Lost Lake

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

After Ami Vergano rested her case, Brendan Kirkpatrick began the prosecution’s case by questioning Dr. Ganett and the other men who’d been taken prisoner at the hospital. Shortly before noon, Judge Velasco recessed court until two.

The prosecutor was feeling a little down when he walked into the Multnomah County district attorney’s office on the sixth floor of the courthouse. He usually felt elated after a great cross-examination, but his demolition of Vanessa Kohler had been too easy. Her irrational belief in General Wingate’s mythical secret army was a product of hate and a deep-seated mental illness. Beating up on someone who was irrational and sick was not something he relished.

“Mr. Kirkpatrick,” the receptionist called out. “I have an important message from Mr. Stamm about your bail hearing. He wanted me to make sure you got it as soon as you came back from court.”

Jack Stamm, the Multnomah County district attorney, was Kirkpatrick’s boss. Brendan took Stamm’s note from the receptionist. His brow furrowed with confusion as he read it. He was tempted to go to Stamm’s office and ask for an explanation of the instructions, but the note was very clear. It ordered him to do as he was told without question.

Brendan walked down a narrow hallway that began at the reception desk and ended in a large open area that housed the workspaces of the deputy district attorneys and their staff. General Wingate was waiting in the conference room. Two Secret Service men were guarding the door. They searched Brendan and his briefcase before letting him in.

General Wingate’s pale blue eyes fixed on the prosecutor the moment the door opened. Seated beside him was Bryce McDermott, the General’s political adviser. Mr. McDermott had returned to the conference room as soon as Vanessa was through testifying, to brief the General on what Carl Rice and his daughter had said. At the end of the table was a compact, muscular man wearing a leather jacket that was open enough to give the deputy DA a clear view of a large handgun. The man’s eyes were on Kirkpatrick as soon as he entered the room.

The General still wore his gray-streaked hair in a military cut. He had on a white silk shirt, a solid maroon tie, and the slacks from a charcoal-gray suit. The suit jacket was folded neatly over the back of a chair.

Wingate looked upset. “Bryce tells me you were pretty rough on Vanessa.”

“It’s my job to win this bail hearing, but I can assure you that I didn’t enjoy myself.”

The General sighed. “I know you’re just doing your job, but I hurt whenever Vanessa hurts. Do you have children, Mr. Kirkpatrick?”

“No,” Brendan answered. His expression didn’t change but he felt an ache in his heart. He and his wife had started talking about a family shortly before she died.

“They’re amazing, but they play havoc with your emotions. Every little thing they do brings you either ecstasy or pain. Sadly for me, Vanessa’s actions over the years have brought me little pleasure. Still, I can’t stand to see her suffer.”

“Then I’m sorry to tell you that I need you to testify.”

“Surely that’s not necessary after the job you did examining Carl and Vanessa. What possible questions could the judge have about their sanity? He’s got to realize that Vanessa is too irrational to release on bail.”

“General Wingate, if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my years in practice it’s that you never assume a judge or jury is going to act in any particular way. I’ve seen the most bizarre decisions made in this courthouse, and the only thing I know for sure is that you always cover you ass.

“Besides, I need you to tell the judge why you had your daughter brought to your home and what happened when Rice broke in. And I think it’s essential that you deny Rice’s allegations about this secret army he claims you ran when you were with the AIDC.”

The General turned to McDermott. “What do you think, Bryce?”

“I agree with Brendan. The press is all over the courtroom. They took down every word Rice and your daughter said. We need to defuse this thing. If you don’t answer their accusations, the media is going to speculate about why you’re keeping mum. Let’s put this bullshit to rest, right now.”

Wingate sighed again. “You’re right. I’m just not happy about sitting across from my daughter and saying things that will reinforce her belief that I’m trying to destroy her life.”

“I understand completely, and I’ll try and make this experience as painless as possible,” Brendan said.

“I don’t suppose Mrs. Vergano shares your sentiments?”

“No, sir, I don’t believe she does.”

Brendan Kirkpatrick and General Wingate pushed through the courtroom doors surrounded by the General’s bodyguards and followed by Bryce McDermott. Suddenly, the back benches were flooded by the glare from the television lights and there was an explosion of sound from the corridor. Then the doors swung shut and the General walked to the witness box, back straight, eyes forward, as if he were on parade. When he drew even with his daughter, he paused to send a sad smile her way. Vanessa met the smile with a look of pure hatred. Wingate’s smile faded and he shook his head sadly.

