Ridley Pearson - Cut and Run

Sunderland glanced over the top of his glasses. “You do look vaguely familiar.”

“Scott Rotem was in the field then. This is back before our protection squad was transferred to F-A-T-F.”

“That’s a nice promotion.” He still couldn’t place Larson. “Let me ask you this: my home? Are you out of your mind?” Sunderland ’s phone number went unpublished and was not listed anywhere in any government publication, nor on any Internet site, standard security for a WITSEC regional. The five regionals ultimately relocated all the witnesses in the program or oversaw their relocated identities. As such, the regionals were carefully protected.

“I traced you through Marley and Conner. You, or your wife, bought them each a cell phone about a year and a half ago. Marley’s phone had the home address listed. It took me about thirty minutes to get it.”

Sunderland grimaced and then waved off the two guards. As he closed the door behind Larson he asked incredulously, “You found me through my kids’ cell phones?”

“It’s what I do for a living.”

The living room was Chippendale, handwoven area rugs, and floral arrangements that matched. Larson drank in the sweet smell of furniture polish, and the tang of ripe cheese. He heard a television running.

Sunderland led him past the kitchen, down a hallway lined with summer vacations, the television first growing louder then fading.

“Scott knows about this visit?”

“Not exactly,” Larson answered honestly.

“Fugitive Apprehension has the utmost respect of those of us in the Service, Larson, and we’re all aware it’s you running field operations. Rotem can be a real prick. We all know that, too. But he gets the job done. So do you, I’m told, or I wouldn’t have let you past the front door.” In fact, he’d recognized Larson’s name if not his face.

“How well do you know Markowitz?” Larson asked, once the study door was closed. Lived-in and somewhat disorganized, it appeared to be a maid’s room he’d converted, for it was a door or two past the laundry room. It smelled of oil paint and whiskey. A partially completed, somewhat tacky landscape sat on a paint-stained wooden easel in the near corner, a canvas drop cloth beneath it.

“Calms the nerves,” Sunderland explained, catching Larson staring.

Not when you look at it, Larson thought.

“Leo Markowitz is a brilliant designer and technician. I know him only professionally, of course, but I’m not sure there’s much to Leo besides the professional. He took an unruly system for cataloging and… and tracking thousands of protected witnesses and… and created out of it not just a database, but an encrypted database . We paid a dozen convicted hackers to try to break Laena , and… and not one of them made it past first base. The man’s a genius.”

“How many within WITSEC knew what he was doing… knew it was him doing it?”

“Listen, if you’re going where I think you’re going, we’re way ahead of you. We’re on it. So’s Rotem. If there’s a mole-WITSEC, FATF, Justice-we’ll ferret him out.”

“I’m sure you will, but we’re coming at this from an entirely different direction than you. You’re trying to find a mole and turn him. We’re trying to find Markowitz. And that means radiating out from anyone who knew his role in this and looking at their recent activities, calls, e-mails, contacts, finances. Some of the same stuff you’re looking at.”

“So, I’ll get you the names. We’ll e-mail them to you. There are about eight people total we’re looking at.”

“That’ll help. Thanks.”

“Which woman?” Sunderland asked. “The farmhouse,” he reminded. “What was her primary?”

“Stevens. Hope Stevens.”

Sunderland nodded. No one forgot Hope. But as it turned out Sunderland remembered her for other reasons than Larson might have thought. “She opted out, you know?”

“I heard.” Larson took a deep breath. “I need to know what’s in her WITSEC record. What someone might see if they went looking. I need to find her.”

That half-cocked, tilted head of curiosity was something his daughter had learned from him. “Have you been assigned to do so?”

Delicate territory. Larson hesitated.

“Because, I don’t know if you know this or not, but Justice would do backflips to find her right now. There’s a case pending. She could be… influential.”

“Donny Romero.”

“You’re beginning to impress me, Larson.”

“Or am I pissing you off?” Larson could see it in the man’s face.

Sunderland nodded behind an ironic smile. “Okay. That, too.”

“You’re not going to read this in any report, but Markowitz’s assistant, the one we found dead in the downstairs bathroom, was killed by the same person that attacked Hope Stevens on that bus six years ago. You remember that incident?”

“Go on.”

“I need to find her, because they’ll come looking. Markowitz’s assistant was either done by the same person, or a different one trained by whoever trained him, because it’s a signature kill. We’re never going to prove it was the Romeros, but that’s not my job. And we’re never going to prove this either, but Hope Stevens is at the top of the list of people they want dead. She reads about Donny’s parole review and maybe she has a change of heart and comes out of the bushes. Are they going to risk that? And we have two choices: let them get her, let her be killed; or find her, lay a trap, and either arrest the killer on the way in and try to debrief him, or-and this is more to my liking-scare the shit out of him, drive him off, and hope the termite returns to the nest.” He’d surprised Sunderland with all of this. In truth, he didn’t care nearly as much about tracking the killer, but he knew Sunderland would want a bigger prize than protecting an AWOL witness. “The same nest that’s containing Markowitz and Laena , I’m guessing.”

“I told you: She opted out.”

“You placed her into the program.”

“I did. It’s true.”

“You created a new life for her, a life she may still be following, using, even if under an assumed name.”

“I’ve put dozens-hundreds-into the program. What makes you think I’d remember this one?”

Larson had his own answer for that. He said, “When she opted out, was there any discussion, or did she just blow you off?”

Sunderland pursed his lips, studied Larson thoughtfully, and shook his head slightly. “I don’t do this,” he said. “I don’t know what your agenda is, Deputy Marshal, but I don’t discuss protected witnesses.”

“The active list is missing. No one is protected. But what about the inactive list-those who’ve opted out of the program? Why do I think that those witnesses would have a list of their own?”

“Everything that’s contained in Laena , or nearly everything, has a paper counterpart. We also have physical backups of Laena . All of that is being onlined as we speak. By Monday we’ll be most of the way back.” His tone indicated otherwise, but Larson didn’t challenge any of that. The computer backups had probably been installed by Markowitz, and if so, they might not be so easily accessed. WITSEC most certainly had paper records, but how current were they, and how easily found and organized? He thought it was probably in more of a shambles than Sunderland was letting on. A couple years into depending on computers and paperwork seemed to calcify.

“I need anything you’ve got on her,” Larson said.

He felt Sunderland resist.

“Why do you suppose there hasn’t been a bloodbath?” Larson asked.

“I beg your pardon?”

“If Markowitz has cracked Laena and decrypted each of the protected identities, if the Romeros have all those names and locations, then why hasn’t there been a bloodbath?” With Sunderland behind the desk, Larson stepped forward and took a seat in a comfortable red leather chair facing him. “They could sell the names off that list. No shortage of buyers. Every crime family in the country has someone on that list they’d like to see dead-most have hit lists they’re just itching to get to. So why no bloodshed?”