Vapor Trail (17 page)

“The heat index has
exceeded one hundred ten degrees for two consecutive days,” said the announcer on WCCO AM radio. “In Minnesota, the heat wave has now claimed seven lives.”

Including Bubble Butt Reardon.

Broker clicked the radio off and drove back to the river through the gorgeous, and now lethal, sunset. When the sun went down, the heat just changed color from light to dark.

Broker had accepted J. T.’s offer and now had an old reliable 1911 military-issue .45 stuck in a borrowed holster on his hip. He had a badge, minus the leather backing, that smelled of kerosene.

He parked, went into Milt’s house, and put his belt, the pistol, his wallet, pocket change, and cell phone on the kitchen table. Then he went outside to the garbage cans, stripped off his clothes, and threw them away. Back inside, he slapped a fresh battery in his cell phone and took an extralong shower.

Then he walked with a towel around his waist, opened a beer, and checked his e-mail box, which was empty. On impulse, he called his folks in Devil’s Rock.

“Hello,” Irene Broker answered.

“Mom, it’s me.”

“Phillip, how nice of you to surface and check in . . .”

“Ah, how’s Dad doing?”

“Your father and your uncle Billie went out on the big water at dusk, after steelheads.”

“He’s feeling okay, then?”

“Seems to be. Of course, I had to remind both of them to wear their life jackets.”

“What’s the weather like up there?”

“Beautiful. Seventy-two, with a nice northwest breeze. How’s it by you?”

“Don’t ask.”

“I won’t. And there’s no word about Nina and Kit on this end. You should make some inquiries,” Irene said tartly.

“Don’t start, Mom.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sure you’ve got it all under . . . your control issues.”

“I love you, too, Mom.”

Broker hung up, finished his beer, and opened another one. The phone rang, and he braced for Harry. Except it was the house phone. He picked up. Not Harry.

It was Janey. “Broker, it’s not real good here right now. Could I have your cell phone number, just in case I have to reach you when you’re not home?”

“I’d prefer not to get involved in your . . .”

“Broker, for Chrissake, I got a kid to worry about here.”

He gave her the number. She thanked him and hung up. He took his beer out on the porch and lit a cigar. Impervious to the smoke, the mosquitoes came out of the dark like a shower of darts. He went back in and turned the TV in the kitchen to the Weather Channel.

He tried to get interested in a newsmagazine show about global warming. He was told that 1995 was the warmest year since global records started to be kept in 1856. Then the weather lady told him there were reports of Eskimo hunters falling through the arctic ice as a result of global climate change. That did it. He thumbed the remote to kill the TV, then went through the house, closing all the windows. He flipped on the air-conditioning, opened his fourth beer—two was his usual limit—turned off the lights, and lay down on the bed with his cell phone for company.

Broker fell into an exhausted sleep as the slowly cooling darkness closed in on him.

After the ring and groping with the cell phone on his chest, a thoroughly drunken voice came out of the dark. “This is Harry, where am I?” The dark sounded like a roar on Broker’s end.

“Harry?”

“Tai sao! Tai vi! Tai vi sao!
” Harry belted out the Vietnamese slang loud as he could.

“What’s that, the wind?” Broker asked.

“Fuck yeah, man,” Harry yelled. “Going through my hair . . . a hundred twenty miles an hour, I shit you not.” The line went dead.

Broker was up, pacing. He considered making a pot of coffee, but then he wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep. Another beer maybe? Christ, Harry was driving him to the bottle. He decided no beer. Instead he opted to brave the mosquitoes, go out on the deck, soak in the heat, and smoke another cigar.

Outside, he watched the running lights on a boat ease down the channel. The inky air hugged in close and suddenly evoked a sharp memory of the mosquito-repellent-soaked, very filthy, plastic stock of an M16 parked against his cheek.

Night after night.

The cigar started to taste like bad history, so he threw it away, went back inside, and settled down at the kitchen table. He concentrated on Ambush the cat. Ambush reclined patiently on the linoleum a foot away from a tiny space between the refrigerator and a cabinet. Ambush was absolutely motionless, covered in thick gray fur. She wasn’t complaining about the heat. She smelled a mouse.

She was working.

So Broker sat with her until . . .

Rinnngggg . . .

Broker was getting so he could activate the cell with his eyes shut.

“Ha! You pooped your pants today,” Harry said.

“Damn near. You this keep up, somebody’s going to get hurt,” Broker said.

