Both Ends of the Night Page 12

  “Yes, within fifteen minutes of the time the second man left the house.”

  “Did you tell them any of this?”

  “… No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I suppose I felt protective of Ron and the boy. The officer who interviewed me hinted that Ron might’ve been involved in Marie’s death in some way, and I knew that couldn’t be true. As one who had suffered through a marriage where the love was one-sided, I’d come to recognize genuine mutual caring. Ron loved Marie very much.”

  I thought of Fuller’s wedding band, still preserved among his treasures, and nodded. “Do you know who the Fullers’ landlord was?”

  “A local real-estate broker named Suzie Kurth. She has her own firm, Kurth Associates, on the boulevard.”

  I thanked Simmons for his time, and he showed me to the door, but once I was outside, he seemed reluctant to let me go. “You know,” he said, “Marie’s death was a wake-up call for me. Before that, I was an insurance broker, always hustling to make the Million Dollar Roundtable. But when she was killed so randomly, I saw that none of it mattered and took my retirement. I’ve never regretted the decision.”

  Maybe Matty’s death should have been a wake-up call for me, but instead it had spurred me on to my own brand of hustling. I wasn’t sure that was good, but it was the only kind of response that I knew.

  “Yes, Mack Gifford inventoried the contents of the house, but I didn’t store the Fullers’ things.” Suzie Kurth shook her curly blond head and glanced impatiently at her watch. Time was a precious commodity; there were commissions to be earned, and I wasn’t a prospect.

  “What happened to them?”

  “Suzie,” the receptionist said, “the title company’s on line one.”

  “Take a message. I’ve got an appointment at that Harborside property in fifteen minutes.” She started for the door, motioning for me to follow. “Now, what did you ask me?”

  “The Fullers’ things—what happened to them?”

  “Oh, right.” She held the door open for me, and we stepped out onto the sidewalk. The sky had clouded over, and there was a hint of rain on the air. Kurth sniffed it and muttered, “Should have brought my umbrella.”

  “The Fullers…?”

  “Let me think.” She closed her eyes, jingling a set of keys. “That’s it—the brother. He came with a U-Haul, took everything away.”

  “Ron Fuller’s brother?”

  “Right. First name Larry.”

  “Do you recall what he looked like?”

  “A hunk, if you like guys with button-down collars.”

  “Age? Hair color?”

  “Early thirties. Brown hair, dark. Blue eyes. But not my type at all.”

  Different brother—more likely no relation. “Had Gifford given you permission to release the things?”

  “No, but he’d been through them, so I figured it was okay to let a relative have them. And Gifford never asked after them again.” She glanced at her watch once more. “Is that all you need? I’ve got to be going.”

  “I’d like to see the Fullers’ lease, if it’s still on file.”

  “Sorry, I don’t keep paperwork that long. Frankly, that house has been a pain in the ass; all my tenants keep getting divorced or dying.”

  “A bad-luck place, I guess.”

  Kurth regarded me sternly. “Ms. McCone, there are no bad-luck houses, only bad-luck people.”

  I pulled into the parking lot of the Good Buy store and stopped next to the line of scraggly pines at its perimeter. Ten years and eight months had passed since John Seabrook—a.k.a. Ron Fuller—had watched from this spot as his wife was gunned down. Over ten years, and what did I expect to gain from a visit here besides the morbid feelings that nightmares thrive on?

  All the same, I sat there watching the shoppers enter and leave. Imagined a faceless woman in a pink dress waving to her husband and son across the lot. Heard the sound of gunfire, the screams of the crowd. After a moment I shut my eyes and the sounds intermingled with an explosion and the screams of the spectators at the air show. The images became confused: Matty, waggling her fingers in a victory sign at me… the woman in the pink dress, waving… my panicky run toward the flaming wreckage… John Seabrook’s panicky move to save his son…

  The stuff my worst nightmares were made of, on a balmy Florida afternoon with the sun peeking through the gravid clouds and a rainbow forming.

