Cut and Run

by Ridley Pearson

  Then she arrived at the front door only to find it hanging open.

  Her daughter-her headstrong, precocious, adorable, frightened little girl-had run off.

  Alice hurried within the building, neighbor to neighbor. Not many of them knew her particularly well-she’d made a point of not getting close. But most knew Penny just from hellos in the hall and at the mail slots.

  With each successive failed attempt, her desperation increased. She was lightheaded and sick to her stomach. She steadied her balance and attempted to predict where Penny might go.

  She ran three blocks to a church playground, grateful that Mrs. Kiyak, a neighbor who didn’t know her well but recognized a mother’s fear when she saw it, agreed to guard the apartment building’s stoop in case Penny returned. Alice ’s deeper concern was that the elderly Mrs. Kiyak might forget why she was sitting there, for whom she was waiting, and might return to her own apartment unaware she was in fact deserting her post. Mrs. Kiyak had delivered Christmas cookies to her friends in the building, not a month too early, but on the twenty-fifth of September.

  The playground stood empty, a blanket of fall leaves at its feet. They stirred in a light breeze. One of the swings moved pendulously on its chains. The more Alice shouted, the more anxiety flooded her.

  She fought to calm herself again. If she’d covered her tracks well, and she believed she had, then no one from her past knew about Penny’s existence, no one could connect either of them to St. Louis. If she’d made any mistake, it had been using her Alice Frizen social security number at St. Luke’s, a mistake she had not repeated here in St. Louis. Able to manipulate computer data with ease, she’d covered her tracks within her employment records at Baines Jewish Hospital by way of a small sin she felt was forgivable, adopting the Social Security number of a woman her age and roughly her description who had passed away from cancer up in Minnesota. By the time the IRS figured that one out, Penny would have her own grandchildren.

  The sounds of city traffic hummed like swarming bees. She inhaled the improbable mixture of rich fall smells: wet, loamy earth; the dry dust of brittle leaves.

  She couldn’t imagine Penny leaving the building without her, much less the neighborhood. But then Alice realized that if Penny had left, there was probably only one place she would go.

  Remembering she’d left some cash by the phone in the apartment, and now not remembering if she’d seen the money during her search, Alice hurried back home. If the cash was gone, then she thought she knew exactly where to find her. Candy was Penny’s first and only real weakness.

  Discovering the cash missing from where she’d left it, Alice tried three neighborhood stores, two that sold candy and one that offered ice cream. Drawing blank looks and offers to help from each establishment, she wandered back out onto the sidewalks.

  She rarely shopped the same grocery store twice in a row. The nearest lay eight blocks away-the opposite direction from the hospital. Sometimes they walked to the market, sometimes they took the bus. She spun in circles, tears now threatening as the hopelessness, anger, and frustration competed within her.

  She thought of the toy store and broke into a run, slaloming through pedestrians, avoiding collisions. Then, halfway to the toy store, she skidded to a stop. Across the street she spotted Little Annie’s Bookshoppe, Penny’s favorite store after Crown Candy.

  Torn between the two, she willed her feet to move but they wouldn’t budge.

  “Penny!” She screamed in such a shrill voice that she turned heads, then quickly reminded herself that she was the one the Romeros sought.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Larson felt about hospitals the way kids do about dentists. He’d watched his mother die in one; he’d sat by his brother’s side as he recovered from a freak diving accident that left him a paraplegic; he’d had his own shoulder operated on, allowing him to continue rowing. The smell, the morose quiet. The only thing good about hospitals was women in uniforms; even a woman wearing blue scrubs turned him on. Pathetic.

  He entered Baines Jewish, the third hospital he’d visited since landing two hours earlier in St. Louis, bound and determined to ferret out Hope.

  Trill Hampton had met him at the airport, driving one of the Service’s black Navigators, an ostentatious ride if there ever were one, considering the Service’s efforts to maintain a low profile.

