Vapor Trail (9 page)

Broker drove around
the back of the LEC, parked in the underground garage, and took an elevator up to the sheriff’s offices. Going into Investigations, he checked Lymon’s cube. Empty. He ignored the sullen nongreetings from the other cops, continued down the row of cubicles. “Narcotics,” he sang out.

“We got a hell of a going-out-of-business-sale on Ecstasy right now,” a young voice replied.

“Where are you?”

“Other side of the cubes.”

A young investigator stood in the aisle. He was dressed in filthy blue work trousers, a soiled T-shirt, steel-toed shoes. A pair of bulbous ear protectors was slung around his neck.

“What are you supposed to be besides bright-eyed and bushy-tailed?” Broker said.

The young cop shrugged. “Working a UC gig; right now I’m a tree trimmer. Got a chain saw and everything.”

“You are . . . ?” Broker said.

“Pete Cody. Narcotics.” Cody did not offer to shake hands. “But I heard about you. You’re the loneliest guy in the world, right?”

Broker was not amused. “How’d a shrimp like you manage to grow up instead of being beaten to death on the playground?”

Cody smiled. “Musta been all that mediation counseling, I guess.”

Broker said, “You know anything about a guy named Ray Tardee?”

Cody shrugged. “Sure, one of our perennials.”

“Who’s prosecuting?”

“Russell.”

“Thanks.”

Broker went to an empty cube, sat down at the desk, got out the county phone directory, called the county attorney’s office, and asked for Gloria Russell.

“Miz Russell took the rest of the day off,” the receptionist said.

“Tell her Phil Broker, Special Projects on Moros, called. We need to talk ASAP about one of her cases, Ray Tardee.” Broker gave his cell phone number.

Broker raised his voice. “Anyone,” he sang out loud enough to carry over the cubicle walls, “is Gloria Russell married?”

“Happily?” someone asked back. That caused a few titters.

“Is she married?” Broker repeated.

“She
was
married. BH. Oh yeah. For sure.” Several voices replied from the cubes.

“BH, Before Harry,” someone added.

“Her life is currently complicated by a dietary situation. She developed this craving for chocolate. That’s why she works out so hard.”

Then a more serious voice overrode the guffaws. “Her marriage went in the toilet. She separated. She’s getting divorced.”

Broker mulled it over, drew it out: Miz . . . Russell. That tingle
on his neck hairs brought him around. A blond, balding, horse-faced guy stood behind him. One of the white-shirt potbellies.

“Who are you?” Broker asked.

“Benish. Fraud.”

“What do you want?”

Benish glanced around the barren cubicle. “We were wondering if you’re going to set up in a cube, you know, hang family pictures? Or maybe you won’t be here that long?”

“Benish, in your professional opinion, do I need a coffee taster?”

“Not my department. You need General Investigations for poisoning cases.”

“Thank you, Benish.”

“Have a good day, Broker.”

A secretary in her early sixties manned the gatekeeper desk at the entrance to Investigations. She had a smoke-cured bingo parlor face, frosted hair, and the trim body of a ballroom dancer.

“Marcy, right?” Broker said.

“You got it,” Marcy said.

“So where’s Lymon?”

“Lymon’s doing Goths.”

“I don’t follow.”

“You don’t have kids in high school?”

“No kids in high school.”

“Goths are to the left of slackers and grunge,” Marcy explained. “Goths wear black all the time, dye their hair green, and insert cuff links in their pierced tongues.”

A voice sounded in back of Broker. “Lymon thinks they also worship the devil. And, in their spare time tip over tombstones, deface and burglarize churches—stuff like that.”

Broker swung around. Benish continued, “So Lymon’s asking the little Satanists if they’ve, you know, whacked any priests lately.”

“So Lymon has a theory about the case,” Broker said.

“Two theories. His first all-purpose theory is Harry did it. If that doesn’t work, then his second theory is the devil did it,” Benish said.

Broker turned back to Marcy. “Has anything come in from the BCA crime lab yet?”

“Not yet,” Marcy said.

