Vapor Trail by Chuck Logan Read Free Book Online Page A

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.

Chapter Six
    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 redbrick 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