“You waited too long. I think there may be a deputy marshal involved now.”
“You mean she’s been put under the protection of the Marshals Service?” The quaver in his voice conveyed his apprehension at the unexpected news.
“No, I don’t think so. I think it’s just one man who has made contact with her. He seems to be working on his own.”
“Then it shouldn’t be a problem.”
“You’d better be right.”
BRAD ARRIVED at the restaurant first, made arrangements for a table, then waited just inside the door. A few minutes passed and still no Tara Ford. She had been right behind him when they had left the parking lot. A moment of alarm pushed at him. Had she changed her mind? Was she out there alone and vulnerable, not knowing that someone wanted her dead? Again he mentally kicked himself for not contacting her sooner, even though he still didn’t have anything more to go on than strong suspicions and too much coincidence without any solid proof.
He wondered if she had decided to skip out on him. A hint of panic pushed at him as he reached for the door, but it opened before he touched it and she entered the restaurant. He quickly pulled her aside. “I have a table for us in a nice quiet corner.”
Her anxiety level increased as soon as they were seated. She had started to turn around and go home rather than drive to the restaurant. But then her common sense told her that he knew where she lived, so she might as well meet him. “You claim to be a deputy U.S. marshal. I don’t recall seeing you before or during the Vincent trial when I seemed to be surrounded by deputy marshals.”
“I have Special Operations Group training and I’m occasionally assigned to them for specific jobs. I was on a fugitive-apprehension mission out of state at the time deputies were assigned to protect the witnesses, so I never became involved with the John Vincent case.”
She frowned in confusion as she studied him for a moment. “Then why are you involved with it now, rather than one of the deputies who protected us during the trial?”
“Well…that’s kind of a convoluted story. I was wounded during my last mission with the Special Operations Group and was placed on recuperative leave then came back to work on light restricted duty until the doctor releases me for active duty again. Part of that light duty has been updating case files. One of those files is the John Vincent case.”
She looked at him questioningly. “There’s something new with the case since the trial ended?”
“Yes. Two weeks after John Vincent started serving his prison term, he died of a heart attack. I’ve been notifying the witnesses and others involved in the case of his death.”
“Uh…do you mind if I see your credentials again? You flashed them rather quickly and I’d like a better look.”
Certainly a reasonable request along with her valid questions, but one that only confirmed his assessment of the situation. Tara Ford was afraid of something and being very cautious. Perhaps it was that caution that had protected her from harm so far. Brad took his identification from his pocket and handed it to her. He watched as she studied the identification card, the badge, then glanced several times back and forth between his photograph and him.
He tried to make light of the situation. “I should look more like that picture in a few days when this gash on my chin and my cuts and scrapes finish healing. I was on courthouse duty last week and got into a little scuffle with a very large man who took exception to the judge’s ruling.”
She handed his identification back to him without responding to his comment.
“Good evening.” The waiter handed them menus. “It’s nice to see you again, Tara.”
“Thank you, George.”
“May I bring you something to drink?”
Brad noted that the waiter addressed the question to him, but gave an appreciative glance in Tara’s direction. An inner smile of approval confirmed his assessment of her being very resourceful. Not only had she chosen a restaurant she knew, she had chosen one where they knew her by name and would take more notice of the person she was with. But on the downside, if someone was stalking her they would also know this was a place she apparently frequented.
They placed their dinner order and as soon as the waiter left, Brad turned to the problem at hand.
“A week and a half ago, while doing follow-up on the Vincent case, I discovered that over the past six months four of the six witnesses who testified against John Vincent have met with strange accidental deaths.
“I found the coincidence of this having happened four times over just a few months to be too great to accept it so casually. After I started checking into these accidents they seemed to me to be more and more like connected crimes. Then four days ago the fifth witness met with a similar type of strange accidental death. The five deaths occurred in five different parts of the country under the jurisdiction of five different law enforcement agencies.”
He took a sip of his water, then continued. “On the surface there didn’t seem to be any connection between the victims. There wasn’t any reason for the local authorities in the individual cases to be suspicious of what appeared to be an unfortunate accident or think that it would have any connection with anything else. Each one seemed to be an isolated incident – just an unfortunate accident. What makes it particularly compelling is that two of those witnesses were in the Witness Security Program and had been given new identities and relocated. The fifth accident happened in Portland, Oregon, and was the only one thoroughly investigated beyond what appeared obvious.”
“The fifth one? What happened to make that the exception that it would be handled differently?”
“I have a friend on the Portland police force. He’s a homicide detective. I contacted him unofficially just two days after the death happened and asked him to go over everything very carefully, to not be too anxious to write it off as an accident. I heard back from him this afternoon. It was a carefully and expertly disguised murder.”
Tara’s eyes narrowed as she stared at him. “The way you describe this…I have a friend on the Portland police force…contacted him unofficially…makes it sound as if you’re doing this investigation on your own rather than it being an official position of the Marshals Service.”
Tara Ford was definitely a smart and perceptive woman. Brad drew in a deep breath and slowly expelled it while trying to determine how best to express himself. “I won’t lie to you. Yes, I’m doing this investigation on my own. I took the information I had to the head of the Seattle office after I discovered the fourth death and he said it was speculation on my part that the victims hadn’t died as the result of accidents and without anything more there wasn’t a case. It was a couple of days later that the fifth…accident occurred. I’ve kept that information to myself for the time being because I don’t have any evidence showing that this murder had any connection to the other deaths, even though it was another of the witnesses in the Vincent case who had been murdered.”
He paused for a moment before continuing. “From what I’ve observed about you the past few days, I think you’re the type of person who would rather have the information straight out rather than have half truths. So—”
“The past few days?” Her eyes widened in shock. “You haven’t been watching me for a few weeks rather than a few days?”
He saw the fear return to her eyes and the wariness that blanketed her features. “No, only a few days. It was only a little over a week that I started pulling information together about the first four deaths and formulated a theory about someone systematically killing off the witnesses from the John Vincent trial – a theory reinforced when the fifth death occurred.”
Tara stared down at the table. The anxiety twisted her insides into knots. If he was telling her the truth, then things were worse than she thought. But was