Vapor Trail (11 page)

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 carefully folded between the double sinks. The sinks themselves were spotless and smelled
faintly of Clorox. The first level was like a loft; kitchen, dining area, bath, and laundry room cantilevered over the broad living room below.

Then she followed him down the stairway to the main level, which was one long airy space with a fireplace at one end. A door led to what Angel assumed was a bedroom on the other. A central patio door opened onto the wide deck. She could see a wedge of river between the trees. It was all very spare and orderly; minimal furniture, maximum hardwood floors, bare walls and windows. A computer desk was set along the wall by the fireplace with an equipment rack next to it. Long black canvas bags were stacked on the rack. A rolled-up scrim hung from the wall like a picture screen. Some spidery folded-up metal things leaned against the rack, like music stands. Probably for lights. But she didn’t see any lights.

“You liked the darkroom, huh? Well, things have changed,” A. J. said.

“What do you mean?” Angel was immediately wary. She reminded herself not to touch anything.

“I mean the darkroom. Like, where is it?” A. J. asked.

Angel shrugged. “But this isn’t your studio, is it?”

“Pretty much.” He swung his camera up on the strap over his shoulder. It was dense black and intricate with knobs, buttons, apertures, a heavy lens. She could tell it was very heavy, just the way he braced to raise it up. “Everything is internal now.”

“Internal?”

A. J. pointed to the computer along the wall. “Like, in there. In the tube.”

“No darkroom? No more chemicals and doing things with your hands, the shadow stuff . . . ?”

“Dodging.” A. J. bobbed his head. “Yeah, I miss it; the little touch of witchcraft. But then this came along.” He held up the
camera. “Nikon D1 digital. Check this out.” He pointed to a small gray window on the camera’s thicker right side. “I press this monitor button, and the most recent shot comes on in this viewing window.”

He smiled when he said that and moved closer so his hip and arm brushed her, casual but intimate. Angel didn’t care; she’d completed her physical trick and didn’t even feel it. He might have been touching a wall. And she’d made up her mind on this. She’d allow him in a lot closer to get a look into his computer files.

But then she stiffened. The picture that popped up in the monitor window was of herself, captured in miniature. That was her, all right, sitting on her towel at the beach. Perfectly framed and perfectly clear. The sonofabitch must have a long-angle lens. He must have taken her picture just before he walked over and started talking her up.

This was not good.

But she controlled herself and said, “A. J., I don’t mind you taking my picture, but I’d like to know in advance; I don’t care for this sneaky candid stuff.”

A. J. placed the palm of his hand on his chest. “I apologize. Habit. What I do. But the thing is” —he smiled— “you can delete it; see the button here, next to Monitor . . .”

“How cute; it’s got a little bitty trash can on it,” Angel said, feeling more relieved and seeing her opening.

“All you have to do is press the delete. Go ahead.”

Angel was reluctant to touch the camera. She did not believe that wiping surfaces reliably eliminated all traces of fingerprints. But this was not a time to introduce speed bumps. She put her index finger forward and carefully pressed the button with the tip of her fingernail.

“See,” A. J. said.

A dialog box appeared in the middle of the picture in the monitor.
ERASING IMAGES
. Underneath it said
YES
, then a little hand pointing to a delete icon identical to the delete button she had pressed. She pressed the delete button again with her fingernail, and the picture disappeared.

She smiled and pursed her lips. “But how do I know that’s the only picture?”

A. J. acted hurt. “You don’t trust me.”

“I don’t
know
you.”

Angel pronounced
know
with just the right suggestion of unfolding revelation. Encouraged, A. J. steered her to the computer table and said, “So why don’t you just edit through all the pix I took at the beach.”

“I can do that, like, just here? Now?” Angel appeared to be genuinely curious. The fact was she knew her away around Macintosh computers and Photoshop software. She smiled.

A. J. smiled back.

He didn’t know she’d smiled because she felt she was getting warm.

A. J. removed the film card from his camera. “Four hundred bucks, one hundred twenty snaps.” It was the size of a short, flat book of matches. He put the card into a slot in a mouselike pad. His screen saver—a goofy dog sailing after a bone—vanished, and his desktop appeared. Then a Nikon D1 icon came on. His fingers flew over the keyboard, and strips of pictures appeared.

“There you go,” he said, “just scroll through them and see for yourself.”

Warmer.

