It was now verging on 3:00 p.m., and the place was crowded with a motley assortment of barflies I recognized all too well—the Friday-afternoon regulars, otherwise known as serious drinkers, who show up early and stay for the duration. I found an empty stool and bellied up to the bar.
Todd had sent me a photocopy of John Borman’s driver’s license, so even though the bartender was at the far end of the bar, I knew he was the guy I wanted to see. Bartenders need to be reasonably gregarious, but they’re generally not wild about talking to detectives of any kind—sworn officers and private investigators alike. It’s usually considered bad for business. They do, however, engage in conversations with paying customers, so when the barkeep came my way, I ordered a ginger ale.
“Not a drinker?” he asked as he delivered my alcohol-free beverage.
“Turns out it was bad for my health,” I replied. “You’re John Borman, right?”
“Depends on who’s asking,” he said. “Who are you?”
I slid one of my cards across the bar. He picked it up and studied it for a moment.
“A private detective?” he asked with a frown. “What’s this all about?”
“I’m looking into the disappearance of Christopher Danielson.”
The frown deepened into a scowl. “From Homer, you mean? That’s yesterday’s news,” he said. “Chris disappeared years ago, while we were all still in high school. You thinking maybe I had something to do with it?”
“I’m just trying to talk to people who possibly knew him back in the day and might have an idea about what became of him.”
That was a giveaway. Had Chris and Borman been close, he would have been aware that Chris had already dropped out of school before he disappeared.
“I’m not going to be of much use to you,” Borman said, confirming my initial assumption. “I mean, I knew who he was, but I didn’t really know him. We weren’t friends or anything. We were maybe in a couple of classes together, but that’s it. He was sort of a sad sack. I think something bad happened in his family when he was little, but I don’t know much about it.”
I nodded. “Domestic violence. His dad killed his mother and then committed suicide.” Sometimes you have to give a little information in order to get some.
“I never knew that part,” Borman conceded.
“What did you know?”
“Just that Chris was mostly an odd duck, a perpetual outsider, so it surprised the hell out of me when I heard he was hanging around with one of the most popular girls at Homer High. How does that happen? Then, a while after that, he was just gone. Word was that his girlfriend was pregnant and they ran off to get married. That’s the last thing I remember hearing.”
A customer down the bar caught Borman's eye and summoned him with a wave of his finger. As he walked away, I could tell that although my “unaffiliated boy” theory had come up winners with Bill Farmdale, it was a dud here. Chris had regarded Bill as a friend—someone Chris had turned to in his time of need. John Borman had been Chris’s sometime classmate, but that was it.
When the bartender returned, I dropped a ten-dollar bill on the counter. “Thanks for the help,” I told him. “Keep the change.”
Setting foot outside the bar, I noticed that the sky was once again that weird shade of pink that made it look like late afternoon. Inside the smoke-filled Travelall, Twink assured me that that pinkish glow was what passed for afternoon daylight in wintertime Anchorage.
“Where to now?” Twink wanted to know as she punched the button on the cigarette lighter.
The truth is, I had no idea. Danitza Miller, Bill Farmdale, and John Borman had been the only three names on my Anchorage to-do list. Two of the three had produced worthwhile information. I had already told Jared Danielson that his brother was most likely dead, but I’d had to do that in order to rush the DNA comparison. The next time I spoke to Nitz, I wanted to have a clear answer one way or the other—either the human remains in Harriet Raines’s lab belonged to Chris Danielson or they did not. Until I knew for sure, there was no reason to see her again.
Bill Farmdale had told me about the mysterious woman whose tire had needed changing the night Chris disappeared. She was certainly a likely suspect in my opinion, but would a random stranger show up at his work, lure him away, and then murder him just for the hell of it? No, I was sure someone with motive must have been behind it. The most promising suspect there was an irate father who’d just discovered that his unwed daughter was pregnant. I needed someone who wasn’t Danitza herself to shed some light on her dear old dad. Suddenly it occurred to me there might be another person in Anchorage who could do just that.