THE SWORD AND SICKLE

CHAPTER ONE: HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT

Assistant Detective Greta thought to herself, He is as jealous as it comes. He would give his right arm to have this one. She turned and retreated to her new desk. Opening up the report, she was dumbfounded. Ansell Bastion's fingerprints were on the JIM, and not just any Ansell, they were the prints of her dead shoplifting Grandfather. "Grandpa, what have you gotten yourself into, you old dead fart," she muttered under her lips. Well, I need to call Aunt Lucy again and get her digging, literally. She sat down and called the coroner in Jackson, Mississippi.

The Director of the FBI was on the phone in the office trying to keep up with everything happening in the city on finding Levi and his family, when Assistant Detective Greta just walked in and said, "I have a blockbuster, and I did it with an hour to spare."

Director Morgan hung up the phone in mid-sentence and said, "Glad you are on top of it, Bastion. Give me the low-down."

"Sir, I thought I would eliminate my own family first, and good thing. It saved me a lot of work and time. I called my Aunt Lucy, who is the family historian, to find out if they had any record of Levi Jackson having contact with our family. She pulled up her genealogy records on her computer and did some research for me, and when she returned my call, she had a wealth of information. It seems, Director, I have cousins; I had no idea they existed. Get this. One of my cousins is named Laida Bastion, who grew up in Jackson, Mississippi. After she graduated from the University, she just dropped off the map. No social security number, and absolutely no record of a Laida Bastion, anywhere."

"Did she get married, or something?"

"Yes, but it wouldn't account for her not having a Social Security number. Lucy said he was going with a man named Jim something, and that she would call around to find out what his last name was. "So, she calls me back in thirty minutes and gets hold of Laida's mother at a nursing home. Her mother says that Laida changed her name after her father died; it seemed the old fart was having sex with Laida since she was a child, and she wanted nothing to do with the family, ever again."

Did she have Jim's last name?"

"Yes, and Lucy finds out from her sister that Ivy became ill and went to live with Judy L. Polanski in Boonville, Missouri. I looked him up on the computer, phoned him, and asked about his wife. He tells me that Laida divorced him and went back to her maiden name, Bastion. He further tells me that years later, she remarried an artist from Missouri, named Levi Jackson, and they have a child named Ariel. The people we are looking for are my cousin and her husband. Can you believe that, sir? The whole nation is in an uproar about my cousin. My cousin is fuckin' married to the founder of the SDL. How awesome is that?"

"That is great work, Bastion. Brilliant."

"Oh, that is only the tip of the iceberg, sir. The prints on the bills are of my grandfather, Ansell. I called up the coroner to see if they had a death certificate for him. They did, and then I told him to dig both of them up, pronto."

"The coroner says he would have to get a family member to approve, and I told him that I was the granddaughter, and I gave my permission. A while later, he called me back and reported to me that the graves were undisturbed and the bodies were still in the grave, but the bodies were remarkably preserved, like they had been buried only hours ago. He said the local officials would perform an autopsy on the bodies to determine their miraculously preserved state."

"I don't want him to autopsy them. Do you have his number?"

"Yes, sir, it is right here on the report. Front page, sir. There is the lower right corner."