Shadows and Lies (26 page)

“Well, we’re ready to go home. Meet us at the bus stop, okay?”

“Uh,” I said in a panic. I couldn’t meet them yet. I would lose Sean. I mean, it wasn’t like I could look his name up in the phone book – he most likely had a new name and I had no idea what it was. “Uh, I’m not ready to leave yet.”

“What are you doing?” Lindsay asked peevishly.

“I’m doing something important,” I snapped, having dropped to a safe enough distance away from Sean so that I could speak in a normal, if testy, voice to my sister. “Look, I’ll meet you at the bus stop, but I might be a little while, so you don’t have to wait for me if you don’t want to. Okay?”

“Okay. We’ll wait,” Lindsay grumbled. “I’m not going to leave you alone in the city. It’s going to be dark soon, so don’t be too long.”

“Thanks, bye,” I said, and crammed my phone back in my purse and tried to calm down.

It seemed that Sean was ready to leave too. He was headed for a nearby parking garage and walking fast. The crowds thinned at this point, and I dropped back further and further, hoping that he wouldn’t sense my presence and turn around and look, because weirdly I wasn’t prepared for that.

Once in the parking lot, I watched Sean from behind empty cars and slunk along, probably looking like a serial killer/stalker, but at that moment I wasn’t thinking particularly rationally. He didn’t have a truck anymore. Instead he drove a little Pontiac coupe that looked like it had seen better days. He threw his purchases in the passenger seat and started the engine. I took a deep breath and got as close as I dared, hugging the side of a brown SUV parked conveniently in the row directly behind his car. I had to see his license plate, and I had to see his face one more time.

901PEG. I memorized it, saying the numbers and letters over and over again in my mind as he backed out of his spot quickly and took off like he had a fire to put out. 901PEG, 901PEG, 901PEG. I could not forget that license plate. I figured that there had to be some way to track a person by their license plate number. I’d look it up online that night.

I was determined. Unfortunately, the squealing tires of a car coming to stop directly behind me distracted me from my scheming. I whipped around to look at what was going on. Two yelling men and the cold hard point of a gun at my temple told me that whatever was going on, I was in big trouble.

“Put your hands on your head! Now!”

The voice came from the man who was holding the gun to my head. His voice was very commanding and very scary. My hands shot up into the air and I thought for sure that I would pee my pants.

“What’s going on?” I asked in a quavering voice.

“Shut up!” the man commanded, pressing the gun at my temple more forcefully so that my neck bent under the pressure. “Get down on your knees! Slowly!”

I obeyed despite the fact that I was scared and totally confused about what was going on.

“Get down on your stomach!” the man yelled at me. I moved to comply, and the man helped me by using a foot to shove me down and then pin me to the asphalt. He had handcuffs on me so fast that I didn’t have time to protest the treatment.

I was jerked to my feet roughly and spun around. My two aggressors both wore suits and flak jackets with FBI written in huge blue letters on them. My heart beat frantically as I tried to understand what was going on.

The man who had cuffed me got in my face and asked me menacingly, “Who are you?”

“C-Carrie Vitagliano,” I stammered.

“That right?” he asked over his shoulder at his partner.

Somewhere along the line my purse had been taken from me, and the man’s partner had it in his hands, checking it for hidden weapons I guessed. He pulled out my wallet and looked at my ID. He nodded. “Yup. And her purse is clean.”

My agent quickly patted me down. “So is she,” he man said curtly. Then to me, “Who are you working for?”

I shook my head. “No one. I’m by myself!”

“What were you doing following that man?”

Tears formed in my eyes. “I just thought I knew him. I swear that’s the truth! I wasn’t going to hurt him!”

“Yeah right,” he said to me, obviously not believing me. “Let’s go,” and he pushed me roughly towards their car.

“Am I under arrest?” I asked, daring to speak.

“We’ll see,” the man who held me said. His partner opened the door, and my handler tried to shove me inside. The backseat was a cage. I balked at going in.

“We’ll see?” I shrieked, visions of being held in a dank prison without due process flashing before my eyes. “What the hell does that mean?”

The agent holding on to me didn’t answer; he just shoved harder, and I fell into the backseat, banging my head against one of the bars of my cage. I refused to shut up, though. “I wasn’t doing anything wrong! You can’t just handcuff me and cart me away! There are laws!”