As soon as the bailiff swore him in, the General took his seat in the witness box.

“Have you ever been married?” Kirkpatrick asked as soon as he had walked Wingate through his educational, military, and business history.

“Yes, to Charlotte Kohler, a wonderful woman.”

“What happened to her?”

Wingate dropped his eyes. “She died in a car accident.”

“When did this happen?”

“In the mid-sixties, when Vanessa was still in middle school. Her mother’s death hit her very hard.”

“You’re referring to the defendant, Vanessa Kohler?”

“Yes.”

“Is the defendant the only child of your marriage?”

“Yes.”

“How would you characterize your relationship with your daughter?”

“We were close until her mother died. Then she got it into her head somehow that I was responsible for the automobile accident that killed Charlotte. She was in her teens, a very vulnerable age. Our relationship became strained.”

The General looked up at the DA. “I take a lot of responsibility for that. Vanessa and I lived in California but I worked in Washington, D.C.”

“You were in charge of the Agency for Intelligence Data Coordination?”

“Yes. I should have been home more, but I couldn’t be, especially after Vietnam started. The workload was punishing.”

“Was there a specific event that further affected the relationship between you and Miss Kohler?”

Wingate nodded. “In 1985, Vanessa saw Carl Rice murder Eric Glass. It was a terrible murder-very gruesome. She had a breakdown and had to be hospitalized. I checked her into an exclusive private sanatorium where she would get the best care possible. She fought her hospitalization. She insisted that locking her away was part of some plot against her.”

Wingate paused and took a sip of water before continuing.

“Putting Vanessa in a mental hospital was very painful for me, Mr. Kirkpatrick, but sending her to Serenity Manor was absolutely essential for her mental health.” The General looked down. “After I had her committed, she refused to speak to me.”

“How long have you known Carl Rice?”

“I believe we first met at my home in California in 1969. It was the beginning of Vanessa’s senior year in high school. Carl was a classmate.”

“What was your initial impression of Mr. Rice?”

“I liked him. He was bright, articulate, and a serious student and athlete.”

“What was Mr. Rice’s sport?”

“Karate. He’d been studying since he was young and he was very good, a black belt.”

“You know that Mr. Rice has accused you of being the head of a secret army unit that recruited him during the Vietnam War.”

“Yes.”

“Are you aware that he alleges that this army unit committed illegal acts, including murder, at your command?”

“Yes.”

“Are you also aware that Mr. Rice has testified that you ordered him to torture Congressman Eric Glass to death in order to retrieve documents which your daughter took from your safe in California? These documents were supposed to prove the existence of this secret army.”

“I’ve heard about the testimony.”

“Did you order Carl Rice to kill the congressman?”

“No, absolutely not.”

“Did this secret army unit ever exist?”

“No. The Agency for Intelligence Data Coordination is an intelligence-gathering organization that works with data supplied by other intelligence agencies, like the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency. The agency’s charter does not permit it to have agents of its own.”

“What about these records that your daughter claims she took from your safe that prove the existence of this secret army-the records Mr. Rice said he took from Congressman Glass after torturing him? What do you have to say about them?”

“Mr. Kirkpatrick, those documents are a figment of my daughter’s and Mr. Rice’s imaginations. They were never in my safe, because they never existed.”

“Do you know why Mr. Rice made up this story about the secret army?”

General Wingate hesitated. “I have a theory,” he said at last.

Judge Velasco looked at Ami because he expected an objection. When she didn’t make one, he chalked it up to her inexperience.

“Please tell it to the court.”

“I’m not particularly proud of what I’m about to say. At the time I believed that I was doing what was best for all concerned.”

Wingate paused to collect himself. Ami thought that he looked like a man who was being forced to perform a necessary, but regrettable, duty. From the silence in the courtroom, it was obvious that he had captivated the spectators and the judge.

“As I’ve said, Mr. Rice was an extremely bright young man who made an excellent first impression. Unlike most of the children at St. Martin’s Prep, Carl was on scholarship, and I admired his grit. I came from a poor family and was also a scholarship boy. I knew how hard it was for someone who is poor to be around other children who have everything. It was only later that I discovered that he was deeply confused, especially about his relationship with me.

