Vapor Trail pb-4

by Chuck Logan

  “Go buy one of your own,” Mouse said.

  Harry shook his head. “She already did that; just before the trial we went down to the big Cabela’s in Owatonna. The background checks should be on file. She picked the Colt.38-caliber Detective Special, said it fit her hand. Two-inch barrel, six shots; goes in the bedroom night table or the glove compartment; she didn’t want to fuss with a safety. She just wanted to point and shoot if somebody came back on her from one of her cases.”

  “You were with her when she bought it?” Broker said.

  “Uh-huh. And taught her to shoot the thing out at my place.” Harry pointed at the green plastic box. “Reloaded ammo for her to practice with. So after I see the scene with her and Lymon in the courthouse, I go over to her place that night and, you know, tell her to give me her gun to hold for a while. .”

  Broker and Mouse watched Harry’s next thought try to scale a spasm of shaking and collapse short of speech.

  “Take your time,” Broker said.

  “Fuck you,” Harry said as he started to move toward Broker.

  “Easy,” Mouse said.

  Harry waved his hand to indicate the bottle of Don Q rum on the writing table in back of Broker. “You wanna hear this, I get to do it my way, and my way is with that bottle.”

  Broker wasn’t about to hand Harry a glass bottle. He picked up the bottle, poured several inches of rum into a plastic cup, and handed it to Harry.

  Harry slowly drank the contents of the cup, grinned, and quoted, “Man takes a drink. Drink takes a drink. .” He laughed, a bad-sounding laugh that was shaking things loose inside and ended in a fit of coughing. When he recovered, he said, “I think this is where the drink takes the man.” He opened his fingers and let the plastic cup fall soundlessly to the carpet. “Okay. So I go over there and ask for the gun, and she bats her eyes and says somebody stole it. Dolman was shot two days later.”

  “The medallion,” Mouse said.

  Broker heard the resigned, lockstep undertone in Mouse’s voice. “What about the medallion?” he said.

  Mouse spoke slowly, like plodding underwater. “Nobody ever said a word about this, and everybody knew. You been in Gloria’s office. She had this picture of Tommy Horrigan on her bookcase. When they were preparing for trial, her receptionist brought in this St. Nicholas medallion and hung it on the picture frame. You know, St. Nicholas, protector of children, like that. .”

  Broker’s forehead creased in a question. He looked at Harry.

  Harry lowered his eyes to the carpet, toed the plastic cup he’d dropped, and said, “Yeah.”

  Broker turned back to Mouse, who said, “The next day after Dolman got whacked, the medallion was gone.”

  “What? Everybody knew?” Broker said.

  “It’s not like we really knew,” Mouse said.

  “Yeah, we did; I did,” Harry said. Then his wavering eyes settled on Broker. “Some people get dealt a shitty hand, they learn to live with it, huh? I guess Gloria couldn’t stand seeing Dolman walk out of that courtroom a free man.”

  Broker told himself he was alert, ready for any tricks Harry might pull. But the black glare of alcohol hate in Harry’s eyes came lightning fast.

  “I wouldn’t rat her out for Dolman; some people might, but not me!” Harry shouted, making his move.

  “Mouse,” Broker warned. But Harry sidestepped and body-slammed into Mouse, yanking Mouse’s baggy shirt aside with his left hand as his right hand swept in the opposite direction, cleanly lifting the.40-caliber pistol from Mouse’s holster. This time, Broker didn’t spin his wheels. Instantly, he had the.45 out from under his shirt, thumbing off the safety.

  Like two dancers obedient to an inevitable choreography, Broker and Harry faced each other, the pistols coming up.

  Harry snapped off the safety. Teeth clenched, he said, “Your little girl is going to be a fuckin’ orphan.”

  Nothing happened.

  “C’mon, let’s go,” Harry said.

  Their beating hearts were six feet apart. Maybe three feet separated the pistol muzzles.

  The veins on Harry’s hands and wrist and forearm bulged as he squeezed the pistol grip. “You gonna learn-”

  “Go on, tough guy, pull the trigger,” Mouse taunted.

  Harry sneered, “-there’s worse things than dying, motherfucker. .”

