“Before he disappeared, Stilwell called Becca Bodine and asked if she had a VCR here.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe the VCR will give us a clue.”
But it didn’t. The machine was empty. There were two shelves of videotapes and DVDs, mostly kids’ things. Cork stood looking at the clutter of the living room.
“Okay, Sherlock, I’m waiting,” Parmer said.
“We need to visit Bodine’s office at the airport. But before we do that, there’s another stop I want to make.”
The Rice Lake Police Department shared a building with the Fire Department. It was one-story, a couple of blocks off Main Street, situated under the town’s water tower. Inside, Cork slid his business card through the slot beneath the glass of the contact window and said to the woman on the other side, “I’d like to speak with the chief.”
She was nonuniform, dressed casually. She came to the window and took his card. “Just a moment.” She returned to her desk, punched in a number on her phone, and spoke quietly. She hung up and said to Cork, “He’ll be right with you.”
The chief came out almost immediately. He was a stocky, solid man, mid-thirties, with a Scandinavian look to him-blue eyes, blond hair, a ruddy cast to his face. He wore gold wire rims.
“I’m Chief Amundsen,” he said.
“Cork O’Connor. And this is my associate Hugh Parmer.”
The chief shook their hands. “Let’s go somewhere we can talk.”
He led them to a small meeting room, and they all sat around a table.
“What can I do for you, Mr. O’Connor?”
“We’re looking into the disappearance of a colleague, a man named Steve Stilwell. He might have dropped by a few days ago to pay a courtesy call himself.”
“As a matter of fact, he did,” the chief said. He folded his hands. His fingers were like thick bratwurst. “He told me he was working for Becca Bodine. A couple of days later I got a call from Becca. She hadn’t heard from him and was worried. Asked me to check into it.”
“Did you?”
“I did as much as I was able. Becca told me that he’d registered at the Best Western here in town. I checked the hotel and found that he stayed for a single night and left the next day.”
“Checked out?”
“He never actually stopped by the desk. Express checkout, you know how that works. According to the hotel people, he didn’t leave anything behind. That’s pretty much the extent of my investigation. Seemed like there was nothing here to warrant anything more. He still hasn’t popped up?”
“Not yet.”
“Well, nothing personal, O’Connor, but in my experience private dicks aren’t necessarily the most reliable of businesspeople. Could be he’s on a bender somewhere.”
“Could be,” Cork allowed.
“He was looking into that business with the missing plane last fall. Is that part of why you’re here, too?”
“That’s part of it. Becca told me you knew her husband.”
“Small town. Pretty much everybody knows everybody here. I went to high school with Sandy.”
“Was he a drinker?”
“Oh, yeah. Back in the day he could drink the rest of us under the table.”
“But he stopped drinking, right?”
Amundsen shrugged. “Around here. But Sandy was gone a lot. Hard telling how a man behaves away from home.”
“Ever arrest him in relation to his drinking?”
“No. He didn’t have an arrest record of any kind here.” He smiled. “Stilwell asked me the same thing.”
“Did he ask anything else?”
“Yeah, what I thought of Sandy. And he also asked if there was any bad blood between Sandy and anyone around here.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That I liked Sandy. He was good people. And that, as far as I know, nobody here had it in for him. Of course, Sandy was Chippewa, and some folks, well, they’ve got ideas about Indians.”
“Anybody like that that you’d be able to put a name to?”
The chief made a brief show of thinking. “Nope, can’t say that I can.”
“Thanks, Chief.”
“Welcome. What do you fellas plan on doing while you’re here?”
“As much as possible, we’re going to try to do exactly what Stilwell did.”
“I’d appreciate you keeping me apprised.”
“We’ll do that,” Cork promised.
TWENTY-SIX
Becca Bodine had called ahead, and when Cork arrived at the Rice Lake Regional Airport, he was expected. He showed ID at the contact counter for the airport’s fixed base operator, or FBO, the primary charter company, clearly a much larger enterprise than Bodine’s one-man operation. He was given the key code to get the Navigator through the security gate and into the hangar area. From the outside, the hangar was unimposing, simply a moderate structure of corrugated steel painted a dull tan. Inside, perhaps because it was empty, it felt enormous and abandoned, like a high school gym long after the last game of a losing season. Overhead, exposed girders supported fluorescent lights. Through dusty windows, the midday sun cast dun-colored rhomboids onto the bare concrete floor. Metal cabinets lined the walls, and there were stacks of cardboard boxes labeled to indicate supplies. The air was cool and smelled unpleasantly of engines and the fuel and lubricants of engines.
In a far corner, Sandy Bodine had established his simple office. There was a large desk of gray metal with an overhead work light and a rolling chair. On the desk sat a big tin can wrapped in orange construction paper decorated with a child’s drawings. The can held pencils, pens, and a ruler. The desk was shoved against a wall where two photographs hung. One was a framed family portrait: Bodine, Becca, and their son. The other was a large poster of a prop jet suspended in blue sky with the green earth far below. To the left of the desk stood a metal bookcase whose shelves were filled with aeronautical publications and rolled maps. To the right was a file cabinet that was a twin to the one in Bodine’s home office.
Cork handed Parmer the key ring. “I’m guessing that little key is for the file cabinet. See what you can find.”
“And I’m looking for what?”
“Pull anything on the Canadian charter a couple of years ago. And of course anything on the Wyoming flight. Other than that, anything that strikes you as odd.”
“Okay. What are you going to do?”
“I have an idea why Stilwell asked Becca Bodine about a VCR. I’m going to check it out.”
Parmer headed to the file cabinet and Cork began a slow search of the hangar. He walked along the walls, inspecting the stacks of cardboard boxes, checking under shelves and behind cabinets. He was moving along the final wall when he found what he’d been hoping for-cable wire concealed behind one of the tall cabinets. The wire ran up the wall to an industrial clock and appeared, at first glance, to be the clock’s power cord. Cork braced himself and shoved the cabinet away from the wall. The cord entered the cabinet through a dime-size hole drilled through the metal backing. The cabinet door was secured with a padlock.
“Hugh,” he called across the empty hangar. “Toss me that key ring.”
Parmer sent it sailing with a fine throw, and Cork snagged it midair. He quickly flipped through the keys until he found the one that fit the padlock. When he opened the cabinet door, he said, “Eureka.”
“What is it?” Parmer called to him.
