Cut and Run

by Ridley Pearson

  “Us.”

  “I said us.”

  “Us,” Rotem repeated, the light from his butane lighter now catching his oversized eyes and throwing two noses onto his face as he lit a cigarette. Larson didn’t know this about the man-that he smoked-and he found it disconcerting to have served five years on the Fugitive Apprehension Task Force and only now learn this.

  His head was spinning. He still couldn’t get that taste out of his mouth. Then, as Rotem coughed, Larson understood the cigarette. It was Rotem’s way-as a nonsmoker-to purge the lingering taste from his own throat.

  “Does that really work?”

  “Yeah,” Rotem answered.

  “You mind?”

  Rotem passed Larson the burning cigarette. Larson took it between his thick fingers, looked down at his own hand, and then passed it back. He tried a stick of gum instead, and for a minute it worked, but when he swallowed he thought he might upchuck.

  The panic hit him again, ran right through him like venom. Hope-first in line for execution by the Romeros.

  “Donny Romero,” Larson said.

  “Is coming up for parole. Yes.”

  Larson had heard only rumors. “How does he pull off a parole hearing if he’s still a suspect in capital murder investigations?”

  Rotem sized him up, sucked on the cigarette. “Government lost its star witness. No witness, no prosecution. The other Romeros are in the wind.”

  Larson cringed. “Lost the witness… to spoilage?” The service’s euphemism for killed witnesses.

  “AWOL.”

  “This is Hope Stevens we’re talking about?” So she never had testified-the rumors were true.

  The look that came back from Rotem was paralyzing. Rotem knew the connection. He nodded.

  Is that why he picked me for the job? Larson wondered. Rotem wanted as much added motivation in his men as he could find.

  Some kind of critter scampered through the undergrowth. A rat, Larson thought, though he didn’t get a look at the thing.

  “Markowitz could be bent,” Larson said. “This could be some kind of ruse.”

  “One hell of a ruse. My gut says Romeros. Yours?”

  Larson’s silence signaled his assent.

  “We’ll bring in forensics,” Rotem said. “But I guarantee you that cut’ll end up matching Benny’s.”

  Larson wondered, with the master list gone, with Hope AWOL from WITSEC, how he would find her before the Romeros did. No matter what Rotem assigned him, that was the task at hand. With Donny’s parole on the line, the Romeros wouldn’t want a witness as potentially damaging as Hope changing her mind and stepping forward. In fact it didn’t seem out of the question that they’d gone after the list specifically to find Hope and prevent her from testifying.

  Larson spat again, trying to rid himself of that horrid aftertaste. The rat or squirrel-whatever the fuck it was-rattled the underbrush as it ran off into the night.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Rotem flew him back commercial. Larson should have seen that coming. The rush had been getting him there, not flying him home. Coach, of course, so he ate his knees and felt his lower back for the entire flight.

  A layover in Chicago, of course, because TWA had sold to American and thus the demise of nonstops to St. Louis. Progress.

  Weather delay, of course, because this was Chicago ’s O’Hare. Larson wasn’t sure he’d ever had a perfect connection here.

  Tired, of course, because he’d been up all night. He’d managed to doze for an hour or so on the plane; it held off the headache but did nothing for the gloom, the underwater-like efforts of movement, and the persistent buzz of panic in his gut.

  He couldn’t get past Hope being a likely target. The Romeros wouldn’t know that she’d fled WITSEC-but unless she’d done everything perfectly, that would only make her easier to find.

  By the time the second delay in boarding for the homeward leg was announced, Larson had already spoken twice with Rotem and finally connected with Trill Hampton. He needed to lead Hampton down the garden path in order to disguise his own intentions to locate Hope Stevens and somehow get her to safety. And, he needed to do so without violating the secrecy Rotem required of him.

  “The trail’s ice-cold,” he told his next in command. He’d caught him up on Markowitz’s disappearance and the murder of the man’s assistant, but not the professor’s role in the creation of Laena. Rotem had been adamant about the need for secrecy. The future of WITSEC itself depended on their team’s ability to contain Laena, and the news of its compromise. And yet Larson felt his guys worked better when they understood the stakes. It took a special mindset to work fugitive apprehension. Your guys deserved to know what to expect on the other side of the door. And Larson felt like giving them the benefit of the doubt. But to keep his word with Rotem, he’d have to lead Hampton into discovering Markowitz’s role for himself. Hampton and Stubblefield didn’t have the rank within the service to have heard of Uncle Leo.