Both agents ignored me.

Seattle has its own FBI headquarters, which is in a big ugly concrete building down on 3rd Avenue. I was hustled inside while I tried not to weep from terror. I was stuck inside a small and ugly interrogation room and left there for quite a while to worry and pace. Its walls were painted a stark white, and ugly military green linoleum graced the floor. The air in there smelled like sweat and fart and Lysol. There was the ever present two way mirror, which showed me only my own image, which was not that great looking after my encounter with the ground. I stopped my frantic dash around the room to pause and look carefully at myself. Dirt smudged my face, and my sweater was stained with something unidentifiable and gross looking. On the other hand, my hair still looked okay, so at least I had that. I was by myself in the interrogation room, though I didn’t kid myself by thinking that I wasn’t being watched. Still, I rubbed the dirt off my cheek with spit and my thumb and tried to make my clothing look a bit more presentable.

Finally the door opened and two agents entered; they were not the same two that had taken me in. I didn’t say anything in greeting; they didn’t seem to expect me to say anything, and they were silent too. I was standing in one corner of the room, and they gestured towards one of the two chairs that were pushed under the interrogation table. I sat. The chair was ice cold and horribly uncomfortable, the slant of the chair back cutting painfully into my lower back. It was definitely not designed to put me at my ease.

We had a three-way staring contest for a few moments in which I was sure I was being silently measured on the ‘How Horrible of a Person Is This Creep’ scale. I tried to make myself appear innocent and young, looking into both agents’ eyes. Unfortunately, neither one of them seemed to be convinced that I was anything other than a criminal. I lowered my eyes and just stared at the scarred and pitted surface of the table instead. It was dented in the middle, as if someone’s head had gotten slammed down onto it. I gulped, and then one agent, a woman with nice looking features and long red hair which was tied up in French roll, sat down opposite me in the second chair, while her partner, an intimidating looking guy, leaned casually against one concrete wall.

The woman asked casually, “So you’re Carrie Vitagliano?”

“Carrie Louisa Vitagliano,” I said promptly. I was completely freaked by the dent in that table, and the male agent in particular looked as if he had sufficient muscle to brain me good if he wanted to.

The female agent looked at me thoughtfully. “You have a Nevada ID,” the woman commented. “Why are you in Seattle?”

“My two sisters and I moved up from there a month ago. I live with them. We came because my oldest sister Lindsay got a job here.”

The agent seemed interested in what I was saying. “What are the names of your sisters?” she asked.

“Lindsay Patrice Vitagliano. She’s 32 years old. She’s single. She works at a urologist’s office. Doctor Winifred Trotter is the doctor’s name, I think. It’s across the street from Virginia Mason Hospital.”

“And the name of your other sister?”

“Vanessa Iona Vitagliano. She works at a craft store called The Yarn Barn near our apartment.”

The female agent smiled and leaned back in her chair. “Would you like to know my name?”

I swallowed. Was she being menacing? I wasn’t sure because she was acting so nicely. “Yes, please?” I said, unsure of whether or not I even had a choice in the knowledge.

She gestured to herself and then her partner. “I’m Agent Douglass, and that’s US Marshall Gonzales.”

I looked between the both of them, wondering when the hammer was going to fall. “Okay,” I squeaked. “Are you going to read me my rights?”

Agent Douglass shook her head. “You’re not under arrest. You’re simply being questioned.”

I swallowed. “And what is the likelihood of my being arrested?” My voice sounded terribly timid in my ears.

Agent Douglass shrugged. “I guess it depends on how you answer the next few questions. I can tell you that lying to us is not in your best interests.”

“I’m not a liar,” I interjected quickly.

Agent Douglass didn’t reply to that. And why should she? She had no reason to trust me. I mean, look at where I was? It was not my finest hour.

Agent Douglass leaned forward again. “So, Carrie. What were you doing when our agents found you and took you in?”

