The Colorado Kid

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 throughline,” 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 throughline 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 weddinring, 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 stampcollectin 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 strikemark 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 strikemark 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 ladyfriend’s house in Pennsylvania. I have to think that MooseLookit 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 riddingup’ 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 easychair, 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 smalltown 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 taxstamp 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.