Chuck Logan - Vapor Trail

He went back up the stairs and returned to the living room, stooped, and inspected the pizza box. A yellow VISA receipt lay among a debris of chewed crusts. He recognized Harry’s scrawled signature. It was dated 18:04 yesterday afternoon. Three empty bottles of Pabst were strewn at the foot of the couch along with a TV remote.

If the clock in the Acura had indeed jammed upon impact, that gave Harry thirty-eight minutes to make it from Broadway Pizza in downtown Stillwater to his driveway. Entertaining Lymon Greene’s suspicions for a moment, Broker speculated that Harry could have driven to St. Martin’s on the way home, parked his car, climbed into some kind of disguise, gone into the church, shot the priest, got back in the car, continued on home eating his pizza with one hand, steering with the other-and put his car into a tree. It was theoretically possible.

Darin Kagin’s silent chattering face flickered on CNN at the edge of his vision. The TV had been left on, the sound muted. Broker reached over and tapped the remote button. The TV zapped off with an electronic sizzle.

He looked around one more time. No Harry.

He picked up Harry’s phone and dialed Anne Mortenson’s number from Mouse’s instruction sheet. No answer. Then he tried the public library number and was transferred to the reference desk.

“Anne Mortenson?”

“Yes?”

“This is Phil Broker with the Washington County Sheriff’s Department. I’m looking for Harry Cantrell. Can you help me?”

There was silence on the line for a beat, two. “Yes, he called this morning and asked to borrow my car.” Her voice was level and direct.

“And?”

“Pardon me?” Anne said.

“Did he borrow your car?” Broker said.

“Yes. His broke down. So I drove over and picked him up. He dropped me off at home; it’s only a few blocks to work.”

“Did you happen to see his car?”

“Ah, no. He met me at the end of his drive by the mailbox.” For the first time there was a slight waver in her steady voice. Concern, like a dropped stitch. “Is this official or personal?”

“Welll. .” Broker drew the word out.

Anne’s voice regained its strength. “It’s official, I imagine. Harry is under a cloud. It’s about his drinking.”

“Okay, you’re right. I need to find him.”

Anne cleared her throat. “When he’s been drinking, I usually don’t encourage that behavior in any way. But on Wednesday mornings Harry visits his mother in the Linden Hills nursing home. I made an exception for that.”

Broker hid his dismay. Initially, she had sounded smarter than that. “Linden Hills near downtown, on Green Street.”

“That’s it. He brings her flowers. She doesn’t recognize him anymore, but she recognizes roses. That’s Alzheimer’s for you. He left here over an hour ago. If you hurry, you might be able to catch him.”

Broker pulled a pen from his chest pocket, poised to write on Mouse’s instruction sheet. “I need a description of your car.”

“Yes, it’s a new Subaru Forester, red, mono color, no cladding. The S model.” Anne gave him the plate number. As he wrote it down, she thought out loud, “Do you think maybe I made a mistake?”

Broker didn’t want to give her a straight answer. “The sooner I find him, the better,” he said. Then, after a quick thank you, he hung up and dashed for his truck.

Leaning forward in his seat, he pushed the Ranger over the speed limit, ran stop signs, and passed on the shoulder. Broker came into town hot and swung into the nursing home lot. He scanned the aisles of cars. No red Forester. He went inside, stopped at the reception desk, and inquired.

A nurse walked him down a hall into a private room. An elderly woman sat up behind a tray that was positioned across the bed. She was very involved in staring at a bouquet of roses.

“Every Wednesday morning Harry brings her flowers,” the nurse said.

“How long ago did he leave?” Broker asked.

The nurse led Broker back into the hall and chatted with another nurse. She turned to Broker. “He was in and out, just making a delivery. So it was quite a while ago.”

Back in the parking lot, Broker raised his eyes to the canopy of elms and cottonwoods where millions of leaves hung absolutely still, pressing down. His body suddenly crossed a threshold, and his sweat came all at once. Mopping his wrist across his brow, he stared across the hills, at the gingerbread facades on the houses, the quaint steeples, the river, the bridge.

Missed him.

Broker hated offices, so he moved fast through Washington County Investigations-a grid of gray cubicles with six-foot privacy walls that housed General Investigations, Fraud, and Narcotics. Art Katzer’s empty office and a receptionist’s desk were located at the head of the room. Interrogation rooms lined one wall; more cubicles made up the other.

He was looking for Mouse.

Several cops stirred around desks in white shirts and ties. They wore round leather backings with five-pointed county stars on their belts, along with holstered.40-caliber pistols. They were mostly older, mostly developing bellies. This being the far reaches of the Twin Cities’ eastern suburbs, they were all white.

Several took a sideways look at Broker, then dropped their eyes. John’s outsider.

Mouse’s bulk was unmistakable at the end of the room next to the coffeepot. Their eyes made solid contact on the order of an eight-ball break shot.

“I got something for you,” Mouse said.

Then the phone on Broker’s hip rang. He picked up and heard Jack Malloy’s voice. “Is this personal, or are you working?” Jack asked.

“Can you stay put? I need a sec,” Broker said.

“You are working,” Malloy said.

“Yep. For John Eisenhower.”

Broker came up to Mouse and took him by the arm and walked him through the security door into the hall. He held up a finger to shush Mouse and turned back to the phone. “Victor Moros was a caretaker priest at St. Martin’s in Stillwater. Are you with me so far, Jack?” Broker said.

“Yes, we heard this morning that Moros died. But the details are coming very slowly.”

“Are we cool, Jack? Like way off the record here?”

“You’re going to have give me cause, but we’re cool.”

“Good. Then I can tell you that the details are slow in coming because he was shot to death last night, in his confessional.”

“Oh, my God- here . .” Malloy’s voice staggered. It was silent on the line for a moment, and Broker didn’t need paranormal powers to divine what Malloy meant when he blurted: here .

“It gets a lot worse, Jack. We have to keep this strictly between us,” Broker said. “You still with me?”

“Sure.”

“He had a St. Nicholas medallion stuffed in his mouth,” Broker said.

Jack Malloy groaned. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph-the Saint. Great, so now it’s really come here. We’ve had charges made, threats; but not a death. The press. .”

“No press; not yet. We’re sitting on the case. But I need a fast read on Moros’s background, and it has to be absolutely discreet.”

Malloy exhaled, steadied, and said, “I’m on it. Meet me here, at the rectory, at ten tomorrow morning.”

“I’ll be there.”

Broker hung up and turned to Mouse, who was pushing the last crumbs of a doughnut into his mouth. “Okay-he’s not home; his car was piled up against a tree in his driveway.”

Mouse chewed, swallowed, and looked around for a place to get rid of his foam coffee cup. Broker took the cup from his hand. The door to Investigations snapped open; a young cop started out into the hall. Broker handed him the empty cup. The young cop looked at Broker, then at Mouse, and went back inside.