Vapor Trail

“It’s local. It’s in our shop. I’m not going to panic the whole state.”

Broker thought for a few beats and said, “I don’t think panic is the right word; more like sensation. If the Saint comes out of the closet people will come out in those baseball jackets cheering him on. So if you think you have a cop who is going around killing suspected child molesters, I wish you’d tell me.”

“Who said it has to be a cop?”

“Say some names, John.”

“I’d prefer to hear them from you.”

“When the fuck did you start talking like Bill Clinton?” Broker said loudly.

“Push Harry, push him hard,” John said and hung up.

Broker dug Mouse’s phone number out of his wallet and punched it in. He got the voice mail. Goddamn, he hated talking to machines.

“Mouse, it’s Broker. I talked to Malloy. I’m on my way in, about twenty minutes out.”

Ten minutes later, Broker’s cell rang. He flipped it open and hit the button. Not Mouse. Harry Cantrell sounded like he was calling from inside a pinball machine. Broker heard lots of electronic bells and jingles going off.

“So what do you think of Sally Erbeck, neat chick, huh?” Harry said.

“You put her on to me?” Broker said.

“Au contraire. I’d never rat a brother officer out to the yellow press, not me,” Harry said with elaborate seriousness.

“Where are you?” Broker said. But he thought he knew; the electronic calliope music he heard in the background sounded like the intersection of five hundred slot machines.

“Uh-uh. The question is, where are you?”

Broker endeavored to comb the burrs of anger from his voice. Be cool, he told himself. It’s a game. “Driving east on thirty-six, heading into town.”

“You know the Civil War statue in front of the old courthouse on the South Hill?”

“Sure.”

“Be standing in front of the statue at noon,” Harry said.

“A meeting, Harry?”

“Silly boy, I want you where I can see you’re alone. I’ll call. Noon sharp.”

“Make it at one. I have a sit-down with Mouse,” Broker said.

“Okay, at one. Don’t get smart on me. Be alone,” Harry said. The connection went dead.

As he drove east on Highway 36, Broker entertained a fantasy replay of the last scene in Easy Rider. The black Ford Ranger would pull up next to him, and a leering Harry Cantrell would lean out the driver’s side with a shotgun cradled in his elbow. Then, after he pumped four rounds of.00 buck into Broker’s face, he’d drive away.

At 120 miles an hour.

Broker walked into Investigations looking for Mouse, who was in his cube on the phone. When Mouse hung up, Broker said, “We’re still on, right?”

“Oh yeah,” Mouse said. “John called. Sally Erbeck’s calling every cop she knows in the county. The Star Tribune called, and so did Channel Four and Channel Five and Channel Eleven. Word’s out we got a dead priest. They all asked the same question: was foul play involved?”

“And you told them?”

“We’re in the initial stages of an investigation, and we’ll keep them informed. They’re closing the ring.”

“Great. So where’s Lymon?”

Mouse’s battered face conveyed a perfect Gallic shrug. But he got up and motioned with a jerk of his head for Broker to follow him. Benish joined them. They stopped at Lymon’s cube, which was along the outer wall and had a window that faced the lawn between the sheriff’s offices and the government center.

Lymon kept his space orderly. Just one personal picture, an attractive light-skinned woman and a smiling toddler in a frame on his desk. Mouse pointed at the Levolor blinds on the window, which were tilted, the right side up at an angle. Then he summoned Broker forward to look out the window and pointed up at the government center.

“Third floor,” Mouse said.

Broker scanned along the third floor windows and stopped on one that had its blinds tilted in a position similar to Lymon’s. The county attorneys’ offices were on the third floor, where he’d been this morning.

Benish stepped forward and said, “We’ve come to think of it as jungle telegraph. .”

“Benish,” Mouse warned.

But Benish went on. “Although now, since they have matching Palm Pilots, they tend to message each other. Like the ad says, there are times when text is better than talk. .”

Mouse held up a key. “Why don’t you cruise by the gym downstairs and tell Lymon it’s time to meet.”

Broker took the key and went down two flights of stairs, took a few turns, and opened the door to the gym. The room had blue cinder block walls, a blue carpet, and was too small for the thicket of stainless steel exercise stations. In among the crowded steel it was silent but not empty.

Lymon stood on one side of the room with a sheen of sweat on his smooth face. He was methodically lifting dumbbells in alternating biceps curls. Not showy, he wore gray wind pants and an oversized white T-shirt. Thick grids of veins swelled in either forearm as he slowly hoisted and lowered the forty-pound weights.

Across the room Gloria Russell sat at the pec fly machine, spreading her arms, aligning her back, and dragging her arms together, working her delts. She wore black spandex shorts and a black tank top. Broker could not see a hint of fold in the tanned belly above her waistband. Gloria’s eyes bored into the middle distance, concentrating on the reps.

Tremendous fatigue streamed off both of them. Broker could almost see it, like smoke. Lymon couldn’t miss Broker coming into the small area, but his eyes didn’t register Broker’s entry. In the zone, his focus remained fixed elsewhere; his lips continued counting reps.

Lymon’s lips mimed eight as he lowered the weight in his right hand. Then he repeated the silent eight as he lifted the barbell in his left hand, and his eyes moved across Broker and fixed on a point in space about a foot off Broker’s shoulder. No one spoke.

So Broker watched them progress gracefully through their compact jungle of iron and steel. After she finished with the pec fly, Gloria moved to the inclined bench press. She started with dime plates on the bar. Did a steady set of ten reps.

Lymon had finished the alternating curls and continued his biceps work on a barbell. But now he was no longer staring into space. He monitored Gloria, who had added a pair of nickel plates to the bar for her second set. On her seventh rep her arms began to tremble but she maintained her form and was able to pump out the eighth rep. The barbell clunked into the weight stand; she sat up and stared, catching her breath.

Broker intruded into the interval between sets and said, “Lymon, we have a meeting with Mouse.”

“Ten minutes,” Lymon said.

Now Gloria added another pair of nickels to the bar and locked her knees over the raised supports and lay back, resuming her head-down prone position on the inclined bench. She composed herself, carefully placed her hands, and lifted the weight. Smooth, concentrated; two, three, four. .

At four she began to fall apart. She struggled.

Lymon was there instantly, hovering, adding a light tug with his fingertips. His spotting made the difference, and she completed the lift. In that second, as she braced her arms and prepared to lower the weight, their eyes locked.

Then, for the first time, they acknowledged Broker’s presence. As a pair, they looked back at him. Broker thought they appeared romantic, arranged there together among the benches and the barbells, which was to say they looked young, beautiful, and haunted. They also looked guilty of something.

And doomed.