  “Yeah, like in-patient treatment at St. Joe’s for alcoholism,” Mouse said, reaching in his pocket and pulling out a fistful of bullets. “All those weepy fucking losers telling their lame life stories in those groups, and you’re gonna have to sit there and listen, and they don’t even let you smoke anymore.”

  Broker lowered his gun. “You’re gonna love the Detox program. They wake you up with cattle prods, put you to sleep with showers of animal blood.” He smiled as he said this, but-even empty-the sight of Mouse’s gun in Harry’s hand wasn’t something to smile about.

  Harry relaxed his grip on the pistol, looking from Broker to Mouse and back again. “You two. .?” he said.

  “What were you doing, Harry, provoking me into ending your misery?” Broker said.

  “That sure puts a new spin on the term suicide by cop.” Mouse chuckled. “Think we’d go into a room with you with loaded guns, you fuckin’ moron?”

  Harry tipped his wrist back, aiming the pistol at the window, and pulled the trigger. The hammer fell on an empty chamber. He dropped out the empty magazine and let it fall to the carpet. Suddenly weak, he handed the.40-caliber to Mouse and settled to the floor and sat cross-legged. Broker also pulled the trigger to show that his weapon was empty. Then he shoved it back in the hideout holster and sat down across from Harry.

  Mouse snatched the rum bottle off the desk, picked up the green plastic box from the bed, and lowered himself to the floor with some difficulty. “Fuckin’ knees,” he said.

  They sat in a circle. Mouse passed the bottle to Broker, who took a ritual swig, grimaced, and offered it to Harry.

  Harry slowly shook his head. “I’ll pass. I been thinking of quitting.”

  Mouse put the green box on the carpet between them. Moving in slow motion, Harry removed one of the bright brass casings from the grid of cubbyholes filled with empty cartridges. He held the primer end up and said, “Every firing pin leaves a distinct impression on the primer, like a fingerprint. The one Gloria’s Colt left was dramatic, obvious to the naked eye. See?”

  They squinted at a fishhook impression dented into the primer.

  Broker and Mouse had the same thought at the same time. Their eyes clicked together.

  “Right,” Harry said. “The six casings left next to Dolman’s body. They were wiped clean of fingerprints, but they have the exact same firing pin signature. I could recognize it blindfolded. Get them from BCA evidence and look for yourself.” Harry paused a beat. “There’s something else. Remember I told you somebody had been snooping in my computer files?”

  “Yeah, but I thought. .” Broker said.

  “I was just drunk, huh,” Harry said. “Well, I did some snooping of my own and I found a stack of printouts in Gloria’s desk. She went into my trash bin and retrieved these anonymous tip reports I checked out and tossed. You should look at them. Victor Moros was right on top of the pile.”

  “We’ll check them out.” Grimacing, Mouse pushed himself to his feet and said, “We got work to do.”

  “Yeah, like get a judge off a golf course to write a warrant,” Harry said.

  Broker took Harry’s arm to help him up. Harry shook off the hand and said, “Watch it. I still might punch your ticket.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe next time you’ll be sober and more in touch with it,” Broker said.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Angel was in position for twenty minutes when she heard Carol’s Mazda pull in the front drive. The garage door rail rattled up; the engine noise muffled as the car entered the garage. Then the door came down.

  Carol was home.

  Angel squirmed around to get more comfortable
, sitting on a damp sack of peat moss. Lights came on in the house; the moving pattern of light and shadow marked Carol’s movement through her rooms. A door opened. Carol, barefoot, padded out onto the terra-cotta tiles.

  Carol’s hand dropped to her waist, and she shed her shorts with a flick of her wrist and a shimmy. She raised one leg, and let her underpants slide down the other leg and caught them expertly on her toe, kicked them up, and caught them in one hand in a gesture that was almost endearing. She crossed her arms in front of her chest, and elbows up, she peeled off the sports top.

  Angel squirmed deeper on her peat moss. Steady. Be steady.

  Carol paused for a moment to tap the CD player, then tugged the binder from her ponytail. As the leaden sounds of Chris Rea’s “Road to Hell” jumped from the speakers, she let her hair swing free. Then she walked a circuit of her space, trailing her hands on the leaves of her plants.

  Coming down from the day. TGIF.

  Carol slipped back into the house and returned wearing a brief orange silk kimono that hung loose, untied, sleeves to midforearm, hem at mid-thigh. A green dragon coiled on the back. She carried a bottle of wine and two long-stemmed glasses.

