Vapor Trail (19 page)

“Ten ways to tell if Rover has been eating corpses,” Timmer quipped.

Mouse’s cell phone rang. He raised the phone and said in a tired voice, “Whatta ya say?” He listened a moment, gripped the toothpick in his mouth between his clenched teeth, and snapped his eyes on Broker.

“Got him,” he said after he’d hung up. “He’s at Mystic Lake.”

Angel watched Carol Lennon
write a check for a bottle of Clos du Bois merlot at the MGM liquor store across from the Cub-Target strip mall in Stillwater.

Carol taught art at Timberry Consolidated High School. She was forty-two years old, had divorced in her twenties and never remarried. She had large oval brown eyes and smooth unblemished skin. Her plain angular face was absolutely clean of wrinkles or crow’s-feet. Her luxuriant black hair had not a trace of gray, and she wore it straight back in a long ponytail. If she’d been shorted some in the chest department, she made up for it with magnificent dancer’s legs, which she usually concealed under long dresses. But this sultry early evening she wore flaring tan shorts, a green sports top, and leather sandals.

The earth colors went nicely with her slightly olive skin.

Carol had a particularly fluid way of walking, and, as she left the crowded store, several men turned to look. One of them smiled and cocked his head as if he had just relived a special
memory of a small-breasted woman with a great ass and knockout legs.

I don’t trust Miss Lennon around the young boys, the anonymous caller complained. She reminds me of that teacher who was in the news, who had the baby with the high school sophomore.

Angel had been observing Carol for two weeks.

She now knew that the anonymous caller had been absolutely right-on.

Carol had a penchant for a muscular young boy who—she reflected back on what A. J. Scott had said—could have modeled for Michelangelo. Angel suspected that Carol offered him marijuana, got him high, and then engaged in sex acts with him. He had showed up at her house last Friday evening, and, from what Angel had glimpsed peeking over the fence, the playing around was carried on under the guise of posing for life drawing.

This Friday night, Angel suspected the boy would appear again, and she was determined to get a closer look.

Angel watched Carol get in her car and drive across the street to the Cub parking lot. Just like last Friday night. She was doing her weekend grocery shopping.

Which gave Angel time to get in place. She went to her car and slipped into the hot traffic snaking back into the old residential district of Stillwater. Carol Lennon lived on a quiet street on the North Hill.

Angel parked downtown. This wasn’t like Moros or A. J. Scott. Angel felt no need to talk. So no wig. Just her sunglasses, running duds, and the backpack with the pistol, silencer, medallion, and the latex gloves. The only new item she carried was a short crowbar to pry open one of Carol’s rotting basement windows that she had scouted. She jogged down Main, then puffed her way up Myrtle Hill, turned right on Owens at Len’s Grocery, and took Owens north out of town.

Waiting for the twilight to crochet in and thicken.

Then, as the shadows lengthened and blended, she angled back toward Carol’s house.

Carol Lennon lived in a tidy rambler with a landscaped, and very fenced in, secluded yard. Angel glanced left and right. Lights were coming on all along the quiet leafy streets, the alleys filling with night. The garage was built under the front of the house. The backyard gate was unlatched.

Angel slipped down the alley, through the gate, into the backyard. Carol’s house was more accessible than George Talbot’s wide-open homestead full of family and pets. Carol didn’t have a dog. She had two cats. And no security system. So Angel had no trouble getting in close.

Quickly, she ducked under a trellis thick with grapevines that ran along the side of the house. She knelt, forced the punky basement window with the crowbar, and went inside.

The cats were indifferent, especially the black shorthair who even rubbed up against Angel’s shin as she came up the stairs. Carol’s house smelled of sandalwood incense and the Alpine air-freshener machine that buzzed on top of the armoire in the living room.

For a few moments Angel thrilled at moving secretively through this strange house.
House invasion. Lying in wait.
The excitement tweaked her senses as she padded into the solarium addition that extended into the backyard, and stepped from the humdrum living quarters of a schoolteacher into a lush riot of plants, light, and color. Carol’s own private Babylon.

