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“ ‘I’m no Sherlock Holmes, Doc,’ I says, ‘but I can go you one better than that.’
“ ‘Really?’ he says, kinda skeptical.
“ ‘Ayuh,’ I says. ‘I think he had his supper either at Curly’s or Jan’s Wharfside over here, or Yanko’s on Moose-Look.’
“ ‘Why one of those, when there’s got to be fifty restaurants within a twenty-mile radius of where we’re standin that sell fish dinners, even in April?’ he asks. ‘Why not the Grey Gull, for that matter?’
“ ‘Because the Grey Gull would not stoop to selling fish and chips,’ I says, ‘and that’s what this guy had.’
“Now Steffi—I’d done okay through most of the autopsy, but right about then I started feeling decidedly chuck-upsy. ‘Those three places I mentioned sell fish and chips,’ I says, ‘and I could smell the vinegar as soon as you cut his stomach open.’ Then I had to rush into his little bathroom and throw up.
“But I was right. I developed my ‘sleeping ID’ pictures that night and showed em around at the places that sold fish and chips the very next day. No one at Yanko’s recognized him, but the take-out girl at Jan’s Wharfside knew him right away. She said she served him a fish-and-chips basket, plus a Coke or a Diet Coke, she couldn’t remember which, late on the afternoon before he was found. He took it to one of the tables and sat eating and looking out at the water. I asked if he said anything, and she said not really, just please and thank you. I asked if she noticed where he went when he finished his meal—which he ate around five-thirty—and she said no.”
He looked at Stephanie. “My guess is probably down to the town dock, to catch the six o’clock ferry to Moosie. The time would have been just about right.”
“Ayuh, that’s what I’ve always figured,” Dave said.
Stephanie sat up straight as something occurred to her. “It was April. The middle of April on the coast of Maine, but he had no coat on when he was found. Was he wearing a coat when he was served at Jan’s?”
Both of the old men grinned at her as if she had just solved some complicated equation. Only, Stephanie knew, their business—even at the humbleWeekly Islander level—was less about solving than it was delineating whatneeded to be solved.
“That’s a good question,” Vince said.
“Lovely question,” Dave agreed.
“I was saving that part,” Vince said, “but since there’s nostory , exactly, saving the good parts doesn’t matter…and if you want answers, dear heart, the store is closed. The take-out girl at Jan’s didn’t remember for sure, and no one else remembered him at all. I suppose we have to count ourselves lucky, in a way; had he bellied up to that counter in mid-July, when such places have a million people in em, all wanting fish-and-chips baskets, lobster rolls, and ice cream sundaes, she wouldn’t have remembered him at all unless he’d dropped his trousers and mooned her.”
“Maybe not even then,” Stephanie said.
“That’s true. As it was, shedid remember him, but not if he was wearing a coat. I didn’t press her too hard on it, either, knowin that if I did she might remember somethin just to please me…or to get me out of her hair. She said ‘I seem to recall he was wearing a light green jacket, Mr. Teague, but that could be wrong.’ And maybe itwas wrong, but do you know…I tend to think she was right. That he was wearing such a jacket.”
“Then where was it?” Stephanie asked. “Did such a jacket ever turn up?”
“No,” Dave said, “so maybe therewas no jacket…although what he was doing outside on a raw seacoast night in April without one certainly beggarsmy imagination.”
Stephanie turned back to Vince, suddenly with a thousand questions, all urgent, none fully articulated.
“What are you smiling about, dear?” Vince asked.
“I don’t know.” She paused. “Yes, I do. I have so goddamned many questions I don’t know which one to ask first.”
Both of the old men whooped at that one. Dave actually fished a big handkerchief out of his back pocket and mopped his eyes with it. “Ain’t that a corker!” he exclaimed. “Yes, ma’am! I tell you what, Steff: why don’t you pretend you’re drawin for the Tupperware set at the Ladies Auxiliary Autumn Sale? Just close your eyes and pick one out of the goldfish bowl.”
“All right,” she said, and although she didn’t quite do that, it was close. “What about the dead man’s fingerprints? And his dental records? I thought that when it came to identifying dead people, those things were pretty much infallible.”
“Most people do and probably they are,” Vince said, “but you have to remember this was 1980, Steff.” He was still smiling, but his eyes were serious. “Before the computer revolution, andlong before the Internet, that marvelous tool young folks such as yourself take for granted. In 1980, you could check the prints and dental records of what police departments call an unsub—an unknown subject—against those of a person you thought your unsub might be, but checkin em against the prints or dental records of all the wanted felons on file in all the police departments would have taken years, and against those of all the folks reported disappeared every year in the United States? Even if you narrowed the list down to just men in their thirties and forties? Not possible, dear.”
“But I thought the armed forces kept computer records, even back then…”
“I don’t think so,” Vince said. “And if they did, I don’t believe the Kid’s prints were ever sent to them.”
“In any case, the initial ID didn’t come from the man’s fingerprints or dental work,” Dave said. He laced his fingers over his considerable chest and appeared almost to preen in the day’s late sunshine, now slanting but still warm. “I believe that’s known as cuttin to the chase.”
“So wheredid it come from?”
“That brings us back to Paul Devane,” Vince said, “and Ilike coming back to Paul Devane, because, as I said, there’s a story there, and stories are my business. They’re mybeat , we would have said back in the old, old days. Devane’s a little sip of Horatio Alger, small but satisfying.Strive and Succeed. Work and Win. ”
“Piss and Vinegar,” Dave suggested.
“If you like,” Vince said evenly. “Sure, ayuh, if you like. Devane goes off with those two stupid cops, O’Shanny and Morrison, as soon as Cathcart gives them the preliminary report on the burn victims from the apartment house fire, because they don’t give a heck about some accidental choking victim who died over on Moose-Lookit Island. Cathcart, meanwhile, does his gut-tossing on John Doe with yours truly in attendance. Onto the death certificate goesasphyxiation due to choking or the medical equivalent thereof. Into the newspapers goes my ‘sleeping ID’ photo, which our Victorian ancestors much more truthfully called a ‘death portrait.’ And no one calls the Attorney General’s Office or the State Police barracks in Augusta to say that’s their missing father or uncle or brother.
“Tinnock Funeral Home keeps him in their cooler for six days—it’s not the law, but like s’many things in matters of this sort, Steffi, you discover it’s an accepted custom. Everybody in the death-business knows it, even if nobody knowswhy . At the end of that period, when he was still John Doe and still unclaimed, Abe Carvey went on ahead and embalmed him. He was put into the funeral home’s own crypt at Seaview Cemetery—”
“This part’s rather creepy,” Stephanie said. She found she could see the man in there, for some reason not in a coffin (although he must surely have been provided with some sort of cheap box) but simply laid on a stone slab with a sheet over him. An unclaimed package in a post office of the dead.
“Ayuh, ’tis, a bit,” Vince said levelly. “Do you want me to push on?”
“If you stop now, I’ll kill you,” she said.
He nodded, not smiling now but pleased with her just the same. She didn’t know how she knew that, but she did.
“He boarded the summer and half the fall in there. Then, when November come around and the body was still unnamed and unclaimed, they decided they ought to bury him.” In Vince’s Yankee accent,bury rhymed withfurry . “Before the ground stiffened up again and made digging particularly hard, don’t you see.”
“I do,” Stephanie said quietly. And she did. This time she didn’t sense the telepathy between the two old men, but perhaps it was there, because Dave took up the tale (such tale as there was) with no prompting from theIslander ’s senior editor.
“Devane finished out his tour with O’Shanny and Morrison to the bitter end,” he said. “He probably even gave them each a tie or something at the end of his three months or his quarter or whatever it was; as I think I told you, Stephanie, there was no quit in that young fella. But as soon as he was finished, he put in his paperwork at whatever his college was—Ithink he told me Georgetown, but you mustn’t hold me to that—and started back up again, taking whatever courses he needed for law school. And except for two things, that might have been where Mr. Paul Devane leaves this story—which, as Vince says, isn’t a story at all, except maybe for this part. The first thing is that Devane peeked into the evidence bag at some point, and looked over John Doe’s personal effects. The second is that he got serious about a girl, and she took him home to meet her parents, as girls often do when things get serious, and this girl’s father had at least one bad habit that was more common then than it is now. He smoked cigarettes.”
Stephanie’s mind, which was a good one (both of the men knew this), at once flashed upon the pack of cigarettes that had fallen onto the sand of Hammock Beach when the dead man fell over. Johnny Gravlin (now Moose-Look’s mayor) had picked it up and put it back into the dead man’s pocket. And then something else came to her, not in a flash but in a blinding glare. She jerked as if stung. One of her feet struck the side of her glass and knocked it over. Coke fizzed across the weathered boards of the porch and dripped between them to the rocks and weeds far below. The old men didn’t notice. They knew a state of grace perfectly well when they saw one, and were watching their intern with interest and delight.
“The tax-stamp!” she nearly shrieked.“There’s a state tax-stamp on the bottom of every pack!”
They both applauded her, gently but sincerely.
10
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15
“ ‘Really?’ he says, kinda skeptical.
