by David Archer
Chance looked at the two men. “You guys okay? He’s treating you okay?”
The two of them looked at each other, then Cambisi smiled at Chance. “We’re alive,” he said. “Right now, that’s about the most important thing. But, yeah, Darrell’s a good guy.”
Chance nodded, then motioned for Johnson to follow him out of the room. “Someplace we can talk privately?”
“Sure,” Johnson said. “Come on in here.” He led the way into another bedroom, where there was nothing but a couple of chairs. He sat wearily in one of them and motioned for Chance to take the other. “You got questions, I can see them in your face. Go ahead.”
Chance chewed his bottom lip for a moment, then looked at Johnson. “According to what we know, you are not really involved with the witness protection program, you work for RICO. How did you end up doing this?”
“It was by accident,” Johnson said. “I was working on a money laundering case that was loosely connected to the Martinelli case, and I came across a recent large cash transaction, more than two million dollars. When I got to digging into it, it was pretty easy to follow where the money went, but then I found out it ended up in the hands of Chuck Garrett. Chuck is the guy who manages all of the WitSec handlers for the western half of the country, the people who actually take care of the witnesses after they go into the program. That makes him the only person who always knows where all of the witnesses are, and that made me suspicious. Trouble was, I couldn’t prove he got the money, not enough to convince anybody to take action; it went through some online financial services that make it hard to track. I saw enough to convince myself, but I'm not sure I could convince a prosecutor. I went to talk to him about it myself, but I happened to walk into his outer office just as he agreed on a cell phone to meet somebody who wanted information on a witness named Giovanni Risotti. He was a witness against Martinelli, and the guy Chuck was talking to wanted to know where he was hidden. I overheard Chuck saying he could deliver a complete list of all the witnesses in the program for two million dollars, and I guess the guy agreed to pay it.”
“And Garrett didn’t know you overheard this?” Chance asked.
Johnson shook his head. “I was in his outer office, where his secretary would normally be. It was after hours and everybody else was gone, but the door leading into his office was open just a bit. I was just about to go for help, but then Chuck hung up and dialed another number. He said, ‘Hey, this is Chuck, and I just sold another list. We got two million, this time.’ When I heard that, I didn’t know who else I could trust. I went back out of the building and waited until Chuck came out, then—it was just an impulse, kind of hit me out of the blue, but I whacked him over the head with my briefcase. Stunned him, and I went through his pockets until I found a thumb drive. I figured that had to be it, so I took off with it before he came around. I went home and plugged that thumb drive in to my computer, and the whole list was there, everybody in the program, and he didn’t even have any security on it. I made a copy for myself, but I’ve got that one hidden away. I'm hoping there will be some way to prove that it came out of his computer, if I ever figure out who to go to with this.”
“And nobody ever wondered what happened to him? Who might have attacked him?”
“Nobody even mentioned it,” Johnson said, incredulous. “The next day, it was like it never happened, but that was enough to tell me I was on the right track. I'm just glad the security cameras couldn’t see where I clocked him.”
Chance shook his head. “Okay, so let me get this straight,” he said. “You took it upon yourself to go and find these people, fake their deaths and hide them out?”
“What else could I do?” Johnson asked. “I can’t go to the Marshals, because I don’t know who else is involved. I got a friend who’s a real estate broker, and I told him I needed to stash somebody, so he let me use this place like a safe house because the owners are in Europe for the next three months. If anybody calls to ask about it, he says there’s a sale pending on it so he can’t show it to anyone. All I gotta do now is figure out how to keep these people safe.”
“But how are you doing all this? How are you getting the bodies you leave behind, for instance, and how do you keep them from being autopsied?”
Johnson grinned. “The bodies come from local funeral homes, the ones that cremate. It’s amazing what a funeral director will do for a chunk of cash, and they always seem to have some extra ashes laying around they can pass off to the family as the dearly departed. As for the autopsies, as soon as I grab the witness and dump the body, I just call their handlers. I tell them the witness was compromised and had to be moved quickly, and to keep anyone from digging too deeply into what happened to them. They flash their IDs and say they don’t want an autopsy, there’s no autopsy.”