“Mr. Rice’s father deserted his family when Carl was very young, and his mother raised him. There was no significant father figure in his home while he was growing up. It soon became apparent to me that he envied Vanessa her wealth and wished that he could be part of our family. He began relating to me as if he were my son. I didn’t realize that this was happening at the time, or I would have distanced myself from Carl.”

“Did a particular incident make you realize that there was a problem?”

“Yes. In those days I knew a man who organized fights between combatants from different martial arts disciplines: boxers would go up against wrestlers, judo players would fight Thai kickboxers. I took Carl to one of these matches because he was a serious student of karate.

“One of the fighters was a black belt named Torrance who ran a dojo and was a local karate champion. After he won, Carl and I discussed the fight and I asked him how he thought he would do if he went up against Torrance. It was a casual conversation, and I didn’t think anything of it until several weeks later when I received an envelope in the mail. There was no name on it and no return address. There was no letter inside either, only a newspaper clipping about Torrance. Someone had broken into his karate studio and beaten him almost to death. I was certain that Carl was the assailant and had sent me the clipping to impress me. It didn’t. I felt terrible that I might have inadvertently caused Carl to attack Torrance, and I was deeply concerned that someone this unbalanced was close to my daughter. But there was no way I could talk Vanessa into breaking up with Carl. By her senior year in high school our relationship was very strained. If I’d even suggested that she stop seeing Carl, she would have intensified the relationship just to spite me.”

“What did you do?” Brendan asked.

“I thought about calling the police, but I had no proof that Carl was involved. Besides, he had a scholarship to an Ivy League school by this time and I knew that an arrest would ruin his chances of going to college. And, as I’ve said, I felt terribly guilty about what had happened. Then fate intervened. Carl received a draft notice, and he came to me for advice.”

“Did you have anything to do with his being drafted?”

“I did not. This is another one of Vanessa’s delusions.”

“Go on.”

“Carl wanted to know if I thought that he should serve or get a student deferment. I should have helped him go to college, but I wanted to get Carl as far from Vanessa as possible, so I persuaded him to go into the army. I shouldn’t have taken advantage of the fact that he saw me as a father figure, but I did it to protect my daughter. I also thought that spending time in the military might help Carl mature.

“When Carl saw Vanessa again in 1985, he knew that she hated me. I think he made up this story about a secret army so she would take him back. He may still have been in love with her.”

“Did you ever meet with Mr. Rice between his senior year in high school and this year when he invaded your home?”

“No, we had nothing to do with each other.”

“You did not have him come to your town house in Virginia soon after his first combat mission so that you could recruit him into this secret army?”

“No. He was never at my town house in Virginia, and, as I’ve testified, there was no secret army.”

“And you did not meet him in a motel in Maryland and order him to torture Congressman Eric Glass to death?”

“Certainly not.”

“Okay, let’s move forward to more recent events. Please tell the judge how the defendant came to be at your home after she helped Mr. Rice break out of the county hospital.”

“You have to remember that Carl had murdered Congressman Glass in 1985, and was also the main suspect in the murder of an army general named Peter Rivera around the same time. Then there were the two men he nearly killed at that Little League game. Needless to say, I was horrified that Vanessa was on the run with someone that dangerous. So I instructed some of my people at Computex…”

“This is your company?”

“Yes. We have a highly trained security force of former Green Berets, Delta Force, and Rangers, who I used to rescue my employees in Afghanistan. I sent them after Vanessa because I knew how dangerous Carl could be. They were lucky enough to find her before Carl hurt her. My men were under orders to bring Vanessa to me. I was planning to call the authorities after I arranged for legal representation and psychiatric care.”

Wingate paused. He looked pensive. “Maybe I should have had my men take Vanessa directly to the police, but I have been able to do so little for her since her mother died and I…Well, I may have used poor judgment, but I would probably do the same thing if I had a second chance. Honestly, I just wanted my daughter safe and with me.”

“What happened after you learned that Vanessa had been rescued?” Kirkpatrick asked.

“I was in Cleveland making a campaign speech. I flew directly home.”

“Tell the court what Carl Rice did when he learned that your daughter was in your home.”

“Soon after I arrived, Carl invaded my house.”

“Was anyone hurt during this invasion?”

“Yes. Several of my guards were either killed or injured.”