“ ‘Ayuh,’ I says. ‘I think he had his supper either at Curly’s or Jan’s Wharfside over here, or Yanko’s on Moose-Look.’
“ ‘Why one of those, when there’s got to be fifty restaurants within a twenty-mile radius of where we’re standin that sell fish dinners, even in April?’ he asks. ‘Why not the Grey Gull, for that matter?’
“ ‘Because the Grey Gull would not stoop to selling fish and chips,’ I says, ‘and that’s what this guy had.’
“Now Steffi—I’d done okay through most of the autopsy, but right about then I started feeling decidedly chuck-upsy. ‘Those three places I mentioned sell fish and chips,’ I says, ‘and I could smell the vinegar as soon as you cut his stomach open.’ Then I had to rush into his little bathroom and throw up.
“But I was right. I developed my ‘sleeping ID’ pictures that night and showed em around at the places that sold fish and chips the very next day. No one at Yanko’s recognized him, but the take-out girl at Jan’s Wharfside knew him right away. She said she served him a fish-and-chips basket, plus a Coke or a Diet Coke, she couldn’t remember which, late on the afternoon before he was found. He took it to one of the tables and sat eating and looking out at the water. I asked if he said anything, and she said not really, just please and thank you. I asked if she noticed where he went when he finished his meal—which he ate around five-thirty—and she said no.”
He looked at Stephanie. “My guess is probably down to the town dock, to catch the six o’clock ferry to Moosie. The time would have been just about right.”
“Ayuh, that’s what I’ve always figured,” Dave said.
Stephanie sat up straight as something occurred to her. “It was April. The middle of April on the coast of Maine, but he had no coat on when he was found. Was he wearing a coat when he was served at Jan’s?”
Both of the old men grinned at her as if she had just solved some complicated equation. Only, Stephanie knew, their business—even at the humbleWeekly Islander level—was less about solving than it was delineating whatneeded to be solved.
“That’s a good question,” Vince said.
“Lovely question,” Dave agreed.
“I was saving that part,” Vince said, “but since there’s nostory , exactly, saving the good parts doesn’t matter…and if you want answers, dear heart, the store is closed. The take-out girl at Jan’s didn’t remember for sure, and no one else remembered him at all. I suppose we have to count ourselves lucky, in a way; had he bellied up to that counter in mid-July, when such places have a million people in em, all wanting fish-and-chips baskets, lobster rolls, and ice cream sundaes, she wouldn’t have remembered him at all unless he’d dropped his trousers and mooned her.”
“Maybe not even then,” Stephanie said.
“That’s true. As it was, shedid remember him, but not if he was wearing a coat. I didn’t press her too hard on it, either, knowin that if I did she might remember somethin just to please me…or to get me out of her hair. She said ‘I seem to recall he was wearing a light green jacket, Mr. Teague, but that could be wrong.’ And maybe itwas wrong, but do you know…I tend to think she was right. That he was wearing such a jacket.”
“Then where was it?” Stephanie asked. “Did such a jacket ever turn up?”
“No,” Dave said, “so maybe therewas no jacket…although what he was doing outside on a raw seacoast night in April without one certainly beggarsmy imagination.”
Stephanie turned back to Vince, suddenly with a thousand questions, all urgent, none fully articulated.
“What are you smiling about, dear?” Vince asked.
“I don’t know.” She paused. “Yes, I do. I have so goddamned many questions I don’t know which one to ask first.”
Both of the old men whooped at that one. Dave actually fished a big handkerchief out of his back pocket and mopped his eyes with it. “Ain’t that a corker!” he exclaimed. “Yes, ma’am! I tell you what, Steff: why don’t you pretend you’re drawin for the Tupperware set at the Ladies Auxiliary Autumn Sale? Just close your eyes and pick one out of the goldfish bowl.”
“All right,” she said, and although she didn’t quite do that, it was close. “What about the dead man’s fingerprints? And his dental records? I thought that when it came to identifying dead people, those things were pretty much infallible.”
“Most people do and probably they are,” Vince said, “but you have to remember this was 1980, Steff.” He was still smiling, but his eyes were serious. “Before the computer revolution, andlong before the Internet, that marvelous tool young folks such as yourself take for granted. In 1980, you could check the prints and dental records of what police departments call an unsub—an unknown subject—against those of a person you thought your unsub might be, but checkin em against the prints or dental records of all the wanted felons on file in all the police departments would have taken years, and against those of all the folks reported disappeared every year in the United States? Even if you narrowed the list down to just men in their thirties and forties? Not possible, dear.”
“But I thought the armed forces kept computer records, even back then…”
“I don’t think so,” Vince said. “And if they did, I don’t believe the Kid’s prints were ever sent to them.”
“In any case, the initial ID didn’t come from the man’s fingerprints or dental work,” Dave said. He laced his fingers over his considerable chest and appeared almost to preen in the day’s late sunshine, now slanting but still warm. “I believe that’s known as cuttin to the chase.”
“So wheredid it come from?”
“That brings us back to Paul Devane,” Vince said, “and Ilike coming back to Paul Devane, because, as I said, there’s a story there, and stories are my business. They’re mybeat , we would have said back in the old, old days. Devane’s a little sip of Horatio Alger, small but satisfying.Strive and Succeed. Work and Win. ”
“Piss and Vinegar,” Dave suggested.
“If you like,” Vince said evenly. “Sure, ayuh, if you like. Devane goes off with those two stupid cops, O’Shanny and Morrison, as soon as Cathcart gives them the preliminary report on the burn victims from the apartment house fire, because they don’t give a heck about some accidental choking victim who died over on Moose-Lookit Island. Cathcart, meanwhile, does his gut-tossing on John Doe with yours truly in attendance. Onto the death certificate goesasphyxiation due to choking or the medical equivalent thereof. Into the newspapers goes my ‘sleeping ID’ photo, which our Victorian ancestors much more truthfully called a ‘death portrait.’ And no one calls the Attorney General’s Office or the State Police barracks in Augusta to say that’s their missing father or uncle or brother.
“Tinnock Funeral Home keeps him in their cooler for six days—it’s not the law, but like s’many things in matters of this sort, Steffi, you discover it’s an accepted custom. Everybody in the death-business knows it, even if nobody knowswhy . At the end of that period, when he was still John Doe and still unclaimed, Abe Carvey went on ahead and embalmed him. He was put into the funeral home’s own crypt at Seaview Cemetery—”
“This part’s rather creepy,” Stephanie said. She found she could see the man in there, for some reason not in a coffin (although he must surely have been provided with some sort of cheap box) but simply laid on a stone slab with a sheet over him. An unclaimed package in a post office of the dead.
“Ayuh, ’tis, a bit,” Vince said levelly. “Do you want me to push on?”
“If you stop now, I’ll kill you,” she said.
He nodded, not smiling now but pleased with her just the same. She didn’t know how she knew that, but she did.
“He boarded the summer and half the fall in there. Then, when November come around and the body was still unnamed and unclaimed, they decided they ought to bury him.” In Vince’s Yankee accent,bury rhymed withfurry . “Before the ground stiffened up again and made digging particularly hard, don’t you see.”
“I do,” Stephanie said quietly. And she did. This time she didn’t sense the telepathy between the two old men, but perhaps it was there, because Dave took up the tale (such tale as there was) with no prompting from theIslander ’s senior editor.
“Devane finished out his tour with O’Shanny and Morrison to the bitter end,” he said. “He probably even gave them each a tie or something at the end of his three months or his quarter or whatever it was; as I think I told you, Stephanie, there was no quit in that young fella. But as soon as he was finished, he put in his paperwork at whatever his college was—Ithink he told me Georgetown, but you mustn’t hold me to that—and started back up again, taking whatever courses he needed for law school. And except for two things, that might have been where Mr. Paul Devane leaves this story—which, as Vince says, isn’t a story at all, except maybe for this part. The first thing is that Devane peeked into the evidence bag at some point, and looked over John Doe’s personal effects. The second is that he got serious about a girl, and she took him home to meet her parents, as girls often do when things get serious, and this girl’s father had at least one bad habit that was more common then than it is now. He smoked cigarettes.”
Stephanie’s mind, which was a good one (both of the men knew this), at once flashed upon the pack of cigarettes that had fallen onto the sand of Hammock Beach when the dead man fell over. Johnny Gravlin (now Moose-Look’s mayor) had picked it up and put it back into the dead man’s pocket. And then something else came to her, not in a flash but in a blinding glare. She jerked as if stung. One of her feet struck the side of her glass and knocked it over. Coke fizzed across the weathered boards of the porch and dripped between them to the rocks and weeds far below. The old men didn’t notice. They knew a state of grace perfectly well when they saw one, and were watching their intern with interest and delight.
“The tax-stamp!” she nearly shrieked.“There’s a state tax-stamp on the bottom of every pack!”
They both applauded her, gently but sincerely.
10
Dave said, “Let me tell you what young Mr. Devane saw when he took his forbidden peek into the evidence bag, Steffi—and I have no doubt he took that look more to spite those two than because he actually believed he’d see anything of value in such a scanty collection of stuff. To start with, there was John Doe’s wedding ring; a plain gold band, no engraving, not even a date.”