  Hampton, a graduate of Howard University, was often asked, stereotypically, if he’d played college sports-football was the first guess because of the broad shoulders and thick neck, the cantilevered brow and jutting jaw. But in fact his interest in college had been theater arts, and to this day, he was Larson’s best guy to send into a dicey situation that required the elements of undercover work. Like Larson, he’d come to the Service through public law enforcement-Baltimore PD-where he’d found the thinly concealed corruption impossible to sidestep, finally turning in his shield and keeping his mouth shut. Through this service he learned more than he’d wanted to know about the federal witness protection plan, eventually applying there for his next job. Like Stubblefield, Hampton had been with Larson for nearly seven years; first on a witness protection team, and more recently FATF.

  Hampton spoke with a tight voice. “Scrotum thinks both Palo Alto and Duke are worth a follow-up. He says you can have Wash U since you’ve been on the road. All three have supercomputers capable of decrypting Laena, and Markowitz either contacted or visited all three right before his disappearance.”

  Larson couldn’t put into words the way he felt. Seeing the cut and naked body of the woman Hope’s age in Minneapolis had poisoned him more than he knew.

  Hampton picked up on the silence. “So… you really think it’s him, Razor Face, the guy who did Benny?”

  Even doing eighty, Larson wished Hampton would drive faster. He lived in a perpetual state of feeling one step behind. He’d been here before, any fugitive pursuit felt much this same way-playing catch-up, living with the concern a crime would go down before you collared the guy. But this was different, and Hampton knew that now, given Larson’s silence.

  “Actually, I got the go-ahead to look for Hope Stevens prior to checking out Wash U. ”

  Hampton seemed to buy it, or at least wasn’t going to argue. “And where’s that leave me and Stubby?”

  “On the road for the next few days.”

  “Interviewing geeks and getting hard-ons over coeds,” Hampton said. “You won’t mind if we wait to file our reports upon our return?”

  “But if you find anything,” Larson said, “that’s a different story. Any possible connection to Markowitz, living or dead, I need to know about it ASAP.”

  “Got it.” Hampton accepted that there was nothing more to be said.

  At Baines Jewish, Larson negotiated his way through the disorganized parade of orderlies and nurses, doctors and housecleaners, maintenance men and visitors, following signs to Administration. He felt his chances of finding Hope alive dwindling, especially if, by now, WITSEC had sent out its national alert. Protected witnesses would have gone into hiding. Would Hope? The notion that the cutter had a head start on him, that one or both of the dead women in Minneapolis had known something about Hope, tortured him.

  With a ten-acre footprint, and housed under a dozen roofs, Baines Jewish was more a small city than a large hospital. Consequently it took Larson over twenty minutes to reach the information desk capable of helping him.

  Larson displayed his credentials while line-cutting.

  “I’m looking for a woman who works here.” He described the former Hope Stevens as, “A little taller than average. Eyes-grayish green. Thin face, a bit of a pointed chin. Nice build. Long legs. Unique laugh, like happy coughing.” Reconsidering, he added, “Could be any hair color really, maybe the chin is rounder or…” He saw the woman’s eyes glaze over. A place like Baines, there had to be thousands of employees. A little more desperately, he said, “I.T. probably. Computers, for sure. Insurance? I don’t know.” He realized how ridiculous this all
sounded.

  “I’m not sure where to start.” The receptionist, polite and demure, wore a telephone headset over a French braid that vaguely resembled a topknot. “Do you have a name, sir?”

  “Try Alice Dunbar,” Larson suggested.

  The woman attempted typing. “No one admitted under that name. Sorry.” She looked past him, at the two women behind him.

  “Not admitted. She works here,” he said. “This is urgent, government business. Please. Employees. Anyone named Alice.”

  Her eyes dulling, she said, “We’ve got over twenty-two hundred people who work here on any one shift. Five, six thousand total. You’re describing a white girl, right? Like the color of her eyes and her having nice legs means something to me. If you’ve got a last name, I’ll put it into the system. Otherwise, you’ve got to step out of line.”

