The Disappearist

Chapter Seven: "A Promotion"

Working out of the Dallas office of the United States Marshal Service made life much easier for Bree. Often, after graduating from training, new agents could potentially be sent anywhere in the United States. But as Bree graduated at the top of her class, her request to be assigned to the Dallas office was granted, not requiring her and Wil to uproot and move to a new city.

Upon arriving at the Dallas office, Bree was interviewed by her new supervisor to determine which part of the office she would be assigned. She was hoping for something exciting like the Fugitive Task Force, hunting down "most wanted" criminals and prison escapees. But since that was the most in-demand position — and since Bree was a rookie (and, as she suspected, since she was a woman) — Bree was eventually given two options.

Her first option was Asset Seizure (through the Department of Justice Asset Forfeiture Program — selling-off items and assets deemed "the proceeds of criminal activity") She would essentially be tasked with the seizure and sale of high-value items and making sure the proceeds from the sale of these assets were distributed appropriately (victim compensation, court claims, expenses, and law enforcement benefits).

Her second option was to work in the Witness Protection Program. In this position, it would be her job to generate new identities for witnesses placed in protective custody and relocated after their testimonies or depositions. She would literally be creating new lives for people and guiding them into their new realities.

The second option seemed much more interesting and she seized the opportunity immediately; it seemed preferable to being a high-end eBay auctioneer.

Within weeks, Bree displayed an amazing knack for this job, creating backstories and identities for people who were state and federal witnesses in trials, but whose testimony put them in grave danger from others. Therefore, it was her job to assist the director of this department in determining the appropriate new location, new identity, new job, and new life of a witness based on their file which included a very descriptive personality profile.

The personality profile was vital because it allowed Bree (and her supervisor, John Donaldson) to appropriately craft the new life of a person within the context of who they already were (so that they wouldn't "stick-out" in their new life and be easily tracked or found.) As Bree combed through the lists of people being relocated, she had to be creative with how she crafted each new identity; it was like she was an author, crafting characters who actually existed, living lives which would actually be lived.

This was how she began to approach her job, and this mindset made her very successful. John Donaldson praised her repeatedly as the best young agent he'd ever supervised and often left her to her own discretion regarding new witness locations, occupations, backstories, etc. She began writing detailed accounts of a person's new life, which each "witness protectee" was required to read and remember, thus creating a detailed biography. She would then sit with each witness protectee and discuss this fictional account of a fictional person, which, once given to the protectee, would become (for all intents and purposes) factual.

Every time Bree met with a witness protectee and gave them the identity she'd crafted for them, that person became a new person. And thanks to her film-buff husband, whenever she gave handed-over someone's newly-crafted life story, she was reminded of a film quote, a line from the end of The Shawshank Redemption: "Until that moment, he didn't exist, except on paper." In the middle of that film, Morgan Freeman's character, Red, remarks, "You can't just make a person up!" Well, as it turns out, that was exactly Bree's job. And she loved it.

Although she was bound by her own job's version of occupational "confidentiality," she freely spoke of her work with her husband. Wil and she would have lively and fascinating dinner discussions about their jobs, their "clients," and their accomplishments. Wil discussed his interesting clients with Bree and Bree discussed the creativity of whatever newly-crafted identity she'd invented for a witness protectee. They both trusted each other with information they were duty-bound by their respective occupations to keep to themselves. But they didn't care. They told each other everything.