“They didn’t leave it on his…” She saw the way the two men were looking at her, and it made her realize that what she was suggesting was foolish. If the man was identified, the ring would be returned. He might then be committed to the ground with it on his finger, if that was what his surviving family wanted. But until then it was evidence, and had to be treated as such.
“No,” she said. “Of course not. Silly me. One thing, though—there must have been a Mrs. Doe somewhere. Or a Mrs. Kid. Yes?”
“Yes,” Vince Teague said, rather heavily. “And we found her. Eventually.”
“And were there little Does?” Stephanie asked, thinking that the man had been the right age for a whole gaggle of them.
“Let’s not get stuck on that part of it just now, if you please,” Dave said.
“Oh,” Stephanie said. “Sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about,” he said, smiling a little. “Just don’t want to lose m’place. It’s easier to do when there’s no…what would you call it, Vincent?”
“No through-line,” Vince said. He was smiling, too, but his eyes were a little distant. Stephanie wondered if it was the thought of the little Does that had put that distance there.
“Nope, no through-line t’all,” Dave said. He thought, then proved how little he’d lost his place by ticking items rapidly off on his fingers. “Contents of the bag was the deceased’s weddin-ring, seventeen dollars in paper money—a ten, a five, and two ones—plus some assorted change that might have added up to a buck. Also, Devane said, one coin that wasn’t American. He said he thought the writing on it was Russian.”
“Russian,” she marveled.
“What’s called Cyrillic,” Vince murmured.
Dave pressed ahead. “There was a roll of Certs and a pack of Big Red chewin gum with all but one stick gone. There was a book of matches with an ad for stamp-collectin on the front—I’m sure you’ve seen that kind, they hand em out at every convenience store—and Devane said he could see a strike-mark on the strip across the bottom for that purpose, pink and bright. And then there was that pack of cigarettes, open and with one or two cigarettes gone. Devane thought only one, and the single strike-mark on the matchbook seemed to bear that out, he said.”
“But no wallet,” Stephanie said.
“No, ma’am.”
“And absolutely no identification.”
“No.”
“Did anyone theorize that maybe someone came along and stole Mr. Doe’s last piece of steakand his wallet?” she asked, and a little giggle got out before she could put her hand over her mouth.
“Steffi, we tried that and everything else,” Vince said. “Including the idea that maybe he got dropped off on Hammock Beach by one of the Coast Lights.”
“Some sixteen months after Johnny Gravlin and Nancy Arnault found that fella,” Dave resumed, “Paul Devane was invited to spend a weekend at his lady-friend’s house in Pennsylvania. I have to think that Moose-Lookit Island, Hammock Beach, and John Doe were all about the last things on his mind just then. He said he and the girlfriend were going out for the evening, to a movie or somethin. Mother and Dad were in the kitchen, finishin the supper dishes—‘doin the ridding-up’ is what we say in these parts—and although Paul had offered to help, he’d been banished to the living room on the grounds of not knowin where anything went. So he was sittin there, watchin whatever was on the TV, and he happened to glance over at Poppa Bear’s easy-chair, and there on Poppa Bear’s little endtable, right next to Poppa Bear’sTV Guide and Poppa Bear’s ashtray, was Poppa Bear’s pack of smokes.”
He paused, giving her a smile and a shrug.
“It’s funny how things work, sometimes; it makes you wonder how often theydon’t . If that pack had been turned a different way—so the top had been facing him instead of the bottom—John Doe might have gone on being John Doe instead of first the Colorado Kid and then Mr. James Cogan of Nederland, a town just west of Boulder. But the bottom of the packwas facing him, and he saw the stamp on it. It was astamp , like a postage stamp, and that made him think of the pack of cigarettes in the evidence bag that day.
“You see, Steffi, one of Paul Devane’s minders—I disremember if it was O’Shanny or Morrison—had been a smoker, and among Paul’s other chores, he’d bought this fella a fair smack of Camel cigarettes, and while they also had a stamp on them, it seemed to him it wasn’t the same as the one on the pack in the evidence bag. It seemed to him that the stamp on the State of Maine cigarettes he bought for the detective was anink stamp, like the kind you sometimes get on your hand when you go to a small-town dance, or…I dunno…”
“To the Gernerd Farms Hayride and Picnic?” she asked, smiling.
“You got it!” he said, pointing a plump finger at her like a gun. “Anyway, this wa’nt the kind of thing where you jump up yelling ‘Eureka! I have found it!’, but his mind kep’ returnin to it over and over again that weekend, because the memory of those cigarettes in the evidence bag bothered him. For one thing, it seemed to Paul Devane that John Doe’s cigarettes certainlyshould have had a Maine tax-stamp on them, no matter where he came from.”
“Why?”
“Because there was only one gone. What kind of cigarette smoker only smokes one in six hours?”
“A light one?”
“A man who has a full pack and don’t take but one cigarette out of it in six hours ain’t a light smoker, that’s anon -smoker,” Vince said mildly. “Also, Devane saw the man’s tongue. So did I—I was on my knees in front of him, shining Doc Robinson’s otoscope into his mouth. It was as pink as peppermint candy. Not a smoker’s tongue at all.”
“Oh, and the matchbook,” Stephanie said thoughtfully. “One strike?”
Vince Teague was smiling at her. Smiling and nodding. “One strike,” he said.
“No lighter?”
“No lighter.” Both men said it together, then laughed.
“They didn’t leave it on his…” She saw the way the two men were looking at her, and it made her realize that what she was suggesting was foolish. If the man was identified, the ring would be returned. He might then be committed to the ground with it on his finger, if that was what his surviving family wanted. But until then it was evidence, and had to be treated as such.
“No,” she said. “Of course not. Silly me. One thing, though—there must have been a Mrs. Doe somewhere. Or a Mrs. Kid. Yes?”
“Yes,” Vince Teague said, rather heavily. “And we found her. Eventually.”
“And were there little Does?” Stephanie asked, thinking that the man had been the right age for a whole gaggle of them.
“Let’s not get stuck on that part of it just now, if you please,” Dave said.
“Oh,” Stephanie said. “Sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about,” he said, smiling a little. “Just don’t want to lose m’place. It’s easier to do when there’s no…what would you call it, Vincent?”
“No through-line,” Vince said. He was smiling, too, but his eyes were a little distant. Stephanie wondered if it was the thought of the little Does that had put that distance there.
“Nope, no through-line t’all,” Dave said. He thought, then proved how little he’d lost his place by ticking items rapidly off on his fingers. “Contents of the bag was the deceased’s weddin-ring, seventeen dollars in paper money—a ten, a five, and two ones—plus some assorted change that might have added up to a buck. Also, Devane said, one coin that wasn’t American. He said he thought the writing on it was Russian.”
“Russian,” she marveled.
“What’s called Cyrillic,” Vince murmured.
Dave pressed ahead. “There was a roll of Certs and a pack of Big Red chewin gum with all but one stick gone. There was a book of matches with an ad for stamp-collectin on the front—I’m sure you’ve seen that kind, they hand em out at every convenience store—and Devane said he could see a strike-mark on the strip across the bottom for that purpose, pink and bright. And then there was that pack of cigarettes, open and with one or two cigarettes gone. Devane thought only one, and the single strike-mark on the matchbook seemed to bear that out, he said.”
“But no wallet,” Stephanie said.
“No, ma’am.”
“And absolutely no identification.”
“No.”
“Did anyone theorize that maybe someone came along and stole Mr. Doe’s last piece of steakand his wallet?” she asked, and a little giggle got out before she could put her hand over her mouth.
“Steffi, we tried that and everything else,” Vince said. “Including the idea that maybe he got dropped off on Hammock Beach by one of the Coast Lights.”
“Some sixteen months after Johnny Gravlin and Nancy Arnault found that fella,” Dave resumed, “Paul Devane was invited to spend a weekend at his lady-friend’s house in Pennsylvania. I have to think that Moose-Lookit Island, Hammock Beach, and John Doe were all about the last things on his mind just then. He said he and the girlfriend were going out for the evening, to a movie or somethin. Mother and Dad were in the kitchen, finishin the supper dishes—‘doin the ridding-up’ is what we say in these parts—and although Paul had offered to help, he’d been banished to the living room on the grounds of not knowin where anything went. So he was sittin there, watchin whatever was on the TV, and he happened to glance over at Poppa Bear’s easy-chair, and there on Poppa Bear’s little endtable, right next to Poppa Bear’sTV Guide and Poppa Bear’s ashtray, was Poppa Bear’s pack of smokes.”
He paused, giving her a smile and a shrug.
“It’s funny how things work, sometimes; it makes you wonder how often theydon’t . If that pack had been turned a different way—so the top had been facing him instead of the bottom—John Doe might have gone on being John Doe instead of first the Colorado Kid and then Mr. James Cogan of Nederland, a town just west of Boulder. But the bottom of the packwas facing him, and he saw the stamp on it. It was astamp , like a postage stamp, and that made him think of the pack of cigarettes in the evidence bag that day.