“Show me,” she said. She put her beach bag down under the computer table within easy reach. Then she sat in the chair in front of the Macintosh and kept her hands primly in her lap.

“Just use the mouse to scroll. If you want to magnify, double-click on the checked box in the corner of the frame.” His lips were
close to her ear, and she could smell his breath on her cheek. His breath smelled like Tic Tacs. She recalled that the priest’s breath had smelled exactly the same through the grille in the confessional.

“Can I ask you something personal?” A. J. said.

Angel prepared herself.
Okay. Here it comes.

But he said, “You didn’t go swimming, did you?”

“No. Why do you ask?” She was still sitting up straight, hands folded in her lap, reluctant to touch the keyboard.

“Because you’re wearing a very expensive wig, and you didn’t want to get it wet.”

Angel turned and looked A. J. directly in the eye. “Tell me, do you think the first time you meet somebody is an appropriate occasion to discuss the Big
C
?”

Her words were a puff of fire. He immediately stepped back.

“Don’t worry,” Angel said with a brave smile, “it’s under control. And A. J.? it’s not contagious.”

A. J. blushed with embarrassment. Before he could stammer a response, Angel spoke up.

“Now can I tell you something personal?”

“Sure.”

“You
did
go swimming because you smell like weeds, and there’s this sign when you drive into that park that says you could get swimmer’s itch.”

“Good point. Why don’t I take a shower. You can browse around the computer. Just don’t pull the card out of the reader, okay?”

Angel nodded. “Gotcha.”

He turned and bounced up the stairs and went into the bathroom. The moment the door closed behind him, Angel reached into her bag and yanked on her latex gloves. By the time she heard water running in the pipes, she had closed out of the pictures A. J. had taken today and was racing through his card files.

No categories to help her. Just dates going back a month. Then maybe he refiled them, probably after burning them to a DVD.

She pulled up dates and scanned a few frames. It was routine newspaper filler—head shots, people at events, local-color shots. Minutes passed. Her fingers blurred over the keys; opening files, random scanning, closing them. She almost didn’t want to find anything.

But then, of course, she did.

She scrolled down the strip of frames. This was some kind of fashion shoot because the subject was posed against a light blue background. She got up, went to the hanging scrim mounted on the wall by the equipment rack. Pulled it down and found a matching light blue. So probably these were taken here.

She returned to the desk and studied a picture of a blond teenage boy in a pair of jeans naked from the waist up. He was thin but svelte, with smooth little ab muscles. Some of the shots looked as if he was modeling the jeans, but in others he was clearly modeling himself.

Especially the ones where he had the fly unzipped. In successive frames the jeans were doing a hula down his hips.

Then she double-clicked on the frame where the zipper was three-quarters open and his not-so-little-business was half tumescent, just kind of ready to pop out of its crinkly nest of pubic hair like a just-opened present nestled in excelsior. Clearly, this was a gift waiting to be discovered. And if the boy’s posture didn’t convey the intended message, the expression on his face certainly did; the lower lip sagging, the tongue in motion.

Angel stared at the eyes. The way they absolutely owned the jaded intersection of violation and vulnerability.

Suddenly, she realized that the shower was no longer running. Upstairs, she heard him coming out of the bathroom. Bare feet slapping the hardwood floor, coming down the hall into the dining
room. She dragged the mouse up to
FILE
and selected
PRINT
. Copies: 5.

Angel reached down, grabbed her beach bag, and set it in her lap. She slid her right hand in and curled her fingers around the pistol. The chair had casters. It was easy to push away from the computer, so he could see the image on the screen as he walked down the stairs.

She half wondered if he’d presume too much and come back down in a bathrobe; but, no, A. J. had on baggy shorts and a tank top. Halfway down the stairs he saw the picture on the screen, heard the printer coughing out the copies. He did not seem alarmed; more alert certainly, but mainly curious.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“I don’t know, you tell me. I hit some keys, and this popped up.”

“And the printer?”

“More buttons, I guess.” Angel was willing to hear his argument but she could feel Athena forming in her bones, armored, of the piercing brow, implacable.

A. J. made a reasonable gesture with his hands. “I didn’t invent Madison Avenue, Angela. So maybe I’m a little ahead of the curve, playing with the edges of child erotica. But ads have been published in the
New York Times Magazine
and in
Vanity Fair
that are a mere inch away from that.”