Stuart Woods - Shoot Him If He Runs

“Yes, well…”

“So what I should be doing right now is picking up the phone and calling London to report our suspicions.”

“Technically speaking, yes.”

“Technically?”

“Sort of. I mean, we’re working on a firm identification of the guy, and if he turns out to be the British robber, then you can call your limey buddy.”

“Are we talking minutes, days, weeks or longer?”

“Maybe days. If we’re lucky.”

“So now I have another slice of green pepper on my metaphorical pizza.”

“For only a short time, I hope.”

Will spat out another sliver of green. “Kate-and this is a direct order from your president-fix this.”

“The green peppers?”

“The metaphorical green peppers.”

“Yes, sir,” she replied.

Holly took a seat on the cottage patio and poured herself a glass of whatever was in the icy pitcher. She sipped it. “Mmmm, what is this?”

“Some kind of rum punch, I think,” Stone said. “Thomas sent it over.”

“It’s delicious, but it doesn’t taste alcoholic.”

“Don’t you believe it,” Dino said. “I’ve had two, and it ain’t iced tea.”

“I think we should ask Irene to dinner,” Holly said. “To repay her kindness in inviting us.”

“Whatever you say,” Stone replied. “Do you hope to learn more from her?”

“I think this Robertson guy could be Teddy. Or maybe, Pemberton or Weatherby.”

“Who?”

“Robertson owns the Cessna 140; Weatherby and Pemberton are the Englishmen who bought the cottage that used to be Irene’s guesthouse and the one next door to that.”

“And why do you think one of them is Teddy?”

“Because Pemberton and Weatherby have the paper trail-passport, driver’s license, credit reports, et cetera that any innocent citizen would have.”

“And that causes you to suspect them of multiple murders, not to mention making a fool of the FBI, the CIA and everybody else who was after him?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because Robertson doesn’t have a paper trail, and Teddy would never use an identity that couldn’t be verified. He would look upon that as unprofessional.”

“What profession are we talking about?”

“You know-master criminal and all that.”

“I didn’t know master criminal was a profession. That kind of waters down the pool of professionals, doesn’t it?”

“Oh, stop it, Stone, you know what I mean.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“How many expatriate Brits do you suppose live on this island?”

“I don’t know; hundreds, maybe a few thousand.”

“And how many of them do you think might have perfectly ordinary paper trails floating in their wakes?”

“How the hell should I know?”

“All right, for the sake of argument, let’s say that ninety-five percent of them are who they say they are, and an investigation would back them up, and the other five percent are fleeing criminals with false passports.”

“What’s your point?”

“That would mean that the ninety-five percent-hundreds, perhaps thousands-would satisfy your criteria for thinking that they are Teddy Fay. Do you see where I’m going here?”

“The ninety-five percent don’t live next door to Irene Foster.”

“All right, I’ll give you that. Now you’ve isolated one criterion that doesn’t apply to the great mass. But it’s not an incriminating criterion, and it hardly resonates like, say, a DNA match.”

“Stone, Teddy through maybe years of careful preparation has ensured that we are never going to get a match of anything-DNA, fingerprint, photo, anything -because he has erased all those things from every computer that might harbor them.”

“Well, then, we’re left with kidnapping the three of them, locking them up somewhere and torturing them until one of them admits he’s Teddy-the George W. Bush method of extracting admissions from people we hate. And, of course, under torture, anybody will admit to anything, so all three of them might admit to being Teddy.”

“No, no, we’re going to have to rely on deduction to make the identification.”

“Ah, detective work!” Dino interjected.

“Well, yes.”

“Well, a tiny problem: we have no evidence to work with to deduce that any of the three of them is Teddy. You see the difficulty?” Dino spread his hands and looked sorrowful.

“Let’s get some evidence, then.”

Stone sighed. “We could break into their houses and ransack them, in the hope that if one of them is Teddy, he’s stupid enough to leave his old birth certificate or passport lying around.”

“Stone…”

“What I’m trying to tell you is that Teddy has made it virtually impossible for us ever to identify him by any means known to criminal investigation.”

“How about eyewitnesses?” Genevieve interjected.

“Eyewitness to what?” Holly asked.

“To Teddy. He worked at the CIA all those years; there must be dozens, maybe hundreds of people who knew him, who could identify him if they saw him. Photograph all three of them and send the pictures to Lance. Let him circulate them and see if he gets a bite.”

Dino looked at his girlfriend with admiration. “I think we might have a spot for you at the NYPD,” he said.

Holly looked at her watch. “I have to call in,” she said.

Holly first called Bill Pepper.

“I’m here.”

“Me too.”

“Scramble.”

“Scrambled.”

Pepper came back with his voice-from-a-barrel. “What’s up?”

“When a foreigner applies to buy a house in St. Marks, does he have to attach a photograph to his application?”

“Yes, a passport photograph.”

“Can you hack into the government computers and get me the photographs of Robertson, Pemberton and Weatherby?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“How long will it take?”

“A few minutes.”

“Can you e-mail them to me in, say, an hour?”

“Probably. Is this about Teddy Fay?”

“The idea is, I’ll look at them, and if one of them could conceivably be Teddy, I’ll send them to Lance, and he can show them to Teddy’s former coworkers for ID.”

“Makes sense to me.”

She gave him her e-mail address. “I’ll be standing by.”

“Later.” He broke the connection.

Holly called Lance.

“Lance Cabot.”

She explained about the photographs she was going to send.

“Excellent,” Lance replied. “How soon?”

“Maybe an hour or so; check your e-mail.”

“Good. Anything else?”

“Yes; I think we’re about done here.”

“You’re giving up?”

“Our stay is nearing its end, and we have not been able to identify Teddy. Our best shot is that he’s Robertson, Pemberton or Weatherby; if we can’t get an ID from these photos, then we have nowhere else to go. Our well is dry.”

“That’s discouraging.”

“Well, we’re discouraged. I want to have one more dinner with Irene Foster, though. Maybe we’ll glean something from her.”

“And her boyfriend? Pitts?”

“I think he may have already sailed for home.”

“You’re satisfied that he’s not Teddy?”

“He isn’t, unless Teddy knows how to grow hair on a bald scalp. Pitts doesn’t wear a toupee.”

“All right, call tomorrow. I’ll send the jet for you at, say, noon the day after.”

“Good.” She hung up and called Irene.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Irene, it’s Ginny; how are you?”

“Very well, thanks; are you still on the island?”

“We leave on Saturday. I was hoping that you could join us for dinner tonight at the inn.”