The Confessions of Matthew Strong by Ousmane K. Power-Greene

Author:Ousmane K. Power-Greene [Power-Greene, Ousmane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Other Press
Published: 2022-10-11T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

—

After our alarming, illuminating meeting with Lucas, Janice dropped me off at the Justice Department building where the FBI had set up a field office.

Agent Washington met me in the lobby and escorted me to a conference room where Agent Tyler sat beside a pile of files. She popped up from her seat when she saw me through the glass window. Two other agents hovered beside her. After the formal introductions and hand-shaking, Agent Tyler waved for me to sit, then shut her laptop.

“What brings you by, Professor?” Agent Tyler leaned her elbows on the table.

“I wondered if you all had spoken with any of the mothers of girls who have gone missing?”

“The sheriff’s office is supposed to send me a report, but to be completely honest, our attention needs to focus on the mayor’s daughter.”

“Yes, but we’ve found there’s a correlation between the locations of the missing girls, old plantation home renovations, and a slave trading map.”

I showed them Lucas’s map that overlaid my grandmother’s map of the towns where girls had vanished.

“But, Professor, you mentioned that Cynthia Wade had been abducted in New York?”

“I realize that, but she’s actually from around here, and with the connection to Shields’s plantation in Elysian—”

Agent Tyler cut me off. “Professor, please. We are interested in the letters coming to you, and how they can help us find Odessa. But this theory you have doesn’t give us much to go on. You say the girls have been reported missing in the same towns with recently renovated plantation homes?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“And these plantation homes are throughout Alabama?”

“Exactly.” I pointed to the locations on the map.

She leaned forward, studying the dots on the map where my grandmother identified towns where girls had been kidnapped, then the line Lucas drew connecting these dots to the plantation homes. After a moment, Agent Tyler pointed to the plantation home once owned by Andrew Shields.

“This one here. That’s near your grandmother’s house, right?”

“Yes.”

Agent Tyler shook her head. “Professor, we had the police check this entire area. In fact, this was where our initial search took us.”

“But what about inside the plantation home?”

“The sheriff told me his deputies went over there and searched the house. They didn’t find any clues. Given the renovation, it was still under some construction, but his men searched every part of the house they could access.”

I recalled the weird interaction I had with officers near the shack Naquasia showed me. I also remembered how the sheriff’s deputies looked at me with scorn when I questioned how well they had investigated the other missing girls. Maybe I was emotionally drained, but my judgment and intuition remained strong. Something was off.

“How do you know you can trust the sheriff or any of his deputies? They may be working with whoever’s responsible for this.”

The agents looked at one another as if my question was ludicrous. Were police involvement and police corruption, in general, really that unrealistic?

Agent Tyler crossed her arms. “Gentlemen, can you please give me and the professor a moment alone?”

After they left she pulled her chair closer to me.

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