  A last name. “She might be in the ER,” he said, thinking back to St. Luke’s. “Try Alice Stevens or Alice Stevenson. Actually, try both Alice and Hope… and try Hope as the last name as well.”

  The woman stared across at Larson. “What’s with all that?”

  Larson returned his credentials to the countertop. “Please,” he said.

  The receptionist lost some of her earlier confidence. The gold federal shield had that effect on some people. She looked warily between Larson and the two waiting women. She started typing. Her eyes widened and narrowed with her efforts. She needed reading glasses but was too vain to wear them. She glanced up sharply, drawing Larson in, then shook her head and mumbled and typed some more.

  Recognition registered in her eyes and then, more brightly, roamed from the screen to Larson and back to the screen.

  “She’s in there,” Larson said. “Under which name?”

  The woman’s attitude had changed. With her success, Larson could feel her wondering if she should involve others in this process. Not wanting any such delay, Larson reached across with his long arms and spun the computer monitor to face him, knocking over a gray plastic magnetic paper clip container in the process.

  The woman protested, but it was too late.

  Alice Stevenson. An acronym alongside the entry: AEDEA. The space for a home phone number had been left blank. The mailing address, a post office box, not a street. No way to trace her to a residence. It was her. They’d taught her all of this.

  A wave of guilty pleasure swept over him. She lived in St. Louis. Five years of wondering boiled down to this. Maybe the laugh at the back of the theater had been her after all. Why? he wondered. Had she been watching him?

  Yanking back the monitor to face its original position, the receptionist asked him, “You want me to call her extension?”

  Did he? He felt stunned. He answered automatically, “No… thank you. Is she here? On site? Working here today?”

  She tried the phone next, angling her index finger to press the phone’s number keys without dislodging a nail. She pressed the headset’s earpiece to her ear.

  Larson reached across the counter and punched a different CO button on the phone, disconnecting the call.

  “Hey!” She slapped the back of his hand.

  “She can’t know…” he told her. “What department?”

  “What’s she done?”

  “It’s not like that.”

  The woman fixed a doubtful, disbelieving look onto him. After a short staring contest, she decoded the acronym for him. “Assistant Executive Director, Emergency Administration.”

  “I’ll check into it myself,” Larson said. Then privately: “You are not to alert her, not to tell anyone. You do, and you’ll be interfering with a federal investigation.” He waited for her practiced eyes to register his warning, but saw nothing.

  Her face expressionless, she called out past Larson, as if he weren’t there, “Next!”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Paolo didn’t trust hospitals. Like the Bates Motel, people checked in but not out. Nor did he like going after a kid. But both directives had come from Philippe, and if there was one thing a soldier learned to do early it was to follow orders.

  Fortunately, looking Latino remained an advantage. No one would take any notice of him. He intended to exploit this invisibility.

  Paolo knew that no day care worker in her right mind was going to turn over information about a child under her care. Not to a Hispanic man. Not to a civilian. For this reason, as he had before, Paolo donned his police uniform. It was black, not blue or khaki, the word SWAT written over the pocket, and a SWAT insignia sewn onto the left sleeve. The trained eye might immediately note the lack of a city or jurisdiction within the badge or insignia, might identify this costume as a costume, might question the forged ID badge that hung open from the left breast pocket, slightly smeared-pink, as if blood had been cleaned from it, his own personal touch for which he felt especially proud-making it difficult to read. But who knew what a SWAT uniform was supposed to look like? Civilians encountered cops often enough to develop expected patterns of dress-but special forces units? Also working in his favor was that SWAT held a certain respect, panache even, that impressed people. It made up for any questions-voiced or otherwise-about his ethnicity.

  He entered Baines Jewish Hospital from the delivery side and asked directions only once, then of a young woman who appeared to be in a hurry. After ten minutes of wandering corridors and moving between connecting structures-this place was more complicated than the pyramids-he finally reached a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. Administrators had elected not to advertise the whereabouts of their employees’ children.

