Invasion of Privacy

stash?”
    “Not our concern. That is up to the Bureau and the U.S. Attorney in the prosecuting jurisdiction.”
    “All right,” I said. “ Dees is at Plymouth Willows and in the program. Why does he leave?”
    “I do not know.” Robinette counted on her fingers. “You get kicked out for committing crimes, using drugs . .
    “Not a problem here.”
    “No, and since we were not about to kick him out, we would have relocated him should his new ID be compromised.”
    “Wait a minute. Given that I—and you—might have contributed to blowing the ‘Andrew Dees’ cover, you’d have relocated him?”
    “Yes.”
    “With a new identity?”
    “Completely.”
    “And he would have known that?”
    Robinette looked to Hendrix, who said, “Absolutely. Explained it to him myself.”
    “When?”
    “When he first got relocated here.”
    “But he didn’t turn to you for that after I spoke with him at the photocopy shop.”
    No response.
    Robinette said, “Boyce?”
    Hendrix shook his head. “No. Tángela called me about you, and I called Dees , but when he phoned me back after throwing you out of his shop, he didn’t say anything about wanting to be relocated somewhere else. Dees was nervous, but that’s all.”
    I thought about it. “You monitor a cooperating witness’s bank accounts?”
    Hendrix said, “Not as a regular practice.”
    “Why not?”
    “It could alert somebody at the bank that the customer was in our program.”
    “But have you checked since you noticed Dees is gone?” Hendrix said, “We don’t know for sure that he is gone.” I looked back to Robinette. “Have you checked with his bank?”
    “Yes,” she said. “He spent most of yesterday afternoon cleaning out his money.”
    Which meant Dees had waited a day after I’d spoken with him. “And how about last night?”
    Robinette said, “I was at a band recital, watching Jamey at his school.”
    “Instead of watching Dees at the complex.”
    A slight flare of the nostrils. “Yes.”
    “So, what do you think? Did Dees just turn rabbit and run?”
    “We think it is possible.”
    “With my client?”
    “Also possible.”
    “Have you followed up at all?”
    Hendrix said, “Followed up?”
    “Yes, Boyce. Airlines, charge-card companies, that kind of thing.”
    His face told me he didn’t like my tone, but all he said was, “No, we didn’t.”
    I thought about it some more.
    Robinette said, “So, Mr. Cuddy, if you find out anything you think can help us, I would—”
    “You don’t care what happened to Andrew Dees, do you?”
    She stopped. “What are you talking about?”
    Again I tried to speak blind of the Milwaukee connection. “ Dees was relocated from somewhere. You’re not going to relocate a cooperating witness before he or she comes through with testimony for you, am I right?”
    No answer from anybody.
    I said, “You don’t know whether Dees just panicked and ran, with or without my client, and you don’t really care. Oh, you’d like to believe it, because then you don’t have to investigate anything, follow up on whether a ‘hunter’ got to one of your protected people. That kind of investigation might get noticed by some criminal defense lawyers, send a little tremor through the program and maybe the hearts of other folks you’d like to see cooperate in the future.”
    Robinette said, “Mr. Cuddy—”
    “You’d rather have Dees be gone than have it get out that somebody under your protection was discovered and killed, because potential witnesses might be less than confident about your program in the future.”
    Hendrix smirked, which bothered me, but Robinette couldn’t see him as she spoke. “Mr. Cuddy, the cooperating witness program is just an option that witness has. If he or she decides to leave the program, there is not much we can do about it.”
    “In other words, it’s a free country.”
    Hendrix said, “Exactly.”
    I looked over to him. “Wrong note, Boycie.”
    The glare.
    I said, “Your smiling just now when I said you guys were worried about other witnesses finding out. You shouldn’t have found that funny, unless I was a little off the mark.”
    Hendrix just stared now.
    I said, “What am I missing?”
    Robinette turned for the door. “I do not see any purpose in going further with this.”
    To her back I said, “No, I wasn’t being specific enough, was I? You’ve been at Plymouth Willows for two years, yet ‘Andrew Dees’ moved in just over a year ago. Hendrix has