Chuck Logan - Vapor Trail

It took a minute to smash the stout redwood strut from the deck rail. Broker slipped the cuff off the shattered wood, snatched up the bullet, got to his feet, went in the house and down the basement stairs.

Harry had left the second gun safe open. Broker looked in the safe to confirm what he already knew: Harry’s favorite long black rifle was missing.

Broker got out of the cab and paid the driver. Then he took a moment to compose himself, run his hand down his sweat-soaked shirt, tuck in the anger and humiliation. He rubbed the red raw marks on his left wrist, tested the lump behind his ear for blood and found none.

He glanced around. The world looked deceptively unchanged. Except now Harry was seriously out there in it. Broker knew the stories about drunks who blacked out and continued to function like sleepwalkers for days, operating on pure reflexes.

Broker squeezed the thick.338 round in his pocket. Harry had some pretty advanced reflexes. As he walked toward the law enforcement compound, LEC, for short, he considered the unique potential for havoc in Harry, the blacked-out sniper. Well, John would be happy now that Harry was on board, as it were.

He buzzed himself through the security door with his ID card. Then he buzzed into Investigations and looked around for Mouse.

“He had to go to court,” Lymon Greene said. “What do you need?”

“A car. I had some trouble with my truck,” Broker said.

“Sure, let’s go down to the motor pool,” Lymon said. On the way out the door he stopped and took a set of keys from a cabinet and tossed them to Broker.

They walked down several staircases and some corridors and came out in an underground garage. Lymon led him to a tan unmarked Crown Victoria and said, deadpan, “Harry’s car.”

“Great,” Broker said. He immediately opened the trunk, saw the first-aid kit, some equipment related to processing traffic accidents, a Kevlar vest, and what he was looking for: the.12-gauge Ithaca pump shotgun and two boxes of.00 buckshot.

“So how’d it go with Harry?” Lymon asked.

“Harry’s just fine. Look. You got the church keys?” Lymon nodded that he did. “Okay, I want to see the church and then talk to this witness. So call him and tell him I’m coming,” Broker said.

“Sure. I was just curious. What did John mean, we don’t want to play guns with Harry. .?”

Broker stepped closer and placed his hand on Lymon’s shoulder. “Lymon, pal, let’s take a little history test. Who was Carlos Hathcock?”

“Don’t play games, I asked you a straight question.”

“All right. I’ll tell you. Hathcock, like Harry, was a marine sniper. Ninety-two confirmed kills in Vietnam.”

“I don’t really get around to the History Channel that much. Too many Geritol commercials.”

“Harry had forty-five kills. But then Harry was only there half as long as Hathcock,” Broker said.

The jaw muscles maneuvered around under Lymon’s smooth skin, but he decided not to say anything.

Broker said, “Okay, look-you gotta help me here. I’m real limited when it comes to small talk, paperwork, and offices. You follow me?”

A complex coolness descended on Lymon’s handsome face; part inexperience, part age, some implicit racial baggage. Broker, smarting from his encounter with Harry, didn’t give a shit.

“Okay, I get it; I’m in a movie with Tommy Lee Jones and Clint Eastwood. I’ve heard about you, you know,” Lymon said.

Broker studied the younger man. “Yeah?”

“Sure. You know how, after nine-eleven, there was all that talk on TV about the CIA not having unsavory types on their payroll who could penetrate terrorist networks. That’s kind of like you, isn’t it?”

“Is it?”

“Yeah.” Lymon carefully twisted his lips along a fine line of irony. “You’re what they call Human Intelligence.”

Broker tapped Lymon on the chest. “Meet me at the church.”

He drove through town in Harry’s car, catching traces of Harry’s aftershave wafting off the fabric upholstery. His head throbbed, and the air-conditioning, cranked on full, hadn’t taken hold yet. The heat squatted on the day, pressing down. And pushing up. You could almost feel the humidity summoning the crabgrass and burdock up into gaps and voids. The toughest weeds had green muscle enough to crack the heavy slabs of city sidewalk.

Like murder maybe. Just waiting for the right climate to rear up and bust through. Broker pictured this big nasty weed bursting right out of Harry’s chest.

He was losing his distance. He was personalizing it. Damn, it was hot.

After a wrong turn, Broker found the church. There was no good place to die violently, but St. Martin’s, abandoned and overgrown, would be way down on anybody’s list. The cops had kept the scene quiet. There was no stark yellow crime scene bunting to advertise what had happened here.

Just Lymon Greene, who waited at the entrance looking like a deacon in his gray suit, shined shoes, white shirt, and quiet maroon tie. He stood next to a scrawled, six-pointed pentacle graffiti vandals had sprayed in black on the flagstones in front of the door.

As Broker approached, Lymon moved to unlock the door and said, “There’s a small rectory around back where Moros lived; you want. .”

“Wait,” Broker said and nodded toward the rundown house across a vacant lot from the church. A scruffy broad-shouldered man sat in the shade of the narrow porch. Watching.

“Is that Tardee?” Broker asked.

“That’s him; he’s waiting on you,” Lymon said.

“Okay, open it up,” Broker said. Lymon opened the heavy wooden door. Broker inspected the lock. It would fasten when he pulled the door closed. He didn’t need the keys to lock up.

“Thanks,” Broker said. “Now I want to be alone.”

Lymon began to say something like, Why the hell did you bring me out here? But he thought better of it and went toward his car. “I’ll be back at the office,” he called over his shoulder.

Broker had brought Lymon out in the heat so Tardee could see them together. It would help establish that he was a cop-because he was traveling a little light in the credentials department. Because, you moron, you let Harry take your badge and gun.

Broker watched Lymon’s blue Crown Vic lurch away down the unpaved street. Then he turned, studied the arched stone entryway, and stepped into the church. The raw limestone, old oak, and coarse stained glass closed around him. The temperature dropped. It was cool like a mausoleum. Or a morgue.

He walked into the dank interior and found his way to the confessional. The crime techs from the BCA lab had left both doors wedged open.

First he looked into the penitent chamber and saw the kneeling rest, the shattered wooden grille through which the penitent would announce himself to the priest.

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.

God’s work. That’s what Harry had said. Was the Saint doing God’s work?

If pushed on the subject, Broker considered himself a serious but skeptical pilgrim who traveled without a declared belief in God. His eyes traveled over the altar, the old-world statues and pageantry. The roots of this power went back to imperial Rome; absolutely the longest-running show in the world. It occurred to him that if he were seriously trying to find God, he sure wouldn’t start in a building some men had built.

Whatever.

He moved a few steps and looked into the priest’s side of the confessional booth. A misshapen tape outline described where Victor Moros had lain in death. The bloodstain still looked damp in the middle. That was the humidity. Neither sweat nor blood were drying as they should.