“Count on it,” Harry said. “And by the way, don’t get too attached to my hat.”

Broker could hear a new hivelike, much lower roar in the background. A very busy bar or a casino. Then Harry launched into a drunken monologue: “So three years ago, when the head of Investigations opened up, I thought I was a shoo-in to take over the unit. But John had other ideas; he brought in Art Katzer from St. Paul. I was upset and said so to John’s face. It went downhill from there . . .

“Then I got onto Tommy Horrigan and started zeroing in on Dolman.”

“And zeroing in on Gloria,” Broker said.

“We hit it off, what can I say? Any rate, I’m doing interviews, building a file, and Katzer comes over and tells me John thinks it’s a good idea to give the case to the new guy.”

“The new guy was Lymon Greene.”

“Yeah.” Harry paused. “He took Dolman. I should back up here and admit I made a few wisecracks about Lymon when John brought him on board.”

“Wisecracks? You mean, like: Gee, lookit this shiny new quarter?”

“No, ah, more like: John’s lost his nerve, knuckling under to all this diversity bullshit.”

“Were they overhead?”

“Oh yeah, and reported back to Katzer and to John. I got a letter of reprimand in my file. So when I bitched about giving my case to a rookie detective, they thought it was more of the same.” Harry paused for a few beats. “The problem with saying something dumb is that it causes people not to hear when you say something smart.”

“Like?”

“Like that Lymon was not seasoned enough to handle that kind of case. For starters, working with Gloria threw him for a loop. They struck these weird sparks from the beginning. I mean, everybody figured Gloria was a closet lez until I came along and turned her out. Suddenly, she starts lifting weights; hell, before that, she would barely acknowledge you, wouldn’t shake your hand, like she couldn’t bear to touch you or something,” Harry said.

“I thought she was married.”

“Oh yeah, right. Her husband was this PC bookend; guy wasn’t even there. A fucking English professor at Macalester College. Any rate, they do Dolman. I came up with three kids I thought were violated, two in the neighborhood and one in his class at school. But the school kid, Tommy Horrigan, was the most credible, so they went with him.

“We had Dolman cold. I’d found a trunk full of kiddie porn in his house. I’d found Polaroids of the kids with their pants down. But Dolman thought he was smart. He cut the faces out of the pictures.
But Tommy had a birthmark on his thigh. And that should have been the lock. Plus that kid took the stand, and he was a rock; I’ll give that to Lymon and Gloria. The kid was prepared. And the scumbag defense attorney couldn’t shake him. Not directly. But the defense attorney saw something. This one juror. White male, fifty-two years old. This fat guy who probably hadn’t seen his pecker in ten years.

“It was subtle, but Mouse and me picked up on it; facial expressions, body language. This guy flat resented Lymon. It was textbook. I mean he hated seeing Lymon sitting next to Gloria. This was back when Gloria had this long black hair and looked like fuckin’ Snow White. It was that goddamn simple.

“The defense kept calling Lymon back to go over procedures. Keeping him on the stand. I went to Gloria, and I told her to put Lymon down in the weeds, keep him out of court. But she wouldn’t hear it, coming from me; she went the other way and kept Lymon by her side.

“So the jury stayed out for three days, and there was the one juror who wouldn’t budge from not guilty. This puke didn’t even see that little kid. All he saw was this black guy working with this white woman. It’s subjective, but that’s my take on how Dolman got off.”

“And you probably didn’t keep this perceptive observation to yourself.”

“Nah, I had a few drinks and talked it around. It got back to John and he had me on the carpet and tore me a new asshole. Threatened to suspend me. I had to attend goddamn diversity classes. So I buttoned up and stuffed it. I had this equal and opposite reaction. I buttoned up too much. ’Cause, thing is, the day the verdict came down and Dolman got off, I followed Lymon and Gloria out of the courtroom. Lymon was hustling her out of sight because she was so pissed. I mean volcanic. I caught up with them in this empty office and . . .

“. . . I swear to God, man, he was restraining her, and she was grabbing at his holster and she was saying, ‘That creep will never be around kids again. I’m going to blow his fucking head off.’

“I never told that to anybody until right now. See, I figured they wouldn’t believe me, all the stuff I’d said about her and Lymon already.

“And two days later, somebody did just that. Put twelve rounds in Dolman’s fat face. And they left a St. Nicholas medallion in his mouth. Okay, so finally I get put on a case. I worked the Saint with the BCA.