“Okay, I’ll be in touch,” Broker said, walking down the length of the room. As he keyed open the locked door, he heard Benish snicker, “
He’ll
be in touch.” He took the elevator and paced back and forth as it descended, then left the elevator and started for the garage thinking . . .

So, if you want to know what’s really going on, get away from the guys with the suits and ties and the big guts who take the long lunches. Maybe it’s time to check in with the flat-belly street grunts.

Abruptly Broker turned away from the corridor leading to the garage, went up a flight, and walked into the patrol division. He cut through the deserted muster room past rows of folding chairs and a lectern. A yellowed pistol target taped to the bulletin board featured Osama Bin Laden’s bullet-punched face.

He went into an alcove off the muster room where a statuesque brunette patrol sergeant named Patti Palen sat at an administrative desk. She had a full-service belt strapped over her regulation beige-on-tan county uniform. An HT 1000 portable radio sat on the desk and hiccuped static.

“Surprise, surprise,” she said in a grudging voice. “I heard you were in the area.”

“Hey, Patti, how you doing? Yeah, I’m around for a few days,”
Broker said. “Thought I’d drop down here belowdecks and see how the galley slaves are doing.”

“You never were any good at small talk, Broker. So what do you want?”

“Hey, how’s your kid doing? It’s Alex, right? He must be, what—twenty-three, twenty-four now?” Broker said casually, avoiding the sight of Patti’s face tightening as his eyes roved the small room.

Seven years ago Broker bumped into Alex Palen, then seventeen, in an entry-level position fencing stolen televisions and VCRs in the electronics division of a biker gang Broker had a relationship with. He’d given the kid a break, steered him clear of a felony bust, and hounded him into the Coast Guard.

Patti drew in a sharp breath, composed herself, exhaled, looked up into Broker’s eyes, and said, “Alex is doing just fine.” Her gaze then moved off and became seriously involved with the linoleum pattern on the floor. “Why don’t you cut me some slack and talk to somebody else.”

“Nah, you owe me. So what’s making the rounds, Patti?”

Patti exhaled again. “Harry Cantrell got suspended for coming in drunk. And we aren’t supposed to know, but a priest got shot in St. Martin’s and they found a St. Nicholas medal in his mouth. The sheriff worked it out with the union so Harry has to go to treatment or he loses his job.” Patti took a breath. “So Investigations is down one body, and we got a Saint’s panic coming on like a storm surge.”

“Anything you left out?”

“Yeah, last I heard, you, of all people, were gonna take Harry to the hospital. So, is he in the hospital?”

“Not yet. Tell me, Patti— you think Harry is the Saint?”

Patti shook her head. “Me personally? No. The coppers are pretty evenly divided on this. There’s a third that think he is, there’s a third that think he isn’t, and the rest don’t really have an opinion.”

“One last question: what’s the story on Harry and Gloria Russell?” Broker said.

They stared each other down. Second by second Patti’s face filled with gravitas until it weighed about a ton. “Some people say they were like crossed live wires on a tin roof from the minute they started working together on the Dolman thing. It got so bad, it deep-sixed her marriage and was interfering with her work. So she talked to John E. and got him to take Harry off the case. Replaced him with Lymon Greene.” Patti sat deeper in her chair and folded her arms. “Which really pissed Harry off.”

“Yeah, go on.”

“Apparently, Lymon replaced Harry in more ways than one. According to this version, that’s why Harry pulled his Mark Fuhrman number. You know, the famous N-word scene.”

Broker lifted his eyebrows.

“I give you one last thing, and then you leave me alone. Okay?” Patti said.

Broker nodded.

“The only thing I know for sure is Gloria and Lymon spend lunchtime together lifting weights downstairs in the gym.”

“Thank you, Patti.”

“Fuck you, Broker.”

Broker continued to the basement motor pool and was going down the lines of marked and unmarked cars when he encountered Cody, the narcotics cop, and his partner, both wearing the tree trimmer costumes. Cody was carrying a black plastic bag. Seeing Broker, he held up the bag and grinned.

“We’re going through garbage. You want to join us?” Cody called out in a sardonic voice.

Broker smiled and kept going, got into Harry’s car, started it
up, and drove from the underground garage into the ash-white sunlight.

