Chuck Logan - Vapor Trail

The story passed by word of mouth. It was never written down. It did not appear in the reports. It had become a quiet police legend that followed Broker through his career.

Harry and Broker were baby cops together. They’d sat next to each other at the academy. They’d partnered in patrol. Neither of them seriously thought of being coppers for the long haul. They’d both seen action in the latter days of the Vietnam War and looked on police work as a way of extending the tour of duty and the adrenaline rush.

They’d both liked the clash and sting of the street, but Harry was always the more willing to mix it up. He’d slap the cuffs on extra tight; he’d choke to subdue; he’d break wrists and dislocate arms. On his third month on the job he shot a drug dealer who’d had the bad sense to pull a gun. An investigation ruled it a righteous shoot.

Then came that perfect night for a domestic. Hot, no moon; cruising the streets, you could feel people’s blood starting to steam up the lighted windows.

At least this time it was in a nice neighborhood, on Summit Avenue, which was just about as nice as you could get in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1985.

They went together, two sergeants advancing fast in rank. Comers. They were filling in for patrolmen who were taking vacation time.

And that’s the night Harry met Diane.

She was, like her house, very well maintained except for the swelling under her eye and the trickle of blood coming from her nose.

Hubby was a dentist who was a meticulous success at everything except, apparently, living. He was given to rages over cobwebs and dust balls. He’d found lint in his underwear drawer, and so he beat his wife.

That night she’d decided not to take it anymore and had picked up the phone. Broker and Harry took one look, then came in fast and split them up. Broker shoved the husband in one room, while Harry sat with Diane in another and persuaded her to file charges.

Harry continued to advise her through injunctions, restraining orders, and the divorce. A storybook courtship followed.

But there were some, with an eye toward Harry’s dossier of brutality complaints, who said discreetly that Diane had traded one batterer for another.

Others in those racially more dubious days scoffed at the notion. Harry, they pointed out, only thumped on young black males.

Broker stood up in a Lutheran chapel as best man on the day Harry and Diane were married.

Now he thought back to being young and moist-eyed sentimental on the cathedral light pouring through stained-glass windows, getting dizzy on the fragrance of fresh flowers.

Here and now he remembered the birthday card inside on the kitchen table. He’d just broken up with his first wife, Caren, and he’d brought a new girl to the wedding. A girl he’d met taking evidence over to the BCA.

Janey.

But the dentist husband turned out to have deeper issues than anyone suspected. He held old-fashioned ideas about his marriage vows. He interpreted the death-do-us-part clause literally, and he began to harass Diane. He studied Harry’s shift schedule, and he caught Diane alone in the backyard on a hot July afternoon. He went after her with his fists.

Diane was lucky; she got away with just her eyes blackened. She’d fought him off with a barbecue fork until her screams brought the neighbors. Word got out over the radios, and Broker met up with Harry in the Ramsey County emergency room.

He’d watched as she told Harry how crazy the ex had been.

Crazy, she’d said. Really crazy.

In a cold fury, Harry left the ER, got in his squad, and drove away.

Broker followed in a separate car. He knew that the ex-husband was still in his old house which was up for sale as part of the divorce settlement. So he headed for Summit Avenue and found Harry’s squad parked in the driveway. He gave the address over the radio and called for backup. The front door was locked, so he went around the back and kicked through the kitchen door and found Harry in the living room beating the dentist’s head against the marble fireplace.

They talked it over:

Harry said, Go away and come back in five minutes.

Broker said, I can’t let you do this.

Harry said, He’s going to resist arrest. He’s going to attack me with that fireplace poker right there. He didn’t leave me any choice.

Broker said, I’m going to cuff him and put him in the car. Step away.

Harry said, Make me.

So they faced each other across six feet of space, with a semiconscious man between them, dripping blood on the Persian carpet. They both carried.38-caliber revolvers; their right hands were poised at hip level above their pistol butts.

Harry’s eyes were too bright, eager for it. He said, I always wondered what this would be like.

Broker said, Maybe you could have got away with doing him, but you’ll never be able to explain both of us.

The opposite of Harry, Broker had centered in a deadly calm, working the problem. He knew that he had to keep Harry talking.

Harry said, I know what this guy’s like. He’ll keep coming back on her until somebody stops him permanently.

Broker said, We’ll lock him up.

Harry said, What do you mean? She has a black eye; he’ll be out in a week. I’m telling you, he’s going to kill her.

Broker said, No he isn’t; he’s going to jail.

And then it was sirens forever as the black-and-whites swarmed the house like metal hornets with blue flashers.

And Harry said, You fucker. This is your call, and it’s on your head.

Fine, Broker had agreed.

They put the cuffs on the man and took him into the station and booked him for assault.

The next day they were handing out traffic tickets on University Avenue when the call came in. Diane was back in Ramsey ER in a coma. That morning a judge who suffered from haughty extremes of robes disease and who tended to be lenient about domestic abuse and who was impressed with Summit Avenue addresses had let the dentist out on bail. He had gone directly back to Harry’s house and beat Diane with a claw hammer he’d found on the back porch. Harry had been using the hammer to repair a loose rain gutter. By the time they got to the hospital, she was dead.

This time a different judge refused bail for the unrepentant dentist.

Six months after Diane Cantrell was married, she was back in the Lutheran chapel; this time she didn’t see the light filtering through the stained glass. She didn’t smell the pyres of flowers.

And Harry met Broker at the church door and said, I don’t want you here.

It changed Broker’s life. His dad had always figured he’d go to law school after tiring of the police. His mother wished for something more whimsical, something to develop the intuitive talents she saw in her son.

Broker remained a cop. But a detached and then a remote kind of cop. He told himself he’d sought out the deep undercover work to anticipate crimes before they happened. Then his current wife, Nina, came into his life. She looked at his undercover routine and said, What are you hiding from, anyway?

Broker and Harry tried but failed to put the friendship back together. They both left the St. Paul department. Broker went to the BCA; Harry to Washington County. Broker departed on his undercover pilgrimage. Harry found refuge in excesses of hard work and binges of drinking and gambling.

And every time they met it was instant time machine-they were back in that living room on Summit Avenue. Their voices were civil and professional, but their eyes were locked as if their hands were poised three inches away from their holstered pistols and each was waiting for the other to make the first move.