The Exceptions

SEVEN


This facility, buried underground and likely roofed by a blanket of corn or soybeans, is actually a factory, an assembly line plant not unlike Ford’s. Though this place is rich with luxury, right down to plush carpets (soothing tones to calm the witness), smoked glass (to instill the notion of safety and privacy), and crown molding (reflects the traditions of home), the object—me—moves from one station to the next, being altered and enhanced until a finished, polished product is ready to be released.

When I walked through the door, the first thing they asked was whether they could get me anything. My answer: a place where I could crash for a few hours; I wanted clarity for all that was about to come. Instead of a couch next to the coffeepot in the break area, I was escorted to a private room—my room—complete with a private bath and king-size bed and television (with no cable or satellite access, used solely for watching DVDs); the only thing missing was the view: not a single window.

Now that I’ve slept—crashed through the night, woke just before dawn—and showered, I emerge from my room. I’m immediately spotted by a lady behind a large circular desk. She gently rises and comes to my side, asks me how I’m handling the adjustment and if I rested well; I suppose most people brought here are frightened into insomnia. As she speaks of the weather, tells me of pending rain that I will neither see nor hear, I follow her down the corridor where she deposits me in a small meeting room. I sit alone, start noticing the general theme of their interior design. My room, the halls, this meeting room, all alike: beige paint, large plush chairs, prints on the walls that always speak of hope and peace—impressionist views of vineyards and flower-filled hillsides, mallard ducks flying over fields and forests free of hunters and retrievers; seagulls nipping through oceanfront sand devoid of a single human body.

After a moment I’m greeted by a pair of coordinators, two women in their late fifties who speak with such calmness and smile so genuinely that it would be impossible, were I actually a witness on the run, not to absorb some sense of optimism from them. I’ve never met two people more suited for their jobs, for the roles they need to play in such a critical and stress-saturated environment.

I spend an hour with them, mostly chitchatting while I sip a cup of coffee and work down a bran muffin, though their true purpose is to give me a brief overview of my next week—week—at the facility, what to expect, who to contact for questions or health issues, what I need to do if I want to reserve the gym, and so forth. They ask my clothing size and assure me some apparel will be available for me by the end of the day. They inform me that this place is capable of housing many witnesses and their families at one time, and while our use of various parts of the building will overlap, I will never see them and they will never see me.

Then they explain each station of the assembly line.

I sit and listen as they unfold Justice’s grand plan for making me someone I was never meant to be, describe the specifics of how I’ll truly become another person right down to the legal documents that prove it, how Jonathan Bovaro is gone and can never return.



Day one: Psychology

My first full day at Safesite has me meeting with the psych team (one psychiatrist and one psychologist), who spend the first portion of our time administering surveys to determine my personality type—could have told them: mafioso with willing spirit and violent tendencies—to better plan my future in a world that will not recognize me. For the five hours that follow, they explain the impact of being in Witness Protection, likely the real reason this team was assembled, utilized not to only quell fears and concerns, but to help head off potential misgivings once the witness is already in the program.

The process of self-analysis exhausts me. Once they’re done, have smiled and shaken my hand and patted me on the shoulder, they set me free. As I lumber away from the center of the facility, thoughts of all the repercussions of my actions arrive and stick in my mind. Right now Gravina is bleeding, begging for some form of mercy, confessing his wasteful mistake, confirming that my intentions are real and true.

And after eating a meal in my room, alone, I lie back on my bed and stare at the ceiling and wonder where Melody is, what she is doing, pray she made her way.

Days two and three: Relocation Coordination

Imagine visiting a travel agency and being given the option to journey anywhere you’d like for free, with one condition: It must be bland. You might think a few hours would do the trick here, except this station I’m told is the most critical component from Justice’s end—the core cost center of the program—for some witnesses have made the mistake of relocating to parts of the country that mismatched their true needs. Beyond obvious preferences, like climate, they cover things that might not occur when looking at a map of the country, like crippling allergies specific to a region, or arthritic concerns (the Southwest is highly recommended). After completing yet another survey, they determine I’d pretty much enjoy any part of the country, as long as I’m placed near areas that offer fresh produce, cheeses, and meats year round—which means the entire West Coast or the Deep South. They inform me that any of these choices are fine because they are outside of the swell—the circle whose center point marks the position on the map where the people who want to harm me most reside, whose radius extends three hundred air miles.