“But don’t they wonder who the heck you are?”
“They might, but they know better than to ask. I'm sure Chuck has had a lot of phone calls about this, but until the last few days, nobody knew I was involved. I guess I blew it when I spotted you following me, because I thought you were working for Chuck. I had called in sick the last couple days so I could take care of Mr. Cambisi, but after I spotted you, I was afraid to go back home. I figure my cover is blown, but now I don’t know what to do.”
Chance looked at him. “So, are you the one who sent somebody to try to shoot me?”
Johnson’s eyes went wide. “Shoot you? Mr. Reddick, I'm working on this alone. Did you get a look at whoever it was?”
“Thin guy, older than you, with dark hair,” Chance said. “He was driving a green Chevy Malibu, fairly new one.”
Johnson narrowed his eyes and screwed up his face in concentration, then nodded. “Sounds like Gary McCall. Gary’s a Marshal, and he works very closely with Chuck, so it wouldn’t surprise me if he was in on this. If they were on to me, then they might’ve spotted you following me. I guess that could put you on their target list, or maybe they were just trying to scare you off so they can get to me.” He looked nervous. “Did that happen anywhere near this house?”
Chance shook his head. “No, it was after I left my office last night. I was driving my truck, which isn’t that hard to spot. I ducked, but the shot took out my windshield. That’s when I decided to get myself a better car.”
“Probably a smart move,” Johnson said. “If they are after you, you could be in some pretty serious danger.” He shrugged and looked imploringly at Chance. “Any ideas, there, Mr. private eye?”
Chance thought for a moment, then shook his head again. “Not right this minute,” he said, “but let me go back and talk to my boss. His name is Pete Dixon, and he’s pretty sharp. He might be able to come up with somebody we can trust to go to with all this.”
“It can’t be anybody connected with the Marshals,” Johnson said. “Chuck sounded to me like he was talking to one of his superiors, so I don’t trust anybody over there.”
“I can understand that,” Chance said, getting to his feet. “Sit tight, and don’t open the door for anybody but me. I’ll be back as soon as I know something.”
Chapter 11
As soon as Chance had left, Josie turned and looked at Pete. “Okay, so what is it you want to know?”
“What I was thinking is…” That was as far as he got, because the door suddenly opened and two men walked in. Pete’s eyes went wide as he was briefly reminded of Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones in Men In Black .
“Mr. Dixon?” One of the men held up an ID case, and the other followed suit a moment later. “I'm Roger Skinner and this is David Kane. We are United States Marshals, and would like to talk to you about the lady who left here just a bit ago.”
“What lady?” Pete asked.
Marshal Skinner smiled, but there was little humor in it. “I'm referring to Mrs. Johnson, of course,” he said. “I'm afraid her husband is a person of interest in a serious matter we’re investigating, and we need to know why she might be consulting with a private investigator.”
“Sounds to me like you coulda figured it out by yourself,” Pete said. “Her old man is missing, and she wanted to know whether I thought I could find him. Don’t suppose you’d like to share whatever you know about where he might be, would you?”
“Do you think we’d waste our time coming here if we knew? Are you saying you don’t have any information as to his whereabouts?”
“I'm saying exactly that,” Pete said. “Can I ask why you folks are so interested in him?”
“No, you can’t,” Skinner replied. He handed over a business card and Pete took it. “Just call me if you get any information. Bear in mind that interfering in a federal investigation can be a felony, Mr. Dixon.”
The two men turned and walked out of the office without another word, and Josie looked up at Pete with her eyes wide. “What the hell?”
Pete watched until both men were in the car and gone, then shook his head. “Curiouser and curiouser, said Alice,” Pete said. “I don’t know what Johnson is into, but I hope Chance is being careful.” He turned back to Josie. “How many of the witness deaths in the last five years were classed as homicides?”
