Vapor Trail (20 page)

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 stalked 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—

Quickly, Angel withdrew her hand. Just as quickly Carol spit the medal out onto the floor.

“I should make you wash out your mouth with soap, that’s what I should do,” Angel said.

Instead she aimed right between Carol Lennon’s eyes.

Seeing the pistol bore in, Carol went limp as if overcome by shock and resignation. In that instant, Angel relaxed, took a breath . . .

But Carol uncoiled like a spring, kicking wildly at the gun hand, and screamed, “HELP, SOMEBODY, HELP!”

No one had fought back before.

Angel froze for an instant. In that pause, Carol windmilled both fists, knocking the gun hand askew.

Angel pulled the gun back in line with Carol’s face—feral now, teeth bared, a grimace wrinkling her brow and cheeks like war paint—and jerked the trigger.

CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!

The angry face spun away as a loud pain punctured Angel’s ears. The three shots sounded like bombs going off. Then Angel got it.
Silencer gone, ripped off in the struggle.

Carol was down, pitched forward on all fours. She struggled for one wobbly beat to push up, then collapsed. Angel knelt, picked up the medallion, and stuffed it in the wreckage of Carol face. Then Angel froze.

Very close, just on the other side of the fence, a man shouted, “What the hell . . . ?” Then, “Carol,
Carol; you all right?
” He had an adrenaline foghorn for a voice.

Not supposed to happen. Not.

Scrambling now, freeing the dangling silencer from the gun barrel.
Hold on. Don’t drop it. Christ, the spent cartridges?
But there was no time. She dashed for the gate.

Footsteps. Rapid, scuffing in the alley, also headed for the gate.

Angel shrank back against the fence as a short thick man thrust open the gate and stepped into the illumination of the yard light. He wore shorts and a green tank top that rode up over his flab. At his waist, next to the tiny cell phone, Angel saw red dots on a ring of flab. Heat rash. And she realized that if she could see his rash, he could see her face.

She raised her left elbow in front of her head to hide her face and came around the gate swinging the clubbed pistol. Her left hand held the green plastic bottle. The half-blind swing landed with panic strength on the man’s forehead. He pitched to his knees, waving his arms.

Angel felt his heat and sweat against her bare legs as she shoved past him. But she was out, in the alley, running fast. By the time she turned onto the street, she could hear him screaming, “Nine-one-one? Yes, goddammit, this is life and death.”

Oh, shit. The cell phone.

For the first time, it occurred to her that she could be caught.

Now Mouse drove
at a slow, almost solemn tempo. After dropping Harry off at St. Joseph’s Hospital in St. Paul, he and Broker settled into their own thoughts. Broker had contracted a case of the Harry-Gloria blues, the main symptom being a heavy reluctance to follow through on the suspicions that Gloria Russell had convicted Ronald Dolman with a pistol when she couldn’t get him in court; and that Harry had erred hugely on the side of omission. He stared at the green box of shell casings sitting on the pile of printouts in the foot well of Mouse’s car. He had no interest in confronting Gloria Russell. Other people would have to do that.

He was done with this.

As if clairvoyant, Mouse picked up the theme. “I ain’t going to pick her up for questioning. Uh-uh. Not me. John’s back tonight. He can make that call. I mean, what have we really got? Some shell casings. Gloria’s going to say, sure, they’re from my gun—but my gun was stolen just before Dolman was whacked.”

“And you still have two different things going on—Moros
wasn’t killed with a thirty-eight; he was a twenty-two,” Broker said.

“I hate this thing,” Mouse said.

“Yeah, but you gotta get a warrant. You gotta at least look,” Broker said.

“Yeah, I know.” Mouse finally roused himself, pulled out his cell, and punched numbers.

“Where are you?” he asked when Benish answered the phone. “You’re at home firing up the grill. Listen, Harry gave us some pretty compelling stuff on Gloria being the Saint. Yeah, I shit you not. Meet me at the shop. We’re gonna need a warrant for her home, her car, her office, and anyplace else she might hide a thirty-eight-caliber Colt Detective Special. Get Lymon in gear and have him run a background check on Gloria purchasing the gun last summer. And put somebody on her place, try to get a line on her movements. We’re going to want to talk to her.” He paused. “Harry? He went . . . quietly. Yeah, give him a couple of days to come down; then we’ll go out and take a statement.”

They were coming through Lake Elmo, going northeast on Highway 5. Mouse’s car radio grumbled occasionally, the volume turned down.

Broker reached down and pulled up the sheaf of printouts he’d taken from Harry’s bag. He started to flip through them, then sat up straight and said, “Holy shit, Mouse.”

“What?”

“This. Holy fuckin’ shit! Lookit the top sheet—it’s the complaint against Moros.”

“Yeah?”

“And we got a real problem here because the second sheet is about someone taking pictures of a little girl putting on a bathing suit,” Broker said.

“So?”

“A. J. Scott.”

It took Mouse a second. “
Our
A. J. Scott from this morning?”

“Address checks,” Broker said, tapping the sheet of paper.

