The first box was a little too early … 1942. He was looking to start at ’44 but he set that one aside just in case. Julie might have been a year or two older than Carla and he could come back to that one if he had to.
He looked at every attendance record for every class in 1944 but didn’t see either Julie or Carla listed. Not surprising. Carla would have been in ninth grade in 1943/1944 and in those days, that was still junior high.
In 1944/1945, Carla was listed all over the place. She was not only taking business courses, training to be a secretary, she was apparently the organizer of most of the tenth-grade field trips and social functions. Michael had to wonder if the knitting club had been Carla’s idea. He’d bet a dollar that it was. But there was no mention of it in the school records, probably because it was something Carla’s mother taught at her home.
Michael had taken a full hour to go over every scrap of paper for that school year, just in case Julie had only attended toward the end of the year, but no luck. So, it was with some anticipation (or was it trepidation) that Michael pulled the 1945/1946 school year records off the shelf. There were a few more boxes for that year, as soldiers were starting to come back from the war. They needed to continue the education that had been interrupted when they’d enlisted and the school had set up night classes for them. A really nice thing to do for our returning heroes, but not so nice that they didn’t keep their records separate from the teenage high schoolers.
So once again, page by page, Michael read each line of every piece of paper in those mucky old boxes. He began to get discouraged as he found no mention of any Julie week after week, month after month. It was Christmas break in the school year, and Michael thought that might be a good time for him to stop and take a break. A nice cold can of Dr. Pepper would do him a world of good. It was summer and the basement wasn’t air conditioned. There was an ancient fan, but Michael had to keep it aimed away from himself for fear of blowing all the papers off the table.
Then he decided, he’d just finish this one box. He had to get this done. He owed it to Carla and a sweet, little, old woman who only remembered how to knit.
January 2, 1946 … registration card for a new student … Julia Atchinson … born August 30, 1930 … Banks County Hospital … Mother, Mary Hunter Atchinson, Housewife … Father, Martin Dean Atchinson, Sgt. U.S. Army … Address, 940 Thornhill Drive, Bankston.
Michael had to read the card four or five times before it sank in that he had really found Julie. It had to be her. Father in the Army. They’d probably moved away from Bankston to follow Martin from base to base … if he was a lifer. Or maybe he’d gone north to find work. In 1930, the depression was well under way. It could have been any number of reasons they’d moved away, and any number of reasons Mary had moved back with Julie.
But now he had something to sink his teeth into. The next step was to find photos of Julie to see how close the reverse-aging program had come. But there was only one, and that was the end-of-year group photo. Black and white, kind of faded and difficult to tell who was who. But there were ways of digitizing old photos and sharpening them up and that would be his next step. He’d have to ask permission to take the registration card and the photograph, but he was sure there wouldn’t be a problem. Mrs. Delaney knew why he was looking through the old records and wanted to help find out who those poor old folks were as much as he did. School records might lead to some long-lost family members.
As soon as Michael cleared the basement, he called Chief.
“Chief, I’m at the high school and I think I’ve got what we need. Hold on a sec.
“Mrs. Delaney, I found this registration card and a class photo. Can I take them to the station to have copies made?”
“Well, I don’t know,” she temporized. “School records aren’t supposed to be given to private citizens. The children need to be protected.”
“Even though the child in this case is eighty-nine years old?” he replied, somewhat taken aback by her response. Yes, children must be protected, but so must the elderly, and finding out all they could about Jane Doe … now Julie Atchinson … might go a long way to protecting her.
Michael paused a moment listening to Chief explain the situation to someone in his office.
“Okay, Chief. I’ll wait here for you.” Michael hung up the phone and turned back to the school secretary. “Looks like the FBI will be taking over the case. They’ll be here in a few minutes to look at what I found.”
“I’m sorry, Michael, but rules are rules and if I make an exception for one, I have to make an exception for another.”
“That’s okay. I’m glad to know you’ll be protecting my children when I have them.” That brought his thoughts back to Anna and a smile to his face.
Denise Delaney well knew that look. She’d seen it on too many young faces not to recognize it when she saw it on Michael’s face.
“Thank you for the compliment, Michael. And who is the lucky young lady?”
“Uh … I … uh … how did you …” But he never got to find out because Chief came through the door with Chief Patterson from Graceville and two men in black.
“Denny, how are you? Long time no see,” Andy boomed.
“Good, good, Andy. Heard you married Cindy Broderick.”
“Yes, indeed,” he smiled. “Now, listen, I understand your concern, but these men are FBI agents and they have a portable scanner to copy those documents. A couple of minutes and you can put them right back where Mikey found them.”
“Alright, Andy. That’ll do just fine.”
“And I’ll put them back for you,” Michael volunteered. “I know just where they came from.”
“Thanks, Michael,” she said, and thought, thank goodness for technology.
Five minutes later, the precious documents were scanned and sent via the agent’s phone to his lab. And even before they’d returned to the station, their tech team was enhancing the photo. The research team had all they needed from the registration to track down every bit of available information on Julie and her family. By the end of the day, they would have a complete dossier of Julie’s life.
