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“It’s an extraordinary case, at least so far.” She glanced down at his hand. “I don’t see a wedding band, but I know lots of cops who don’t wear them on the job.”
Okay, where did that come from, Mick?
Sullivan rubbed that spot on his finger. “I was engaged, once. Didn’t work out.”
“I wish I hadn’t pulled the trigger on my walk down the aisle.”
He grinned and turned his head a bit. She noted the scar that poked above his shirt collar.
“Work souvenir?” she said, pointing at it.
He flinched and then nodded. “I was a little sloppy on an arrest when I was in uniform. Didn’t search the perp carefully enough. He pulled a knife. Another half inch to the right, I’m not sitting here with you.”
She shook her head. “However much they pay cops, it’s not enough. So, tell me about the US marshal we’re going to be meeting.”
“Earl Beckett. Been doing his job for well over twenty-five years.”
“So was Pottinger/Langhorne in WITSEC?”
“I don’t think Earl would bother meeting if he wasn’t.”
“But what is he allowed to tell us?”
“Considering Langhorne’s been murdered, I hope a lot.”
“Pretty much no one who stayed in WITSEC and followed the rules has ever ended up being murdered by the people they were being protected against,” Gibson noted.
“So either Langhorne is the rare exception or—”
“—or he voluntarily left WITSEC and got himself killed. Which seems far more likely, since I don’t see WITSEC springing for a place like Stormfield.”
“Hopefully he can tell us what happened to Langhorne’s family.”
“I’m not surehopeis going to cut it,” noted Gibson.
“But even cops can hold out for it,” said Sullivan, grinning and tapping her hand. That was a first in their relationship, thought Gibson, who immediately caught herself.
What relationship?She recalibrated. “Maybe whatever Daniel Pottinger has been up to lately got him killed. It may have nothing to do with what he did decades ago as Harry Langhorne.”
Sullivan slipped a French fry into his mouth and munched on it. “Come on, what are the odds?”
Yeah, but I have a list of global psychopaths Pottinger was doing business with and you don’t.
“Apart from the little you told me aboutPottinger, I know nothing about what he’s been doing all this time, or when Langhorne changed his name.”
Sullivan shrugged. “I don’t know all that much, either. Like I told you, Pottinger came here around six years ago and bought the property from the Turners.”
“Have you been in contact with the Turners? Did they know why he was coming to the area?”
“Ihavetalked to them. They say they never met him. It was all handled by his representatives. Lawyers, real estate agents, financial people.”
“All that money and he was living alone in that mausoleum at the end.”
“People make choices.”
“Was that secret room always there?”
“I asked John Turner that when I talked to him. He said his great-grandfather had put that in. They used to play hide-and-seek, and that was a popular destination. Until people caught on, that is.”
