Chuck Logan - Vapor Trail

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.