They show me videos of these different sections of the country, forty-minute DVDs that put each area on display, provide all the statistics for populations and school systems and major employers, show summer and winter scenes, offer profiles of quiet towns and villages. As I watch them, I can’t help but be amused; they’ve covered these places in chocolate and whipped cream. I’ve visited many small corners of this nation in my pursuits of Melody, and by watching these videos you’d think the most attractive places in the country are the ones I never visited. I’m sure they have appealing videos of Michigan and Kentucky, too, absent the depiction of Willie and his cafoni trying to assault a young lady in a public park.

Much of the following day covers my preference for a career. Eventually, Kirsten, the young woman who’s been assisting, asks me what I like to do, what my skills and interests and propensities are.

We stare each other down. What exactly would I say? I know how to launder money. I know how to manhandle information out of people. I’ve become fairly adept at tracking people down, breaking into buildings.

Eventually, with a shrug: “I like to cook.”

Kirsten raises her eyebrows and nods a little like I just made her workload a lot lighter, as if to say, Well, that’ll be easy.

Then back to my room, alone, with a meal, staring at the ceiling, wondering what Melody is doing, if she could ever know the best part of being in Safesite is that it distracts me from thinking about her every minute of every waking hour. And some of the nonwaking, too.

Days four and five: Legal

The legal team generates what they call a Memorandum of Understanding, the specifics of what was agreed upon with Justice—both ways—so that everyone knows what they’re getting and giving, but mostly so the witness can be certain of the details of his future, right down to the last penny of the monthly subsistence checks. My MOU confuses the legal team, has various members running in and out of the room to contact Justice to get broader details of what I’m giving back. They do not broaden much, pretty much stop at information against current dealings and relationships within the existing Bovaro organization.

On my end, I will receive: no advance bonus money; a full-time job that will be no less than a 65-percent match to one of my preferences as generated out of the meetings with the relocation coordinator; a guaranteed annual salary that will be augmented by subsistence checks of one thousand one hundred dollars per month for the first year and seven hundred fifty the following two years; a rent subsidy of five hundred dollars per month for two years. A lot for someone offering nothing, nothing for someone offering a lot.

By the end of day five I’m desperate to get my blood moving and ask one of the fiftysomething gals if I could reserve the gym. She tells me it’ll be free after dinner; I take it for an hour.

I’m escorted to the far end of the facility into a gymnasium half the size of a high school basketball court without the bleachers. I’m left alone, my shoes squeaking as I walk across the polished wood floor. I grab a basketball off a rack near the door to a small weight room and start dribbling, each bounce echoing through the room, the ceiling so high it makes me realize just how far underground we are. I take a few shots, begin moving faster, and progress to jump shots, try jamming it in a few times to no avail. As I hold the ball under my arm and catch my breath I look around the empty gym, wish I could borrow someone from the staff for a quick game of one-on-one.

I stare at the basket, put the ball on the ground and sit on it. And the realization arrives: I didn’t just swap places with Melody; I am becoming Melody. This is how it will be, countless months of enduring loneliness and isolation. I’ve been in Witness Protection for four days and I already feel it.

Melody felt it for twenty years.

I pray right now she is in someone’s embrace, despite how badly I wish it were mine.

Day six: Authentication

I don’t fully understand who comprises the authentication team, seems like some hybrid group of psychologists and technologists, but their critical function is to generate and explain the details of who you are becoming, from your name to a pseudo-history to the creation of documents—driver’s licenses, social security cards, college transcripts. Then they take me into a room and apply makeup to cover what remain of the cuts and bruises so recently delivered by Sean’s hand. I have my picture snapped seven times, each with a clothing change and modification to my hair, some with glasses on and some off, two taken at the end of the day with a full five o’clock shadow. The result: a collection of images that appear to have been assembled over the course of many years.

After the last flash lingers in my vision, I change my clothes and wash the makeup from my face and return to the gym again, intensify my workout, get my blood moving as best I can. I walk into the tiny exercise room and assess the equipment—older models that still look brand-new—and wall coverings, framed movie posters of films that could only bring light and carefree thoughts: You’ve Got Mail, Doc Hollywood, half of Jim Carrey’s earliest work. No signed prints of Casino or The Godfather here. I lift weights, beat the side of a dust-laden heavyweight bag, run on the treadmill, and listen to Melody sing to me via a small portable CD player on the floor in the corner: Aimee Mann.

