I assume he’s grabbing the cuffs, throwing a tantrum by suddenly going by the book and locking me down to the table. Instead he pulls out what looks like a wallet and chucks it against my chest.
It bounces onto the table and falls open backward, displays a gold badge and identification bearing his picture and name—for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
“I’m with the Organized Crime Unit. Have been for most of my career.” I leave the badge on the table, try to assess his angle, the second time today I’ve been forced to reevaluate everything I thought I understood—though this assessment requires far less analysis. And as I quickly comprehend what has happened, how things have been so badly manipulated, I don’t even realize I’ve left my seat.
“Wait a minute,” I say. “Melody was set up.” Sean slowly reaches over and takes back his identification, slides it in the pocket opposite the cuffs. “You used her.”
“It was an experiment,” he says. “And it failed.”
Sean sits down, points to my chair, and I do the same. He explains how he was a member of a small group of pioneers within Justice (those who carried disdain for the group termed them rebels)—a hybrid of its divisions and offices, but mostly comprised of FBI agents—who proposed breaking the rules, and some laws, to infiltrate three principal areas: child pornography, drug trafficking, and organized crime. He tells me how he started working to bring down child pornographers and pedophiles, how it made him sick enough that he had to move on, generated an anger and rage in him that he redirected toward the Mafia. He studied and learned everything he could about the Italian organizations, memorized every chart and every member of every family operating up and down the East Coast.
A year earlier, the group conjured the idea of manipulating a single witness in WITSEC—the United States Federal Witness Protection Program—into unwittingly becoming a lure, as bait to draw the Mafia closer, to catch them acting on a federally protected witness, with the notion that it would create a frenzy of one member folding on the other. The small group viewed the countless bad guys turned witnesses as a bucket of juicy worms to hang from their giant fishing pole. And all they needed was one worm. The idea was to take a single witness who’d been a member of one of the families, someone they callously viewed as expendable from both sides, and set the mousetrap.
Except.
Except they could never find the right witness at the right time, waited years for the perfect scenario to present itself. And during these years, two things occurred simultaneously: an increasing angst at nailing the largest families in New York, and annual federal budgets where funds were increasingly redirected from organized crime to terrorism. They became desperate—I argue it was an issue of job security, but Sean explains it was truly about bringing justice—and they decided they were going to pull in a prizewinner without getting a fishing permit.
And then: little Melody. The woman with whom I fell in love grew bored of her surroundings at the absolute wrong time. The nadir. When Melody called in to the Marshals Service and the FBI was notified, the handler she’d dealt with most of her life explained—lied—that he was going to retire and a younger, more able marshal was going to take her case.
In walked Sean Douglas, a strapping and powerful man who, while fully capable of protecting her, played the part of the aloof buffoon, the only marshal in the history of the service who didn’t fit the part, who didn’t possess the power to take your life with a punch to your face, the red umbrella in the sea of black ones. The toddler.
“When you found her in Cape Charles,” he says, “you think we didn’t know you were there?” I feel like I could throw up. When I don’t answer, he adds, “I mean, c’mon, I kept making excuses while driving down Route 13 to let you catch up.”
“No way. I saw the marshal with your caravan who ran into the convenience store on the Delmarva. That guy was the real deal.”
“Indeed, he was. Had no clue I was undercover.”
I clench my fist so hard my nails dig into my palm. “I hope one day you have to be protected by the guys you duped.”
He ignores me, continues, “When you were so cleverly sneaking into her room in Cape Charles, I sat on the beach on my