I swallowed once more. I could have really used a glass of water at that point, but I thought that it was better to not leave behind DNA samples. I eyed Agent Douglass, and then Marshall Gonzales too, considering my options. I could have said that I thought I had seen an old friend but wasn’t sure and as a woman I hadn’t felt comfortable approaching a man who may or may not have been known to me. But that wouldn’t have been the whole truth, and anything besides the whole truth would be a lie. Since I didn’t want Douglass to think that I was just another scuzzy human being who needed to be taken out, I decided then and there to tell nothing but the truth, so help me God. Besides, I figured, maybe the truth would lead me to Sean.

“I thought the man I was following was my boyfriend, Sean Whalen. He looks different now. He has hair – all over,” I gestured, circling my hands around my head. “I met him in Las Vegas. He told me that he was in the Witness Protection Program.”

Oddly, neither agent seemed surprised by that bit of information. I looked at them both questioningly. The Marshall’s face was unreadable, and Agent Douglass just gestured for me to go on.

My confusion as to what was really going on grew, but I obeyed. “He didn’t tell me that right off the bat,” I said in his defense. “We were next door neighbors, but I stayed away from him because I thought he was scary. The only reason I got to know him was because we were in a wedding together as maid of honor and best man. We got to know each other and he told me about his past slowly, but he didn’t mention the fact that he was in the Protection Program till he knew for sure that I loved him and swore to never tell a soul.”

I looked from Douglass to Gonzales anxiously. “And I did. Swear to never tell. I thought he’d be worth the trouble because Sean’s a wonderful, caring, responsible man who treated me like a lady, and as you know Agent Douglass, there aren’t too many guys like that out there anymore.”

Agent Douglass didn’t answer one way or another.

I swallowed nervously. “So we, you know…we had sex…and he was going to tell you guys all about us, because he wanted me. In his life. You know – permanently. But I guess before he could do that, you showed up and took him away. I assumed he never got the chance to tell you about me, or he felt that his situation was too precarious to have me with him. I don’t know.

“I moved up here because Lindsay got a job and our parents are crazy. We all needed a fresh start. We were in the Pike Place Market when I saw Sean. Or I thought I saw him. He looked so different.” I shrugged. “I had to know, so I followed him.” I looked defiantly at my interrogators. “And it was him, but so much had happened since he’d disappeared that I just couldn’t walk up to him. I didn’t have the guts. And that’s when I got taken here.”

My explanation done, I waited for a reaction. Douglass drummed her fingers on the metal table top and shook her head. “That’s a very nice story, Ms. Vitagliano.”

I bristled and sat up straight. “It’s not a story! It’s the truth.”

Douglass looked askance at me. “Don’t you think it’s a little convenient that you just happened to live next door to Mr. Whalen, and you just happened to be in a wedding together, and you just happened to fall in love with him so that he revealed a secret to you that could get him killed? Oh, and you just happened to move to the very city Sean had been relocated to. Am I missing anything?”

My eyes narrowed. “No, but I don’t think it’s convenient. Are you suggesting it is?”

Douglass cocked her head to one side. “Perhaps. Don’t you find it awfully coincidental that the day after Sean revealed his true identity to you that some goons in the employ of a convicted mob boss had also found out where he was and were moving to take him out?”

My draw dropped with shock. “I had nothing to do with that!”

Douglass shrugged. “But you can see how it must look, Ms. Vitagliano.”

“I had nothing to do with that!” I repeated. “I would never have betrayed Sean’s confidence!”

Only I had, I suddenly remembered. I had told Nancy about him. But that was long after Sean was gone.

“You’re not a very good liar,” Douglass said quietly. “You’ve got a guilt written all over your face.”

It was then that Gonzales moved. He was swift and silent, and his fists banged down on the table in front of me, making me jump in fear. “Tell us who you’re working for!” he yelled at me, his voice booming and shattering what poise I had left. “Tell us or you’re going to spend a very long time in a dark cage!”

His anger made tears spill from my eyes, but if he thought that yelling at me was going to make me start talking, he had another thing coming. I had been trained by Nancy very well over the years, and the more Gonzales shouted, the more I would simply withdraw into myself. He didn’t understand that immediately though.

“You did tell someone about Sean didn’t you? Who was it? Do you know how many laws you’ve broken? Do you understand that you’re not just in trouble with the state, but with the federal government? We can make you disappear, did you know that? We can dispose of a body much easier than any criminal can. Do you want that to happen to you? No? Then tell us the truth!”