As I get down on a mat and begin doing sit-ups, I recall the night Melody and I shared a bed, how our bodies were wrapped together between the sheets, how we conquered and surrendered to temptation at the same time. I replay the kiss—do so with regularity—that almost crumbled our commitment, would have dismantled her escape. I remember how I felt her giving in, the way she moaned as our lips moved together like it was the first time she had felt the rush of a drug. I remember how she was the stronger of the two of us, how she honored my request, how she held a finger to my mouth, how I felt her breath on my face. I reach for the words she spoke to me.

But then, even with all of the blood moving through my body and my brain, my memory stumbles, falls to the ground, and fractures: I can’t remember what she said. Don’t let me go, Jonathan. No. Save me, Jonathan. No. Rescue me, Jonathan. Nothing. I can’t remember. The words are so distant, almost gone. A sudden panic comes upon me at the notion that someday I will forget her, that the memories of her will be altered, incorrect. That I might one day look back and think, She was just a girl I was trying to protect, I guess I didn’t really know her the way I thought I did, instead of the truth: that no greater thing will ever come and go from my life, that the moments between us were the exact minutes and hours and days that define me, that my life is worth living if for no other reason than to recall what we shared.

I get to my feet, grab a towel, and run it over my face and hair and neck as I quickly make my way back down the hall to one of the coordinators. As I ask for a pad and a pen, she studies my look of alarm. I wave her off. “Don’t worry, nothing to do with the program.”

I enter my room and kneel before my bed and start writing everything I can remember from that night in Baltimore, narrate everything that occurred. Never mentioning her by name, I document every detail from the moment we returned to our rooms: her falling back on the bed and the smooth form of her body, her reluctance to cover herself and my desperate desire to cave in to her suggestive pose, helping tend to her wounds in the bath and how I caught indistinct glimpses of her naked body after the bubbles had popped, how we agreed to sleep in the same bed. Three pages later I’m still writing, approaching the sentence that is slipping my mind. I record the kiss to paper, take nearly an entire page to describe it, the way it made me feel, the sensation of the first kiss with the only woman I truly loved, even before I realized it. I write down how she pulled back, put a finger to my lips, looked me in the eye, breathed against my face, and said to me… said… whispered…

Keep me alive, Jonathan.

I write the first three of those four words on the pad and collapse on the floor in relief.

Day seven and part of eight: Procedural Consultations

The procedural team explains who to contact and what to do in case you’re ever spotted, and to offer general behaviors and lifestyle choices to avoid the public eye.

The combination of having to watch too many videos about counteraction and veiled survival and the fact that I’ve not seen sunlight in a week is starting to take a toll. I’ve been living underground in a facility that could be confused for a hotel, but all of the high ceilings and wide walkways can’t prevent it from feeling like what it is: a big tunnel.

I spend each remaining evening alone, exercising, then journaling. Now on my second notepad, I’ve documented each event from the few days that Melody and I spent together, written down every conversation, every experience, every observation we shared. The way her body looked when it moved, how she would purse her lips to suppress a smile, how the hue of her irises would change when her eyes filled with tears. And in the pursuit of writing down all of these memories, I can’t believe how much I actually noticed.



I’ve been here for well over a week, completed the mandatory steps and ingested the indoctrination to the point where the knowledge of how to handle myself will be second nature—though it hardly matters. Who exactly would be coming after me?

In the dead period where they’re finalizing the details of a job, a car, a residence and furnishings, I am restless. Now that the amazement of what’s achieved here has faded, I realize that this place, this entire operation and division of the Department of Justice, was born out of protecting people from the likes of my father, of Peter and Tommy Fingers, of me. When I was a kid and I’d help unload the back of an eighteen-wheeler my brothers had broken into, it was presented as a crime where no one got hurt. But people were getting hurt every day—financially and physically—and once I was old enough to understand what my family really did, a different kind of indoctrination had occurred, one built on acceptance and apathy, along with a sharper focus on retaliating against those who wronged us or had it coming. But here, in this sanctuary built to safeguard the innocent and brave defectors, you see what is required for true protection. The government had to do this because of us.

Upon arrival I was told Safesite could house several families at one time, and throughout my entire stay I have yet to see one person who was not an employee of the Department of Justice.

Until.

