Three days later , Marie Logue was at the New Orleans International Airport, checking in for a flight to Milan, when she was surrounded by a dozen special agents from the local office of the FBI. The name she was using was Barbara Grossman, and she had a Louisiana driver’s license and a four-year-old passport to prove it. Unfortunately for Marie Logue, the FBI had, on videotape, the footage of the transaction taking place between Marie and the same man who had sold Eric Logue his Cleve Garrett identity papers.
Portenson was exuberant and cocky when he called Joe and told him what had happened. He said he had thought it through once Joe tipped him off about the relationship between Marie and Eric Logue, and he figured out that Eric had probably told Marie about the location of the identity thief in New Orleans. Portenson figured that Marie would eventually go there herself, for her new documents. Portenson said his colleagues in New Orleans had arrested the identity thief earlier in the week and had made a deal for leniency with him if he would help them set her up, including the placement of video cameras in his office over a bar on Bourbon Street.
“We want to interview her tomorrow, and we’d like you to be here, since you know her,” Portenson said.
“I thought I knew her,” Joe corrected. “Whatever. We want you there.” “New Orleans?”
“I’ll fax you the address for our field office, and we’ll make you a reservation at a hotel nearby. If you take the commuter flight that leaves your little podunk airport in two hours, you can connect in Denver. You can be here tonight.”
“I don’t think I have the budget to . . .”
“We’re covering your expenses, Joe. I already got approval for it.”
oe Pickett landed in New Orleans at midnight, in a rainstorm of biblical dimensions. His Stetson got soaked through in just the time it took him to climb into a taxi at the airport.
Despite the rain, there were throngs of people moving on the sidewalks downtown. Some carried umbrellas, but most just got wet. He checked in at the Bourbon Orleans Hotel in the French Quarter.
As he stood at the front desk, dripping, the flinty blond clerk found his reservation and said, “Are you really from Wyoming?”
“Yup.”
“I don’t believe I’ve ever actually met anyone from there before.” “Now you have,” he said.
There was a message on the voice mail in his room from Portenson saying to be at the FBI field office on Leon C. Simon Boulevard by 9 a.m. “We’ll brief you on what we’ve got so far, and then we’ll go in and see her,” he said. “So don’t party too hard on the Quarter tonight.”
Joe called Marybeth to tell her that he had arrived safely, then tried to sleep. He couldn’t. The unfamiliarity of it all—Marie Logue, mutilations, New Orleans—kept him awake.
At two in the morning he put on his wet hat and went outside into the rain. The streets were still crowded with people. He walked down Dauphine Street and then Bourbon, and a reveler from a balcony above him called him “Tex” and threw him a beaded necklace.
t was still raining in the morning when he arrived at the FBI field office. The security guard found his name on the computer, gave him a guest badge, and sent him into the back offices.
Portenson was waiting with a bookish woman he introduced as Special Agent Nan Scoon. Scoon had been the leader of the team that arrested Marie at the airport.
Portenson said, “When we brought her in, she had $8,000 in cash on her and records that indicate that she transferred $1.3 million—the rest of the insurance money—to accounts in the Caymans. That’s what she had spent her time doing after she left your place.
“The calls she made to your wife supposedly to check on her daughter were from all over the country. Not one actually came from Denver, where her parents do live. We interviewed them and she never even showed up there.”
Joe whistled. “You did some good work.”
“I know,” Portenson said, “I’m a fuckin’ genius. But the great thing is that we built the case on her while we waited for her to show up here, and last night we dropped it on her like a ton of bricks. First-degree accessory to three murders, child abandonment, conspiracy, racketeering, and fifteen other counts. She was playing it straight at first—she kept insisting she was Barbara Grossman—but we dropped those charges on her like the Mother of All Bombs. And after a little crying jag, she cracked. She gave us a little at first, fishing around for a deal. When she saw she wasn’t going to get one, she started yapping. My guys down there said that by the time she was through, it was like she was bragging about it, all full of herself.”
“So she’s willing to talk?” Joe asked.
“That’s why we brought you down here, cowboy.”
Joe didn’t recognize her at first when they entered the spartan interview room. Marie was now blond, and she wore fashionable, black-framed glasses. She had added a beauty mark to her upper lip. When she saw Joe, her eyes widened behind the lenses.
“Hello, Marie,” Joe said, sitting across the table from her. Portenson and Scoon took the other chairs.
Agent Scoon signaled for the tape to roll, and briefed Marie on her rights. As she had done the day before, Marie waived the right to have an attorney present.
“Let’s get this over with,” she said curtly, looking at Joe.
“So who actually found the file in the basement?” Joe asked.
“Moi,” she said, and her eyes sparkled. “Cam might have seen it before, but it didn’t connect with him the way it connected with me. He was a little slow in that regard. Cam was a fairly weak guy, basically. He looked to me for guidance.”
Joe grunted. In retrospect, it didn’t surprise him all that much. As he had thought earlier, Cam was driving without a road map. But Marie was the one providing directions.
“Then those mutilations came,” she said, “and that’s all everyone was talking about. We liked the idea that the land values were sinking, but we worried about whether we could afford the Timberline Ranch anyway. That’s when