“Jesus Fucking Christ!” Mouse pulled onto the shoulder and put the car in neutral. “We made some assumptions . . .”

Broker nodded. “Heart medication in his bathroom cabinet doesn’t have to equal heart attack in his yard.”

“There was no medallion,” Mouse said.

“There was no mouth to find it in.”

“Jesus, you’re right. The dogs could have taken it,” Mouse said. “And even if somebody shot Scott, how the fuck could you tell—”

“You better call Joe Timmer over at the ME and tell him to start looking for bullet holes in all that hamburger,” Broker said.

“Two shootings in Stillwater in one week?” Mouse said, steering back on the road. “Give me a fucking break.”

Five minutes later, they were swinging around the LEC, heading for the underground ramp, when the dispatcher’s voice surged up out of the routine static:
“Anyone in the vicinity of Beech Street, North Hill Stillwater. We have a possible fatal shooting and an armed suspect fleeing on foot. Address is six thirty-eight Beech.”

Mouse hit the brakes and locked eyes with Broker.

“Get a name,” Broker said.

Immediately, Mouse snatched his radio handset and keyed it:
“One hundred, this is one oh six. Do you have a name on the victim?”

“Wait. Two cars talking. One oh six, go ahead.”

“This is one oh six. Do you have a name on the victim?”

“Ah, wait. Everybody else shut up on the net. Two oh seven, come in.”

“Two oh seven.”

“Do you have an ID on the victim?”

“Ah, roger that. Carol Lennon. Schoolteacher, Timberry High.”

“Let’s get to that shooting,” Broker said, holding up the printouts. “She’s the fourth sheet.”

When all hell breaks loose, women make the best dispatchers.

“Ten thirty-three, emergency traffic only. All units, shots fired in Stillwater, victim down . . .”

It had something to do with multitasking.

“Suspect fled west down Maple on foot from six thirty-eight Beech Street . . . suspect described as white female in dark running shorts and dark tank top.”
The dispatcher’s voice strove for calm.
“Use caution; suspect’s got a gun.”

It was ninety-nine dead-still degrees out, the humidity 82 percent. The surge of radio ten codes hot-wired the moisture in the air. A dozen cops leaned forward, stepped on the gas, and fired up their adrenaline jets. A computer program immediately set in motion the units nearest to the address. At the Washington County Comm Center, Dispatch—call sign one hundred—and the first cop on the scene worked on basic emergency first aid.

“Clear the airway, see if she’s breathing. EMS en route.
”

“She ain’t breathing, and there’s something stuck in her mouth . . .”

Broker’s fist slammed down on the dashboard. “Aw, shit!”

“Some kind of locket on a chain.”

Mouse loosened the safety strap on his holster and stepped on the gas. Lights and sirens. Broker put out his hand to steady himself on the dashboard as Mouse plunged into the summer traffic.

Broker’s heart kept pace with the runaway cop radio rap.

“One hundred, two twelve is twenty-five on scene. Confirm ten seventy-two: Victim is DOA. Stop EMS. We want to keep the scene as clean as possible.”

“Ten-four, all units copy—victim is dead
.
Use caution. Two twelve, one hundred. What about the neighbor?”

“He’s got a lump on the head, but he’s ambulatory; after questioning we’ll run him to Lakeview emergency.

“Ten-four.”

Mouse pushed the Crown Vic through a grid of residential blocks, toward the sound of sirens. He held his radio handset in his left hand. His right hand tapped on the computer keyboard.

“One hundred, one oh six, en route.”

“Ten-four.”

“Two twelve. One hundred. What’s your status?”

“We got another one like the priest.”

“Calm down out there.”

Now they could hear the wolf pack sirens starting to gather in on the neighborhood. Mouse shook his head, tapped on his computer keys. “The only thing missing is a full moon,” he said.

Broker noticed the display on Mouse’s MDT screen flicker, bringing up a screen full of different color type. White lines of type blipped to blue lines. “What’s going on?”

“This is the duty roster. White is off duty; blue is on duty. Guys are piling on.” Mouse tapped one of the blue lines. “See, seven niner just logged in blue. That’s Lymon. He’s in ahead of us.”

Cross streets named after trees: Linden, Laurel, Maple. Broker turned onto Beech. An ambulance from Lakeview. Six squads: two from Stillwater, two county, Oak Park Heights, and Bayport. Cops with flashlights working the lawn, the fence line. Light and movement and sound coming in from the adjoining streets, where more cops were cordoning the neighborhood. Stopping cars. Asking questions.

A Stillwater cop was standing on the front lawn of the address. He waved at Broker and Mouse. “In the back. In the back.” They parked and ran to the back of the house.

Badge number two twelve, the Stillwater sergeant who was commanding the scene, leaned over a street map unfolded on
the hood of a squad. A county deputy held a flashlight on the map.

The sergeant nodded to Mouse and Broker as they walked up. “You hear? We got another one,” he said. “And this time it’s out in plain view. Still in her mouth.” Then he opened the gate and pointed toward a well-lit solarium porch.

Carol Lennon lay sprawled on her back in front of a futon couch, starkly naked in the askew orange kimono.