Josie looked at him for a moment, then turned back to her computer. “All but two,” she said after a moment. “One man died of a heart attack while watching a movie, and another one came down with cancer and it turned out to be terminal.”
“Okay,” he said. “Now, other than these last five that we believe Johnson has been staging, how many of the others might have been faked?”
“Um, maybe two of them. There’s a car crash where a witness was crushed to death, his head completely smashed, and another one where a car went over a cliff and exploded.” She looked up. “Neither one of those had an autopsy performed.”
Pete nodded. “Okay, so those were probably the work of an eraser. That’s what I was wondering, whether somebody else had been doing this same sort of thing.”
Josie turned around and looked at him. “Pete? What are we going to do about Mrs. Whittington? I mean, we can’t tell her it’s possible her husband is still alive, but we also can’t tell her he was murdered. Should we really be taking her money?”
“Hell, yes,” Pete said. “Just keep your fingers crossed that we will eventually be giving her some very good news.” He reached out and caressed her cheek. “Don’t worry, Josie, I'm not planning to bill her a lot of hours. We’ll keep the case open, so that we have a legal reason to get information on the Whittington case that might help us on the Johnson case. Other than that, I'm not interested in ripping the lady off.”
“Good,” Josie said. “That makes me feel a lot better.”
“Now,” Pete said, “how hard would it be for you to hack into the Marshals’ database?”
Josie shrugged. “Probably not that hard, but why? What do you expect to find that we don’t already know?”
Pete pointed at the flash drive that was still sticking out of her computer. “All I want to know is whether that really is a complete list,” he said. “Think you can find out without getting us in deeper trouble?”
She grinned. “I think so,” she said. She turned to her computer and started tapping away, and Pete returned to his desk and sat down.
Thirty minutes later, Pete was just about to doze off when the front door opened and Chance walked in. He was instantly awake, and was smiling by the time Chance’s eyes were adjusted enough to see him.
“Well, well,” Pete said. “The look on your face tells me you learned something.”
“I learned way too much,” Chance said. “First off, you were partly right. Darrell Johnson has been erasing people to keep them from being murdered, but that’s not his job. In fact, he’s probably put his head on the chopping block, because he’s been doing this entirely on his own. That flash drive his wife found? He thinks it’s still hidden away safe, somewhere.”
“Doing it on his own? But why?”
“Because he overheard the top man in charge of keeping track of all the witnesses agreeing to sell the list to somebody for two million dollars. He knows there are others in the U.S. Marshals that are involved, but he doesn’t know who they are. Instead of trying to confront anybody, he whacked the guy over the head and took the flash drive he was carrying. What we’ve got is a copy he made for himself, but I didn’t let him know that we have it.”
“Holy jumping… Chance, this case gets crazier every minute. So, I gather you got to talk to him?”
“Oh, yeah,” Chance said. “I even met some of the witnesses. You’ll be happy to know that Dr. Whittington is alive and well.”
Pete nodded. “Thought so. Now, what’s the deal on that house? Is that where he’s hiding people?”
“Yes, and I doubt it’s really all that safe. He thinks the guy who took a shot at me was with the marshals, and that they may have realized I was following him around. Now that he’s pulled a disappearing act, he’s pretty sure they know he is the one who’s been fighting against them. Pete, he’s got five of those witnesses stashed there, but I don’t think it will be that long before they get found.”
“And I bet you are right. The question is, what can we do to help?”
“Well, I thought about that,” Chance said, “and I came up with an idea. What if we rent a house and move him and his people into it? We could take turns watching over them, right?”
Pete shrugged. “Yeah, maybe,” he said. “The question is, where are you going to find one this quick?”
Chance turned and looked at Josie. “Hey, you, Brain Girl,” he said. “Think you can find something in a hurry?”
