Chapter 7

Our newly-returned son, Little Jimmy, upon his return to his biological family, did not take to us right away. He cried at night for a few weeks, sometimes calling out for his mommy--Mrs. Connie McAllister, the only one he had known in his short life. After Congressman McAllister's primary defeat to another Democrat candidate--mainly because of the exposure of his illegal adoption of the infant Jimmy from Russian gangsters, he also faced the very-much-publicized and ugly divorce proceedings from his wife.

Connie McAllister had not realized the illegal nature of her husband's actions with respect to their acquiring a son almost three years before from a source that had proved now to be definitely illegitimate. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia also had a formal criminal investigation under way on the soon-to-be former Congressman.

Crushed at losing the son she had thought would be hers, Connie Fletcher--her maiden name, to which she reverted following the divorce--had contacted us through her attorney and asked if she could somehow remain a part of Jimmy's life, even if it were only in some small way. Lana and I discussed this request and prayed about it.

Lana impressed on me the agony and heartbreak that she herself had experienced at having children ripped from her life, as had the other women with whom she had been in captivity. I finally caved and we said that Connie could indeed be a part of Jimmy's life in some fashion, but we would like to hold off on personal visits by her until the child psychologist--that we had engaged as part of the family therapy necessary to reintegrate the boy into his biological family--gave the okay. She agreed, and we set a tentative date of sometime in the coming New Year time frame.

Nadia Doreen Brodie joined our happy growing family just two weeks before Thanksgiving. She was a beautiful redhead, with a rich tuft of hair already showing when she was born, following a rather uneventful labor and delivery on Lana's part. Even with the previous addition of Angela and Jimmy to our household, we had plenty of room for this new little miracle.

Only once did Lana make a comment about wishing that her daughters had the DNA of both of us, but I squashed that conversation quickly. I informed my wife that, from that day forward, we would only refer to them as OUR daughters--never mind who the sperm donors were. We would reap the bounty of love that came from having, raising, and enjoying the loving family relationship with these two little darling girls.

And not only was I now an official member of the Mushy Pushover Club--being the father of daughters. I was actually already envisioning my future role as the father figure in their lives. I would help them learn how to play softball well so that no one could accuse either of them of 'throwing like a girl.' I would ensure that, when they became teenage girls, and began to date, I would meet their first dates while cleaning my shotgun. I looked forward to the day when I would walk each of them down the aisle, fulfilling my role of handing them off to the poor sons of bitches who might be brave enough to take on my sure-to-be-hardheaded little girls as life partners.

We had settled into what I felt now was somewhat of a routine as a family. Sure, there were visits to the child psychologist for Jimmy that would probably taper off to an eventual end sometime this summer. He had begun to accept being part of the family now, especially with all the love he found with his new siblings--especially his older brother, Steven.

Even though Nadia was being the typical new-baby-handful, she did not detract Lana or me from recognizing the need to offer all the love and parental attention necessary for all of our children--WOW; four now!

Even though there was a five-year age difference, Steven and Jimmy seemed to get along well enough to share a bedroom. They also did not appear to pick on poor little Angela in the manner to which older brothers seemed prone in other families.

They would still annoy her when they did 'boy' things, to the exclusion of Angela. She did not want to be left out of anything that was going on with the boys. Lana and I both made special efforts to comfort Angela when she went into a crying spell caused by Steven's and Jimmy's apparent ignoring of her.

Suddenly, one day in March of the following year, I noticed that Lana appeared to be especially tense for no apparent reason. I was at a loss to understand this sudden step back along the progress trail that we had been on since Lana's return; progress that had been reinforced positively by the return of her son and the arrival of a new daughter.

When I asked her about what was going on with her, Lana was vague, saying that it must be hormones. I advised her to see the doctor if this kept up; but she smiled and told me not to worry. Then she said something very strange.

"I will do whatever it takes to protect myself and my family from bad things, bad thoughts, and bad people." I had accepted her excuse of her being in a temporary hormonal funk--after all, women's physiology and psychology were still deep mysteries to a mere man, such as I. Thus, I simply attributed her strange comment to a passing phenomenon.

I also noted and mentally catalogued some of the details of that tension that I had detected in Lana--she was a bit jumpy at sudden noises and she seemed a bit reserved around me. She also seemed a bit overly protective of Steven, Jimmy, Angela, and Nadia all of a sudden.

Lana surprised me again when she asked me to allow her to practice her shooting again, now that we had some place in which to do this. When I asked her what had brought on this sudden interest in shooting again, she smiled at me innocently and said that it was nothing really; she simply wanted to get back into practice.

This conversation occurred during a week when things had picked up considerably at work, so I did not have the time or the mental focus to delve into the matter any further. I simply showed her the key to the gun cabinet, where I kept the Ruger Blackhawk, along with the ammunition, shooter's glasses, and acoustic hearing protectors.