  Expecting company.

  So Angel watched Carol sit on her futon sofa and work the cork from the bottle, set the corkscrew aside, pour a glass of wine, and recork the merlot. Then Carol went into her banded chest and removed the baggie of grass and cigarette papers and rolled a joint. A match flared, and Carol inclined back on her couch.

  This was the worst part. The waiting. During the waiting the doubts crowded around her in the dark. The scent of the dope reminded her of A. J. Scott. She made a mental note to watch the news tonight, to see if he’d turned up yet.

  Then she tried to concentrate on the here and now, which only prompted her to speculate that probably there were spiders in here along with the mosquitoes. She pictured a fat gray leopard spider as big as a mouse.

  She shivered.

  Get thee behind me. Concentrate on Carol.

  She’s on the list.

  But then the wait ended abruptly when Angel heard the gate open. Carol’s student entered by the same route as had Angel, coming down the dark alley. Sneaking in.

  Carol slithered up from the couch and made a halfhearted gesture at tying the robe. She met the boy at the door to the solarium, and they conversed in low tones that Angel couldn’t hear clearly. But their body language was easy to decipher, awkward and needy as two dumb animals edging toward the trough.

  Snatches of conversation drifted on the soupy air.

  “Can I get you some wine?” Carol.

  “How about a hit on that joint?” Him.

  Carol wagged a finger. “The wine’s bad enough.”

  The boy looked around, and his eyes stopped on a direct line with the ajar door to the shed. “Yeah, right,” he said.

  And Angel held her breath. He’s staring right at me. But then she thought, He can’t see me-not because she was invisible but because she was out in the dark yard and he was standing inside, in the light. All he probably saw was his own reflection on the curved transparent panels of the solarium.

  He had a jock’s blond buzz cut, wore baggy over-the-knee shorts and a T-shirt artfully torn to emphasize his lifter’s delts, lats, and triceps. A barbed-wire tattoo circled the biceps on his left arm. He wore an ear stud in his left ear.

  Maybe he swaggered at the gym. Inside Carol’s house he moved uncertainly and had to be reassured. So she guided him from the solarium into the house proper.

  When they reemerged, he’d been outfitted with a robe identical to Carol’s, which he wore with the shuffling self-consciousness of a seven-year-old playing a wise man in a church Christmas pageant.

  Carol poured a glass of wine, which he held awkwardly: clearly, he’d prefer a beer or a can of Mountain Dew.

  He sipped the wine as Carol assembled her gear. Drawing pad, a short stepladder. A tackle box. She placed the stepladder among the philodendrons and dwarf pines. Teacherlike, she took the wineglass from his hand and led him to the ladder.

  Carol had him sit and arranged him, positioning a knee here, a shoulder there. The boy quivered at her every touch. A loop of Carol’s hair fell over his throat; the silk robe grazed his skin. She eased the robe from his shoulders and let it fall around his belly so the tight curls of blond pubic hair peeked in the hard wedge of his lap.

  When Carol returned to her couch and picked up her charcoal, her own robe had worked open, revealing a glimpse of inner thigh, a shadow of stomach muscles. Carol obviously stayed in shape. But not a gym type.

  Yoga maybe.

  Then, for half an hour, Carol sketched, occasionally asking if the boy needed a break to stretch. Angel was the one who needed the break, for crying out loud-her hamstrings were starting to cramp from squatting in the shed.

  By the time Carol finished up her sketch, her robe concealed little, and slowly the boy’s robe was sliding deeper down around his hips. His chest now glistened with sweat. More and more, he appeared to be holding his breath.

  Waiting for it.

  Carol moved forward with a towel and gently wiped the sweat from his chest and shoulders and upper arms. When she leaned over him, Angel imagined her tidy breasts grazing, touching.

  In a minimal gesture of intimacy, the boy reached out awkwardly, to caress her hair, but she stiffly steered the hand away. Insisting on having all the control here. In a deliberate movement, she straightened the sweat towel and folded it and made a pad for her knees. Then she kneeled before him, her back to Angel, who saw the robe start to slip down her shoulders, down her back. Her skin was pale, startlingly so; she must avoid the sun. SPF 40.