“Already on it,” Josie said. “Just depends on what you want. There are a thousand houses around here that you can rent by the week or the month or the year. Any suggestions?”
“Anything close to my place?” Chance asked. “I'm pretty sure I have seen some for rent signs around the neighborhood.”
“Let me look. Well, as a matter of fact, the house right beside yours, to the east, is available. Three bedrooms, three bathrooms, a little over two thousand square feet total on almost an acre, with a fence all the way around it. It’s for sale, but it’s also listed for rent, and it’s fully furnished. I'm looking at the pictures, and this place is pretty nice.”
“Then let’s grab it,” Chance said. “I can sneak them down there in my car, one or two at a time.”
“Hold on, buster,” Josie said. “If the marshals are watching you, the last thing you want to do is something out of the ordinary, like renting another house. What we need to do is set up a dummy corporation to rent the place, something that won’t be directly connected to you or us. Give me half an hour.”
She began typing furiously and Chance and Pete sat back to watch.
“So, did you get to meet any of the people he’s rescued?” Pete asked.
“I met two of the men, including Doctor Whittington. The other men and the woman were hiding in the attic. Whittington, or Mr. Martinelli, says Darrell Johnson saved his life. I suspect he’s absolutely correct about that.”
“So, who’s the shmuck at the Marshals who’s dirty?”
“The guy’s name is Chuck Garrett,” Chance said. “He’s some kind of supervisor over the people who take care of the witnesses in the program, at least in this part of the country. According to Johnson, that means he’s the only person who always knows where every witness is.”
“Well, not anymore, he doesn’t. Johnson has done a pretty good job with five of them. How did he manage to keep the local authorities from doing autopsies?”
Chance grinned. “He used their own handlers. After he grabbed the witnesses, he told the handlers that the witnesses had to be moved suddenly and to make sure nobody looked too closely at the bodies. All they had to do was flash their IDs and tell the locals not to look too closely, and they didn’t.”
“Smart man,” Pete said. “What about the rest of the people on that list? Are they in danger?”
“Undoubtedly they are,” Chance said, “but Johnson had
to go for the ones he knew were in the most danger. He got those hidden away while he’s trying to figure out what to do about the rest of them.”
Pete looked into his eyes for a long moment, then slowly nodded. “We’ve got the names of all the people who take care of the witnesses, right? In that flash drive thingy?”
“We do,” Josie said over her shoulder. “Names, cell numbers, everything.”
“Then we dump it on them,” Pete said. “We send them all a text message warning them that this guy Garrett is dirty and can’t be trusted. We tell them that the list has been sold, and they need to hide their people ASAP. I'm betting that most of them are honest and will do everything they can to protect their people before they try to verify what we’re saying.”
“But why would they believe us at all?” Chance asked. “They won’t even know who the message is coming from, right?”
“Because we can use the handlers for the ones Johnson already saved. We tell all of the handlers to contact them to verify that there’s something strange going on, and that ought to handle it. Those people should be able to hide their witnesses without letting their bosses know what’s happening until it’s already done. If we can get at least most of them to go along with it, it should be enough to get Garrett under investigation. Johnson can come in, then, and share whatever he knows.”
Chance nodded approvingly. “I told Johnson you were pretty smart,” he said. “I'm going to head back out there. As soon as you have that house set up, let me know.”
“Hold on, Chance,” Josie said. “When you said to do this, I was assuming you know that Pete Dixon Investigations doesn’t have that kind of money, right?”
Chance grinned. He took out his wallet and removed a card, then handed it to her. “There’s a little over two million in that account. Spend whatever you need to.”
Pete and Josie were both aware that Chance and Gabriella had money, though they weren’t privy to its source. “No, hold on, I'm setting up a dummy company. I'm calling it Desert Paradise Investments, so we can keep your name completely out of it. I will need to transfer some money into a bank account for that business. The rent on this place is almost two grand a month, and they want a year lease. You really willing to spend twenty four thousand on this?”