“Once inside, what did Mr. Rice do?”

“He broke into the room where Vanessa was staying. I was talking to her when Carl attacked. One of my men distracted Carl, and I escaped and summoned the guards. We kept him pinned down until the police arrived. My daughter had called an FBI man named Victor Hobson, and he negotiated their surrender. I’m very grateful to him because Vanessa was not harmed.”

“I have no further questions for General Wingate,” the DA said.

The judge nodded to Ami. “Mrs. Vergano,” he said, “your witness.”

Ami slid a list of ten names out of her file. “Thank you, Your Honor,” she said, rising to her feet. “General Wingate,” Ami said, “who is Arthur Dombrowski?”

“I have no idea.”

“Who is Fredrick Skaarstad?”

“I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of him.”

Ami read seven more names. The General denied knowing all of them.

“But you do know Carl Rice?” she asked after glancing up from the last name on the list.

“Yes.”

“Would it surprise you to know that I’ve just read you a list of the ten men whose records your daughter took from the safe in your home in California and gave to Congressman Glass?”

“Mrs. Vergano, those records never existed except in my daughter’s imagination. I assume she gave you those names, but I have no idea where she got them.”

Ami stared intently at the General, who braced himself for more cross-examination. After a moment, however, she shook her head.

“No further questions, Your Honor.”

The General looked surprised. He cast a quick glance at Kirkpatrick, who shrugged.

“Do you have any more witnesses, Mr. Kirkpatrick?” Judge Velasco asked.

“I may have one more. Can we recess so I can speak with him?”

“How long will you need?”

“Twenty minutes, half an hour.”

“Very well. We’ll adjourn for half an hour.”

As Wingate and Kirkpatrick walked up the aisle toward the courtroom doors, two Secret Service men and the General’s bodyguard formed a protective circle around him. More members of the General’s security force waited outside the courtroom. Kirkpatrick pushed through the doors, and the television lights flashed on as the reporters began firing questions at the candidate.

“The General will hold a press conference in an hour at his hotel,” Bryce McDermott said loudly enough to be heard over the din. “He won’t take any questions until then.”

“Let’s get you upstairs and away from this mob,” Brendan said.

They double-timed it up the marble staircase to the district attorney’s office, and Kirkpatrick led the General back to the conference room.

“Before you leave, there’s someone who wants to meet with you,” Brendan told Wingate.

“We don’t have much time,” McDermott said. “The General has to be in Pittsburgh tomorrow, and we still have the press conference.”

“I’m afraid this is important,” Brendan insisted as he opened the conference room door.

“Good afternoon, General,” said Ted Schoonover, President Jennings’s chief troubleshooter. He was seated at the conference table with Victor Hobson. “You know the assistant director, don’t you?”

McDermott pointed at Schoonover. “What’s he doing here?” he asked Brendan angrily.

“Mr. Kirkpatrick has no idea why I’m here, Bryce,” Schoonover said. “And the reason for our meeting is something I can discuss only with General Wingate. So, everyone but General Wingate and Director Hobson will have to step outside.”

“No fucking way,” McDermott answered. “General, we don’t have time for a chat with Jennings’s hatchet man.”

“You don’t have a choice, Mr. McDermott,” Hobson said. “This meeting is part of a criminal investigation and I’m exercising my authority as a federal agent to clear this room. You, the General’s bodyguard, and the Secret Service will have to wait outside.”

McDermott started to protest, but Wingate held up his hand.

“Wait outside, Bryce.”

“But…”

“I’ll be fine.”

As soon as the door closed behind Kirkpatrick, McDermott, and the General’s bodyguards, Wingate took a seat across from Schoonover and the assistant FBI director.

“We have a problem, General. Or, rather, you do,” Schoonover said.

“What problem?” Wingate asked.

“I’m afraid that some of your testimony under oath wasn’t true and I thought that you’d like to clear it up before the press finds out.”

“I’m not following you,” General Wingate said.

“You testified that you had no contact with Carl Rice between the time he was in high school and the time he invaded your mansion.”

“That’s correct.”

“During her cross-examination, Mrs. Vergano read you a list of names of men who were supposedly in the secret unit you ran out of the AIDC. You said you’d never heard of them.”

“That’s right.”

Schoonover took a sheaf of papers out of an attache case and pushed them across the table.

“Then how do you explain these?” he asked.

