Vapor Trail

Harry snapped off the safety. Teeth clenched, he said, “Your little girl is going to be a fuckin’ orphan.”

Nothing happened.

“C’mon, let’s go,” Harry said.

Their beating hearts were six feet apart. Maybe three feet separated the pistol muzzles.

The veins on Harry’s hands and wrist and forearm bulged as he squeezed the pistol grip. “You gonna learn-”

“Go on, tough guy, pull the trigger,” Mouse taunted.

Harry sneered, “-there’s worse things than dying, motherfucker. .”

“Yeah, like in-patient treatment at St. Joe’s for alcoholism,” Mouse said, reaching in his pocket and pulling out a fistful of bullets. “All those weepy fucking losers telling their lame life stories in those groups, and you’re gonna have to sit there and listen, and they don’t even let you smoke anymore.”

Broker lowered his gun. “You’re gonna love the Detox program. They wake you up with cattle prods, put you to sleep with showers of animal blood.” He smiled as he said this, but-even empty-the sight of Mouse’s gun in Harry’s hand wasn’t something to smile about.

Harry relaxed his grip on the pistol, looking from Broker to Mouse and back again. “You two. .?” he said.

“What were you doing, Harry, provoking me into ending your misery?” Broker said.

“That sure puts a new spin on the term suicide by cop.” Mouse chuckled. “Think we’d go into a room with you with loaded guns, you fuckin’ moron?”

Harry tipped his wrist back, aiming the pistol at the window, and pulled the trigger. The hammer fell on an empty chamber. He dropped out the empty magazine and let it fall to the carpet. Suddenly weak, he handed the.40 -caliber to Mouse and settled to the floor and sat cross-legged. Broker also pulled the trigger to show that his weapon was empty. Then he shoved it back in the hideout holster and sat down across from Harry.

Mouse snatched the rum bottle off the desk, picked up the green plastic box from the bed, and lowered himself to the floor with some difficulty. “Fuckin’ knees,” he said.

They sat in a circle. Mouse passed the bottle to Broker, who took a ritual swig, grimaced, and offered it to Harry.

Harry slowly shook his head. “I’ll pass. I been thinking of quitting.”

Mouse put the green box on the carpet between them. Moving in slow motion, Harry removed one of the bright brass casings from the grid of cubbyholes filled with empty cartridges. He held the primer end up and said, “Every firing pin leaves a distinct impression on the primer, like a fingerprint. The one Gloria’s Colt left was dramatic, obvious to the naked eye. See?”

They squinted at a fishhook impression dented into the primer.

Broker and Mouse had the same thought at the same time. Their eyes clicked together.

“Right,” Harry said. “The six casings left next to Dolman’s body. They were wiped clean of fingerprints, but they have the exact same firing pin signature. I could recognize it blindfolded. Get them from BCA evidence and look for yourself.” Harry paused a beat. “There’s something else. Remember I told you somebody had been snooping in my computer files?”

“Yeah, but I thought. .” Broker said.

“I was just drunk, huh,” Harry said. “Well, I did some snooping of my own and I found a stack of printouts in Gloria’s desk. She went into my trash bin and retrieved these anonymous tip reports I checked out and tossed. You should look at them. Victor Moros was right on top of the pile.”

“We’ll check them out.” Grimacing, Mouse pushed himself to his feet and said, “We got work to do.”

“Yeah, like get a judge off a golf course to write a warrant,” Harry said.

Broker took Harry’s arm to help him up. Harry shook off the hand and said, “Watch it. I still might punch your ticket.”

“Yeah, well, maybe next time you’ll be sober and more in touch with it,” Broker said.

Chapter Thirty-four

Angel was in position for twenty minutes when she heard Carol’s Mazda pull in the front drive. The garage door rail rattled up; the engine noise muffled as the car entered the garage. Then the door came down.

Carol was home.

Angel squirmed around to get more comfortable, sitting on a damp sack of peat moss. Lights came on in the house; the moving pattern of light and shadow marked Carol’s movement through her rooms. A door opened. Carol, barefoot, padded out onto the terra-cotta tiles.

Carol’s hand dropped to her waist, and she shed her shorts with a flick of her wrist and a shimmy. She raised one leg, and let her underpants slide down the other leg and caught them expertly on her toe, kicked them up, and caught them in one hand in a gesture that was almost endearing. She crossed her arms in front of her chest, and elbows up, she peeled off the sports top.

Angel squirmed deeper on her peat moss. Steady. Be steady.

Carol paused for a moment to tap the CD player, then tugged the binder from her ponytail. As the leaden sounds of Chris Rea’s “Road to Hell” jumped from the speakers, she let her hair swing free. Then she walked a circuit of her space, trailing her hands on the leaves of her plants.

Coming down from the day. TGIF.

Carol slipped back into the house and returned wearing a brief orange silk kimono that hung loose, untied, sleeves to midforearm, hem at mid-thigh. A green dragon coiled on the back. She carried a bottle of wine and two long-stemmed glasses.

Expecting company.

So Angel watched Carol sit on her futon sofa and work the cork from the bottle, set the corkscrew aside, pour a glass of wine, and recork the merlot. Then Carol went into her banded chest and removed the baggie of grass and cigarette papers and rolled a joint. A match flared, and Carol inclined back on her couch.

This was the worst part. The waiting. During the waiting the doubts crowded around her in the dark. The scent of the dope reminded her of A. J. Scott. She made a mental note to watch the news tonight, to see if he’d turned up yet.

Then she tried to concentrate on the here and now, which only prompted her to speculate that probably there were spiders in here along with the mosquitoes. She pictured a fat gray leopard spider as big as a mouse.

She shivered.

Get thee behind me. Concentrate on Carol.

She’s on the list.

But then the wait ended abruptly when Angel heard the gate open. Carol’s student entered by the same route as had Angel, coming down the dark alley. Sneaking in.

Carol slithered up from the couch and made a halfhearted gesture at tying the robe. She met the boy at the door to the solarium, and they conversed in low tones that Angel couldn’t hear clearly. But their body language was easy to decipher, awkward and needy as two dumb animals edging toward the trough.

Snatches of conversation drifted on the soupy air.

“Can I get you some wine?” Carol.

“How about a hit on that joint?” Him.

Carol wagged a finger. “The wine’s bad enough.”

The boy looked around, and his eyes stopped on a direct line with the ajar door to the shed. “Yeah, right,” he said.

And Angel held her breath. He’s staring right at me. But then she thought, He can’t see me-not because she was invisible but because she was out in the dark yard and he was standing inside, in the light. All he probably saw was his own reflection on the curved transparent panels of the solarium.

He had a jock’s blond buzz cut, wore baggy over-the-knee shorts and a T-shirt artfully torn to emphasize his lifter’s delts, lats, and triceps. A barbed-wire tattoo circled the biceps on his left arm. He wore an ear stud in his left ear.