It was dusk outside, dark in the house. They went in through the side door, Carmen and Wayne following the deputy marshal, each holding a lighted candle. In the kitchen he turned to them saying, “We could use cups as holders, so we don’t drip wax all over.”
Carmen, already looking in a cupboard, heard Wayne say, “You think it matters? You can feel the dirt and grit on the floor.” There were dishes on the shelves, but not many. Most of them were piled in the sink, soiled, some crusted with bits of food. Carmen opened the refrigerator and closed it quick against the awful rancid odor. There were dirty pans on the range.
“The couple lived here before,” Ferris said, “I suspect she wasn’t much of a housekeeper. All the woman did was complain. She ran out on him, oh, a few months ago. Then he left, was only last week, right before we found out you all were being relocated here and J. D. Mayer told me I’d be acting-inspector in charge, see to your needs.”
“Come here, Ferris, I want to show you something,” Wayne said. “I want you to look at the carpeting in the living room. I can’t even tell what color it is.”
Following Wayne, the deputy marshal said, “I think it’s kind of a green.”
Carmen watched their candles moving away in the dark. She stepped into the hall to look at the bedrooms, both tiny, twin beds crowded into what would be the front bedroom, the other one empty, cardboard boxes stacked against a wall. Wayne would have a few words to say about the twin beds. She could hear him in the living room telling the marshal to look at the stains and here, look at the drapes, like some animal had been chewing on them, the front of the sofa, the same thing.
The bathroom didn’t seem too bad, for a bathroom. Scrub it with a disinfectant, get rid of the shower curtain full of mildew stains. Do something with the window. The windows in the bedrooms, too, all the windows, clean the whole place good ...if they were going to stay here. Right now it was someone else’s house. Carmen followed her candle into the living room. The upholstered furniture, modern-looking, appeared white, the carpeting more gray than green. The walls seemed to be white or off-white.
Ferris was telling Wayne the couple that’d lived here had had a little puppy must not have been housebroken, left its little messes wherever it wanted, little black-and-white shorthaired pup. Looking at Carmen he said, “I know it would try to chew on my shoelace if I wasn’t wearing my boots, which I generally do. These here are Tony Lamas I sent away for. I’d give the puppy a little kick, not to hurt it none, you understand, but the woman’d have a fit. She took the pup when she left. Her name was Roseanne—I mean the woman, I forgot the puppy’s name.” Ferris paused. “It’ll come to me. Roseanne, the woman, had real blond hair but was older than you folks. Both of ’em were, her and the guy, her husband.”
“These people,” Wayne said, “were in the witness program?”
“We call it WitSec,” Ferris said, “short for Witness Security. Yeah, they were here when I got assigned last winter, after I finished my thirteen weeks training at the academy. See, I was a police officer in West Memphis, Arkansas, that’s my home, before I joined the Marshals Service and was sent to this district.”
“You like it?” Carmen said. “I mean Cape Girardeau.”
“Yeah, I like it, it’s nice. See, I’ll work security in the federal court when it’s in session, or I’ll get a call from the local Bureau office, there two resident agents here, back them up when they make an arrest and then take charge of the prisoner or seize his assets if he’s got any, like his car, and arrange for its disposition, you know, sell it at auction or we might use it in surveillance work. Like this house was seized, it was owned by a guy was running dope on the interstate, St. Louis to Memphis, and was using this house as a place to stash it if he wanted, or sell some of it. You know the See-Mo campus is here, Southeast Missouri State? I’m thinking of taking some business courses, maybe computer programming, something like that. I can get home when I want, it’s not too far to West Memphis, and there’s good deer hunting right over here in Bollinger County.”
Carmen watched Wayne. He said, “Is that right?” trying to sound only mildly interested. “Whitetail or mule deer?”
“Whitetail and plenty of him. But getting back to your question,” Ferris said, “the one here before you was a guy name Ernie Molina, little guy, had this little mustache. He was a loan shark from over in New Jersey. Ernie and his wife I mentioned, Roseanne.”
Carmen was about to speak, but Wayne beat her to it. “That’s the guy’s real name, Ernie Molina, or the one he made up?”
“His real one. What he changed it to—this’s funny—was Edward Mallon, see, E.M., using the same initials on account of he had, what do you call it, his monogram on all his shirts, on the pocket here. Guy had more shirts’n I ever saw in my life, like he musta had a good twenty shirts or more hanging in his closet, I’m not kidding you. The thing was, it was funny, he’s going by this name Edward Mallon, but you could tell by looking at him he was a greaser. Excuse me, I mean a Latin. I have to watch that. I come here, Ernie’s not doing nothing, living offa Uncle Sam, I took him over to Procter and Gamble’s and got him a job, but he didn’t care for it, so he quit and got himself one tending bar. Ernie was a nervous type, I think drank a lot.”
“We were told,” Carmen said, glancing at Wayne in the candle glow, “you aren’t supposed to talk about people in the program, reveal their identity. Isn’t that right?”
Ferris seemed surprised. “Well, you’re not gonna tell anybody, are you?” He started to grin.
“Being in the same club, so to speak, as him. No, I take that back. Ernie’s gone, so he’s not in WitSec no more. Now my responsibility, as far as the program goes, is to protect you folks, keep you out of harm. I know there a couple guys looking for you, they have detainers out on them and you’re gonna testify at their trial if and when, but that’s about all. See, Marshal J. D. Mayer was given the information and told me you were coming and would be in my care. He’s on sick leave, his pump acting up on him, and I doubt will be back. He’s funny, I ask him things and he says, ‘Look, Ferris, I tell you what you need to know and what you don’t won’t hurt you.’ So all I got is a file with not much in it. I don’t know if you’re actually married or common-law or even what your real names are.”
Carmen said, amazed, “Are you serious?”
“Well, nobody’s told me.”
“We’re Mr. and Mrs. Colson. We’re actually married, in church, and that’s our name.”
“What I have in the report, then—that’s your Christian name, Carmen?”
She said, “I don’t believe this. Yes, it is.”
“That’s a nice name,” Ferris said. “I like it.” He looked at Wayne. “And you’re Wayne Morris Col-son? That’s the name on your original birth certificate?”
Wayne took a moment, staring back at him in the candle glow. “What’s your problem?”
“Hey, there’s no problem. It was my understanding that to be in WitSec you have to take on a new identity. Anybody I’ve ever heard of in it, that’s what they did. I’ll study out that file again, satisfy my curiosity. It’s possible I could’ve missed something.”
“But you sound like you don’t believe us,” Carmen said.
“No, I believe you, you tell me your real name’s Carmen, that’s fine with me. I just want to get it straight in my own mind what you have to do and what you don’t. As I told you, I wasn’t given much information.”
“And you haven’t been a marshal very long,” Wayne said.
“Be a year come January. I might not be up on all the procedures, or you might say the fine print as to what you agreed to. But let me tell you, I know what I have to do. I’m armed at all times, got a three-fifty-seven Smith and Wesson on me, and I’m sworn to protect your lives to the death.”