Bandau’s cheeks went raspberry.
“That’s no way to make it up the chain, son.”
Ryan turned back to me.
“Twenty-four to forty-eight hours tracks with the wit’s account. Gripper says he comes out here on his days off, usually Tuesdays and Thursdays. Swears day before yesterday the pond was canoe and corpse free.”
“Algae patterning suggests the body was floating with the head just at or below the waterline,” I said.
Ryan nodded. “According to Gripper, the body was hanging head up in the water, with the booted foot attached to a rock lying on the bottom. He guesses the pond’s about eight feet deep where he found the guy.”
“Where was the canoe?”
“Beside the vic. Gripper says that’s how the rope got tangled in his outboard.”
Ryan spoke to Bandau. “Check for feedback on those prints.”
“Yes, sir.”
Ryan and I watched Bandau lope toward his cruiser.
“Probably DVR’s cop shows,” Ryan said.
“Not the right ones,” I said.
Ryan glanced toward the body, back to me.
“What do you think?”
“Weird one,” I said.
“Suicide? Accident? Murder?”
I spread my palms in a “who knows” gesture.
Ryan smiled. “That’s why I bring you along.”
“The vic probably kept the canoe at the pond and drove the moped back and forth.”
“Back and forth from where?”
“Beats me.”
“Yep. Can’t do without you.”
A wood thrush trilled overhead. Another answered. The cheerful exchange was in stark contrast to the grim conversation below.
As I glanced up, hurried footsteps startled the birds into flight.
“Got him.” Bandau’s aviators were now hanging by one bow from his pocket. “Cold hit in the States. Thirteen- point match.”
Ryan’s brows may have shot higher than mine.
“John Charles Lowery. Date of birth March twenty-first, nineteen fifty.”
“Not bad, Bandau.” This time I said it aloud.
“There’s one problem.”
Bandau’s already deep frown lines deepened.
“John Charles Lowery died in nineteen sixty-eight.”
“HOW’S LOWERY A FLOATER TODAY IF HE CLOCKED OUT FOUR decades back?” Ryan voiced the question I’d been asking myself.
I had no answer.
We were heading north on 15. The coroner’s van was somewhere behind us. Pomerleau and Lauzon would check their soggy passenger into the morgue, where he’d wait in a cooler until I unwrapped him in the morning.
“Maybe the hit was a mistake.”
“Thirteen-point match?” My tone conveyed the skepticism I felt.
“Remember that lawyer in Oregon?”
Brandon Mayfield. The FBI linked him to the Madrid train bombing based on fingerprint evidence. Turned out the match was erroneous.
“That was a fluke,” I said. “You think printing the body on-site will cause blowback?”
“On the good agent, yeah. A bonehead move, but probably little harm done.”
“He meant well.”
Ryan shook his head in disbelief.
For several miles, silence filled the Jeep. Ryan broke it.