One day later that week, as I was going to work, I noticed that Lana was very quiet and brooding; she was snappish with me and did not even acknowledge my attempt to give her a goodbye kiss, as she turned away to look out the back window of the kitchen when I tried. She did not even return my statement of, "I love you." I shrugged in my ignorance of what might be going on in her mind at that moment, as I was beginning to run behind schedule, but I would be sure to talk to her in more detail about what might be going on with her later tonight. I did not want her to begin to slip back into her psychological difficulties associated with her years of captivity.

As it turned out, I did not find a need to talk to Lana about her snappishness and contrary attitude.

That night, when I returned from work, Lana was a different person entirely. Even though I was later than usual getting in, due to a problem at work--one that I had alerted her about when I had called her and left a message on the machine that afternoon when she had not answered the phone--she seemed to be pleasant and relaxed. We greeted each other just inside the door with hugs and kisses and I was relieved to see some of the old Lana back again.

After the children were asleep that night, Lana almost killed me with her appetite for sex. Needless to say, I went to sleep a very happy man.

The following weekend, I had taken a 2-1/2-gallon pump tank of Roundup spray to the back area of my property. I wanted to kill off at least one of several patches of the poison ivy that I was determined to eradicate from my property--good luck with that, I know; but, shit; I had to try.

As I sprayed in an area down near the berm where I had established my shooting site, near what I had confirmed to be a deer trail, I noticed my gamecam. I mentally kicked myself as I removed the spring band that held it to the tree where I had left the gamecam weeks earlier; I just could not believe that I had forgotten and left it in place without checking on it for so long. Sticking it in my cargo pocket, I continued to spray the Roundup on the offending poison ivy vines near me, figuring in the back of my mind that Steven would probably enjoy seeing the wildlife shots snapped by the gamecam when we reviewed them together later.

As I continued spraying around the area behind my makeshift shooting range, I spotted what looked like the beginnings of a hole in the ground. I could tell that it had been made by a person with a shovel or spade, as the shape and configuration did not lend itself to one created by the fore paws of an animal. I noted, as I looked into the very shallow hole, that the rock layer was only about a foot down from the surface in this spot. Some ONE had begun to dig here, and had hit the rock layer, thus frustrating whatever purpose that person might have had for the hole.

I knew that I had not been the one to dig back here. And, with the ages of our children being such that they were too young to wield a shovel that big, the situation pointed to another adult. That led me to realize that either Lana had been doing something back here, or else some trespasser had paid us a visit, possibly looking for something buried back here--or doing something else back here that involved digging. Naturally, with all that we had been through over the past few years, I went into 'family protection' mode.

I could not help myself. All the while that I was spraying the poison ivy, my aim was not the best and I also ended up spraying some of the wild blackberry bushes that I had actually wanted to preserve. I guess that it was probably inevitable, since I was trying to look around me often as I sprayed; attempting to discern among the pine trees any sign of someone lurking nearby. Yeah; with the discovery of the past intrusion into my property, I was feeling a bit spooked.

Returning the sprayer to the garden shed that I had had delivered, assembled, and leveled by the delivery team from Home Depot on a spot that I had selected out back of the house, I took a deliberate look at my garden tool rack. It was an upright slotted ceramic-coated metal rack that allowed me to store several long-handled tools upright against the wall of the shed, leaving me plenty of room to park my beloved Manly Yard Tool--a 50-inch zero-turn Cub Cadet riding mower with lap bars instead of a steering wheel.

Within the rack, I had stored a yard rake, a garden cultivator, a garden rake, a spade (for breaking the clay soil as I dug), and a shovel (for moving the clay soil out of the way after it was broken). As a new homeowner, who had just moved to a more rural setting from a major city, I was still pretty fastidious with my tools--I am reasonably sure that this attitude would probably change as I got comfortable with living here, but I was trying to forestall my complacency at least until after my first three years or so of living here. Thus, I would clean my yard tools when I finished with them in the yard, washing them and then hand-rubbing in a light coat of utility oil on the metal surfaces to forestall the onset of rust or any other type of corrosion.

I noted that the spade and the shovel were the only tools that did not appear to be as clean as I had left them the last time that I had used them. There appeared to be a light coating of the red dirt streaks normally left behind by use in the soil around my house. I was pretty sure, at that point, that someone had gotten into the shed and used these implements in some endeavor in the soil of my property.

A rising and falling buzzing sound enticed me to raise my eyes toward the ceiling in order to discern the source of the noise. There--directly above the tool rack--was a clump of the clay that is indigenous to the property on which my house sits. It was red and caked into a shape that resembled either six red-colored link sausages that had become fused adjacent to each other or the beginning of a rack of pipe organ tubes made from clay. The shape was also canted at an angle that allowed the mud daubers that had built it to enter and exit the tube shapes of this obviously-growing clay clump. I could see two of the insects working on the nest and indications from the sounds that there were probably three or more within my hearing, flying around in or near the shed.

