The airplane hangar had been built within walking distance of the rambling farmhouse that had been gutted and converted into the Fort Jefferson sheriff’s office. The search-and-rescue helicopter was long gone, and the hangar had visible pockets of rust along the walls, the concrete floor cracked and crumbling in a few areas. But it had six powerful wall heaters that were being fed by the same outside generator supplying the electricity. The warm air inside the hangar smelled damp and carried the metallic odour of the river.
Noel tried hard to concentrate on what Bradley was telling him about the status of the forensics on the Ford Explorer, how the boys he’d called early this morning from the Missoula office had brought up a portable fuming tent, assembled it over the SUV and pumped it full of cyanoacrylate. They collected a whole bunch of fingerprints but found none on the steering wheel, not even a smudge. Granted, the John Doe had been wearing gloves when he was pulled out of the water, so his hands could have rubbed some prints away as he drove, but all of them?
The boys from Missoula – there were two, Dale and Peters, stocky middle-aged men who wore permanent scowls – were finishing up work on the SUV, writing up their reports. When they weren’t looking at clipboards or through a camera lens, they were stealing glances at the door, their expressions anxious, like they were waiting for someone to walk in and start firing.
Noel’s attention drifted back to this morning, how he’d jumped at every sound, thinking the Red Ryder was now coming for him. It wasn’t an outrageous thought. If the Red Ryder had kidnapped and tortured both Karen and Cooper, as Darby believed, it was possible they might have, in anger or fear or extreme pain, told him that Noel Covington, the brother of Karen Decker, was now a Federal agent. Would the Red Ryder try to kill him from a distance or get up all close and personal?
And what about Darby? What if he went after her?
‘Sound like a plan?’ Bradley asked.
Noel turned to him, confused. ‘I’m sorry, could you repeat that?’
‘What I was telling you about the evidence.’ Bradley chin-nodded to the folding table in front of them. It held Cooper’s suitcase and his clothes. They’d been hung out overnight to dry and were now folded, bagged into evidence. ‘We’re going to take it to Bozeman, process it there.’
‘Do me a favour and process the luggage tag first, see what prints you get off it.’
One of the side doors opened. Sheriff Powers stepped inside, bringing a blast of cold air in with him.
The man, unsurprisingly, wasn’t happy. But Noel detected something else fuelling his unhappiness: perhaps he’d been ordered to apologize and play nice. Noel wondered if Vivian, working behind the scenes, had called in favours or applied the appropriate pressure on the appropriate people to get Powers to cooperate with the Bureau or, even better, hand over the reins of the investigation.
‘We’ve identified our John Doe,’ Powers said.
Noel’s eyebrows jumped in surprise. ‘That was fast,’ he said.
‘Last night, I sent a couple of my people to Missoula with Mr Bradley here, to make sure John Doe’s clothes were properly collected. My guy said he saw a tattoo on the John Doe’s right thigh, near his groin.’
Bradley said, ‘A red heart encased in a gold heart. It’s a tattoo we’ve started seeing on a lot of paedophiles. I told your guy that.’
‘You did. And that was very helpful, ’cause it helped to narrow our initial search. Two guys in the state have that tattoo, according to their files. So we pulled their prints and compared them to the gentleman we found behind the wheel and got a match. His name is Toby Dennis, a resident over in Beacon Point. His flavour was girls between the ages of ten and fifteen – the younger, the better. Been in and out of prison, was living in a camper his brother had given him. We’d had a few run-ins with him – peeping-Tom stuff, a couple of instances when he’d tried to lure a girl into his car – but he knew better than to go sneaking around in my backyard.’ Powers looked directly at Noel when he said those last words.
‘We appreciate your sharing this information with us,’ Noel said.
‘I can’t tell you how happy that makes me, Mr Covington.’
‘How old is he?’ Noel asked.
‘Dennis?’ Powers scratched the corner of his nose with his thumb. ‘Seventy-three, I believe. Could be a few years older, though.’
Roughly the same age the Red Ryder would be, Noel thought. ‘You find anything in his background that connects him to the house Melissa French rented?’
‘A direct link? No. But I can tell you he was born and raised here in Fort Jefferson and once upon a time worked construction for the J. C. Mountain Group. They built pretty much everything in this town. That’s all I’ve got, Mr Covington. The moment I find out anything else, I’ll be sure to email you. Have a safe trip back home.’
Before Noel could speak, Bradley stepped forward. ‘We’ll be out of your hair first thing in the morning,’ he said, and shook the man’s hand. ‘Thanks for all your help, Sheriff.’