  Larson said, “I’m told a couple of our guys canvassed Markowitz’s associates this morning. They were pretty tight-lipped. Claimed he traveled so much he was hard to keep track of, and that no one knew he’d gone missing.”

  “A guy his age, traveling a lot?” Hampton, who was not yet forty, related everything to age. Larson had long since decided it was some kind of phobia with Hampton. He was terrified of growing old and saw anyone over fifty as long gone. He’d focused so much on age that he’d missed the hint Larson had dropped.

  Larson again. “Markowitz was, or is-we don’t know yet which-doing a lot of consulting work as well as speaking engagements. Must have been raking it in.”

  “And no one knew his schedule?”

  Larson sank the hook. “Our guys didn’t get anything out of the canvass.” His point here was that FATF, not the FBI, had done the canvassing. That should have sounded alarms for Hampton.

  “His last known?” Hampton had missed again.

  “A little slippery. His assistant might have helped there. We’re left to fill in the gaps, and his most recent schedule is among them. We’ve confirmed Palo Alto, Raleigh-Durham, and our own Wash U. Airline records show he’d been commuting between these three and back to Princeton regularly for the past couple months. That’s where you and Stubby will start. Phone-canvassing the three universities. Face-to-face follow-ups, if needed.”

  “This guy qualifies as a fugitive? From what, an old folks’ home?”

  Closer, Larson thought.

  “We’re gonna need his full financials, his medical records, and a psychiatric.” Hampton ’s voice bordered on complaint. “Does a guy that old have a love life?”

  Larson carefully considered what he said next. He wanted Hampton making the connection that no other law enforcement was involved, that Leopold Markowitz had put the witness protection list at risk. He owed his guys that much. He looked for another way around it.

  Okay. “The assistant’s wound was nearly identical to Benny’s.”

  The pause on the other end of the call said enough. “Did you say our guys did the canvassing?” Bingo. “Why are we investigating this, anyway?” Hampton asked. “Where the hell’s the Bureau in this?”

  Larson nodded on his end of the call. “They’re not in this, which should tell you a lot. That, and the fact that it may be the Romeros behind the disappearance, right at a time Donny’s coming up for parole review.”

  “Why the fuck would the Romeros care about some old computer geek?” Hampton asked. “What is it you’re not telling me, Rolo?”

  “Now you’re getting the idea.”

  “They’ve got you gagged on this.”

  Relief swept through him. He thought this was probably how “people close to the investigation” leaked things to the media. You didn’t have to say things to say things. You could let them speak for themselves. He was somewhat new to this.

  “Who else did this geezer consult for besides these three universities? Do I smell federal government?”

>   “Hell of a nose you’ve got, Hamp.”

  “Romeros,” Hampton said. “Organized Crime Unit?”

  “Colder. Think Benny.”

  “Justice?”

  “Scalding hot.”

  “WITSEC.” The inflection was gone. Hampton had made it a statement. “Wait! Was he involved with the reorg of the master list?”

  Pure poetry. Larson knew Hampton would see the full scope of it now. They were not pursuing some old man who was missing his college lectures but-if Hampton was able to take it one step further-the man behind the Laena list, the lives of more than two thousand protected witnesses and their five thousand dependents. What came with that was a level of personal risk unlike anything associated with their typical day job: chasing down escaped convicts and wanted felons.

  “Our primary is Markowitz. He’s believed to need access to a supercomputer for whatever reasons. They want us interviewing the people running the computers at these places in hopes of intercepting him.”

  “Supercomputers? You go for that?” Hampton asked.

  “It has merit.”

  “Money, women, and work,” Hampton said. “That’s how you find a guy.”

  “No argument there.”

  “Why’s he need the computer?”

  “That’s off-limits for discussion, as is most of this.”

  “The Romeros?”

  “You’re warm.” Hampton would put it together. It just might take a day or two.

  “Scrotum’s taking his orders from WITSEC? What’s with that? Since when?”

  “If this plane ever takes off, I should be landing before noon.” But another idea had surfaced. He would not be on the next plane out.

  “You want me to pick you up?”

  “That would be good. My car’s downtown. But I’ll call you when I leave. Meanwhile, you and Stubby get cooking. Rotem’s got the contacts for you.”

  “Riddle me this, Rolo,” Hampton said, still working out the information he’d been supplied. “Are you in Chicago on a layover or because the regional WITSEC office is up there? How involved are they? They wouldn’t be missing something, would they? Something our very own Ben Franklin created for them about five years back?”

  Larson wanted to congratulate the man, but he said only, “I’ll call you.”

  His return to St. Louis was going to have to wait a few hours.

  First things first.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  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.”