Until this very moment: As I leave my room just past seven o’clock on my thirteenth day, I catch sight of a little boy who could not be more than seven years old, standing far down the walkway with his hand touching the corner that faces an intersection of hallways. He gazes up and down the corridor with a nervous look on his face, then turns and stares at me for a few seconds, as if he might ask me where a certain person or room was, faces me squarely from fifty feet away like we’re preparing for a duel. He takes a half step in my direction before being snatched up by a woman and pulled away. I see nothing more than a forearm and a bangle-covered wrist before he disappears.

I shift a few paces to the left and lean against the wall, sense my face becoming cold and wet at the notion of another young child getting dropped into a program that will never set him free, the next Melody to suffer through a life of fear and loss and misery. I slide down the wall until I’m sitting on the floor, my face in my hands. I try to imagine who the woman and child are, wonder how many more family members are waiting in another room, why they are here, what crime family or drug dealer or gang they’re running from. I rationalize how I’ve manipulated the system to truly free one of its witnesses, and I hope and pray that that frightened little kid down the hall will one day be free, too, that the sacrifices he and his family are making now will bring them peace.

Part of me wishes I could bring my father and Peter to this place and have them look around, show them what has been created to protect people from their type of brutality, how the few tax dollars they ever end up paying are contributing to their own eventual demise. Yet I’m the one who bought them more time on the clock. And to what end? Were they to walk these halls with me and see these panicked families, would they turn themselves around? When they catch a glimpse of the little boy scared and shaking and looking for help, would they stop and question, “Why do we do these things?” Would they look at how the government has invented this ingenious operation to give men, women, and children far braver than anyone in our crew a way to survive? My existence, my three decades of living among these men, offers the one true answer: never.

I slowly get to my feet, feel the same exhaustion as if I’d finished one of my evening workouts. I wander toward the place where the boy stood, know my decision to free myself of my family was the right thing to do—to give up everything, including who I am. But let my honesty be known: the if you love something set it free concept is nothing more than a platitude.

Now, Melody? She may be free, but I’ll never let her go.

I pass the place where the boy stopped and stared at me, gone now like the ghost he’s become, another apparition to exist among the living and real. I take small steps toward the desk and wipe my face of cold sweat, face the lady behind it.

She looks up and smiles, but I can’t return the sentiment. I stare at her, can barely utter the words: “How much longer?”



On my fifteenth morning, I turn on the water in the shower, strip down and shave as I prepare to officially depart from Safesite. I’ve packed all the things I’ll be taking with me, which took less than five minutes. The overnight bag I brought and the clothes that were in it are gone—“You’d be surprised how often a witness is recognized by the shirt he’s wearing or the suitcase in his hand or the backpack over his shoulder”—been replaced by government-supplied versions. The odd fit and inferior quality, I am told, are intentional; if a witness wore expensive and/or fashionable clothes in his former life, he gets junk now—and vice versa. On my unmade bed rests a small gray overnight bag with their temporary clothing selections and toiletries by companies I don’t recognize. Beyond that, only two other things remain: a small stack of notepads that chronicle and detail my every memory of Melody, and the case of compact discs that act as the soundtrack for those memories. I take all these things and place them on a small table in the corner, in case the cleaners service the room while I’m showering: the bag, the discs, three note-filled pads stacked in chronological order.



I take a long time washing myself, and as I turn off the shower and grab a towel off the rack, I realize I left my comb on the dresser adjacent to my bed. I open the bathroom door and swear I hear the latch to the door of my room click shut, though it happens so quietly I doubt myself. I step into the bedroom and feel a sweep of swirling air, as though the door had closed as I imagined. My naked skin comes alive with goose bumps at the change in temperature from the steam-filled bathroom to the chilled bedroom and I realize I’m jumping like a witness who really has something to fear.

No matter: I leave the door to the bathroom wide open as I towel off and finish getting ready, take a few final minutes to examine myself in the mirror, notice the last traces of bruising from Sean’s released anger, see the long gray blemish at my hairline where he slammed my head into the doorframe of the Explorer—indeed, a souvenir—the permanent mark that will be the newest addition to my collection of scars, and I wonder if any other woman will assess my face and body the way Melody did.

I slip on my new pair of glasses, same prescription as determined by a contracted optometrist, but different frames—big round frames that could only have been intended for use as sunglasses. I look like a movie star trying to draw attention instead of evade it. But the actual lenses are perfect, clear and scratch-free, so large I can see clearly from the widest angle. These glasses, like the new me, are unscarred, undamaged.