“I remembered what Gloria said after the trial, so just to run out all the grounders, real quiet so as not to draw any attention, I checked on her and Lymon’s whereabouts the night Dolman got whacked. And you know what? They were together. And not any place that could be verified. They were together in his car, driving the freeways, talking.”

“What are you getting at?” Broker said.

“Gee, I dunno. Maybe somebody should, ah, check where Gloria was the night the priest got whacked,” Harry said.

The connection went dead.

Friday morning dawned
with an arsenic yellow haze and hit 102 sticky degrees by 9
A.M.
Another no-run day. Broker drove into town trying to take J. T.’s long view on Harry: just round him up and get him off the streets, sober him up, and then seal him in a cabinet like a fire ax. Maybe hang instructions around his neck: Break Glass in Case of Emergency.

Investigations was empty, except for Benish, who sat glumly watching his phone.

“Where is everybody?” Broker said.

“They just found a body north of town.”

“Another one?”

“Nah, this is superweird.” Benish straightened up and stared at Broker. “Don’t you have a radio in your car, a computer?”

“Sure,” Broker said, grinning. “I just never turn them on.”

Benish shook his head. “Any rate. This guy had a heart attack, and dogs got to him is what I heard. Kinda grisly, a real eye-fuck special. Now everybody’s piled on to get a look, and I’m stuck
waiting on a must-get call.” Benish jotted an address on a slip of paper and handed it to Broker.

Dogs?

Broker took the address, headed out the door, and got back in his car. For a moment he studied the Mobile Data Terminal grafted onto the dashboard like an unplugged R2D2. He picked Harry’s hat off the passenger seat, the one that announced “I Am Not Like the Others,” and placed it on top the computer.

Then he drove down Main Street, through downtown, and ran an amber light on Myrtle. Horns blared behind him. He glanced in the rearview and saw a dusty green Volvo had run the red light, skewing the crossing traffic.

He continued on north with an eye to the mirror. The Volvo kept pace. At the north end of town he speeded up on Highway 95. The Volvo paced him, staying four car lengths behind.

Okay. So who was following him? In his general experience, threatening people did not drive Volvos. Soccer moms drive Volvos. People who shop at the food co-op drive Volvos. Volvo owners listen to Minnesota Public Radio. They love wolves; they hug trees.

He squinted into the rearview. And this person didn’t believe in car washes, because the dust on the windshield was as good as a tint; he could not make out the driver.

Broker scratched his chin and went with his gut: Volvo owners do not usually tail cops unless they are psychos.

Or reporters.

North of town the highway dipped and rose through a turn in a raw cut in the limestone river bluff. Heading into the incline, Broker floored the gas. When he lost the Volvo in the shoulder of the turn, he gained the top of the hill going almost eighty, braked sharply, and turned into a blind intersection on the left. Spitting gravel, he swung around and punched the accelerator as the Volvo
raced to catch up. He pulled back on the highway and flashed his lights on and off, pulled alongside, and looked over at Sally Erbeck, the
Pioneer Press
reporter.

Emphatically, he held up his badge and pointed to the side of the road. She rolled her eyes and pulled over.

Broker parked behind her and approached down the shoulder trying to keep a straight face. He hadn’t gone through the motions of a traffic stop in over twenty years.

“You should wash this car, lady,” Broker said. “I can’t see your brake lights.”

“Oh c’mon,” Sally said.

Broker put on a stern expression and said, “You ran a red light back there in town.”

She sat up straighter and hung her head, mostly getting her defiant voice under control. “I’m sorry, officer; I thought I had the amber,” she said, and Broker could almost hear her dad instructing her as a teenager.
Even if the cop is a total asshole, always show respect; always call him sir or officer.

Struggling to maintain his stern expression, Broker continued. “Plus you’re driving erratically. I could write you up for operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of journalism. That’s a pretty serious offense in Washington County.”

Sally stared at him.

Finally, Broker couldn’t hold back the grin. “So what’s up?” he asked.

Exasperated, she shot him a sidelong glance. “Not much. Just that the whole Catholic Church is under siege, and you got a dead priest, as in shot-in-the-head dead, in his confessional to boot.”

Broker squinted at her. “Has somebody been tipping you, like anonymously?”

Sally batted her eyes. “You mean, like calling me up at odd hours?”

“Yeah.”

“C’mon, that only happens in bad novels and B movies.”