“You see, Steffi, one of Paul Devane’s minders—I disremember if it was O’Shanny or Morrison—had been a smoker, and among Paul’s other chores, he’d bought this fella a fair smack of Camel cigarettes, and while they also had a stamp on them, it seemed to him it wasn’t the same as the one on the pack in the evidence bag. It seemed to him that the stamp on the State of Maine cigarettes he bought for the detective was anink stamp, like the kind you sometimes get on your hand when you go to a small-town dance, or…I dunno…”
“To the Gernerd Farms Hayride and Picnic?” she asked, smiling.
“You got it!” he said, pointing a plump finger at her like a gun. “Anyway, this wa’nt the kind of thing where you jump up yelling ‘Eureka! I have found it!’, but his mind kep’ returnin to it over and over again that weekend, because the memory of those cigarettes in the evidence bag bothered him. For one thing, it seemed to Paul Devane that John Doe’s cigarettes certainlyshould have had a Maine tax-stamp on them, no matter where he came from.”
“Why?”
“Because there was only one gone. What kind of cigarette smoker only smokes one in six hours?”
“A light one?”
“A man who has a full pack and don’t take but one cigarette out of it in six hours ain’t a light smoker, that’s anon -smoker,” Vince said mildly. “Also, Devane saw the man’s tongue. So did I—I was on my knees in front of him, shining Doc Robinson’s otoscope into his mouth. It was as pink as peppermint candy. Not a smoker’s tongue at all.”
“Oh, and the matchbook,” Stephanie said thoughtfully. “One strike?”
Vince Teague was smiling at her. Smiling and nodding. “One strike,” he said.
“No lighter?”
“No lighter.” Both men said it together, then laughed.
11
“Devane waited until Monday,” Dave said, “and when the business about the cigarettes still wouldn’t quit nagging him—wouldn’t quit even though he was almost a year and a half downriver from that part of his life—he called me on the telephone and explained to me that he had an idea that maybe, justmaybe , the pack of cigarettes John Doe had been carrying around hadn’t come from the State of Maine. If not, the stamp on the bottom would show where theyhad come from. He voiced his doubts about whether John Doe was a smoker at all, but said the tax-stamp might be a clue even if he wasn’t. I agreed with him, but was curious as to why he’d called me. He said he couldn’t think of anyone else who still might be interested at that late date. He was right, Iwas still interested—Vince, too—and he turned out to be right about the stamp, as well.
“Now, I am not a smoker myself and never have been, which is probably one of the reasons I’ve attained the great age of sixty-five in such beautiful shape—”
Vince grunted and waved a hand at him. Dave continued, unperturbed.
“—so I made a little trip downstreet to Bayside News and asked if I could examine a package of cigarettes. My request was granted, and I observed that there was indeed anink -stamp on the bottom, not a postage-type stamp. I then made a call to the Attorney General’s Office and spoke to a fellow name of Murray in a department called Evidence Storage and filing. I was as diplomatic as I could possibly be, Stephanie, because at that time those two dumbbell detectives would still have been on active duty—”
“And they’d overlooked a potentially valuable clue, hadn’t they?” Steff asked. “One that could have narrowed the search for John Doe down to one single state. And it was practically staring them in the face.”
“Yep,” Vince said, “and no way could they blame their intern, either, because they’d specifically told him to keep his nose out of the evidence bag. Plus, by the time it became clear that he’d disobeyed them—”
“—he was beyond their reach,” she finished.
“You said it,” Dave agreed. “But they wouldn’t have gotten much of a scolding in any case. Remember, they had an actual murder investigation going over in Tinnock—manslaughter, two folks burned to death—and John Doe was just a choking victim.”
“Still…” Stephanie looked doubtful.
“Still dumb, and you needn’t be too polite to say it, you’re among friends,” Dave told her with a grin. “But theIslander had no in’trest in makin trouble for those two detectives. I made that clear to Murray, and I also made it clear that this wasn’t a criminal matter; all I was doing was tryin my best to find out who the poor fella was, because someplace there were very likely people missin him and wantin to know what had befallen him. Murray said he’d have to get back to me on that, which I kinda expected, but I still had a bad afternoon, wonderin if maybe I should have played my cards a little different. I could have, you know; I could have had Doc Robinson make the call to Augusta, or maybe even talked Cathcart into doing it, but the idea of using either of them as a cat’s paw kind of went against my grain. I s’pose it’s corny, but I really do believe that in nine cases out of ten, honesty’s the best policy. I was just worried this one might turn out to be the tenth.
“In the end, though, it came out all right. Murray called me back just after I’d made up my mind he wasn’t going to and had started pullin on my jacket to go home for the day—isn’t that the way things like that usually go?”
“A watched pot never boils,” Vince said.
“My gosh, that’s like poitry, give me a pad and a pencil so I can write it down,” Dave said, grinning more widely than ever. The grin did more than take years off his face; it knocked them flying, and she could see the boy he had been. Then he grew serious once more, and the boy disappeared again.
“In big cities evidence gets lost all the time, I understand, but I guess Augusta’s not that big yet, even if it is the state capital. Sergeant Murray had no trouble whatsoever finding the evidence bag with Paul Devane’s signature on the Possession Slip; he said he had it ten minutes after we got done talking. The rest of the time that went by he was trying to get permission from the right person to let me know what was inside it…which he finally did. The cigarettes were Winstons, and the stamp on the bottom was just the way Paul Devane remembered: a regular little stick-on type that said colorado in tiny dark letters. Murray said he’d be turning the information over to the Attorney General’s office, and they’d appreciate knowing ‘in advance of publication’ if we got anywhere in identifying the Colorado Kid. That’s what he called him, so I guess you could say it was Sergeant Murray in the A.G.’s Evidence Storage and filing Department who coined the phrase. He also said he hoped that if wedid have any luck identifying the guy, that we’d note in our story that the A.G.’s office had been helpful. You know, I thought that was sort of sweet.”
Stephanie leaned forward, eyes shining, totally absorbed. “So what did you do next? How did you proceed?”
Dave opened his mouth to reply, and Vince put a hand on the managing editor’s burly shoulder to stop him before he could. “How do youthink we proceeded, dear?”
“School is in?” she asked.
“’Tis,” he said.
And because she saw by his eyes and the set of his mouth (more by the latter) that he was absolutely in earnest, she thought carefully before replying.
“You…made copies of the ‘sleeping ID’—”
“Ayuh. We did.”
“And then…mmm…you sent it with clippings to—how many Colorado papers?”
He smiled at her, nodded, gave her a thumbs-up. “Seventy-eight, Ms. McCann, and I don’t know about Dave, but I was amazed at how cheap it had become to send out such a number of duplications, even back in 1981. Why, it couldn’t have come to a hundred bucks total out-of-pocket expense, even with the postage.”
“And of course we wrote it all off to the business,” said Dave, who doubled as theIslander ’s bookkeeper.
“Every penny. As we had every right to do.”
“How many of them ran it?”
“Every frickin one!” Vince said, and fetched his narrow thigh a vicious slap. “Ayuh! Even the DenverPost and the Rocky MountainNews ! Becausethen there was only one peculiar thing about it and abeautiful through-line, don’t you see?”
Stephanie nodded. Simple and beautiful. She did see.
Vince nodded back, absolutely beaming. “Unknown man, maybe from Colorado, found on an island beach in Maine, two thousand miles away! No mention of the steak stuck halfway down his gullet, no mention of the coat that might have gotten off Jimmy-Jesus-knows-where (or might not have been there at all), no mention of the Russian coin in his pocket! Just the Colorado Kid, your basic Unexplained Mystery, and so, sure, theyall ran it, even the free ones that are mostly coupons.”
“And two days after the Boulder newspaper ran it near the end of October 1981,” Dave said, “I got a call from a woman named Arla Cogan. She lived in Nederland, a little way up in the mountains from Boulder, and her husband had disappeared in April of the previous year, leaving her and a son who had been six months old at the time of his disappearance. She said his name was James, and although she had no idea what he could possibly have been doing on an island off the coast of Maine, the photograph in theCamera looked a great deal like her husband. A great deal, indeed.” He paused. “I guess she knew it was more than just a passin resemblance, because she got about that far and then began to cry.”
“Now, I am not a smoker myself and never have been, which is probably one of the reasons I’ve attained the great age of sixty-five in such beautiful shape—”
Vince grunted and waved a hand at him. Dave continued, unperturbed.
“—so I made a little trip downstreet to Bayside News and asked if I could examine a package of cigarettes. My request was granted, and I observed that there was indeed anink -stamp on the bottom, not a postage-type stamp. I then made a call to the Attorney General’s Office and spoke to a fellow name of Murray in a department called Evidence Storage and filing. I was as diplomatic as I could possibly be, Stephanie, because at that time those two dumbbell detectives would still have been on active duty—”
“And they’d overlooked a potentially valuable clue, hadn’t they?” Steff asked. “One that could have narrowed the search for John Doe down to one single state. And it was practically staring them in the face.”
