Ridley Pearson - Cut and Run

First things first.

Chicago ’s North Shore, a string of bedroom communities developed a century before, retained some of its former heritage. Classic architecture lined the streets of the quaint villages. These townships had, for the most part, been spared the tract housing that swept across the American Midwest during the suburban sprawl of the postwar 1950s.

But to Larson it all began to look the same- Winnetka, Glencoe-hard to tell one from the other, the difference being the occasional golf course with a brick clubhouse.

On a Saturday afternoon the die-hard homeowners were out raking leaves. They wore creased khakis, leather deck shoes, and Izod shirts. The women had been released to jog, Rollerblade, and walk the dog, while their adolescent kids skateboarded or rode bicycles in packs.

The cars he followed, Lexus, Mercedes, Volvos, and Cadillac Escalades, carried golden retrievers or Labradors in the back, with soccer camp and hockey stickers on the rear window and foolish bumper stickers announcing their kids were honor students.

Larson’s small house in St. Louis -one of those ’50s ranches-would have fit into the garage of most of these palaces, though that space was probably reserved for the au pair or the Morgan or XKE. He double-checked the address and pulled over.

Traveling through suburbia, the reminders of family and what his life might have been had he accepted Hope’s invitation without second thought, forced him to call Linda, the only person in whom he’d confided this past.

Linda had been his one and only relationship in the past six years. A recently widowed wife of a dear friend of Larson’s, the two had shared a brief, but emotionally charged affair nearly three years earlier. Neither had entered the bed with any expectation beyond comfort and understanding, but both came away with a confidante for life. Linda often looked after Larson’s dog, Tanner, when he was away for work. He’d left her a message from New Jersey, and decided to follow up.

She screened her calls, so he had to wait for her to call him back. She never asked him where he was or what he was doing.

“Tanner’s fine,” she began the call.

He thanked her for taking care of the dog on such short notice and she replied that it was no problem. She lived in a huge house with a giant backyard, a holdover from the marriage she would eventually have to part with. But not yet. They both knew she wasn’t ready.

He said, “You remember that guy who I knew would know my friend’s new persona?” No names. Nothing definite.

“Yeah?” She sounded worried. He’d expressed many times how pursuing this information might cost him his job.

“I’m parked around the corner from his house.”

“Well, that’s news.”

“Am I crazy?”

“Of course you are. Crazy in love, right?”

“She’s in danger.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t know if I’m just using this as an excuse or not, but here I am and I’m going through with it.”

“Unfinished business.”

“Exactly.”

“If I could have had even five minutes with Jack… Well, you’ve heard this enough times.”

Larson’s friend had died while lecturing at a small New England college. Not for the fee, but because they’d asked. Forty-three years old. Way too early.

“I’m going to get my five minutes,” he said, although it rang of hollow confidence. His odds of tracking Hope down were limited by a very tall wall erected to prevent such contact.

“Remember, you’re the one pursuing her. You’ve had time to process the reunion and what it means. She won’t have. Don’t judge her by her first reaction. Give her time to sort it out. It won’t be easy on her.”

“It won’t be easy on either of us.”

“I’m happy for you.”

He felt like an asshole, bringing Linda into this, rubbing her nose in his opportunity while she would have no such chance to reconnect.

He said, “If and when I find her, it may be me making the proposal this time…”

“I’ll give Tanner a good home” was all she said.

He heard her voice tighten, could picture her at the kitchen table. He knew her patterns. He loved her as one of the good ones. They would miss each other.

“We’ll see,” he said.

She told him to take care of himself, that she loved him, and as they hung up he realized how very close they’d become, how much he would miss her.

Pulling back onto the road, the trees alive with color, Larson considered the career risk he took by coming here to the man’s private home. He wasn’t supposed to know the identity of any of the WITSEC regional directors, much less visit one unannounced. He had no idea what repercussions he might face.

He pulled to a stop in front of an impressive, three-story Tudor. Either Sunderland or his wife came from a wealthy family, or she had a hell of a good job, because there was no way a person on Sunderland ’s salary could afford this place. It sported four brick chimneys, leaded glass windows, and a fully landscaped yard-more like a park-including a slate walkway that led up to an arched-top wooden door that hosted a massive wrought-iron knocker in the shape of an ivy wreath. A pair of impressive oaks shaded the front yard, their leaves rattling at Larson’s feet. Intimidated by the surroundings, he rehearsed not only what to say, but how to say it.

The door opened to a young teenage girl, self-conscious and wearing braces she tried to hide by covering her mouth as she spoke. She wore hip-hugger blue jeans, and a Gap T-shirt that showed her navel. Larson wondered what it was like being her parent.

“Marley? Your dad home?” He took a risk by using her name, but thought the familiarity might soften her.

She cocked her head. Curious. “May I tell him who’s asking?”

The right words. The right schools. She didn’t invite him inside. She blocked the door with her foot. The right training.

“Deputy Marshal Roland Larson,” he told her, handing her his business card. “Tell him I’m with,” he spelled it, “F-A-T-F.”

“Sure. Wait here, please.”

She closed the door. For the hell of it, Larson tried the handle and found it locked. Sunderland ’s kids had grown up to learn the complexities of living in the same house as a regional WITSEC director. Or maybe it was just suburbia. There were only four other regional directors who knew the program as intimately as Sunderland, but it had been Sunderland who had relocated Hope from the Orchard House.

Sunderland ’s face and his wrinkled clothes left the impression he hadn’t slept recently. A pair of smudged reading glasses hung from his neck by a thin black cord. He smelled of popcorn-or maybe that was the house itself. He had ice blue eyes that projected contempt, a Roman nose, the silver hairs of which needed trimming, a cleft chin, and awkward ears. He wore his graying hair cut like that of his fellow suburban businessmen, well in disguise. His right hand remained behind and screened by the massive door, possibly concealing a weapon.

Larson caught a reflection in the narrow side window alongside the door. Two big guys, well dressed, completely out of place on a Saturday, stood back on the sidewalk between him and his car. Deputy marshals, no doubt assigned to protect the guy who protected so many. The loss of Laena had shaken WITSEC to its core.

“Creds,” Sunderland ordered, fingering the business card.

Larson turned over his ID wallet, his moves slow and controlled for the sake of the two behind him. “We met once, six years ago.”

“Did we?” he asked, still studying Larson’s credentials through the half reading glasses on the bridge of his nose.

“A woman witness,” Larson said, using this to jog Sunderland ’s memory because women were such a minority among protected witnesses. “It was a farmhouse, outside of St. Louis. You came down there to debrief her.”