Just then a dark blue Stillwater squad and two white county cruisers zoomed past and headed north with their flashers turning but no sirens.

Sally didn’t even say good-bye. She dropped the Volvo in gear and left Broker in a shower of gravel as she pulled back on the road and headed out after the cops.

Broker turned into the driveway right after Sally. He saw at least five other police cruisers, a couple unmarked Crown Vics, and a green ambulance from Lakeview Hospital.

Several cops were fanning out in the densely wooded area around the house, which was a basic St. Croix River place: basement built into a slope, one upper story, wraparound deck. Broker watched Sally get out of her car and approach the house. Several cops saw her but didn’t stop her, so she continued around to the back. Broker saw Mouse standing in the shade of a basswood tree. He got out and walked over.

“Hey Mouse, what’s up?”

“Go look.”

“Is this a crime scene or a county fair?” Broker said.

“I’m, ah, relaxing the rules a little,” Mouse said. Sweat soaked his face.

“I guess . . . you just let Sally Erbeck go traipsing through. I thought the general idea was you don’t want civilians messing it up.”

“We may have caught a lucky break here in a ghoulish sort of way. Appears this guy had a heart condition and caught the Big One in his yard. The neighborhood dogs were roving in a pack and found the body, probably twenty-four hours ago. There’s no
way to mess this one up any more than it already is. Go look. But, ah, watch your step.”

Broker walked around the house and down the lawn to where a knot of Stillwater and county patrol coppers had gathered to direct traffic around points of interest strewn in the grass. Sally backed away from the group, walked over to a lawn chair, and sat down. Her face was pale and queasy.

Then Broker got a whiff of the rotten-meat stench plumped up on a platter of heat. A few more steps, and he glimpsed literally flesh and blood on the grass and what could be a gut pile. His first impression was: the cadaver of a road-killed deer.

But they were a long way from the road.

He took a few more steps and saw that the remains were human. One of the cops walked stiffly away, ducked into the bushes, and lost his breakfast.

The corpse lay on its back and was distorted by the mutilation of genitals, belly, and face. Entrails had been chewed and jerked out in red, white, and purple ribbons across the grass. Eyes gone, no mouth. The face had been gnawed down to the bone. All the exposed meat was coated with a glistening swarm of green flies that hummed like a small hardworking motor.

“Dogs,” said one of the cops. “Regular old Rover and Spot.”

He pointed through the trees at a house over two hundred yards away. “The neighbors had been up north on vacation. They came home last night and heard dogs scuffling in the woods, didn’t think much of it. Then this morning they heard them again and the man came to investigate. He thought maybe the dogs had run down a deer.”

“Wild dogs?” said Sally Erbeck. Like a good soldier, she had returned.

“Nah, just your everyday faithful Fido. They’re probably at home nuzzling the kids.” The cop, a husky sergeant, smiled at
Broker. He was enjoying his moment with the white-faced reporter.

“And all those flies?” Sally said.

“Bluebottles, they show up fast in the heat, when a body starts to release gas and fluids. Now if this guy hadn’t been chewed on by dogs, the flies would settle into the orifices; eyes, nose, mouth, and the genital anal region—but as you can see, there ain’t no eyes, nose, mouth, or . . .”

“I get the picture,” Sally said, walking away.

“What’s going on?” Broker said to the sergeant.

“Mouse said to let the press take a good look, no restrictions, long as they don’t actually step in it,” the sergeant said quietly. Then his heavy features composed into a swoon of pure delight. “Oh my,” he said.

Broker turned and saw a blond television reporter in a lime green pants suit striding toward them with her cameraman in tow. Her perfect features were clenched in an enamel Botox smile.

“Margo Shay, Channel . . .” She got a look, and her smile clotted into a gag reflex.

“It ain’t exactly ashes to ashes, dust to dust, is it?” the sergeant said, striking a thoughtful pose.

Broker left the sergeant to his forensic epiphany and went back toward the house, where he found Mouse facing another camera crew and several print reporters. Mouse shifted from foot to foot like an old lion gathering himself to jump through yet another ring of fire.

“We’re still waiting on the medical examiner, so anything I say is strictly off the record and for background. But we found a whole cabinet full of medication, so we speculate this person might have suffered a heart attack in his yard at least twenty-four hours ago,” Mouse said.

“What kind of medication?” a reporter said.

