Chuck Logan - Vapor Trail

She smiled and pursed her lips. “But how do I know that’s the only picture?”

A. J. acted hurt. “You don’t trust me.”

“I don’t know you.”

Angel pronounced know with just the right suggestion of unfolding revelation. Encouraged, A. J. steered her to the computer table and said, “So why don’t you just edit through all the pix I took at the beach.”

“I can do that, like, just here? Now?” Angel appeared to be genuinely curious. The fact was she knew her away around Macintosh computers and Photoshop software. She smiled.

A. J. smiled back.

He didn’t know she’d smiled because she felt she was getting warm.

A. J. removed the film card from his camera. “Four hundred bucks, one hundred twenty snaps.” It was the size of a short, flat book of matches. He put the card into a slot in a mouselike pad. His screen saver-a goofy dog sailing after a bone-vanished, and his desktop appeared. Then a Nikon D1 icon came on. His fingers flew over the keyboard, and strips of pictures appeared.

“There you go,” he said, “just scroll through them and see for yourself.”

Warmer.

“Show me,” she said. She put her beach bag down under the computer table within easy reach. Then she sat in the chair in front of the Macintosh and kept her hands primly in her lap.

“Just use the mouse to scroll. If you want to magnify, double-click on the checked box in the corner of the frame.” His lips were close to her ear, and she could smell his breath on her cheek. His breath smelled like Tic Tacs. She recalled that the priest’s breath had smelled exactly the same through the grille in the confessional.

“Can I ask you something personal?” A. J. said.

Angel prepared herself. Okay. Here it comes.

But he said, “You didn’t go swimming, did you?”

“No. Why do you ask?” She was still sitting up straight, hands folded in her lap, reluctant to touch the keyboard.

“Because you’re wearing a very expensive wig, and you didn’t want to get it wet.”

Angel turned and looked A. J. directly in the eye. “Tell me, do you think the first time you meet somebody is an appropriate occasion to discuss the Big C ?”

Her words were a puff of fire. He immediately stepped back.

“Don’t worry,” Angel said with a brave smile, “it’s under control. And A. J.? it’s not contagious.”

A. J. blushed with embarrassment. Before he could stammer a response, Angel spoke up.

“Now can I tell you something personal?”

“Sure.”

“You did go swimming because you smell like weeds, and there’s this sign when you drive into that park that says you could get swimmer’s itch.”

“Good point. Why don’t I take a shower. You can browse around the computer. Just don’t pull the card out of the reader, okay?”

Angel nodded. “Gotcha.”

He turned and bounced up the stairs and went into the bathroom. The moment the door closed behind him, Angel reached into her bag and yanked on her latex gloves. By the time she heard water running in the pipes, she had closed out of the pictures A. J. had taken today and was racing through his card files.

No categories to help her. Just dates going back a month. Then maybe he refiled them, probably after burning them to a DVD.

She pulled up dates and scanned a few frames. It was routine newspaper filler-head shots, people at events, local-color shots. Minutes passed. Her fingers blurred over the keys; opening files, random scanning, closing them. She almost didn’t want to find anything.

But then, of course, she did.

She scrolled down the strip of frames. This was some kind of fashion shoot because the subject was posed against a light blue background. She got up, went to the hanging scrim mounted on the wall by the equipment rack. Pulled it down and found a matching light blue. So probably these were taken here.

She returned to the desk and studied a picture of a blond teenage boy in a pair of jeans naked from the waist up. He was thin but svelte, with smooth little ab muscles. Some of the shots looked as if he was modeling the jeans, but in others he was clearly modeling himself.

Especially the ones where he had the fly unzipped. In successive frames the jeans were doing a hula down his hips.

Then she double-clicked on the frame where the zipper was three-quarters open and his not-so-little-business was half tumescent, just kind of ready to pop out of its crinkly nest of pubic hair like a just-opened present nestled in excelsior. Clearly, this was a gift waiting to be discovered. And if the boy’s posture didn’t convey the intended message, the expression on his face certainly did; the lower lip sagging, the tongue in motion.

Angel stared at the eyes. The way they absolutely owned the jaded intersection of violation and vulnerability.

Suddenly, she realized that the shower was no longer running. Upstairs, she heard him coming out of the bathroom. Bare feet slapping the hardwood floor, coming down the hall into the dining room. She dragged the mouse up to FILE and selected PRINT. Copies: 5.

Angel reached down, grabbed her beach bag, and set it in her lap. She slid her right hand in and curled her fingers around the pistol. The chair had casters. It was easy to push away from the computer, so he could see the image on the screen as he walked down the stairs.

She half wondered if he’d presume too much and come back down in a bathrobe; but, no, A. J. had on baggy shorts and a tank top. Halfway down the stairs he saw the picture on the screen, heard the printer coughing out the copies. He did not seem alarmed; more alert certainly, but mainly curious.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“I don’t know, you tell me. I hit some keys, and this popped up.”

“And the printer?”

“More buttons, I guess.” Angel was willing to hear his argument but she could feel Athena forming in her bones, armored, of the piercing brow, implacable.

A. J. made a reasonable gesture with his hands. “I didn’t invent Madison Avenue, Angela. So maybe I’m a little ahead of the curve, playing with the edges of child erotica. But ads have been published in the New York Times Magazine and in Vanity Fair that are a mere inch away from that.”

“Looks more like about six inches to me,” she said in a flat, deadly voice.

He misunderstood her comment because he grinned and said, “It’ll be mainstream someday, so I’m getting ready.”

“He’s just a kid, for Christ sake,” Angel protested.

“Really. Did you know how old the shepherd boy was who posed for Michelangelo’s David ? No? How about fourteen.”

“So this isn’t pornographic? This is art?” Angel felt the trigger along the pad of her index finger, the trigger guard eased against her knuckle.

“I don’t see any sex act, do you? And the statutes are very specific on that. ‘Clear and convincing’ is the rule. ‘Explicit’ is the governing term,” A. J. said.

Angel rolled back to the computer, reached out with her left hand, and selected another frame.

“Why are you wearing gloves?” he said in a challenging tone, and now the first thin quiver of alarm sounded in his voice.

“So my hands don’t get dirty, asshole. Now tell me about the artistic content of this one.” She clicked twice, and the boy was back except now he was unmistakably limbering up to masturbate for the camera.

“Get the hell out of here,” A. J. said. In fast jerky steps he crossed in front of her, closed out the computer file, and turned off the printer.

“Right after you,” Angel said as she came off the chair and started to swing the gun up out of the bag. For a second the Ruger snagged in the material.