  I opened my eyes and forced the bad feelings down, kept them at bay as I turned my attention to what my next move should be. No use in questioning the people at the grocery store; ten years was a long time as memories went, a long time as job tenure went, too.

  Think, McCone. Think about what happened that day.

  “One bullet, a twenty-two, placed right in the heart. A clean, cold kill.”

  A clean kill, and later a clean disappearance of Marie Fuller’s family. Husband and son spirited away by two strangers claiming to be relatives, leaving most of their possessions behind. Most of their possessions and Marie Fuller’s body. How could the man Matty had known as John Seabrook leave his wife unclaimed in the morgue, when he’d preserved his wedding band in its velvet box for over ten years after her death?

  He’d had no choice about leaving.

  I sat still for a few more minutes, an idea forming. Then I took out my phone, deciding to run the idea by the person whose judgment I trusted most. But Hy wasn’t at my house or at RKI’s San Francisco offices. I checked my office, then Rae and Ricky’s house on the off chance he’d paid Zach a visit. No one had seen him. But when I called the terminal at Oakland Airport’s north field and spoke with a friend of ours who worked in the office, I found he’d flown out early that morning.

  “VFR?” I asked.

  “VFR, and quite evasive about his destination. All he’d tell anybody was ‘Up and around.’”

  Now I was concerned. Quickly I phoned Touchstone. No answer. The same at his ranch near Tufa Lake. Hy was on the move and being secretive—always a bad sign.

  Well, there was nothing I could do about that now. I ran down a mental checklist, then called my friend Adah Joslyn at SFPD Homicide.

  “McCone! How the hell are you? You must be out of shape in a major way; I haven’t seen you at the health club in weeks.”

  “I’ve been swamped with work. Listen, are you still in contact with Craig Morland?” Morland was an FBI agent based in Washington, D.C., who had been on temporary assignment in San Francisco earlier that year. He’d been supportive of Joslyn when she got herself into some serious trouble, and I suspected only distance had prevented the relationship from becoming a romantic one.

  Testily she said, “How are you, Adah? Oh, I’m fine, McCone. Sorry I haven’t been in touch, Adah. Oh, that’s all right.”

  “I am sorry—okay? But I’m calling on my cell phone at seventy-five cents a minute, plus long distance from Florida, and this is important.”

  “And there I was, thinking you’d phoned me up to ask me about my love life.”

  I pictured her: slumped low in her swivel chair, long legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, wearing one of her elegant outfits and a playful smile on her honey-tan face.

  “So you are still in touch with Craig. I really need to talk with him—today.”

  “I’ll give you his number at the Bureau.”

  “No, that won’t do. He can’t talk about what I need to ask him on a Justice Department line, and he won’t want to answer my questions, anyway. You’re the only person I know who can persuade him to.”

  “Well, I’m a good little persuader where Craig’s concerned. You said this is important?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll call him, see what I can do, and get back to you.”

  “Thanks, Adah.”

  “You know, McCone, sometimes I wonder if it was worth it.”

  “If what was worth it?”

  “You saving my goddamn life. I’d always heard that when you save a person’s life you�
��re responsible for them, have to look out for them from then on. But ever since you saved mine, I’ve been looking out for you.”

  After I flipped the phone closed, I remained in the parking lot, watching the ebb and flow of customers at the Good Buy store.

  Other people come to Florida for the sun and the beach, I told myself, but not you. You come to stare obsessively at the spot where a woman you never knew died violently over ten years ago. This kind of morbid focus is dangerous.

  But I couldn’t bring myself to start the car and drive away.

  A trio of young mothers came out of the store, laughing, their offspring belted securely into the carrier seats of their heavily laden carts. Two teenage boys skimmed along on skateboards, calling to each other. An older couple went over their list before they entered, sharing both the weekly chore and an easy closeness that comes of happy years together. A bag boy accurately sailed a cart toward a long linked chain of carts he was preparing to return to the store, and in reward received a smile from a pretty blonde.

