Chuck Logan - Vapor Trail

So the story passed by word of mouth, and it wasn’t written down or reported, and some people said that Harry had put it all behind him. Others were convinced that Harry had never recovered from the events surrounding Diane’s murder and it was only a matter of time before he took revenge on Broker.

And Broker understood that it was Harry’s style not to be in any particular hurry.

Broker drove the ten miles from Marine on St. Croix, where Milt had his river house, toward Stillwater, the Washington County seat. He was heavier by thirty-eight and a half ounces of steel slung in a nylon hideout rig behind his right hip. John was right. If Harry had gone off the deep end, it could get nasty. So after he showered and shaved, he loaded the Colt.45 Gold Cup National. Then he put on faded jeans, cinched the holster to his belt, and pulled a loose gray polo shirt over the pistol’s bulk. Scuffed cross trainers and a pair of sunglasses completed his casual attire.

Never a big fan of sidearms, he had always preferred to deal with trouble inside the reach of his arms. But he was fond of the.45 for its usefulness in close as a steel club.

Broker breathed in, breathed out. Don’t get ahead of yourself. Take it one step at a time. Stay professional; it’s a job.

Bullshit. It was Harry.

He turned off 95 to bypass the business district and eased on back streets to the Law Enforcement Center at the south end of town. He parked in the visitors’ lot by the front door. The red brick building housed the sheriff’s office and the jail and looked like one half of a deserted shopping mall. The other half was the county offices next door.

Inside, John was waiting in the lobby in front of a framed map of the United States on which all the Washington Counties in the continental forty-eight states were indicated by police uniform shoulder patches.

A husky six footer in a gray suit stood next to him. A young guy.

“Broker, meet Lymon Greene,” John said.

Greene’s style was strictly in your face. For starters, he made a strength contest of the handshake. Broker endured the viselike grip without commenting.

“You have a first name?” Greene asked in that cop tone that implied, You have a first name, asshole? Except Greene projected a slight aura of stiff straightness that suggested he didn’t use words like asshole a whole lot.

So Broker didn’t respond to that slight either. They were not off to a good start. There was the fact that Greene was barely thirty years old and was obviously caught in the rapture of indomitable youth. He wore his hair cropped in a tight black skullcap. His brown eyes smoldered with a carefully masked contempt for Broker that conveyed: geezer, retread, crony . And, complicating Broker’s gut-level aversion to Greene’s persona and style, was the fact that Greene was a black guy. Actually less black than light wicker tan. But, at any rate, a black guy.

“Clearly this is a match made in heaven,” John said in a dry voice. “C’mon, this way, you two.”

After a brisk tour through administration, Broker emerged with a badge and a sizzling new laminated picture ID. John held up a.40-caliber pistol, a holster, and a box of ammunition.

Broker refused the weapon. “I never qualified with the forty. Never could hit squat with a handgun anyway.” He tapped the bulge on his hip. “Got my tamer right here.”

Lymon smiled and said, “Forty’s a sweet weapon. I could take you to the range, check you out.”

Broker remained silent, but John Eisenhower winced as they went down the hall to his office. Sergeant Maury Seacrest, Lymon’s supervisor, waited impassively next to the office. He had a mound of hard gut pushing over his belt, and sticking out under his gray 1950s flattop were extra-large ears, which had earned him his nickname.

“Hey, Mouse, how you doing?” Broker said, extending his hand.

They shook. “What’s a big dog like you doing in our quiet little town?” Mouse grumbled with the barest smile. A drinking buddy of Harry Cantrell, clearly he disapproved of this day’s work.

Lymon watched suspiciously as Broker greeted his supervisor. “You guys know each other?” Lymon said.

Maury’s and Broker’s eyes met, looked away. For a new guy, Lymon didn’t know how to keep his mouth shut. They went into John’s office and sat down. Broker noticed that John still had the same two Norman Rockwell pictures on the wall. The same chemically treated plastic card on his desk with a thumbprint and the invitation: Test your stress level.

Without preliminaries, John shot a question to Mouse. “As of this minute, who knows we got a saint’s medallion on the crime scene?”

“The four of us; Joey Campbell, the Stillwater mayor; his police chief, Arnie Bangert; and Tim Radke, one of Arnie’s patrol cops. He was the first copper on the scene,” Mouse said.

“And that’s how it stays until I get back in town. I’m bringing Broker in as Special Projects to do a little poking around. He reports only to me. So he wants anything, you guys give it him,” John said.

“That’s clear enough,” Lymon said.

John pointed his finger at Lymon. “Watch it.”

The phone rang; John took the call, then rolled his eyes. “Sally Erbeck,” he said, “you must be psychic; I was just thinking of you. What’s up?”

Mouse leaned over and whispered to Broker, “Sally Erbeck, St. Paul Pioneer Press reporter. Now it begins.”

“Nothing much, Sally,” John said. “It’s pretty quiet out here in Sleepy Hollow. A couple cows got out of the barn, but I saddled up the boys and we rounded them up. Sure. See ya.” John hung up the phone. “Just routine checks; she hasn’t caught wind of the dead priest yet, so the troops are staying mum.”

“I don’t know,” Lymon said, narrowing his eyes.

“What?” John protested. “I don’t have an official cause of death yet. Sure, he had a bullet in his head, but he could have died of a heart attack. Get with the program, Lymon. Now, Mouse, what’s our fallback position?”

Mouse shifted in his chair and spoke in a monotone. “The Church is in crisis; priests are being targeted; some guy shot one in Philadelphia a little while ago. We got a climate of scandal that could attract nutcases. This Moros wasn’t around long enough to put down roots here. So maybe it’s somebody striking from his past, or somebody with lots of grievances just lashing out at the Church in general. They throw in the saint’s medal as misdirection, to twist our crank.”

“We don’t want to go anywhere near that yet,” John said. “Try again.”

Lymon took a turn. “Moros was alone; it’s a fairly remote location. And there’s been a rash of church break-ins the last month in town. Satanist graffiti, stuff like that.”

Mouse shook his head. “Aw, shit, that’s those little high school creeps with the green hair who wear black. I don’t buy this vandalism-goes-wrong theory.”

“It’s not bad for a start,” John said. “Okay, we need a minimum press release to cover our ass. The stress is on minimum.”

Mouse shrugged, looked at Lymon. “How old was Moros?”

“Forty-three.”

“’A forty-three-year-old male was found dead in Stillwater last night,’” Mouse said.

“Sounds great,” John said as he checked his watch. “It is now nine-thirty. I board a plane to Seattle at twelve twenty-five. Have the Comm Center ship that out at eleven-thirty.”

“So when the media calls and asks about the dead priest, what do we say?” Lymon asked.

“ We say jackshit,” John said. He pointed to Mouse.

Mouse shifted in his chair. “You say we’re investigating, and we’ll keep them abreast of events as they develop. They need anything more detailed, they should get ahold of me.”