“Yep,” Vince said, “and no way could they blame their intern, either, because they’d specifically told him to keep his nose out of the evidence bag. Plus, by the time it became clear that he’d disobeyed them—”
“—he was beyond their reach,” she finished.
“You said it,” Dave agreed. “But they wouldn’t have gotten much of a scolding in any case. Remember, they had an actual murder investigation going over in Tinnock—manslaughter, two folks burned to death—and John Doe was just a choking victim.”
“Still…” Stephanie looked doubtful.
“Still dumb, and you needn’t be too polite to say it, you’re among friends,” Dave told her with a grin. “But theIslander had no in’trest in makin trouble for those two detectives. I made that clear to Murray, and I also made it clear that this wasn’t a criminal matter; all I was doing was tryin my best to find out who the poor fella was, because someplace there were very likely people missin him and wantin to know what had befallen him. Murray said he’d have to get back to me on that, which I kinda expected, but I still had a bad afternoon, wonderin if maybe I should have played my cards a little different. I could have, you know; I could have had Doc Robinson make the call to Augusta, or maybe even talked Cathcart into doing it, but the idea of using either of them as a cat’s paw kind of went against my grain. I s’pose it’s corny, but I really do believe that in nine cases out of ten, honesty’s the best policy. I was just worried this one might turn out to be the tenth.
“In the end, though, it came out all right. Murray called me back just after I’d made up my mind he wasn’t going to and had started pullin on my jacket to go home for the day—isn’t that the way things like that usually go?”
“A watched pot never boils,” Vince said.
“My gosh, that’s like poitry, give me a pad and a pencil so I can write it down,” Dave said, grinning more widely than ever. The grin did more than take years off his face; it knocked them flying, and she could see the boy he had been. Then he grew serious once more, and the boy disappeared again.
“In big cities evidence gets lost all the time, I understand, but I guess Augusta’s not that big yet, even if it is the state capital. Sergeant Murray had no trouble whatsoever finding the evidence bag with Paul Devane’s signature on the Possession Slip; he said he had it ten minutes after we got done talking. The rest of the time that went by he was trying to get permission from the right person to let me know what was inside it…which he finally did. The cigarettes were Winstons, and the stamp on the bottom was just the way Paul Devane remembered: a regular little stick-on type that said colorado in tiny dark letters. Murray said he’d be turning the information over to the Attorney General’s office, and they’d appreciate knowing ‘in advance of publication’ if we got anywhere in identifying the Colorado Kid. That’s what he called him, so I guess you could say it was Sergeant Murray in the A.G.’s Evidence Storage and filing Department who coined the phrase. He also said he hoped that if wedid have any luck identifying the guy, that we’d note in our story that the A.G.’s office had been helpful. You know, I thought that was sort of sweet.”
Stephanie leaned forward, eyes shining, totally absorbed. “So what did you do next? How did you proceed?”
Dave opened his mouth to reply, and Vince put a hand on the managing editor’s burly shoulder to stop him before he could. “How do youthink we proceeded, dear?”
“School is in?” she asked.
“’Tis,” he said.
And because she saw by his eyes and the set of his mouth (more by the latter) that he was absolutely in earnest, she thought carefully before replying.
“You…made copies of the ‘sleeping ID’—”
“Ayuh. We did.”
“And then…mmm…you sent it with clippings to—how many Colorado papers?”
He smiled at her, nodded, gave her a thumbs-up. “Seventy-eight, Ms. McCann, and I don’t know about Dave, but I was amazed at how cheap it had become to send out such a number of duplications, even back in 1981. Why, it couldn’t have come to a hundred bucks total out-of-pocket expense, even with the postage.”
“And of course we wrote it all off to the business,” said Dave, who doubled as theIslander ’s bookkeeper.
“Every penny. As we had every right to do.”
“How many of them ran it?”
“Every frickin one!” Vince said, and fetched his narrow thigh a vicious slap. “Ayuh! Even the DenverPost and the Rocky MountainNews ! Becausethen there was only one peculiar thing about it and abeautiful through-line, don’t you see?”
Stephanie nodded. Simple and beautiful. She did see.
Vince nodded back, absolutely beaming. “Unknown man, maybe from Colorado, found on an island beach in Maine, two thousand miles away! No mention of the steak stuck halfway down his gullet, no mention of the coat that might have gotten off Jimmy-Jesus-knows-where (or might not have been there at all), no mention of the Russian coin in his pocket! Just the Colorado Kid, your basic Unexplained Mystery, and so, sure, theyall ran it, even the free ones that are mostly coupons.”
“And two days after the Boulder newspaper ran it near the end of October 1981,” Dave said, “I got a call from a woman named Arla Cogan. She lived in Nederland, a little way up in the mountains from Boulder, and her husband had disappeared in April of the previous year, leaving her and a son who had been six months old at the time of his disappearance. She said his name was James, and although she had no idea what he could possibly have been doing on an island off the coast of Maine, the photograph in theCamera looked a great deal like her husband. A great deal, indeed.” He paused. “I guess she knew it was more than just a passin resemblance, because she got about that far and then began to cry.”
12
Stephanie asked Dave to spell Mrs. Cogan’s first name. In Dave Bowie’s thick Maine accent, all she was hearing was a bunch ofa -sounds with anl in the middle.
He did so, then said, “She didn’t have his fingerprints—accourse not, poor left-behind thing—but she was able to give me the name of the dentist they used, and—”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Stephanie said, putting her hand up like a traffic cop. “This man Cogan, what did he do for a living?”
“He was a commercial artist in a Denver advertising agency,” Vince said. “I’ve seen some of his work since, and I’d have to say he was a pretty good one. He was never going to go nationwide, but if you wanted a quick picture for an advertising circular that showed a woman holdin a roll of toilet tissue up like she’d just caught herself a prize trout, Cogan was your man. He commuted to Denver twice a week, on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, for meetings and product conferences. The rest of the time he worked at home.”
She switched her gaze back to Dave. “The dentist spoke to Cathcart, the Medical Examiner. Is that right?”
“You’re hittin on all cyclinders, Steff. Cathcart didn’t have any X-rays of the Kid’s dental work, he wasn’t set up for that and saw no reason to send the corpse out to County Memorial where dental X-rays could have been taken, but he noted all the fillings, plus the two crowns. Everything matched. He then went on ahead and sent copies of the dead man’s fingerprints to the Nederland Police, who got a tech from the Denver P.D. to go out to the Cogan residence and dust James Cogan’s home office for prints. Mrs. Cogan—Arla—told the fingerprint man he wouldn’t find anything, that she’d cleaned the whole works from stem to stern when she’d finally admitted to herself that her Jim wasn’t coming back, that he’d either left her, which she could hardly believe, or that something awful had happened to him, which she wascoming to believe.
“The fingerprint man said that if Cogan had spent ‘a significant amount of time’ in the room that had been his study, there would still be prints.” Dave paused, sighed, ran a hand through what remained of his hair. “There were, and we knew for sure who John Doe, also known as the Colorado Kid, really was: James Cogan, age forty-two, of Nederland, Colorado, married to Arla Cogan, father of Michael Cogan, age six months at the time of his father’s disappearance, age going on two years at the time of his father’s identification.”
Vince stood up and stretched with his fisted hands in the small of his back. “What do you say we go inside, people? It’s commencing to get a tiny bit chilly out here, and there’s a little more to tell.”
He did so, then said, “She didn’t have his fingerprints—accourse not, poor left-behind thing—but she was able to give me the name of the dentist they used, and—”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Stephanie said, putting her hand up like a traffic cop. “This man Cogan, what did he do for a living?”
“He was a commercial artist in a Denver advertising agency,” Vince said. “I’ve seen some of his work since, and I’d have to say he was a pretty good one. He was never going to go nationwide, but if you wanted a quick picture for an advertising circular that showed a woman holdin a roll of toilet tissue up like she’d just caught herself a prize trout, Cogan was your man. He commuted to Denver twice a week, on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, for meetings and product conferences. The rest of the time he worked at home.”
She switched her gaze back to Dave. “The dentist spoke to Cathcart, the Medical Examiner. Is that right?”
“You’re hittin on all cyclinders, Steff. Cathcart didn’t have any X-rays of the Kid’s dental work, he wasn’t set up for that and saw no reason to send the corpse out to County Memorial where dental X-rays could have been taken, but he noted all the fillings, plus the two crowns. Everything matched. He then went on ahead and sent copies of the dead man’s fingerprints to the Nederland Police, who got a tech from the Denver P.D. to go out to the Cogan residence and dust James Cogan’s home office for prints. Mrs. Cogan—Arla—told the fingerprint man he wouldn’t find anything, that she’d cleaned the whole works from stem to stern when she’d finally admitted to herself that her Jim wasn’t coming back, that he’d either left her, which she could hardly believe, or that something awful had happened to him, which she wascoming to believe.
“The fingerprint man said that if Cogan had spent ‘a significant amount of time’ in the room that had been his study, there would still be prints.” Dave paused, sighed, ran a hand through what remained of his hair. “There were, and we knew for sure who John Doe, also known as the Colorado Kid, really was: James Cogan, age forty-two, of Nederland, Colorado, married to Arla Cogan, father of Michael Cogan, age six months at the time of his father’s disappearance, age going on two years at the time of his father’s identification.”
