The Colorado Kid

12

Stephanie asked Dave to spell Mrs. Cogan’s first name. In Dave Bowie’s thick Maine accent, all she was hearing was a bunch ofa sounds with anl in the middle.

He did so, then said, “She didn’t have his fingerprints—accourse not, poor leftbehind thing—but she was able to give me the name of the dentist they used, and—”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Stephanie said, putting her hand up like a traffic cop. “This man Cogan, what did he do for a living?”

“He was a commercial artist in a Denver advertising agency,” Vince said. “I’ve seen some of his work since, and I’d have to say he was a pretty good one. He was never going to go nationwide, but if you wanted a quick picture for an advertising circular that showed a woman holdin a roll of toilet tissue up like she’d just caught herself a prize trout, Cogan was your man. He commuted to Denver twice a week, on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, for meetings and product conferences. The rest of the time he worked at home.”

She switched her gaze back to Dave. “The dentist spoke to Cathcart, the Medical Examiner. Is that right?”

“You’re hittin on all cyclinders, Steff. Cathcart didn’t have any Xrays of the Kid’s dental work, he wasn’t set up for that and saw no reason to send the corpse out to County Memorial where dental Xrays could have been taken, but he noted all the fillings, plus the two crowns. Everything matched. He then went on ahead and sent copies of the dead man’s fingerprints to the Nederland Police, who got a tech from the Denver P.D. to go out to the Cogan residence and dust James Cogan’s home office for prints. Mrs. Cogan—Arla—told the fingerprint man he wouldn’t find anything, that she’d cleaned the whole works from stem to stern when she’d finally admitted to herself that her Jim wasn’t coming back, that he’d either left her, which she could hardly believe, or that something awful had happened to him, which she wascoming to believe.

“The fingerprint man said that if Cogan had spent ‘a significant amount of time’ in the room that had been his study, there would still be prints.” Dave paused, sighed, ran a hand through what remained of his hair. “There were, and we knew for sure who John Doe, also known as the Colorado Kid, really was: James Cogan, age fortytwo, of Nederland, Colorado, married to Arla Cogan, father of Michael Cogan, age six months at the time of his father’s disappearance, age going on two years at the time of his father’s identification.”

Vince stood up and stretched with his fisted hands in the small of his back. “What do you say we go inside, people? It’s commencing to get a tiny bit chilly out here, and there’s a little more to tell.”