He turned south on Osgood, crossed Highway 36, and stopped at the Holiday station, went in and bought several packs of Backwoods cigars. Back in the car, he fired up one of the rough-looking stogies with Harry’s casino matches. As the raw but calming smoke meandered from his mouth, he caught himself automatically doing a terrain field scan. A pre-cop habit from a shooting war. He was checking the surrounding area by breaking it into quadrants, then stopping, reversing field to overlap the last quadrant before moving on and repeating the process.

Broker shook his head.
What do you expect? Harry’s going to follow you in your own truck? The one he stole from you?

With the windows down and the cigar clamped in his teeth, he put the car in gear and continued north through Oak Park Heights, past the quaint shady residential streets. Then, off to the left, the Oak Park Heights Correctional Facility hid in a fold of open field. The maximum security prison was sunk four levels deep in the ground, like a buried battleship.

The worst dudes in the state were entombed here like bad canned meat. Ten years ago, Diane Cantrell’s murderer was on his way here for his own protection—but they didn’t move him fast enough, and he was knifed to death in Stillwater Prison. Washington County was host to the state’s two serious prisons, Stillwater and OPH, located within a few miles of each other. The county could boast more killers and rapists per capita than any other jurisdiction.

He hadn’t consciously planned this; consciously, he was just buying some smokes. But now he knew that he was following a need to get close to the origin of this whole thing. So he stepped on the gas and raced past clusters of large framed homes. Then he topped a rise and saw the strip malls and monotonous condo barracks of Timberry sprawled below him.

He pulled over, consulted his Hudson’s street map guide, got his bearings, and drove on. Ten minutes later he was in more open country. Then he pulled into the entrance to Timberry Trails Elementary School, where he was surprised to find a line of yellow school buses along the entry road.

Summer school, maybe?

Eight- and nine-year-olds wearing red safety patrol belts were walking out the front door, taking up positions at the buses. Broker parked, stubbed out his cigar, and popped a Certs in his mouth. As he approached the school entrance, it was as if they’d opened a faucet. Children squirted out the front door in a blur of color and squeals. They sluiced past him wearing shorts and T-shirts.

He stood motionless as they swept past. Little nudges and tugs, like a happy rush of water. Open faces, innocent bright eyes.

Trusting.

He shook his head to clear out the sunspots and entered the building, crossed an atrium, and went into the administrative office. There was a basket on the reception desk containing red clip-on visitors’ badges. Broker picked one up, weighed it in his hand.

The receptionist eyed him, smiling less and less the more she looked. “Are you a parent?” she asked.

“Yes,” Broker said. “My daughter is in preschool.”
In Italy.
Broker dropped the visitors’ badge and took out the Washington County ID and showed it to the receptionist. “Maybe I could have a word with the principal?”

“I . . . guess . . .” The receptionist turned and called through a doorway, “Marian, we have a police officer here . . .”

The principal was a short, vigorous woman in her early sixties. She came to the door and sized up Broker. Her expression steadied down, but she continued to smile.

“Come in,” she said. “Marian Hammond.”

“Phil Broker.” They shook hands.

“You don’t look well, Mr. Broker. Can I get you a glass of water?” Marian said as she closed the door.

“I’m fine. It’s the heat.”

“No, it’s the heat plus. I’m in the people business, and you look like trouble. May I see some identification, please,” Marian said promptly.

Broker showed his new ID card.

Marian scrutinized the ID. “Okay, so why is a detective in my school?”

“I thought school was out.”

“Special summer event day. Why are you here, Mr. Broker?”

“I’m a temporary officer assigned to clearing out old files. I have a few questions about the Ronald Dolman case.”

Marian raised her hand to her throat as Dolman’s name glided across the room like a dark-finned shadow. She dropped her hand and balled her fists. “What kind of questions?”

“The boy involved . . .”

Marian nodded. “Tommy Horrigan. He was six then; he’s seven now.”

“Is he still . . . ?”

“Of course not; his parents moved out of state, and they requested no forwarding address be given out.”

“Okay. There’s no nice way to ask this one. Was Dolman buried in the county?”

