been on the news. Fact of life.

  Dirty air was the prettiest.

  She could feel herself getting ambiguous about this A. J. He did not project anything like social impairment. She saw no hints of the thing she feared and hated more than anything else, which was sexual sadism. He was easygoing; he did not seem to desire control. The vibes she got off him suggested a debauchee, a libertine.

  Intuition whispered that he probably enjoyed wine, food, and dope even more than sex.

  She was drifting. She sternly reminded herself that the Nonexclusive Type Pedophile can be attracted to adults as well as children.

  If there is no hard evidence, Angel, you will let him go.

  A. J. Scott lived off of Highway 95 in a bungalow with a broad wraparound cedar deck that overlooked the St. Croix River. He had the sunrise over Wisconsin, but the sunset was shrouded by the bluff above the highway. By late afternoon his yard was patterned with shade. Coming down his driveway, Angel left the glory of the western sky behind and parked in woodsy gloom.

  No sunsets but lots of mosquitoes. The house was crowded close in among pines and mixed hardwoods.

/>   The nearest neighbor was two hundred yards away through the thick trees. Angel spotted a peek of yellow and blue, a plastic tube slide and a swing set. Perhaps that’s where the little girl lived. The one who’d tried on the bathing suit.

  Angel got out. She liked the location. She was concerned about someone seeing her car, and she especially didn’t want anyone to get a good look at her. When she’d called on Father Moros, she’d been in full disguise. Today all she had was the wig.

  She walked around to the driver’s side of A. J.’s Accord, and as he got out, she pointed at the left rear wheel well.

  “Just drives me nuts how it happens in the same place every time,” she said.

  A. J. cocked his head.

  Angel explained, “See the boil of rust there on the rim of the wheel well? Accords, Civics, and Preludes; they all start to rust right there. It’s a design flaw.”

  “I’m impressed; most people don’t pick up on that kind of detail. You have a good eye,” A. J. said.

  Angel shrugged. “I owned a couple Hondas.” She walked with him to the door.

  A. J. raised an eyebrow. “A good eye is a preselection factor for being a photographer.”

  Angel nodded. “I remember this high school class. I liked the stuff we did in the darkroom.”

  He unlocked the door, and they went inside. A. J.’s house was built on two levels, into the slope. Entry was through the kitchen, which was clean.

  “Mind if I snoop a little?” Angel asked.

  “Go ahead,” A. J. said.

  She nosed around quickly. The clean, uncluttered counters met with her approval, as did the dishcloth carefully folded between the double sinks. The sinks themselves were spotless and smelled faintly of Clorox. The first level was like a loft; kitchen, dining area, bath, and laundry room cantilevered over the broad living room below.

  Then she followed him down the stairway to the main level, which was one long airy space with a fireplace at one end. A door led to what Angel assumed was a bedroom on the other. A central patio door opened onto the wide deck. She could see a wedge of river between the trees. It was all very spare and orderly; minimal furniture, maximum hardwood floors, bare walls and windows. A computer desk was set along the wall by the fireplace with an equipment rack next to it. Long black canvas bags were stacked on the rack. A rolled-up scrim hung from the wall like a picture screen. Some spidery folded-up metal things leaned against the rack, like music stands. Probably for lights. But she didn’t see any lights.