I stare at myself.

I stare at Jonathan Bovaro while I still can.

This is the moment I turn and walk away from him forever, have a permanent out-of-body experience. I will from this day forward begin to read and hear about myself and refer to it in the third person. I will look at pictures of myself and perhaps say, “That guy’s a dead man,” or “I hope someone takes that scumbag out.” Down the hall are marshals waiting to escort me away, to push the boundaries and walls of Safesite to a distance far away. When I walk from my room, everything about my former self will disappear, will be a collection of memories that will define some other person, like a distant relative or soon-forgotten loved one.

Here is where I should feel the panic. Here is where I should say goodbye.

Right before I turn off the bathroom light, I instead say this: Good riddance.

I walk to the table and collect my things, still lined up in perfect order, all neatly assembled.

I open the overnight bag and toss in my comb and toothbrush, gently place the CD case into the open slot on the side, and as I pick up my perfectly stacked set of journals and prepare to protect them, sandwich them between two pairs of unfaded and unworn jeans, I stop in mid-motion, do a double take: The journals are out of order.



I make my final walk down the hall and approach the central desk to find out who would’ve been in my room, but I stop short, notice someone fast approaching from the corner of my eye. I turn and look—Sean slides up to me with a warped grin and a hand on his holster.

I drop my bag on the ground and say, “Okay, when does this part end?”

He keeps his smile and shakes his head, looks me up and down, studies my baggy banana-cream-pie-colored sweater, my jeans that are an inch too loose and a half inch too short, my loafers, my movie star glasses. “Smokin’.”

“You’re not a marshal. You’re not even—I don’t know, what are you, exactly? Why are you here? Please tell me you’re not my contact in WITSEC.”

He crosses his arms and says, “I’m not. I’ll be the first to admit I would not have your best interests in mind.”

“You think?” I say, rubbing my scarred forehead.

“Just here to see you off.” He leans in and adds with a whisper, “Though you never know when our paths might cross again.”

I wince. “I’d say you have an overactive imagination. I don’t plan on ever seeing you again.”

“You shouldn’t be so quick to blow off the security and protection of the FBI.”

“Yeah?” I tilt my head a little. “How’s it working out for Eddie Gravina?”

His eyes circle around and back to me, exaggerating his indifference like I just guessed the PIN to his ATM card. “You don’t know the first thing about—”

“You’re the one who doesn’t understand, Sean. I mean, really, after all these years of supposedly mastering an understanding of organized crime? Gravina’s either resting at the bottom of some body of water and getting nipped at by various forms of sea life, or”—I gesture my hand about the facility—“he’s right here, might have even been escorted to this place by you, yeah?”

He turns as if he’s going to walk away, like a little kid whose mother told him the best remedy for a bully is to ignore him. “You’re just a street punk, another thug costing a working system a fortune. I’m glad I’m not marshalling you this time, glad I don’t have to pretend to care about the guy I’m protecting with my life.”

And as he walks off, attempts to flee before I can get the last word, I say loud enough that the lady behind the desk looks up, “Did you care about Melody?”

Sean stops, turns, and stares.

“Did you care about her,” I say, “when she kissed you outside your motel room in Cape Charles, when she stood on her toes to reach you?”

He glances at the lady behind the desk—she quickly looks back down—then aims my way, does not walk back or tell me to lower my voice, slips his hands in his pockets and studies me.

“Did she ever know you weren’t really a marshal? That you never possessed the capabilities those guys have? That instead of protecting her life, you were risking it?”

Sean looks at me for a long moment, no longer seems to have the bottled angst and fury. It takes him some time, but when he finally answers he speaks softly, out of everyone else’s earshot, intends the sentence to be shared only between us: “Strange questions from the man who took her life.”

For my benefit—or for those who might be eavesdropping—it sounded like that sentence was altered and forced, for his intonation and glare suggested this unabridged version: “Strange questions from the man who supposedly took her life.”



A marshal leads me to an empty conference room where I sit and wait while an incoming witness is processed and taken out of sight. I wonder for a minute if it’s Gravina—except the odds are maybe one in four that he would’ve made it here. My money is on him being protected by the program offered by the East River.

I wait in the same conference room as when I first arrived, study the same hopeful art on the wall. I rest back in the chair and close my eyes. For forty minutes.

