Chapter 9

After a long night of thinking and worrying about Judith’s concerns and what she might do, Olive called her boss in Boise.

“Hi, Harold.”

“Olive, Good to hear from you. What’s up?” He answered.

With the worry evident in her voice, Olive said, “I wanted to let you know that I’ve sent you my budget recommendations for next year.”

“I know I’ve been reading them, but that isn’t why you called, right?” Harold questioned.

“No, it’s about Judith Stevens.”

Harold chuckled. “Oh no. What has our big city crusader been up to now?”

“It’s not that she’s been up to anything. It’s more about what she may have stumbled on to.”

“Sounds mysterious. Please continue.”

“Well, she had a meeting with a parent who was asking about homeschooling.”

Harold chuckled. “I’ll bet that Judith wasn’t happy with that.”

“True, but that wasn’t the problem. She felt there were a bunch of red flags with this guy. It sounds like he is one of our off-grid folks. You know the type, no phone, internet, not even electricity. What really rang Judith’s bell was that he had no address, just a set of GPS coordinates.”

“I’m guessing that’s the first time she’s encountered one of our nonstandard residents.”

“Yes, but that isn’t why I called you. When Mr. Reynolds claimed that he was fostering the child, Judith started conducting some internet searches. She couldn’t find any entries for either the child or Reynolds. That led her to think that she might have been abducted from Mexico because of the child’s Hispanic surname. So, I ran his and the child’s name through the state and federal databases. I got suspicious when the NCIC system flagged the little girl.”

Now Harold was also concerned. “OK, let me check this out. What are the names involved?”

“Matt Reynolds and Kathy Garcia.”

Lawson pulled up a quick search on his computer after a moment, he said. “That’s interesting.”

“What’s that?” Olive asked.

Reading further into the first report, “It seems that Mister Reynolds was involved in apprehending several escaped federal prisoners a couple of years ago.”

Then he pulled up the next file, his eyebrows raised. “The plot thickens. It also looks like he found a crashed Department of Justice plane a year ago.”

Harold paused for a moment. Could this Reynolds fellow be a federal agent? He thought.

He stopped and reread the names of the casualties. “Olive, what was that child’s name again?”

“Kathy, Kathy Garcia.”

Harold then ran the child’s name. The first article stunned him even more than what he had read about Matt.

Lawson sat back in his chair and was silent. After a minute, Olive asked. “Harold, are you there?”

Lawson sat up and started talking. “Olive, I want you to send me everything you have on this. Then I want you to delete the files, all of them. I also want both you and Ms. Stevens to keep quiet about this. Don’t talk to anybody about this. If anybody asks, let me know who and when.”

Beginning to panic, Olive asked, “Harold, what’s wrong? What’s going on?”

Trying to calm Olive down, Harold’s tone changed. “It’s nothing to worry about, Olive. It just looks like we may have stumbled onto something we shouldn’t know about. Don’t worry, you and Judith are not in trouble. I’ll handle everything from now on.”

“Can you give me a hint?”

“No, it’s best you don’t know. Just let me handle it.”

After hanging up the phone, Lawson sat back in his chair and wondered what to do next.

Then he had an inspiration. Early the previous year, he had gone to an alumni meeting. It was the usual donation drive. Normally, he would have avoided it. But it had been held in Reno, and he thought it would be a good chance for a second honeymoon for his wife and him.

They had attended the first dinner, and a guy with an obviously over-inflated ego was at his table. He had claimed to be a big wig at the Department of Justice. Harold did not remember him but had been polite and smiled and nodded at his stories. Harold’s wife, Marge, later told him she was not impressed with his classmate. She said he seemed creepy to her. Harold had laughed and told her, “Education doesn’t equal intelligence or knowledge. Just the rote repetition of the instructor’s position.”

It took Harold 15 minutes to remember the guy’s name. Clarence Dawson.