Vince stood up and stretched with his fisted hands in the small of his back. “What do you say we go inside, people? It’s commencing to get a tiny bit chilly out here, and there’s a little more to tell.”
13
They each took a turn at the rest room hidden in an alcove behind the old offset press that they no longer used (the paper was now printed in Ellsworth, and had been since ’02). While Dave took his turn, Stephanie put on the Mr. Coffee. If the story-that-was-not-a-story went on another hour or so (and she had a feeling it might), they’d all be glad of a cup.
When they were reconvened, Dave sniffed in the direction of the little kitchenette and nodded approvingly. “I like a woman who hasn’t decided the kitchen’s a place of slavery just because she works for a livin.”
“I feel absolutely the same way about a man,” Stephanie said, and when he laughed and nodded (she had gotten off another good one, two in one afternoon, a record), she tilted her own head toward the huge old press. “That thing looks like a place of slavery to me,” she said.
“It looks worse than it ever was,” Vince said, “but the one before it was a horror. That one’d take your arm off if you weren’t careful, and make a damn good snatch at it even if you were. Now where were we?”
“With the woman who’d just found out she was a widow,” Stephanie said. “I presume she came to get the body?”
“Yep,” Dave said.
“And did one of you fetch her here from the airport in Bangor?”
“What do you think, dear?”
It wasn’t a question Stephanie had to mull over for very long. By late October or early November of 1981, the Colorado Kid would have been very old business to the State of Maine authorities…and as a choking victim, he had been very minor business to begin with. Just an unidentified dead body, really.
“Of course you did. You two were really the only friends she had in the state of Maine.” This idea had the odd effect of making her realize that Arla Cogan had been (and, somewhere, almost certainly still was) a real person, and not just a chess-piece in an Agatha Christie whodunit or an episode ofMurder, She Wrote .
“I went,” Vince said, speaking softly. He sat forward in his chair, looking at his hands, which were clasped in a driftwood gnarl below his knees. “She wasn’t what I expected, either. I had a picture built in my head, one based on a wrong idea. I should have known better. I’ve been in the newspaper business sixty-five years—as long as my partner in crime there’s been alive, and he’s no longer the gay blade he thinks he is—and in that length of time, I’ve seen my share of dead bodies. Most of em would put all that romantic poetry stuff—‘I saw a maiden fair and still’—out of your head in damn short order. Dead bodies are ugly things indeed, by n large; many hardly look human at all anymore. But that wasn’t true of the Colorado Kid. He looked almost good enough to be the subject of one of those romantic poimes by Mr. Poe. I photographed him before the autopsy, accourse, you have to remember that, and if you stared at the finished portrait for more’n a second or two, he still looked deader than hell (at least to me he did), but yes, there was something kinda handsome about him just the same, with his ashy cheeks and pale lips and that little touch of lavender on his eyelids.”
“Brrr,” Stephanie said, but she sort of knew what Vince was saying, and yes, it was a poem by Poe it called to mind. The one about the lost Lenore.
“Ayuh, sounds like true love t’me,” Dave said, and got up to pour the coffee.
When they were reconvened, Dave sniffed in the direction of the little kitchenette and nodded approvingly. “I like a woman who hasn’t decided the kitchen’s a place of slavery just because she works for a livin.”
“I feel absolutely the same way about a man,” Stephanie said, and when he laughed and nodded (she had gotten off another good one, two in one afternoon, a record), she tilted her own head toward the huge old press. “That thing looks like a place of slavery to me,” she said.
“It looks worse than it ever was,” Vince said, “but the one before it was a horror. That one’d take your arm off if you weren’t careful, and make a damn good snatch at it even if you were. Now where were we?”
“With the woman who’d just found out she was a widow,” Stephanie said. “I presume she came to get the body?”
“Yep,” Dave said.
“And did one of you fetch her here from the airport in Bangor?”
“What do you think, dear?”
It wasn’t a question Stephanie had to mull over for very long. By late October or early November of 1981, the Colorado Kid would have been very old business to the State of Maine authorities…and as a choking victim, he had been very minor business to begin with. Just an unidentified dead body, really.
“Of course you did. You two were really the only friends she had in the state of Maine.” This idea had the odd effect of making her realize that Arla Cogan had been (and, somewhere, almost certainly still was) a real person, and not just a chess-piece in an Agatha Christie whodunit or an episode ofMurder, She Wrote .
“I went,” Vince said, speaking softly. He sat forward in his chair, looking at his hands, which were clasped in a driftwood gnarl below his knees. “She wasn’t what I expected, either. I had a picture built in my head, one based on a wrong idea. I should have known better. I’ve been in the newspaper business sixty-five years—as long as my partner in crime there’s been alive, and he’s no longer the gay blade he thinks he is—and in that length of time, I’ve seen my share of dead bodies. Most of em would put all that romantic poetry stuff—‘I saw a maiden fair and still’—out of your head in damn short order. Dead bodies are ugly things indeed, by n large; many hardly look human at all anymore. But that wasn’t true of the Colorado Kid. He looked almost good enough to be the subject of one of those romantic poimes by Mr. Poe. I photographed him before the autopsy, accourse, you have to remember that, and if you stared at the finished portrait for more’n a second or two, he still looked deader than hell (at least to me he did), but yes, there was something kinda handsome about him just the same, with his ashy cheeks and pale lips and that little touch of lavender on his eyelids.”
“Brrr,” Stephanie said, but she sort of knew what Vince was saying, and yes, it was a poem by Poe it called to mind. The one about the lost Lenore.
“Ayuh, sounds like true love t’me,” Dave said, and got up to pour the coffee.
14
Vince Teague dumped what looked to Stephanie like half a carton of Half ’N Half into his, then went on. He did so with a rather rueful smile.
“All I’m trying to say is that I sort expected a pale and dark-haired beauty. What I got was a chubby redhead with a lot of freckles. I never doubted her grief and worry for a minute, but I sh’d guess she was one of those who eats rather than fasts when the rats gnaw at her nerves. Her folks had come from Omaha or Des Moines or somewhere to watch out for the baby, and I’ll never forget how lost n somehow alone she looked when she came out of the jetway, holdin her little carry-on bag not by her side but up to her pouter-pigeon bosom. She wasn’t a bit what I expected, not the lost Lenore—”
Stephanie jumped and thought,Maybe now thetelepathy goes three ways.
“—but I knew who she was, right away. I waved and she came to me and said, ‘Mr. Teague?’ And when I said yes, that’s who I was, she put down her bag and hugged me and said, ‘Thank you for coming to meet me. Thank you for everything. I can’t believe it’s him, but when I look at the picture, I know it is.’
“It’s a good long drive down here—no one knows that better than you, Steff—and we had lots of time to talk. The first thing she asked me was if I had any idea what Jim was doing on the coast of Maine. I told her I did not. Then she asked if he’d registered at a local motel on the Wednesday night—” He broke off and looked at Dave. “Am I right? Wednesday night?”
Dave nodded. “It would have been a Wednesday night she asked about, because it was a Thursday mornin Johnny and Nancy found him on. The 24th of April, 1980.”
“You justknow that,” Stephanie marveled.
Dave shrugged. “Stuff like that sticks in my head,” he told her, “and then I’ll forget the loaf of bread I meant to bring home and have to go out in the rain and get it.”
Stephanie turned back to Vince. “Surely hedidn’t register at a motel the night before he was found, or you guys wouldn’t have spent so long calling him John Doe. You might have known him by some other alias, but no one registers at a motel underthat name.”
He was nodding long before she finished. “Dave and I spent three or four weeks after the Colorado Kid was found—in our spare time, accourse—canvassin motels in what Mr. Yeats would have called ‘a widenin gyre’ with Moose-Lookit Island at the center. It would’ve been damn near impossible during the summer season, when there’s four hundred motels, inns, cabins, bed-and-breakfasts, and assorted rooms to rent all competing for trade within half a day’s drive of the Tinnock Ferry, but it wasn’t anything but a part-time job in April, because seventy percent of em are shut down from Thanksgiving to Memorial Day. We showed that picture everywhere, Steffi.”
“No joy?”
“Not a bit of it,” Dave confirmed.
She turned to Vince. “What did she say when you told her that?”
“Nothing. She was flummoxed.” He paused. “Cried a little.”
“Accourse she did, poor thing,” Dave said.
“And what did you do?” Stephanie asked, all of her attention still fixed on Vince.
“My job,” he said, with no hesitation.
“Because you’re the one who always has to know,” she said.
His bushy, tangled eyebrows went up. “Do you think so?”
“Yes,” she said. “I do.” And she looked at Dave for confirmation.
“I think she nailed you there, pard,” Dave said.
“Question is, is ityour job, Steffi?” Vince asked with a crooked smile. “I think it is.”
