The Light at the End of the Tunnel by James W. Nelson Page B

good.
    Oh, and she was a very good girl. She always
did what she was told to do, by everybody and anybody.

     
    Chapter 23 Employment

    Another year passed. The chaplain and Nicole
kept up with Les Paul by news stories—if anything reached that
point—or simply by going out and checking. They also renewed their
acquaintance with Riley Stokes and his crew and continued training,
which began to include helping to train others. With the many
doomsday threats, greenhouse effect, climate change, terrorism, and
a whole host of other toxic problems, it seemed that many people
wanted to learn a few self-preservation tactics. Besides martial
arts, gun laws and the care and firing of weapons, and private
investigation, Riley added to his course list rural, urban, and
wilderness survival. A new man and wife from the Hopi Reservation
joined the crew and brought with them many ancient Native American
skills, and added to the weapons list, knives, spear and tomahawk
throwing and bow and arrow.
    One of Nicole’s main jobs became computer
work. Besides two hours every morning of correspondence and
research she also did background checks. Riley Stokes was the only
person to answer the phone—or at least to give answers on the
phone—but once he had names and social security numbers he handed
them over to Nicole. She was surprised to learn that the chaplain,
too, had provided his own number to Riley the first time he called,
but because they had just met he didn’t ask for her number, and
convinced Riley to take her on anyway. And all parties became very
pleased with her addition—not only as the chaplain’s partner—but as
one of the two newest members of Riley’s crew.
    Both the chaplain and Nicole continued
appreciating watching each other’s training, too. As yet, neither
had betrayed their true feelings for each other, but they had
become the best of friends. And working with Riley Stokes became a
good source of income, and something to do when they weren’t
tracking and/or documenting Les Paul, as both the chaplain and
Nicole were keeping track of everything and writing down their own
version of their search. With regular income again, laptop
computers for each soon became part of their tool chest.
    The work-for-hire continued too, and Riley’s
crews increased their travels to include not only Arizona, but all
of New Mexico, and parts of both Texas, and California…with their
talks to drug dealers. There again, background checks of clients
were essential, because, if ever they became involved with the
wrong people the law could come down on them very hard. So more
than one client was refused their service.
    ****
    The horror stories shared by the many foster
families continued too, and all but guaranteed the child they were
tracking was truly worst-of-the-worst criminal, Les Paul.
    At foster family-four, as best guessed, as
always, they learned what Baby Boy-Doe9 did to get jerked out of
their home and returned to the state system.
    “My little girl has fourteen Barbie Dolls,
the mother of the home said, “All the shapes and sizes and colors,
and a few Kens and a few other dolls—way too many, I admit—But the
number of dolls my daughter has is not the issue!”
    “Of course not, Ma’am.” The chaplain patted
the top of the lady’s shoulder.
    The woman threw her hands to her face, “Oh!
The little monster!” She sighed again and left her hands over her
eyes.
    “We know this must be difficult for you,
Ma’am,” Nicole said, “But this is a special child. That’s why we’re
trying to follow up on his actions, so, if you could please tell
us, exactly, what he did.…”
    The woman dropped her hands and guffawed, a
sound more like a man would make, “Special, huh? Yes, I suppose any
four-year-old who would place a bunch of dolls in sexual
positions—boys on girls, girls on boys, and when he ran out of boys
he put girls-on-girls, in every position even the worst sex
predator probably wouldn’t think of! And