When I’m finally claimed, two marshals lead me out of the core of the building, past all the desks, past the ladies who processed and helped me. I pass Kirsten as she exits the ladies’ room. She gives me nothing more than a nod and practiced grin. I get no gauntlet of hope and well-wishing; this is not an exit from a recovery program. I am not leaving a store with a big purchase, not a welcome customer. They need to get me out so they can get the next one in.

So many ghosts haunt this land.

As I leave the facility and return to the underground parking garage, a third marshal is added to the mix; I recognize none of them. These marshals are bigger, more intense than they ever seemed at a distance, even the one behind me in line in the convenience store on the Delmarva Peninsula. So easily I confirm that Sean was never one of them, does not have it in him. They are not comic book heroes, yet possess the same infrangible composition, armed and angry and hoping to find trouble the way Peter always did; they’re just not looking to cause it.

One opens the back door to an older Ford Expedition, points to the seat. I toss my bag on the floor and secure it between my feet as I sit. The marshal flips on the interior light and closes the door. I wait, can see nothing through the panes that once held glass. After three or four minutes the other doors open in concert and the release of pressure from the cab makes my ears pop.

The other marshals take the remaining seats, and the driver turns back and says as he points to himself, then around the car: “Marshals Wilhelm, Broadview, and Caposala. Any questions before we rendezvous with your travel team?” Wilhelm asks, though he might as well have phrased it as, “You don’t have any questions, right?” He’s already facing forward, turning the ignition. As I consider asking how long before we meet up with the travel team, the divider between the front and back seats goes up and the interior light goes dim and just like that we’re in motion.

So here I sit, protected by the very foes I once fought. How they must hate my guts, yet they promise to protect me like I’m their collective newborn.

The vehicle speeds over the cement floor, reversing the journey I made here over two weeks ago: up the ramps and out the garage, over smooth pavement, slowing past the gate, and back out to the countryside. The drive is longer this time, twists far more than I remember. The marshals don’t speak to me, to one another. The only voice heard occurs when the driver responds to someone calling over secure radio transmission.

After twenty minutes, the SUV comes to a rest, jerks back and forth as the transmission is put in park, is so well insulated I can’t hear one of the front doors open and close again, but I feel it. Caposala says, “In just a moment your door will open and I want you to immediately follow the marshal.”

I stare at my door, aim my answer toward it: “Okay.”

I slip my fingers around the strap of my bag, curl it in my fist. Within a few seconds my door flies open and a blast of hard rain—drops inaudible as they crashed against the insulated steel shell of the SUV—cascades against me and floods my side of the cab. I turn and wince, my glasses covered in droplets of moisture, and two hands heave me from one vehicle to another the same way my brothers and I would unload all those eighteen-wheelers in the middle of the night; that’s what I truly am: cargo.

I adjust myself in the back of what should be my last government SUV and watch the Expedition vanish, study the farmhouse and silo we’re sandwiched between. I search for something to dry my lenses—really, they’re big enough that they might as well have installed wipers—but I’m so relieved to see the outdoors again that I don’t pursue cleaning them.

The light coming through the windows of the SUV is dim, the glass still bulletproof, but they—the two new marshals now shepherding me—no longer care about me seeing my surroundings, allow me to observe where I’m going, where I’ll be ending. We wind along a dirt and gravel lane with a grass strip down the center where tires never touch, a country path lined by Leyland cypress trees. We stop at the end next to a mailbox and a small sign that reads WINDSWEPT VALLEY FARM.

We pull onto an unmarked road wide enough for one and a half cars, then onto a lined street that bears no sign to identify it, and finally to a four-lane highway. I do not recognize where we are until we cross over the beltway for Washington, DC, and loop back around to the exit for New Hampshire Avenue. We drive south at the speed of traffic, blend into the mix, and within minutes we are south of the city, driving down I-95: my second home.

These silent marshals, cab drivers with guns and permission to kill, take me on my last journey. I drift off near Richmond, sleep on and off through the Carolinas, officially awaken while we’re gassing up somewhere near the northern border of Georgia. When the marshal gets back in the SUV, I’m struck with an adjustment in temperature and humidity that I know will be part of my lifestyle change. When I used to travel to these corners of the country hunting Melody, I knew it would not be long before I would leave; now I am a stranger moving in from out of town, feel like an expatriate. Jonathan Bovaro is disintegrating, a memory that will only fade over the years.