Vapor Trail

Aubrey grinned and slapped his stomach. “I should drop a few pounds, I know.” He squirmed closer on his sandals and extended his hand. “Aubrey Jackson Scott. But they call me A. J.”

“Howdy, A. J.,” Angel said. She managed the handshake without grimacing, but just beneath her skin she imagined all the capillaries writhing like blue maggots.

“So. . life’s pretty dull around the old sister’s house, huh?” A. J. mused.

In a self-conscious reflex, Angel let one of her hands wander up and fluff her hair, then she toyed with a curl near her forehead. And she thought how things had never been exactly dull around her sister’s house. Actually, things at her sister’s house had been terrifying, and very very sad.

His voice brought her back to the present. “So, ah, do you like to get high, Angela?”

“I’ve been known to imbibe,” Angel said.

Encouraged, he sidled a little closer. “Tell you what. How about we go someplace and smoke a joint, then go to a nice dark air-conditioned sports bar and get a burger?”

“I saw you taking pictures of the scuba divers. Are you really a photographer?” Angel knit her brow and put a wary lilt in her voice.

“Hey, absolutely. I string for the Pioneer Press and the Star Tribune. And I do a lot of stuff for the weeklies in the valley.”

“And you have, like, a studio and equipment and everything?”

“Of course.” He reached in his bag and withdrew the heavy Nikon D1. “This is not exactly kid’s stuff I have here.”

And Angel thought, Oh, I bet it is exactly kid’s stuff, you greasy fat fuck. But she smiled, lowered her eyelids, and said, “And so? What. .you’re going to invite me over to your studio under the pretense of taking my picture and get me stoned, huh?”

A. J. shook his head and held out his hands in a genial protest. “Hey. No pressure on this end. Don’t believe in it. You want to hang for a while and smoke a number, fine. If you don’t, that’s fine, too.”

“Well, I guess you don’t look too much like Charles Manson,” Angel said.

A. J. stood up and held his hand out to help her to her feet. “Okay, c’mon.”

Angel put her hand out to him and shut her eyes tight when she felt his grip on her fingers. As he hoisted her up, she repeated to herself, Just remember, kiddo, you’re not here.

She folded her towel around her sun lotion. She’d left her beach bag in the car for obvious reasons. He asked where she’d parked, and she pointed up the grassy slope in back of the beach. So they walked side by side through the picnic tables and barbecue grates and up the stairs made of green treated timbers.

Near the top of the steps he smoothly cupped her elbow, to steady her balance, and she did not recoil because she was almost totally invisible now.

Angel had seriously, desperately asked God to help her when she was eleven years old. She had called on God-she’d never say Him again, not ever-with all her heart. And God must have been somewhere else, or maybe God was deaf or asleep, because God had not done a single thing to help her.

So she had learned to make herself invisible, lying rigid with her wrists crossed over her heart like thin iron bars.

Sometimes she’d pretended she was the wall next to the bed.

As they walked to the parking lot and he continued to steer her with his hand on her arm, she moved smoothly with his touch. Hold up a mirror, you wouldn’t see her. Uh-uh.

Gone girl gone.

Chapter Nineteen

Angel disliked being closed in, so she drove with the windows open, and the air slicked her skin like hot oil. She caught herself drifting, involved in the fact that A. J. owned a blue 1995 Honda Accord. Not exactly a flashy car but a dependable performer. The Accord had rated high on Consumer Reports’ reliability chart, and also held its resale value.

But lately it had been losing ground to the Volkswagen Passat.

She reminded herself to get more serious and focus.

She leaned forward and gripped the steering wheel with both hands as she followed his car back toward town. Then she reached down for the fifth time and confirmed that the automatic, the silencer, the pair of latex gloves, and the medallion were under a towel in her beach bag.

The wig clamped down, trapping sweat, broiling her skull. Wearing the wig in this heat was like torture. But necessary. And apt. She let her hand glide up and twisted a finger in a light ginger curl. Then, softly, she stroked the wavy hair over her ear. Soft, the honey color of champagne.

It was her sister’s hair, expertly crafted into a wig. She had helped harvest it to be made into this wig, when the doctors told her sister that chemo had moved from among the options to mandatory treatment.

She dropped her hand back to the wheel. Stay the course, Angel; that’s what her sister would say.

So she continued to drive south, toward Stillwater, and on her right, the western sunset was almost biblical in its intensity. It must be the smoke from the forest fires in Colorado and Arizona that had been on the news. Fact of life.

Dirty air was the prettiest.

She could feel herself getting ambiguous about this A. J. He did not project anything like social impairment. She saw no hints of the thing she feared and hated more than anything else, which was sexual sadism. He was easygoing; he did not seem to desire control. The vibes she got off him suggested a debauchee, a libertine.

Intuition whispered that he probably enjoyed wine, food, and dope even more than sex.

She was drifting. She sternly reminded herself that the Nonexclusive Type Pedophile can be attracted to adults as well as children.

If there is no hard evidence, Angel, you will let him go.

A. J. Scott lived off of Highway 95 in a bungalow with a broad wraparound cedar deck that overlooked the St. Croix River. He had the sunrise over Wisconsin, but the sunset was shrouded by the bluff above the highway. By late afternoon his yard was patterned with shade. Coming down his driveway, Angel left the glory of the western sky behind and parked in woodsy gloom.

No sunsets but lots of mosquitoes. The house was crowded close in among pines and mixed hardwoods.

The nearest neighbor was two hundred yards away through the thick trees. Angel spotted a peek of yellow and blue, a plastic tube slide and a swing set. Perhaps that’s where the little girl lived. The one who’d tried on the bathing suit.

Angel got out. She liked the location. She was concerned about someone seeing her car, and she especially didn’t want anyone to get a good look at her. When she’d called on Father Moros, she’d been in full disguise. Today all she had was the wig.

She walked around to the driver’s side of A. J.’s Accord, and as he got out, she pointed at the left rear wheel well.

“Just drives me nuts how it happens in the same place every time,” she said.

A. J. cocked his head.

Angel explained, “See the boil of rust there on the rim of the wheel well? Accords, Civics, and Preludes; they all start to rust right there. It’s a design flaw.”

“I’m impressed; most people don’t pick up on that kind of detail. You have a good eye,” A. J. said.

Angel shrugged. “I owned a couple Hondas.” She walked with him to the door.

A. J. raised an eyebrow. “A good eye is a preselection factor for being a photographer.”

Angel nodded. “I remember this high school class. I liked the stuff we did in the darkroom.”

He unlocked the door, and they went inside. A. J.’s house was built on two levels, into the slope. Entry was through the kitchen, which was clean.

“Mind if I snoop a little?” Angel asked.

“Go ahead,” A. J. said.

She nosed around quickly. The clean, uncluttered counters met with her approval, as did the dishcloth