Marian was probably a grounded, compassionate woman. But she curled her lip, showed her teeth, and did not conceal the flash of disgust. “I’d have thought you people would know about that. Ronald Dolman was cremated, and his remains were thrown in the trash.”

Brother, was J. D. Salinger
ever full of shit.

Angel frowned as a mob of shouting eight-year-old boys rocketed past. Defiant, she refused to even wince when their churning bare feet pecked her with sand. She watched them tear along the crowded beach and yowl and smile goofy breathless grins when they trampled the sand castles that two quiet, serious-looking seven-year-old girls were constructing at the water’s edge.

See, it’s all right there. The rampant Y chromosome and testosterone.

Give me a break. No way boys could concentrate long enough to save anybody from running off a cliff. Much less find them in a field of rye. Look at them, tearing around. Probably, they’ll go off somewhere and light farts. Little fuckers.

Holden Caulfield, no, thank you.

Angel carefully picked grains of boy sand from her well-oiled arms, dusted off her towel, and then continued to rub SPF 40 sunscreen on her legs. She wore a broad sun hat, which left her face in shadow, and wide sunglasses. The tight wig was a bother in all this heat.

But necessary.

It was a sweltering late afternoon, the beach at Square Lake was packed with people, and Angel was far from invisible. No, today she had slipped free from her constraining sports bra and let out a little cleavage. Usually, she would wear a one-piece suit, but today was an exception. Today she was showing some skin.

Aubrey Jackson Scott spent his afternoons on this beach, and since the heat spell fell on them like hot dishwater she’d observed him here several times. Now she thought she had a plan that might work. So she’d bought the new suit.

He appeared to be omnivorous and might like a gal who was hanging out here and there. Angel got the impression that his appetites strayed all over the pasture and couldn’t be fenced in. He did kind of remind her of a goat.

And he was a borderline exhibitionist. Which was sad, purely on the basis of evaluating his body type. He’d clearly been in shape once and let himself go. About thirty pounds over the line. Aubrey wore the briefest of swimsuits, a European job a bit skimpier than a Speedo, which sometimes nearly disappeared in the dross of his belly, or skinnied up between the cheeks of his butt. Once in the last hour Angel had watched two teenage lifeguards put their heads together and consult in his direction, presumably about his appearance.

Angel could imagine their discourse:
Well, he hasn’t done anything wrong yet.
Right. That epitaph had graced a lot of tombstones.

So they let Aubrey jiggle his overweight gut and rear end around the beach. With a heavy gold chain around his neck, he had to be the greasiest man Angel had ever seen. His body hair was matted in streaks. The man actually oozed. He looked as if he’d acquired his deep-fried tan from a full immersion dip in a vat of boiling fat at McDonald’s.

Maybe he’d been discreet once, but he’d passed the point of control. Aubrey was definitely surplus population. Somebody had to come along with a pooper-scooper and remove him from the scene.

Letting it all hang out wasn’t his only problem. From a distance of twenty feet, Angel watched Aubrey remove tobacco from the tip of a non-filter cigarette, then tamp something in the cavity. He lit up, took a deep drag, and held it in. She could distinctly smell the thick oily marijuana in the heavy air. She shook her head. The guy looked as if he lived in a cannabis haze of sensation. Men, women, boys, girls. You name it. He’d probably tried it with his vacuum cleaner.

But she wasn’t capricious. She needed some proof that he belonged on the list. Angel took her work seriously; she was prepared to go pretty deep undercover to get her confirmation.

Aubrey kept a blocky digital Nikon camera in his gym bag. He’d whip it out and grab snaps when the opportunity presented itself. She watched his camera follow a six-year-old girl in a blue bikini as she walked into the lake.

He was close enough for Angel to hear the precise snap of the shutter.

Angel had been moving in on him for more than an hour. Unaware that she was getting closer, he trolled his watery brown eyes up and down the crowded beach. Looking for strays, maybe. Except he had not approached any children. Occasionally, he just took some pictures. Once he walked down the beach, past the roped-off swim area, and snapped a group of scuba divers when they came ashore for a break; then he talked to them and wrote something down.

Hmmm.