“Anyway, after treading water off the coast of Mexico for about four years, Tyler suddenly surfaced last month. He opened up a bank account in Philadelphia and then applied for a new Visa card.” Leetch dug a hand in his back pocket, pulled out a single sheet of folded paper, and handed it to Cohen.

Cohen unfolded the page. He scanned the short list of items on the credit card statement. “Not many charges.” He studied the list of locations. “What was Tyler doing in Philadelphia?”

“Not what you’d expect a sailor to do,” Leetch said. “He dropped a couple grand on clothes and jewelry. I recognize a couple of these places too. High-end gangsta rapper wear. Pricey stuff, but it fits with his nouveau pimp outfits. He stayed two nights at the Intercontinental. But whatever other trouble Tyler—or whoever now has his ID—got up to, he did it in cash.”

“If he paid at all,” Cohen murmured. His eyes rested on the last item on the list, bearing the name of a major national airline. The purchase was dated more than three weeks earlier. “Where did Tyler fly to that cost over two grand?” he asked.

“I just got the statement,” Leetch said, “and you wouldn’t believe the fast-talking and charm I had to use to get it. I haven’t had a chance to follow up line-by-line yet.”

“Good work, Rome,” Cohen said with a nod. “Okay with you if I track this one down?” He picked up a pencil and underlined the airline charge at the bottom of the statement.

“What can I say? You outrank me.” Despite the longstanding joke, Cohen knew it wasn’t a source of friction between them.

After Leetch left, Cohen picked up the phone and dialed the toll-free number for the airline listed on the statement. Finally, after speaking to three operators, he was transferred to a manager who had the authority to release the information he required. “We are very protective about this sort of thing, Sergeant,” the man said in a nasal, officious tone. “These days, you can imagine how sensitive an issue it is.”

“Absolutely,” Cohen said, though he had the distinct feeling the man was lording his limited power over him. “But this could be the key evidence in a double-homicide investigation. If we have to subpoena the records, we might seek out even more privileged information like the passenger lists and so on.”

“I see.” There was a long deliberate pause. “Okay,” the man sighed. “Let me call up that information. Can you give me a confirmable number to call you back at?”

Cohen gave him the Portland Police Department’s main number as well as his direct line.

Five minutes later, his phone rang. “On the nineteenth, Mr. Tyler booked a roundtrip ticket to Vancouver, Canada,” the airline manager said.