“Lessee.” Mouse consulted a small spiral notebook. “Lasix, Bumix. Some digitalis and, ah, I think it’s Coumadin—that’s a blood thinner, basically rat poison is what it is.”

“Rat poison?”

“Yeah, really thins out the little fuckers’ blood so when they squeeze through itty-bitty cracks they start really gushing inside,” Mouse said.

“So the dogs didn’t kill him?” another reporter said.

“Highly doubtful. Almost certainly not. Usually, domestic dogs will feed on a corpse only if there’s fresh blood. So maybe he had a nosebleed or something; that might explain the pattern of mutilation from the face down the front of the torso,” Mouse said.

“Are we talking regular dogs, house pets?” a reporter asked.

“The neighbor who found the body this morning chased off five or six dogs, two of which he recognized,” Mouse said. Then seeing Broker, he waved off the reporters. “I think it’s better to wait on the Ramsey County medical examiner.”

Mouse took Broker by the arm and walked him into the shadows under the deck. “Lookit this. We put the dog stuff over the radio, and there’s sheriff deputies here from St. Croix County, Wisconsin, Forest Lake, Cottage Grove. And, ah, it must be a slow day in St. Paul because the ‘A Team’ from BCA just arrived.” Mouse pointed at two guys in suits who were striding down the driveway.

A Stillwater cop and county patrol sergeant Patti Palen were standing a few feet away. The Stillwater cop said, “The tall guy in the blue suit with the dark hair, is that . . . ?”

Patti said, “You mean the guy in the
thousand-dollar
blue suit.”

The Stillwater cop said, “Yeah. So that’s him, Davenport?”

Patti said, “That’s him. He bailed from Minneapolis, now he’s with the state.”

The Stillwater cop said, “I hear he cuts notches in his gun.”

Patti’s face was deadpan, her timing perfect. “The way I heard it, he cuts notches in his dick.”

The Stillwater cop said, “BCA ain’t gonna be the same.”

Patti said, “No shit, looks like the Sears catalog is out and
GQ
is in.”

Broker rolled his eyes and turned to Mouse. “This is a circus. You know what you’re doing?”

“Orders. I been on the horn to John E. He said throw it wide-open. I got guys keeping an eye out so the press doesn’t disturb anything. But how can you contaminate a scene like this? There’s pieces of this poor pilgrim spread out for a hundred yards in every direction,” Mouse said. “The point is, it takes the heat off our dead priest for a news cycle.”

“Gotcha. Who was this guy anyway?” Broker said.

Mouse scratched his flattop. “His name was Scott. Some kind of photographer.”

“Our boy called again last night. It sounded like he was in a casino,” Broker said.

“Don’t worry, they’ll spot him,” Mouse said. “In the meantime, prepare yourself to hear, see, and read a lot about the dogs of Washington County this weekend.”

Then Broker spotted Lymon Greene walking uncertainly up from taking a look at the body.

“Lymon,” he called out, “you got a minute?”

“I’ve never seen anything like that before,” Lymon said.

“About time you got wet,” Broker said.

“Is that some kind of joke?” Lymon said. He was clearly upset; sweat dotted his skin like BBs of mercury.

Broker shook his head. “No joke. Part of the job is protecting the public from seeing stuff like that. The civilians live up on top
the water. We get to see what swims under it.” Broker paused a beat. “Like the Saint.”

Lymon nodded and motioned Broker to follow him up the driveway. They counted three TV vans. Cops from other jurisdictions were coming down the drive three abreast.

“It’s like a circus sideshow,” Lymon said.

“You got the sideshow part right,” Broker said.

When they reached Lymon’s car, he reached in the open window, took out a manila folder, and handed it to Broker. “Benish said you were out here, so I thought I’d bring these,” Lymon said.

The folder contained several glossy black-and-white photographs of Victor Moros lying in a small pool of blood on the carpet of his confessional. He was a stocky, strong-featured man, more Indian than Spanish, with longish black hair. His eyes were closed in death, but his mouth was open in a grimace of even, white teeth.

Lymon tapped a sheaf of faxes that were in the folder along with the photos.

“Cause of death, a .22 long fired point-blank into his temple. The two other wounds, one in the neck and in the cheek, would not have killed him if he’d received medical attention promptly. So they speculate the killer lured Moros close to the screen, shot twice, then came around and put one in his head. They found plastic residue in the wounds, like from a commercial container. A pop bottle. They think the killer might have used a homemade silencer.