Obviously, the girl had a green thumb.

Carol’s jungle of houseplants thrived on the summer heat; the chlorophyll air was loamy with damp potting soil, peat moss, and vermiculite. Elephant-eared philodendrons were crowded in with palms, dwarf pines, a ming aralia, and scheffleras.

There was even an orchid under a grow light. Carol was especially fond of snake plants, several of which grew to seven feet tall. And she liked prickly pear cactus . . .

And fifteen-year-old boys.

So this was where Carol wiggled out of her old-maid skin. A low futon couch sprawled amid the plants. A big sand-filled urn held stumps of incense sticks. The broad coffee table was made from the varnished hatch of an old sailing ship. Under it Angel found an ornate wooden chest banded with inscribed metalwork and dense with colorful designs.

From India or Pakistan maybe. Teachers had the summer off; they were big on vacations.

Angel opened the chest and found where Carol kept her stash of weed.

And her porn flicks. And her paraphernalia. Her slippery stuff, her vibrator.

With one ear cocked for the sound of a car in the driveway, Angel couldn’t resist taking a look. So she put a tape in the VCR. It wasn’t just stuff with guys. There were pictures of farm animals.

Amazing.

A bechained dominatrix strapped on a plastic dildo and made this guy in a black leather mask bend over . . .

Angel carefully put it all back the way it was.

She’d studied the solarium and the dimensions of the backyard and made her plans. A small prefabricated toolshed sat in a corner of the yard; just big enough for a lawn mower, fertilizer spreader, a wheelbarrow, sacks of peat, composted manure, and a rack for garden tools. If you left the shed’s door ajar, you could see everything that went on in the solarium.

And that’s just what Angel did. There was just enough room for her to squeeze in and, leaving the door open a crack, she had a decent field of view. She’d walked off the distance. Twelve paces, about
thirty-six feet across the thick grass to the solarium screen door.

She had not eaten or consumed liquids for the last three hours. If Angel was one thing, it was regular. No call of nature would interrupt her vigil.

So. Hide in the shed. Wait to see if the boy showed. Then, wait for him to leave.

If Carol deserved the full visit, Angel would give it to her.

Broker observed that,
for an old fart, Mouse still really enjoyed goosing the flasher and speeding in his Crown Vic. Drving over one hundred miles per hour, he zigzagged through the Friday afternoon traffic going west on Interstate 494 and then veering south on I-35W until he had to rein it in slightly—but only slightly—as he plowed right through red lights on County Road 42.

The Mystic Lake Casino complex was twenty minutes of freeway driving from the Twin Cities metro, which put it about an hour from Stillwater. Mouse made the drive in thirty-five minutes flat. The casino dominated the center of a mile-square parking lot like a twin-domed hit-me factory where people punched machines on three shifts, twenty-four hours a day.

“He’s bound to get tricky,” Broker said.

“We been over this. Not with both of us he won’t,” Mouse said.

Broker and Mouse showed their badges to two security cops in black blazers who were waiting under the front-door portico in valet parking. One stayed with the car; the other escorted them into the main circular gambling hall.

Broker wondered if maybe this was what the inside of Harry’s mind looked like: a smoky cavern filled with the low roar of slot machines and the shuffling shadows of the players.

They were walking fast around the periphery of the sunken gaming parlor. “He’s in the High-Stakes Slots alcove. And believe me, we got him so he isn’t going anywhere,” the security guard said.

“How? Are you restraining him?” Broker said.

“Nothing so crude. You’ll see.” The guard smiled.

“How’d you get onto him?” Broker said.

“You’ll see,” the guard said.

They stopped and were met by two more black blazers and two casino floor workers: a man and a woman in red shirts and black vests.

“We all set?” their escort said.

“All set,” said the woman.

“Let’s go,” said the escort.

High-Stakes Slots was a sparsely attended alcove done up in Art Deco, with a marble floor, tall snake plants, and a stone sculpture. Harry Cantrell slouched on a stool at the end of an arcade of machines in front of a huge slot machine that looked, to Broker, like a twelve-foot-high Wurlitzer jukebox.