  Everybody going about the many small acts that weave the fabric of our daily lives—and none realizing how quickly that fabric can be torn by an event such as a single gunshot.

  Suddenly I felt an isolation so severe that hollow pain spread under my breastbone. I looked at my watch. There was a flight to Miami in fifty minutes. I could catch it, connect with the afternoon nonstop for San Francisco. Go home, tell Hank it was impossible to locate John Seabrook, let him deal with the problem of Zach. Tell Hy we had to abandon our vengeful and potentially disastrous course. Take up a normal, connected life.

  Sure. And cats can fly from nine stories high.

  A normal, connected life was an illusion, at least for me. Perhaps there had been some semblance of one when I was a fresh-faced high school cheerleader. But even then my bouncy coordination and flashing smile and perky mannerisms had concealed private demons. And in the end the effort had been too much for me; my facade had crumbled the day I turned my last cartwheel.

  “Craig took a lot of persuading,” Joslyn said, “and the only way he’ll talk with you is in person.”

  “Where and when?”

  “Eight o’clock tonight, at Raffles Bar in Georgetown.” She gave me the address, near DuPont Circle. “Can you make it?”

  “I’m sure there’s an available flight from Miami to D.C. within that time frame.”

  “I’ll confirm it with him, then. Call me if you have a problem.” She hesitated. “McCone, something’s going on with Craig. I can’t get a handle on it, but we talk on the phone a couple of times a week, and he’s… different.”

  “How so?”

  “Just different. See if you can pick up on it, and try to figure it out. Tell you the truth, I’m kind of afraid for him.”

  Eleven

  Monday evening: Washington, D.C.

  Adah was right: Craig Morland had changed.

  When I stepped through the door of the small dark bar in Georgetown, I at first thought the FBI agent had failed to keep our appointment. But then I saw a slender man in sweats and running shoes get up from one of the stools and come toward me. I’d never known Morland to wear anything other than a suit and tie, even when he wasn’t working, and I’d certainly never seen him sporting a mustache, with his dusty brown hair grown longish. Outer manifestations of what was going on inside, perhaps, but an improvement on the staid and rather colorless man I’d known last spring. So why was Adah concerned?

  But then I clasped his outstretched hand and looked into his eyes. Saw there what she’d undoubtedly sensed, but could put no more name to it than she had.

  Morland ordered me a glass of wine and himself another Scotch, and we took our drinks to a banquette toward the rear. As he sat down, he glanced around at the other patrons as if to reassure himself that we were well out of their earshot. Then he leaned across the table toward me and said in a low voice, “So what are these questions you told Adah I won’t want to answer?”

  “Actually, I’ve got a scenario I want to run by you first.”

  In detail I outlined the Marie Fuller homicide and the disappearance of her husband and son. “What does that sound like to you?”

  He shrugged. “It could be one of many things. Why’re you asking me?”

  “Because I think the two men at the Fuller house were from the Justice Department. More specifically, the U.S. Marshals Service.”

  “Why? Because the man whose credit rating was used to rent the house was with the marshals?”

  “That’s part of my reasoning, but there’s more. The Fullers acted as though they were afraid of retaliation for something they’d done. Mack Gifford says Marie’s killing was a contract hit, and it does sound that way; even the newspaper accounts picked up on it. The Fullers’ neighbor claims they had no friends and never mentioned a relative in the area, but Ron was able to summon the men who got him and his son out of town immediately after the shooting.”

  Morland nodded, eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

  I went on, “The neighbor went over to Fuller’s house after the shooting; he didn’t believe the man who came to the door was Ron’s brother, but he also said he didn’t sense that Fuller and his son were under duress when they left. To me, it sounds the way things would go if the family was in the federal Witness Protection Program.”

  “I’ve always suspected you had an overactive imagination.” But Craig’s smile didn’t reach his eyes.

  “Is that the way it would go?”