  Carol was now naked from the waist up. As her head dipped forward, Angel wasn’t immune to the lust of the eye. She opened the door wider and squinted, straining to see the boy’s expression.

  Too far for fine detail. She should have binoculars. Opera glasses maybe. His eyes must be arias as he grabbed Carol’s head in both hands for balance.

  Abruptly, Carol raised up and removed his hands.

  “Don’t touch,” she said distinctly. The words clinked in the night like two dropped coins.

  Obediently, the boy’s hands groped at his side, treading air, as Carol resumed the ritual.

  And it went on forever, and Angel’s thighs were burning, and she had to stretch out her left leg and flex her foot, which was full of sawdust and stinging needles. C’mon, c’mon, she exhorted her foot.

  And you, she exhorted the boy, you c’mon.

  When he finally did, it was shocking. Foreshadowing, because as Carol lurched her whole body forward to accept it, she flung out her arms straight to either side. Angel couldn’t resist opening the door wider to get a better look. She had seen this move before, in a movie about Anne Boleyn, who, kneeling before the headsman, adopted this absurd posture when she bent forward to lay her throat upon the block.

  Angel’s eyes strained, involved in the mindless animal glee smeared all over the boy’s face.

  When it was over, the boy dressed quickly, clumsily, uncertain if he should express some affection, a hug, a good-bye kiss. Expertly, Carol fended him off. She turned away as if a kiss would be distasteful. Flushed and vaguely smiling, with his eyes still pinwheeling, the boy was steered past Angel’s hiding place, back toward the gate, and ushered out.

  Carol returned to the solarium, trailing her fingers on the leaves, until she settled back on the couch, poked around in the incense urn until she found the roach.

  Angel. Up and moving now. Soundless. Invisible. Crossing the grass, coming out of the inky night.

  Carol stretched out, puffed, and raised her eyes toward her glassy ceiling. Angel was close enough to hear the pleasurable hiss of Carol’s inhalation, drawing sharply on the dope: Owwwshhhhh.

  Angel coming in closer. Look at the bitch, lying there, eyes rolled back dreamy like a boa constrictor, digesting.

  Angel thrust open the screen door and s
talked into the solarium, a little awkward, the sleep needles not all the way out of her left foot. Her right hand hung close to her side, the green plastic silencer held back, out of sight behind her thigh.

  When Carol opened her eyes, she saw Angel coming straight toward her, knocking aside the leaves of the ming aralia, kicking over the stepladder. Still frozen in shock, she did not comprehend; Angel’s wraithlike expression, the extended left hand, the accusing finger.

  “What the. .?” Carol started to rise. She looked reflexively across the coffee table, toward the cordless phone.

  “I saw you with that underage boy,” Angel said. “And you a teacher. What do you suppose his mother will say?” Angel picked the words carefully for effect. They worked; Carol was momentarily stayed, subdued.

  “Who are you?” she said, her voice looking for traction between fight and flight. Carol swallowed, tried her voice. It cracked. She tried again, found it this time, and said, “What’s that in your hand?”

  “Take it,” Angel said. She tossed the silver chain and the medallion into Carol’s lap.

  “What the fuck?” Carol groped at the medallion.

  “Wipe your chin,” Angel said, disgusted.

  Carol winced, ran the sleeve of her robe across her jaw. Down deep on a preconscious level, her brain just now sensed how total and black Angel’s shadow was, that it was a pit into which she was meant to disappear. The first hard tremble hit her. “Why are you. . wearing. . gloves?”

  “Shut up and listen. I won’t tell anybody what you’ve done if you pray with me. Now first, kiss the medal.”

  “You’re nuts.” Carol. Stronger now.

  “Do it.” Angel. Stronger.

  “And then what? You’ll leave me alone?” Carol slowly raised the trinket to her shuddering lips.

  Angel’s right hand came up and pointed the silenced pistol. “Now put it in your mouth.”

  Carol’s voice cracked again. “Please, can we work this out a little?”

  “IN YOUR MOUTH!”

  Angel moved forward and shoved the silencer against Carol’s forehead. With the gloved fingers of her left hand, she roughly jammed the medal into Carol’s mouth. Carol gagged, and through the latex Angel felt the warm interior: the gums, the corrugated pinkness on top against her knuckle, the-