The sergeant went on, “The neighbor found her facedown, he was talking to nine-one-one, he turned her over to try CPR.”

Her eyes were stuck open, exaggerated by blood from the wound in her face that had pooled in the eye sockets. The elbow and the wrist of one arm were twisted at an unnatural angle of stress. Shards of shattered wineglass sparkled on the floor.

Broker could see a long swirl of dark hair soaking in a wide pool of blood on the terra-cotta tiles. A tall snake plant was tipped over, the hairy roots exposed, the long green blades bordered with blood.

The sergeant pointed to the stocky man in shorts and a lime tank top who was holding a gauze pad to his forehead. “He’s the next-door neighbor. Charlie Ash. He was out watering his lawn and heard shots and breaking glass. So he came to investigate and the shooter whacked him in the head when he came through the gate.”

The guy nodded. “I went to check Carol, like the nine-one-one operator told me, and I turned her over to, you know, clear the airway, and she had this thing in her mouth.”

“We heard,” Mouse said.

“Where do you want us?” Broker asked.

The sergeant drew a semicircle on the map with his finger encompassing the area west of their present location. “We’re clamping off everything to the west and stopping anyone moving on the streets or driving out of the cordon.” He turned to the neighbor. “You’re sure this was a female?”

The guy nodded wearily. “Even with blood in my eye, I noticed she was pretty built from behind. Definitely a female.”

“So we’re looking for a female, dark shorts, dark sports top,” the sergeant said.

A county deputy approached with a big black-and-tan shepherd on a leash.

“Good, we can get a track started,” the sergeant said. The he stuck his head in the squad and keyed his radio.
“One hundred, two twelve. Status on the state police helicopter?”

“Trooper nine is airborne. ETA fifteen minutes.”

“Ten-four.”

A squall of voices competed in the static.

“All units not directly involved in perimeter go to alternate channel . . .”

Then out of a jitter of static:
“One hundred, seven niner. Woman running north on McKusick, along the lake.”
The voice sounded agitated, as if it was spinning in a washing machine.

The radio channel went dead silent.

Mouse said, “Lymon.”

Broker nodded, recognizing the shaken voice.

“Leaving the car. Won’t stop. Told her to halt. Just turned off the path and ducked into trees north end of the lake. Will pursue on foot.”

“Take the mobile, take the mobile,” Mouse said, gritting his teeth.

“What?” Broker asked.

Mouse hunched over the map, tapped his finger, and said, “I know exactly where he’s at. The lake ends here, and then there’s this swamp. He’s chasing her down this wooded finger that runs in between.” Mouse bit his lip. “It gets real fucked in there, broken ground, this woods on the other side of the lake before you get to this single windy street.”

Broker saw the problem
.
Lymon was chasing someone into a
marshy woods in the dark. And it sounded like he didn’t take his mobile radio. Broker also sensed that most of the squads converging on the area, which had started to set up a perimeter, now were bolting toward the lake.

The radio squawked a confirmation:
“Gimme a cross street on McKusick . . .”

“Which end of the Lake . . . ?”

The cops were talking at once, stepping on their transmissions. A cluster was taking shape in the night.

The sergeant reached in his car and grabbed his handset.
“Units on perimeter, it’s tricky in there, no through streets; you have to swing around east end of lake. Copy?

“Ten-four.
”

“I gotta stay here, wait for John,” Mouse said.

The sergeant nodded, barked to the Stillwater cop blocking the gate. “Terry, go in around the other side of the lake and see if you can get ahead of this goddamn footrace.”

The cop nodded and started toward his car.

“You going or staying?” Mouse said to Broker.

Broker pointed to the Stillwater cop, followed him, and piled in his car. Lights, no siren, they raced around the lake. Broker saw in detail the difficult terrain Mouse had warned about. The solitary curving road they drove down had few streetlights. And the houses dissolved into darkness. The street ended in a cul-de-sac.

“I don’t like this,” said Terry, the Stillwater cop. “Only a couple of streets on this side, and they wind all over.”

“Lymon’s in there, no radio,” Broker said, squinting into the darkness. “Person he’s chasing could be armed and maybe just killed somebody.”

They got out of the car and walked between the houses. Immediately the ground slanted downhill in a jumble of treacherous footing.

“I don’t know,” Terry said, slapping his long-handled flashlight against his palm. To turn it on was to give away their position. So he strained to see in the dark. Then he cupped his hands to his ears, listening.

Broker figured there were twenty cops on the scene now, and like him, they were bracing for a melee of shooting in the dark. He and Terry edged to the extreme limit of the yard.

“Now what?” Terry said.

“We wait and listen, maybe—” Broker was cut off by a yell about one hundred yards ahead of them.

“Halt. Police. Halt. Police.”

A flashlight stabbed the darkness. Immediately, Broker and Terry started into the broken ground, feeling their way toward the commotion.

“No, no.” A gasping hysterical female voice.

“They got her,” Terry said; then he switched on his flashlight and crashed forward into the dark. Broker followed at a much more cautious pace.