“Sure,” she said, almost carelessly. She had known this for weeks now, although if anyone had asked her before coming to theIslander , she would have laughed at the idea of deciding for sure on a life’s work based on such an obscure posting. The Stephanie McCann who had almost decided on going to New Jersey instead of to Moose-Lookit off the coast of Maine now seemed like another person to her. A flatlander. “What did she tell you? What did she know?”
Vince said, “Just enough to make a strange story even stranger.”
“Tell me.”
“All right, but fair warning—this is where the through-line ends.”
Stephanie didn’t hesitate. “Tell me anyway.”
“All I’m trying to say is that I sort expected a pale and dark-haired beauty. What I got was a chubby redhead with a lot of freckles. I never doubted her grief and worry for a minute, but I sh’d guess she was one of those who eats rather than fasts when the rats gnaw at her nerves. Her folks had come from Omaha or Des Moines or somewhere to watch out for the baby, and I’ll never forget how lost n somehow alone she looked when she came out of the jetway, holdin her little carry-on bag not by her side but up to her pouter-pigeon bosom. She wasn’t a bit what I expected, not the lost Lenore—”
Stephanie jumped and thought,Maybe now thetelepathy goes three ways.
“—but I knew who she was, right away. I waved and she came to me and said, ‘Mr. Teague?’ And when I said yes, that’s who I was, she put down her bag and hugged me and said, ‘Thank you for coming to meet me. Thank you for everything. I can’t believe it’s him, but when I look at the picture, I know it is.’
“It’s a good long drive down here—no one knows that better than you, Steff—and we had lots of time to talk. The first thing she asked me was if I had any idea what Jim was doing on the coast of Maine. I told her I did not. Then she asked if he’d registered at a local motel on the Wednesday night—” He broke off and looked at Dave. “Am I right? Wednesday night?”
Dave nodded. “It would have been a Wednesday night she asked about, because it was a Thursday mornin Johnny and Nancy found him on. The 24th of April, 1980.”
“You justknow that,” Stephanie marveled.
Dave shrugged. “Stuff like that sticks in my head,” he told her, “and then I’ll forget the loaf of bread I meant to bring home and have to go out in the rain and get it.”
Stephanie turned back to Vince. “Surely hedidn’t register at a motel the night before he was found, or you guys wouldn’t have spent so long calling him John Doe. You might have known him by some other alias, but no one registers at a motel underthat name.”
He was nodding long before she finished. “Dave and I spent three or four weeks after the Colorado Kid was found—in our spare time, accourse—canvassin motels in what Mr. Yeats would have called ‘a widenin gyre’ with Moose-Lookit Island at the center. It would’ve been damn near impossible during the summer season, when there’s four hundred motels, inns, cabins, bed-and-breakfasts, and assorted rooms to rent all competing for trade within half a day’s drive of the Tinnock Ferry, but it wasn’t anything but a part-time job in April, because seventy percent of em are shut down from Thanksgiving to Memorial Day. We showed that picture everywhere, Steffi.”
“No joy?”
“Not a bit of it,” Dave confirmed.
She turned to Vince. “What did she say when you told her that?”
“Nothing. She was flummoxed.” He paused. “Cried a little.”
“Accourse she did, poor thing,” Dave said.
“And what did you do?” Stephanie asked, all of her attention still fixed on Vince.
“My job,” he said, with no hesitation.
“Because you’re the one who always has to know,” she said.
His bushy, tangled eyebrows went up. “Do you think so?”
“Yes,” she said. “I do.” And she looked at Dave for confirmation.
“I think she nailed you there, pard,” Dave said.
“Question is, is ityour job, Steffi?” Vince asked with a crooked smile. “I think it is.”
“Sure,” she said, almost carelessly. She had known this for weeks now, although if anyone had asked her before coming to theIslander , she would have laughed at the idea of deciding for sure on a life’s work based on such an obscure posting. The Stephanie McCann who had almost decided on going to New Jersey instead of to Moose-Lookit off the coast of Maine now seemed like another person to her. A flatlander. “What did she tell you? What did she know?”
Vince said, “Just enough to make a strange story even stranger.”
“Tell me.”
“All right, but fair warning—this is where the through-line ends.”
Stephanie didn’t hesitate. “Tell me anyway.”
15
“Jim Cogan went to work at Mountain Outlook Advertising in Denver on Wednesday, April the 23rd, 1980, just like any other Wednesday,” Vince said. “That’s what she told me. He had a portfolio of drawings he’d been working on for Sunset Chevrolet, one of the big local car companies that did a ton of print advertising with Mountain Outlook—a very valuable client. Cogan had been one of four artists on the Sunset Chevrolet account for the last three years, she said, and she was positive the company was happy with Jim’s work, and the feeling was mutual—Jim liked working on the account. She said his specialty was what he called ‘holy-shit women.’ When I asked what that was, she smiled and said they were pretty ladies with wide eyes and open mouths, and usually with their hands clapped to their cheeks. The drawings were supposed to say, ‘Holy shit, what a buy I got at Sunset Chevrolet!’ ”
Stephanie laughed. She had seen such drawings, usually in free advertising circulars at the Shop ’N Save across the reach, in Tinnock.
Vince was nodding. “Arla was a fair shake of an artist herself, only with words. What she showed me was a very decent man who loved his wife, his baby, and his work.”
“Sometimes loving eyes don’t see what they don’t want to see,” Stephanie remarked.
“Young but cynical!” Dave cried, not without relish.
“Well, ayuh, but she’s got a point,” Vince said. “Only thing is, sixteen months is usually long enough to put aside the rose-colored glasses. If there’d been something going on—discontent with the job or maybe a little honey on the side would seem the most likely—I think she would have found sign of it, or at least caught a whiff of it, unless the man was almighty, almighty careful, because during that sixteen months she talked to everyone he knew, most of em twice, and they all told her the same thing: he liked his job, he loved his wife, and he absolutely idolized his baby son. She kept coming back to that. ‘He never would’ve left Michael,’ she said. ‘I know that, Mr. Teague. I know it in my soul.’ ” Vince shrugged, as if to saySo sue me . “I believed her.”
“And he wasn’t tired of his job?” Stephanie asked. “Had no desire to move on?”
“She said not. Said he loved their place up in the mountains, even had a sign over the front door that said hernando’s hideaway. And she talked to one of the artists he worked with on the Sunset Chevrolet account, a fellow Cogan had worked with for years, Dave, do you recall that name—?”
“George Rankin or George Franklin,” Dave said. “Cannot recall which, right off the top of my head.”
“Don’t let it get you down, old-timer,” Vince said. “Even Willie Mays dropped a pop-up from time to time, I guess, especially toward the end of his career.”
Dave stuck out his tongue.
Vince nodded as if such childishness was exactly what he’d come to expect of his managing editor, then took up the thread of his story once more. “George the Artist, be he Rankin or Franklin, told Arla that Jim had pretty much reached the top end of that which his talent was capable, and he was one of the fortunate people who not only knew his limitations but was content with them. He said Jim’s remaining ambition was to someday head Mountain Outlook’s art department. And, given that ambition, cutting and running for the New England coast on the spur of the moment is just about the last thing he would have done.”
“But she thought that’s what hedid do,” Stephanie said. “Isn’t it?”
Vince put his coffee cup down and ran his hands through his fluff of white hair, which was already fairly crazy. “Arla Cogan’s like all of us,” he said, “a prisoner of the evidence.
“James Cogan left his home at 6:45 AM on that Wednesday to make the drive to Denver by way of the Boulder Turnpike. The only luggage he had was that portfolio I mentioned. He was wearing a gray suit, a white shirt, a red tie, and a gray overcoat. Oh, and black loafers on his feet.”
“No green jacket?” Stephanie asked.
“No green jacket,” Dave agreed, “but the gray slacks, white shirt, and black loafers was almost certainly what he was wearing when Johnny and Nancy found him sittin dead on the beach with his back against that litter basket.”
“His suit-coat?”
“Never found,” Dave said. “The tie, neither—but accourse if a man takes off his tie, nine times out of ten he’ll stuff it into the pocket of his suit-coat, and I’d be willin to bet that if that gray suit-coat everdid turn up, the tie’d be in the pocket.”
“He was at his office drawing board by 8:45 AM,” Vince said, “working on a newspaper ad for King Sooper’s.”
“What—?”
“Supermarket chain, dear,” Dave said.
“Around ten-fifteen,” Vince went on, “George the Artist, be he Rankin or Franklin, saw our boy the Kid heading for the elevators. Cogan said he was goin around the corner to grab what he called ‘a real coffee’ at Starbucks and an egg salad sandwich for lunch, because he planned to eat at his desk. He asked George if George wanted anything.”
“This is all what Arla told you when you were driving her out to Tinnock?”
“Yes, ma’am. Taking her to speak with Cathcart, make a formal identification of the photo—‘This is my husband, this is James Cogan’—and then sign an exhumation order. He was waiting for us.”
“All right. Sorry to interrupt. Go on.”
“Don’t be sorry for asking questions, Stephanie, asking questions is what reportersdo . In any case, George the Artist—”
“Be he Rankin or Franklin,” Dave put in helpfully.