The nest was directly above the spot where the shovel and spade were stacked within the tool rack. Thus, there was the possibility that the streaks on the tools had been caused by the residue from the construction by the mud daubers--but somehow I doubted it. I was still pretty well convinced that someone had used my tools for some as-yet-to-be-determined purpose on my property without my knowledge.

I took the opportunity, since I was out there, to use some hornet spray to drive the insects out (what the heck--if it works on hornets and wasps, it would work on mud daubers). They were not pleased, but they vacated pretty quickly. Once they were clear, I took the shovel and scraped the nest off the ceiling where it also met the wall, thus clearing out the big chunks. Following up with a moist towel from my rag pile to clean the residue from the nest, thus leaving the inside surfaces of my shed clean once again, I turned to the tools. I did a once-over cleaning of the ones that had been tainted by the falling dirt from the nest, applied a light coat of oil from the nearby 3-In-One can, and re-racked them.

Locking up the shed, I reminded myself that the sod man's instructions had been for me to wait another week or so before I cut the new sod out back here. The front and side yards, along with the area around the back patio had already settled nicely. I had made the decision to sod back to a point about thirty yards back from the patio this growing season. The new sod covered all the way down the slope from the back of the house to where the lot leveled off leading back toward the woods and the wetlands area. This area included the ground over the slight rise created by my super-dyna-whopping-high-tech Presby Septic system leach mound.

Upon entering the house, I noted that Lana and the four young-uns (as the locals referred to small children around here in the Deep South) were not in the house. Looking out front, I noted that Lana's Honda Odyssey minivan was not in its usual place. I shook my head and smiled in silent admiration at the guts that Lana was displaying with this action.

NO!

Not the guts to go out in and among people, as she had avoided doing for the first few weeks after her discharge from therapy the previous year; but the guts to go out by herself with ALL FOUR KIDS! Wow! That really took guts!

Then I became mildly concerned; and I actually felt badly that I had not been here when she was loading up to leave. I could have at least offered to go with them in order to help with the kids while Lana ran whatever errands she had planned.

Oh, well; I would apologize for my non-availability to her after her return. Meanwhile, I remembered my gamecam that I could feel nudging my thigh from the cargo pocket of my trousers. I went to my home office and woke my laptop; then I plugged the USB connection between the gamecam and the computer and fired up the app that would allow me to view and edit the pictures from the gamecam.

I began to click through the pictures that the gamecam had taken. I reminded myself early on in the viewing that I needed to replace the batteries in the thing, as it had been out there for several months without my checking during this latest episode of use.

There were a few daytime shots of birds of reasonable size and a couple of does and bambis. In the IR shots taken at night, I got a few really good shots of a large raccoon whose presence in our area I had noted in previous outings to retrieve and review the shots on the gamecam.

I had to take a deep breath and grip the desk when the first of several totally unexpected photography subjects popped on the screen of my laptop. Concurrently, the anxiety that I had felt back among the trees and bushes earlier returned, but multiplied now so that it was full-blown fear for the safety of my family and me.

I was looking now at a really good night shot under the IR flash conditions of an adult male. The subject was slightly off-center within the frame of the shot, but he had moved to within the center by the time of the next shot, and had moved across to the other side by the third. He only appeared within those three frames--but that was enough!

Without any additional deep thinking--just by instinct inspired by my fear--I went to Lana's and my bedroom and retrieved my Ruger Blackhawk .357 magnum revolver before returning to review the rest of the pictures from my gamecam. There had been about thirty wildlife shots preceding those involving the shots of the man. There were four more after those shots; evidently, the battery had died shortly after that. The four final shots included two mystery shots--probably set off during the high winds associated with the thunderstorm we had had several nights before. They also included two that partially captured what looked like a person moving out of the lateral viewing range of the gamecam--with a spade over one shoulder.

Well, that was another mystery that I had to deal with--who was the person with my spade? And what was that person doing out there in the dark during the night some days or weeks earlier, way toward the back of my back yard, near the boundary of the wetlands area?

As I indicated, that was 'another' mystery. The first mystery was one that was connected to the case of Lana's years of captivity and her subsequent return.

Special Agent Fife, in his many discussions with me about the case, had confirmed many of the events that Lana had revealed to me. He had also helped me to put faces to some of the personalities involved with the criminal enterprise that had put my wife--and so many women and girls before her--through the hell of human trafficking, sex slavery, and forced prostitution and child-breeding. Despite the strange glare caused by the IR flash on the gamecam, I had recognized the face of the man captured in those night shots as one of the faces that Fife had shown me during and after Lana's return.