Michael couldn’t help but be impressed with the speed and efficiency of these agents and their teams. Wow, he thought, what I could do with those kinds of resources.
“Gentlemen,” Andy said once they were back in his office, “Michael is a reporter for the Bankston Daily. Now don’t let that put you off.”
“Look, Chief Sutherland, we can’t have reporters …”
“Normally, I would agree with you, but I’ve known Mikey since he was five and I have every reason to believe he’s trustworthy. Never once has he tried to use our relationship to get information from me, and any time I’ve asked him not to release something, he hasn’t.”
The senior agent stared hard at Michael … at least Michael thought he did because the man still wore those dark glasses.
“You do understand, Mr. Broderick, that if you leak anything at all to anyone, no matter how much you trust them not to repeat it, you will be arrested for obstruction of justice. At this point, it’s a federal offense since this case is now under FBI jurisdiction.”
Michael wasn’t intimidated by the agent’s harsh words. He understood the seriousness of this case, and he further understood that if he wanted to stay in the loop, he’d best cooperate with these men.
“Yes, sir. It won’t be a problem, sir.”
“Good.”
“Chief, did you tell them what my sister and her friends are going to be doing tomorrow? They may not want the girls to be doing any canvassing.”
“Good thinking,” Chief nodded. “Mikey’s sister and two of her friends are going to take the photos of the current Jane Doe and the reverse-age Jane Doe … I guess I should call her Julie, now … and show them around any store that sells knitting supplies in Banks County.”
The two agents looked at each other; Agent Brown with his eyebrows raised in question, and Agent Corwin shaking his head.
> “Isn’t there a murder involved in this case?” Brown asked.
“Yes,” Chief nodded.
“Then with a murderer on the loose, we can’t have these young women running around asking questions.”
“What do you suggest, then?” Andy asked.
“The two officers that were here earlier. Send them.”
Andy smiled at the idea, but inside, he was not a happy camper. The man might have asked and not ordered.
“Fine idea,” he replied genially. “Carter works out of Graceville and Gordon can take Joseph. Aren’t that many places around here that sell yarn and stuff.”
“We’ll be working out of the county courthouse,” Brown told Andy. “Have your men report to us there when they’ve finished their canvass. Tell them we’ll need written reports, both hard copies and flash drives.”
“Of course,” Andy smiled. “Anything we can do to help.”
“You mentioned a case book.”
“Over there,” Chief nodded to the three-ring binder on the table in the corner. Good thing he’d had Helen copy it since the Feds were obviously going to take it with them.
“Thank you for your cooperation, Chief Sutherland. We’ll be in touch if we need you for anything.”
The men left, closing the door quietly behind them, leaving in their wake what Michael could only call an atmosphere.
“Well, Chief, that was …”
“Yeah,” Andy replied.
“Mmm. In case you’re interested, I took pictures of the registration and photo with my phone before I went to see Mrs. Delaney.”
“I always said you had a head on your shoulders.”
Michael texted the two photos to Chief then said casually, “I’d better tell Mims not to go running around with those pictures.”
“Good idea,” Chief nodded. “Then what?”
“Might go home and spend a little time poking around the Internet. I find it very relaxing.”
“You do that,” Chief said, breaking out into the first smile Michael had seen in the last half hour with the Feds.
Chapter Fifteen
Mia was not pleased that she’d been booted off the case. Oh, she knew it wasn’t personal and the FBI wouldn’t want civilians butting in, but she also knew that Chief would have been happy to have her help. And he would have been grateful for Ashley and Jessica to lend a hand as well.
“C’mon, Mims,” Michael soothed, “at least we have a name and some family history to go on.”
“Go on with what?” Mia grumped.
“You really don’t think I’m going to let it end there, do you?”
“And just what do you have planned, oh devious big brother of mine?”
“Now if I was going to do anything devious and underhanded, would I allow my little sister to get involved?”
“And just what would that involvement entail?”
“Well, knowing that said sister has exceptional Photoshop skills, and my having obtained a class picture from 1946, I might just ask her to enlarge and enhance that very old photo.”
Mia burst out laughing. “Bring it on, Mikey. Let’s put a few FBI noses out of joint.”
While Mia called her friends to tell them the hunt was off and why, Michael uploaded and printed out the two photos. Looking at the faded class picture, he knew it would take all of Mia’s skills to bring the faces into focus. It was a good thing there were only a couple of dozen graduates that year and probably half of them were boys. It would make their job much easier.
“I emailed the picture to you,” he told his sister. “I’ll start working on the names.”
“Bet you a dollar I finish before you do,” Mia grinned. They’d been competing against each other and betting a dollar since they were kids. That dollar had been going back and forth for years with never a clear winner.
“You’re on!” Michael grinned.
* * *
Agents Kevin Brown and Paul Corwin settled themselves into the office provided for them at the courthouse. It was neither large nor well-furnished. A couple of desks and chairs, a table to lay out their files, and a smaller table with a filled coffee pot. They’d been in worse and didn’t expect to be here more than a day, maybe two. anyway.