  “It might be. Or it might not.”

  “Did they teach you to duck questions like that at the FBI Academy?”

  “Actually, it’s a self-acquired skill.” He signaled for another round of drinks—stalling for time.

  I asked, “Will you refresh my memory about the program?”

  “No reason I shouldn’t; we make no secret of it.”

  “I’ve heard it called both the Witness Protection Program and the Witness Security Program. Which is it?”

  He shrugged. “Either, I suppose. I’ve heard people refer to it as Sec Sec, meaning Security Section. But they also call it the Protection Program, so take your pick.”

  Only in the federal bureaucracy could the individuals responsible for a program be unable to agree upon its name.

  Craig went on, “It began in the early seventies as a joint operation of the Bureau, Justice’s Criminal Division, and the Marshals Service. The marshals run it.”

  “And it’s mainly designed for people who testify against organized crime figures?”

  “Originally that was its purpose, yes. But protected witnesses have also testified against non-mob-affiliated drug dealers, gunrunners—you name it. In addition, we established the Short Term Protection Program in the early nineties, for witnesses who don’t require permanent relocation. And various other jurisdictions—NewYork, for example—have their own programs. It used to be that witness intimidation was something associated with the higher levels of organized crime, but now it extends all the way down to your lowest street criminal. Nobody hesitates at taking out a witness anymore. So you see, when I say your scenario might or might not be how it would go with the program, I’m not really ducking the question. The Fullers could’ve been under the protection of any number of jurisdictions—or none at all.”

  “How likely do you think it is that they were in some program?”

  “I’d say it’s a good possibility.”

  “And if the threat to them was of a serious, long-term nature, wouldn’t it be logical that Justice was the department involved?”

  He remained silent while the waiter delivered our drinks, watched him walk away before replying. “Why do you assume it was serious and long-term?”

  “Because Ron Fuller, under another identity, is still running scared over ten years later.”

  Morland raised an eyebrow.

  “That’s all I can tell you. Client confidentiality—I was hired by an attorney.”

  “There’s been some debate on the
legality of that premise.”

  “Okay, maybe I could be ordered to testify before a grand jury, but I don’t have to volunteer information to you or any other law-enforcement officer.”

  “Unless you’re obstructing an active investigation.”

  “To my knowledge, there isn’t any.”

  He smiled skeptically.

  “Okay,” I said, anxious to get off that tack, “witnesses who enter the federal program are relocated, given new jobs, new documentation, new names?”

  “In legal closed-court proceedings. The identity changes are strictly legitimate; we can’t have our administrators perpetrating fraud.”

  I hadn’t known that, and it argued against John and Zach Seabrook being new identities created for the Fullers by the government. The birth certificates that I’d found in John’s files had most certainly been acquired by a widely used illegitimate method—so widely used that by now most departments of vital statistics had instituted safeguards against it.

  Ignoring that hitch for the moment, I continued, “Say I’ve testified against someone and received threats. How do I go about getting into the program?”

  “You request it through the party at Justice who’s handling the case. If you’re accepted, you go to the nearest U.S. Marshals office and read a document called an MOU—Memorandum of Understanding. It outlines the conditions of the program. If you can live with them, you initial the MOU page by page, sign it, surrender all your old I.D., and you’re in. A deputy marshal is assigned to protect you, arrange for your new identity, relocate you. Afterward, if you have problems or an emergency arises, you can call on him.”

  “Do people ever turn the program down?”

  “Some do. Its conditions are pretty stringent.”

  “Such as?”

  “Most important is that you never go back to what we call the danger zone—the location where the threat is most severe. That’s usually the person’s home, where all his or her family and friends are. You also can’t go places where you know anyone, so that rules out the rest of your relatives and friends. Nobody from your past life can phone you; you can call them, but the marshals prefer you don’t. Any mail you receive from people in your past has to go through a post-office box held by the Marshals Service, and packages—like Christmas or birthday presents—are forbidden.”