A blue light flashed atop the tall machine.

Three red 7s were pasted across the video drum. They were a close match to the three 7s tattooed on Harry’s right arm.

With bloodshot eyes he watched them come down the aisle. “So what took you so long? I can barely keep my eyes open,” he said. His Cherokee cheekbones were puffy with bloat, and his tan was turning yellow.

“Just take it easy,” Broker said.

Harry’s face hung on in his cigarette smoke by a bare shred of willpower.

The escort pointed to the three sevens. “He hit a jackpot on our
one-hundred-dollar machine. When our people came to verify the win, they noticed the tattoo—and they mentioned it to Security. We held up his check until you got here.”

“We appreciate it,” Mouse said.

“No problem; funny thing is, your be-on-the-lookout mentioned he’d probably be drinking. We’re a booze-free facility,” the escort said.

Harry said, “I confess, I got a bottle of rum in my room. I been spiking my Pepsi. Main reason I came is this machine. I always wanted to nail this sucker.”

“And you did,” the floor worker said. She handed Harry his driver’s license and a receipt, which he signed.

“How do you do it?” Mouse asked.

Harry handed back the receipt, got his carbon copy, accepted the check, and tapped his forehead with a shaky finger. “It’s a mind-set. You gotta study Ulysses S. Grant. Main thing about Ulysses was he never let losing bum him out. He’d lose ten thousand men. Go to bed, get up the next morning, and attack. You gotta believe that, in the end, you’re going to win.”

“Okay, Ulysses” Broker said, “it’s time to go.”

“Led you on a merry chase, though,” Harry said, getting slowly to his feet.

Mouse took Harry’s left elbow, Broker took his right; the security men went two in front, one behind and led them through the crowd to the door.

Harry pulled up short. “Gotta stop at my room.”

“No stops,” Broker said.

“Yeah, we do,” Harry said. “Papa Echo—I spell phonetically:
PE,
man.
Physical Evidence
. I’ve got physical evidence on the Saint.”

Broker and Mouse looked at each other.

“Bullshit,” Broker said.

“Exactly what have you got?” Mouse said.

“Hey, it’s in my room. I ain’t gonna talk in front of the whole fucking world.” Harry pulled a key card envelope from his back pocket and handed it to the security escort.

“Okay,” Mouse said. “But you try anything this time, I’ll put my cuffs on you.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Harry raised a Lucky Strike toward his exhausted grin. He missed his mouth, hit his chin, and the cigarette fell to the floor.

“Worth a look,” Mouse said.

“I’d cuff him, just to be safe,” Broker said.

“What?” Harry said. “I ain’t even drinking, I’m not resisting nothing. I’m ready to go take my medicine. Hell. I just heard that Viagra works better if you’re booze-free.”

“Okay,” Broker said.

Harry remained quiet but stumbled occasionally as they negotiated the corridors and malls to the adjoining hotel lobby; then they got into the elevator and went up to his room.”We’ll just be a second,” Mouse said to the security escort, who used Harry’s card to open the door. The escort nodded. He and his colleagues took up positions in the hall.

Harry’s room was totally undisturbed, just a leather travel bag on one of the beds.

“Open it,” Harry said.

Broker unzipped the bag. He saw several new pair of socks and underwear still in their plastic wraps. A shaving kit. “What am I looking for?”

“Green plastic box on the bottom,” Harry said.

Broker moved items aside and found the box sitting on a sheaf of paper. He took it out. An old piece of adhesive tape was stripped across the top with faded ballpoint notation:
Brass/.38/ GR/158 Speer Wadcutter/4.8 grain.

“GR,” Broker said.

“Gloria,” Mouse said with no surprise in his tired voice.

Harry squinted at Broker. “’Fraid so. Remember, I told you how she made a grab for Lymon’s pistol after Dolman was acquitted; how she was screaming, ‘I’m gonna do the so and so’?”

“I didn’t know that,” Mouse said.

“Yeah, well, if your friendly local detective won’t hand over his pistol, what’s your next move?” Harry said.

“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.