They’d just settled into their desk chairs, coffee in hand, when Brown’s phone dinged.
“Photo coming through, Paul. Check your email.”
“Sharp,” said Corwin. “Almost as good as digital.”
“Yeah, that’s the advantage of working for the Bureau. The best toys and the best geeks to play with them.”
“Have you got that young photo of the girl?”
“The hard copy is in my briefcase,” Kevin said, already looking at the faces in the class photo with the magnification app he had on his phone.
“Let’s hope Julia Atchinson wasn’t absent on the day this was taken.”
“Might set us back a bit, but you know we’ll find her anyway.”
Kevin’s phone dinged again and he stopped for a moment to look at the message. “Prelim report’s in. You start looking at that and I’ll keep on here.”
“Got her,” Kevin grinned at the same time Paul exclaimed, “Holy cow!”
“What is it?”
“We’ve got a whole new line to follow, Kev. Seems our young lady had a baby out of wedlock … to use the quaint term from the forties … and gave it up for adoption in 1948.”
“So, there might be family after all, and DNA proof of who our Jane Doe really is,” Kevin mused.
“Looks like it, but we’ll have to get those adoption records to track down her baby. And it looks like she gave birth out of state.”
“Start working on that, but first take a look at little miss Julie.”
“Wow,” said Paul, peering over Kevin’s shoulder. “The Photoshop geeks were really close.” Corwin was new enough to the Bureau to still be impressed by the level of expertise of both the agents and the staff.
“We need … what was that old lady’s name that remembered her?”
“Findlayson. Carla,” Paul told him.
“She’s in a nursing home, right?”
“Yeah. Wynwood Estates,” Paul said, looking at the case book to be sure.
“And who’s been working with her?”
He looked at the book again. “That reporter kid. Michael Broderick.”
“He’ll probably get more out of the old lady than we will, but I sure hope Sutherland is right about him.”
“The chief seems solid and so does the kid.”
“But this is probably his first big story,” Kevin pointed out, “and he’s got to sit on it. That’s a lot of temptation.”
“If he does sit on it, he’ll have a mighty big exclusive when the time comes.”
“And if he doesn’t, he’ll have three hots and a cot courtesy of the federal government,” Kevin added.
“I say trust him,” Corwin nodded. “But just to be on the safe side, we’ll drive out there with him and wait in the car. I don’t think he needs us breathing down his neck. We just need him to be aware that we can.”
* * *
Michael was still pulling info off the Internet when Mia looked up from her laptop, a puzzled look on her face.
“Mikey,” she whispered. When he didn’t answer … Mia knew how quickly Michael could get lost in cyberspace … she cleared her throat and raised her voice to try again.
“Mikey,” she called more sharply this time.
“What?” He didn’t mean to be abrupt, but it always took him a minute or two to come down out of the cloud … literally.
“There’s a face here that looks familiar,” she said. “I mean really familiar.”
“I’m not surprised. We probably know half their grandkids.”
“I’m sure you’re right. But there’s something about this girl that’s tugging at me. Michael, we know her. I’m sure of it.”
“Wait a minute.” Michael reached for his bag to get his tablet and quickly swiped the screen
to pull up the photo Carla had identified as Julie.
Staring at the photo, he realized that he had never really looked at the face as a face. He’d just been fascinated at what the technology could do.
“I’m an idiot. I should have seen it right away,” he muttered, shaking his head.
“Seen what, Michael?”
“You tell me,” he said, laying the photo down in front of his sister.
Mia’s eyes flew open as she took in the red hair, the shape of the face, the wide eyes.
“No freckles,” she whispered.
“The tech working on this would have no way of knowing whether or not Julie had freckles.”
“No, you’re right. But this is Ash.” Mia looked up at Michael seeking reassurance. “How could it be Ash?”
“I don’t know, Mims. I just don’t know.”
“We need to talk to her. Find out if her mother or father were adopted or if there is family they’ve lost touch with. It happens, you know.”
“Uh-uh. We give this to Chief and he hands it over to the Feds.” He picked up his phone and called Chief while Mia went to answer the door.
“We’ve got something the Feds will want to know, but I thought I should give it to you to give to them.”
“We’re here now and we’ll take it whatever it is.” Kevin Brown’s sharp command had Michael’s jaw dropping.
“Chief, I’ll call you back. The agents are here now.” Without waiting for a reply, Michael ended the call.
“This is my sister, Mia Broderick. She’s concerned about this case, too.”
“And how is that?” Brown’s skepticism showed in the flat, hard stare he gave Michael.
“Okay,” Michael said, clearing his throat. The last thing he wanted these guys to know was that he and Mia had been researching on their own. “We were looking at the reverse-aging photo I’d sent to Mia. It was the first time she’d seen it and she recognized a strong resemblance to a friend of hers.”
“Wait, I’ll show you,” Mia interrupted, reaching for her phone, pulling up Ashley’s photo from her contacts list.
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