They hadn’t spoken since before they entered. Now Cork shook his head and said quietly, “It could be that there’s nothing. Or it could be that what they’re using is too sophisticated for my stuff to detect.” He put his equipment away and returned to Bodine’s office. In the desk, he found the key marked “Hangar” that Becca had told him about. He also found the key to a file cabinet in the corner. He opened the cabinet and went through the files, drawer by drawer.
“What’re you looking for?” Parmer asked.
“Anything that’ll give me an idea about why someone would want Bodine dead. I don’t know what that might be, but I’m hoping I’ll know it when I see it.”
He found the file on the flight that Bodine had made for the Canadians two years before. He pulled it out and handed it to Parmer. “See if you spot anything suspicious in there.”
“Suspicious?”
“Whatever.”
Cork went back to rifling through the files in the cabinet. When he’d finished he said, “Anything?”
Parmer shook his head. “Nothing extraordinary so far as I can see. He flew two men to a town in northern Ontario to fly-fish. All the paperwork seems to be here.” He handed the file back to Cork. “Did you find anything?”
“It’s what I didn’t find that concerns me.” Cork scanned the file Parmer had given him, then put it back where it belonged. “It appears to me that Bodine kept good records of every charter flight he made, and for every charter there’s a signed contract. But the file for that final charter, the one to Seattle, doesn’t contain a contract or a record of a deposit made to secure the flight.”
Parmer nodded. “A strange omission for a man so organized.”
“Omission? I don’t think so. It’s possible, I suppose, that the FAA investigators or the attorneys somehow ended up with the original.”
“But you don’t think so?”
“No. Stolen would be my guess. Before the investigators ever saw the files.”
“What is it they don’t want us to see?”
“It would tell us, among other things, who arranged for the flight. Whoever it was that wanted Bodine dead had time to plan things carefully. If we knew who made the flight arrangements, we might be able to get a handle on who could have been involved in planning his disappearance. It would be a lead to follow, anyway.”
“Okay,” Parmer said. “What now?”
“Let’s have a look at the entertainment center in the living room.”
“This isn’t exciting enough for you?”
“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.