The General shuffled through the papers for a moment. They were covered with numbers and letters and appeared to be some kind of code.

“What are they?” he asked.

“Do you want to explain, Victor?” Schoonover said.

“Sure. Your daughter took the personnel records of the men in your secret unit from your safe.”

Wingate smiled. “There were never any records, Mr. Hobson. They are…”

“Yes, yes,” Hobson interrupted, “figments of the imaginations of two very disturbed people, as you testified, and I’m sure the originals don’t exist anymore. You’d have been a fool to keep them after Carl Rice killed Eric Glass to get them, and you are definitely not a fool. But neither is your daughter. Vanessa wrote down the names of the men before she gave the documents to the congressman, and that enabled me to track down the documents Ted just gave you.”

“These don’t look like personnel records,” the General said.

“They’re not. I did serve a search warrant at the army records center in St. Louis, Missouri, for the personnel records, and they found records for all the men on Vanessa’s list. They were similar to Carl’s official records. The men were all listed as having few if any combat missions, and most of those were early in their careers. They were also shown as having stateside duty for most of their time in the service. None of them had a rank over sergeant.

“But the personnel records weren’t the main thing I was looking for. Carl always claimed that he was a captain. A captain’s pay is significantly higher than a sergeant’s. Vanessa told me to look for the pay records, too. Strangely, none of the pay records for these men existed in St. Louis. The clerk I spoke with told me that a fire of mysterious origin destroyed a lot of their records in 1973.”

Hobson paused and stared at the General, but Wingate did not react. Hobson smiled.

“A lot more microfilm was destroyed in the mid-nineties when the information was upgraded to digital media,” he continued. “I thought that I’d reached the end of the line when the clerk remembered that the Defense Finance and Accounting Service in Indianapolis kept copies of the original pay records on microfilm.”

Hobson shook his head. “I had a hell of a time finding them. The microfilm was in old moldy boxes filled with thousand-foot rolls. My men and I thought we’d go blind, but we finally got the pay records for all ten men.”

“I can’t make heads or tails of these numbers and letters,” Wingate said.

“But you do recognize the names at the top. They’re the same names that Mrs. Vergano read to you, the names you testified under oath rang no bells.”

Hobson placed a document on the table. “This is Carl Rice’s pay record for his time in the army from 1970 until 1985. You should have a copy in that stack.”

Wingate found his copy and stared at it.

“I couldn’t make any sense of this either,” Hobson said, “but I got a subject-matter expert at the DFAS to interpret the code. What’s important is the pay rate for each man. Carl was paid as a captain right after he claimed to have started working for you. And he received hazardous-duty pay, which he would not have received for teaching at the language school. But most important, someone had to authorize the promotion of these men so they could receive the pay increase. On the page for each of these men is a code that authorizes their promotion to captain so they could be paid as captains. The papers promoting these men were with their pay records.”

Hobson pushed them across the table.

“They were all signed by you, General,” Schoonover said.

Wingate looked at the documents but did not touch them.

“Victor, would you step outside?” Schoonover asked.

Hobson got up without a word. As he circled the table, his eyes never left Wingate. The General was pale. He seemed disoriented, like a man awakening from a deep, troubled sleep.

“So, what does Jennings want?” Wingate asked as soon as he and Schoonover were alone.

“He’d love to see you on California’s death row awaiting execution for the murder of Eric Glass. Actually, we both would.”

“That’s not going to happen.” Wingate picked up the papers he’d stacked in a pile. “This jumble of numbers and letters won’t get you anywhere. And neither will testimony from my daughter, the ex-mental patient; or Carl Rice, the mass murderer.”

“Carl passed three polygraphs since we took him into federal custody. Vanessa passed her tests, too.”

“Polygraph evidence isn’t admissible in court.”

Schoonover smiled. “You’re right, but newspaper reporters are. The bail hearing is only in recess. What do you think the papers will print when these documents are admitted into evidence? You’ve testified under oath that you’ve never heard of these men and that you had no contact with Carl after he graduated from high school. Your signature on the pay records proves that you’re lying.”

“These documents are forgeries. Jennings probably had someone from the CIA doctor them.”

“Right, the CIA. That reminds me. Do you remember getting a visit from a CIA agent shortly after Eric Glass was murdered?”

“No.”