  He found the door locked-an unexpected nuisance-and knocked twice with authority. There would be cameras here. There might be an armed response if his uniform were spotted by some alert security guard.

  “Officer Rodriguez,” he announced himself in a hush to the anorexic who opened the door and received him. She could have been thirty, might have been fifty. Her teeth pushed apart thin lips.

  “I need to speak to Penny…” he said, while digging into his left pants pocket.

  “… Stevenson,” the woman supplied. Teachers were always so eager to know everything, so eager to please. “Regarding?”

  “Police business,” he replied. “We have a… a tricky situation. In progress. I’m going to need to contact the mother… April, no. Alice ,” he corrected himself. “I’ll leave Penny in your care, but ask you to keep a close eye on her once I’ve spoken to her.”

  “Penny’s not with us today.”

  Paolo craned to get a better look past her. He hadn’t been asked in. A group of fifteen kids sat cross-legged on the floor, facing an adult woman who held a book in her lap.

  “Where is she?”

  “I wouldn’t know. Absent today. Her mother’s scheduled, so we called, but there was no answer.”

  “I’ll need her address and home phone number.”

  “The police don’t have a home phone number and address?” Lines of incredulity damaged an already difficult face. Her eyes fell to his uniform, and he knew he’d lost her.

  He jammed a straight arm, the flat of his palm against the flatness of her chest, and drove her backward and off her feet. She fell onto her coccyx and cried out sharply.

  He was inside. With his foot, he drove the door shut behind him.

  “Cell phones on the floor,” he announced, carefully brandishing a plastic weapon in order to disguise its lack of authenticity. To his satisfaction the other two caregivers, the one reading and another neatening up a play area behind her, went slack-jawed. The one neatening up was of a sturdy, breeder build, a dark-haired wonder, well endowed in both hips and chest. He took a special interest in her immediately.

  With the instruction repeated, the reader tried to speak as the breeder rose and crossed silently to her purse. The breeder set her phone down onto the carpet.

  Not taking chances, Paolo holstered the fake pistol. He backed up, seized the thin one off the floor, and held her in a choke hold. She was frail enough that he could kill her by merely tighte
ning his grip.

  “Anyone moves,” he warned, now flashing his razor blade in the grip of index finger and thumb, “including any of the little ones, and there’s trouble for all of us.” He made eye contact with each of the two caregivers now on their feet. “Are we clear?”

  The women nodded. They eyed their captive colleague, and instinctively moved to corral the children.

  The one Paolo held went limp, having passed out from fright-or perhaps he’d choked her too tightly. He allowed her to slump to the floor and released her. He stepped over her, approaching the two others. Both recoiled.

  “Penny’s mother’s address. Now.”

  The kids stared at him, wide-eyed.

  The breeder glanced toward the computer terminal on the gunmetal gray desk.

  Paolo grabbed the phone off the desk and tore it from the wall, in case that had been her intention. He signaled her over, and she responded by standing and brushing herself off. Her colleague, the reader, reached out to stop her, but the gesture went unfelt. The sturdy woman walked calmly toward the computer terminal and sat down. Paolo moved around to view the screen from directly behind her. He stood close enough that had he wanted, he could have cut her open ear to ear.

  “You do anything to-”

  “I won’t.”

  He watched as she called up various employee records.

  He kept watch between keystrokes, first to the wall clock, then to the woman seated with the kids, then to the one still unconscious on the floor. He hoped he hadn’t killed the skinny one.

  She toggled through several records, a digital photo embedded in each. A minute or two had passed. Murphy’s Law told him everything about this would quickly fuck up, and he’d be caught if he didn’t hurry.

  By purposely identifying Penny and her mother he’d shown his cards, revealed his target. In the time it now took him to reach Hope Stevens, a.k.a. Alice Stevenson, she’d be warned off, and he’d miss her again.