“Ayuh, him—he told Cogan that he’d pass on the coffee, but he walked out to the elevator lobby with Cogan so they could talk a little bit about an upcoming retirement party for a fellow named Haverty, one of the agency’s founders. The party was scheduled for mid-May, and George the Artist told Arla that her mister seemed excited and looking forward to it. They batted around ideas for a retirement gift until the elevator came, and then Cogan got on and told George the Artist they ought to talk about it some more at lunch and ask someone else—some woman they worked with—whatshe thought. George the Artist agreed that was a pretty good idea, Cogan gave him a little wave, the elevator doors slid closed, and that’s the last person who can remember seeing the Colorado Kid when he was still in Colorado.”
“George the Artist,” she almost marveled. “Do you suppose any of this would have happened if George had said, ‘Oh, wait a minute, I’ll just pull on my coat and go around the corner with you?’ ”
“No way of telling,” Vince said.
“Washe wearing his coat?” she asked. “Cogan? Was he wearing his gray overcoat when he went out?”
“Arla asked, but George the Artist didn’t remember,” Vince said. “The best he could do was say he didn’tthink so. And that’s probably right. The Starbucks and the sandwich shop were side by side, and they reallywere right around the corner.”
“She also said there was a receptionist,” Dave put in, “but the receptionist didn’t see the men go out to the elevators. Said she ‘must have been away from her desk for a minute.’” He shook his head disapprovingly. “It’snever that way in the mystery novels.”
But Stephanie’s mind had seized on something else, and it occurred to her that she had been picking at crumbs while there was a roast sitting on the table. She held up the forefinger of her left hand beside her left cheek. “George the Artist waves goodbye to Cogan—to the Colorado Kid—around ten-fifteen in the morning. Or maybe it’s more like ten-twenty by the time the elevator actually comes and he gets on.”
“Ayuh,” Vince said. He was looking at her, bright-eyed. They both were.
Now Stephanie held up the forefinger of her right hand beside her right cheek. “And the counter-girl at Jan’s Wharfside across the reach in Tinnock said he ate his fish-and-chips basket at a table looking out over the water at around five-thirty in the afternoon.”
“Ayuh,” Vince said again.
“What’s the time difference between Maine and Colorado? An hour?”
“Two,” Dave said.
“Two,” she said, and paused, and said it again. “Two. So when George the Artist saw him for the last time, when those elevator doors slid shut, it was already past noon in Maine.”
“Assuming the times are right,” Dave agreed, “and assume’s all we can do, isn’t it?”
Stephanie laughed. She had seen such drawings, usually in free advertising circulars at the Shop ’N Save across the reach, in Tinnock.
Vince was nodding. “Arla was a fair shake of an artist herself, only with words. What she showed me was a very decent man who loved his wife, his baby, and his work.”
“Sometimes loving eyes don’t see what they don’t want to see,” Stephanie remarked.
“Young but cynical!” Dave cried, not without relish.
“Well, ayuh, but she’s got a point,” Vince said. “Only thing is, sixteen months is usually long enough to put aside the rose-colored glasses. If there’d been something going on—discontent with the job or maybe a little honey on the side would seem the most likely—I think she would have found sign of it, or at least caught a whiff of it, unless the man was almighty, almighty careful, because during that sixteen months she talked to everyone he knew, most of em twice, and they all told her the same thing: he liked his job, he loved his wife, and he absolutely idolized his baby son. She kept coming back to that. ‘He never would’ve left Michael,’ she said. ‘I know that, Mr. Teague. I know it in my soul.’ ” Vince shrugged, as if to saySo sue me . “I believed her.”
“And he wasn’t tired of his job?” Stephanie asked. “Had no desire to move on?”
“She said not. Said he loved their place up in the mountains, even had a sign over the front door that said hernando’s hideaway. And she talked to one of the artists he worked with on the Sunset Chevrolet account, a fellow Cogan had worked with for years, Dave, do you recall that name—?”
“George Rankin or George Franklin,” Dave said. “Cannot recall which, right off the top of my head.”
“Don’t let it get you down, old-timer,” Vince said. “Even Willie Mays dropped a pop-up from time to time, I guess, especially toward the end of his career.”
Dave stuck out his tongue.
Vince nodded as if such childishness was exactly what he’d come to expect of his managing editor, then took up the thread of his story once more. “George the Artist, be he Rankin or Franklin, told Arla that Jim had pretty much reached the top end of that which his talent was capable, and he was one of the fortunate people who not only knew his limitations but was content with them. He said Jim’s remaining ambition was to someday head Mountain Outlook’s art department. And, given that ambition, cutting and running for the New England coast on the spur of the moment is just about the last thing he would have done.”
“But she thought that’s what hedid do,” Stephanie said. “Isn’t it?”
Vince put his coffee cup down and ran his hands through his fluff of white hair, which was already fairly crazy. “Arla Cogan’s like all of us,” he said, “a prisoner of the evidence.
“James Cogan left his home at 6:45 AM on that Wednesday to make the drive to Denver by way of the Boulder Turnpike. The only luggage he had was that portfolio I mentioned. He was wearing a gray suit, a white shirt, a red tie, and a gray overcoat. Oh, and black loafers on his feet.”
“No green jacket?” Stephanie asked.
“No green jacket,” Dave agreed, “but the gray slacks, white shirt, and black loafers was almost certainly what he was wearing when Johnny and Nancy found him sittin dead on the beach with his back against that litter basket.”
“His suit-coat?”
“Never found,” Dave said. “The tie, neither—but accourse if a man takes off his tie, nine times out of ten he’ll stuff it into the pocket of his suit-coat, and I’d be willin to bet that if that gray suit-coat everdid turn up, the tie’d be in the pocket.”
“He was at his office drawing board by 8:45 AM,” Vince said, “working on a newspaper ad for King Sooper’s.”
“What—?”
“Supermarket chain, dear,” Dave said.
“Around ten-fifteen,” Vince went on, “George the Artist, be he Rankin or Franklin, saw our boy the Kid heading for the elevators. Cogan said he was goin around the corner to grab what he called ‘a real coffee’ at Starbucks and an egg salad sandwich for lunch, because he planned to eat at his desk. He asked George if George wanted anything.”
“This is all what Arla told you when you were driving her out to Tinnock?”
“Yes, ma’am. Taking her to speak with Cathcart, make a formal identification of the photo—‘This is my husband, this is James Cogan’—and then sign an exhumation order. He was waiting for us.”
“All right. Sorry to interrupt. Go on.”
“Don’t be sorry for asking questions, Stephanie, asking questions is what reportersdo . In any case, George the Artist—”
“Be he Rankin or Franklin,” Dave put in helpfully.
“Ayuh, him—he told Cogan that he’d pass on the coffee, but he walked out to the elevator lobby with Cogan so they could talk a little bit about an upcoming retirement party for a fellow named Haverty, one of the agency’s founders. The party was scheduled for mid-May, and George the Artist told Arla that her mister seemed excited and looking forward to it. They batted around ideas for a retirement gift until the elevator came, and then Cogan got on and told George the Artist they ought to talk about it some more at lunch and ask someone else—some woman they worked with—whatshe thought. George the Artist agreed that was a pretty good idea, Cogan gave him a little wave, the elevator doors slid closed, and that’s the last person who can remember seeing the Colorado Kid when he was still in Colorado.”
“George the Artist,” she almost marveled. “Do you suppose any of this would have happened if George had said, ‘Oh, wait a minute, I’ll just pull on my coat and go around the corner with you?’ ”
“No way of telling,” Vince said.
“Washe wearing his coat?” she asked. “Cogan? Was he wearing his gray overcoat when he went out?”
“Arla asked, but George the Artist didn’t remember,” Vince said. “The best he could do was say he didn’tthink so. And that’s probably right. The Starbucks and the sandwich shop were side by side, and they reallywere right around the corner.”
“She also said there was a receptionist,” Dave put in, “but the receptionist didn’t see the men go out to the elevators. Said she ‘must have been away from her desk for a minute.’” He shook his head disapprovingly. “It’snever that way in the mystery novels.”
But Stephanie’s mind had seized on something else, and it occurred to her that she had been picking at crumbs while there was a roast sitting on the table. She held up the forefinger of her left hand beside her left cheek. “George the Artist waves goodbye to Cogan—to the Colorado Kid—around ten-fifteen in the morning. Or maybe it’s more like ten-twenty by the time the elevator actually comes and he gets on.”
“Ayuh,” Vince said. He was looking at her, bright-eyed. They both were.
Now Stephanie held up the forefinger of her right hand beside her right cheek. “And the counter-girl at Jan’s Wharfside across the reach in Tinnock said he ate his fish-and-chips basket at a table looking out over the water at around five-thirty in the afternoon.”
“Ayuh,” Vince said again.
“What’s the time difference between Maine and Colorado? An hour?”
“Two,” Dave said.
“Two,” she said, and paused, and said it again. “Two. So when George the Artist saw him for the last time, when those elevator doors slid shut, it was already past noon in Maine.”
“Assuming the times are right,” Dave agreed, “and assume’s all we can do, isn’t it?”