Schoonover nodded. “Charles told me you’d deny any knowledge of the meeting, and Gregory Sax, the agent, is dead-the victim of an armed robbery that occurred shortly after Peter Rivera was murdered.”

“Where is this going?”

“Sax was the Unit’s liaison with the White House in 1985. When Vanessa told the police that Carl Rice murdered Eric Glass, Sax knew that a member of the Unit had killed the congressman, and he had a crisis of conscience. He’d been leery of some of the Unit’s missions, but there had always been some sort of national security justification that let him rationalize the assassinations, the drug dealing, and all the other sordid activities in which your men engaged. But Glass’s murder was the last straw. He’s the one who went to President Reagan and told him that the Unit had to be shut down. He’s the man who carried President Reagan’s order to shut down the Unit back to you in 1985. And you really shut it down, didn’t you? You sent those fine soldiers to their deaths. Then you made it look like Carl Rice had murdered Peter Rivera for the codes to the secret fund, but you killed Rivera and took the money, didn’t you?”

“It’s convenient for you that this Sax person and the president he allegedly told about Vanessa’s secret army are dead. Where is this fairy tale going?”

“When Sax was murdered, President Reagan put a bright young CIA agent in charge of a secret investigation of the Unit. The agent was Charles Jennings.”

“Ah, and I suppose that Charles is going to get on TV and tell the world about his secret investigation that just happens to prove that the man who is running against him is a murderer and a thief.”

“You know better than that. But the president knows you’re dirty, Morris. He doesn’t have to be convinced that you betrayed your men in Vietnam, that you stole the millions in the secret fund and used that money to buy into Computex, and that you were behind the murders of Sax, Glass, and Rivera. Unfortunately, with Rice missing and Sax dead, he could never prove anything. Then Carl Rice returned from the dead. And now we have the pay records of men that you swore under oath you didn’t know, with your signature authorizing their promotions to a rank their official files say they never attained.”

“This is all very interesting but I’ve got a statement to make to the press and a plane waiting to take me to Pittsburgh.”

“Use the press conference to announce that you’re dropping out of the race.”

“Not a chance.”

“Then we’ll go public with the pay records, the Justice Department will look into where you got the money you used to finance Computex, and we’ll investigate the plane crash that killed Simeon Brown. With all the negative publicity, you’ll be lucky to get any votes in the primary, and the president will have four more years to make your life hell.”

“This is what happens in banana republics, Ted,” Wingate replied calmly. “The person in power arrests his opposition. If Charles tries that with me, I’ll win the primary in a landslide.”

“You’ll be able to count the votes in jail, if the other prisoners vote to watch the news that night,” Schoonover answered.

Wingate stood up. “I’m calling your bluff, Ted. If you persist with these outrageous demands, I’ll hold a press conference, all right, and I’ll use it to expose the blackmail threats you’ve just made. I’ll have Brendan Kirkpatrick and the Secret Service agents in my guard detail tell the world how the president’s hatchet man insisted on this private meeting. Then I’ll get the best experts money can buy to prove that these documents are false.”

Schoonover smiled. “When I was in ’Nam, we had a name for guys like you who sent other people to die doing their dirty work. We called them REMFs. It’s an acronym that stands for rear-echelon motherfuckers. We despised them, just like I despise you. That’s why I’m going to take great pride in bringing you down.”

Sam Cutler was working on the details of security for an appearance in Madison, Wisconsin, when the General stormed into his hotel suite. Wingate had been calm and self-assured when he spoke to the reporters at his press conference, but he was seething now.

“Sam,” Wingate barked. Cutler cut short his phone conversation and followed the General into the bedroom.

“Has this room been swept?” Wingate asked.

“We can talk,” Cutler assured him.

As he changed into casual clothes for the trip to Pittsburgh, Wingate told Cutler about his meeting with Ted Schoonover.

“The documents can hurt us,” the General said, “but our real problem is Carl Rice. Vanessa knows only what he told her. Carl is the key.”

“What do you want me to do?” Cutler asked.

Wingate stared at his aide. “Don’t be obtuse.”

“Rice is going to disappear, General. Jennings will stash him in a safe house.”

“Then find him. Use our contacts at Justice, the CIA. Pay what you have to, but find him. And remember, Sam, I’m not the only person who’s in danger. You have a lot to lose as long as Carl Rice is alive.”