Daniel Brennan came calling and the county was reduced of fish by his visit. Little was said of our clandestine activities of the past year as we simply enjoyed each other's company. The government agents who dogged him have given up chase for the so called tipster so he is free to finally enjoy his retirement. I check the web site of After occasionally but have refrained from direct contact. Betsy won't even look at the web site, afraid of the anguish she'll feel seeing negative results from some of our cases and in action on others.
The entire business of the psychic tipster has faded rapidly without new news to feed the sharks. I did a little arithmetic. In nine months, we as a group, tracked an unknown number of missing children, culling out two hundred and eleven Howie attempted to locate. He was successful, in varying degrees in locating ninety-six. Between sixty and seventy were freed from severe physical or mental harm and in some instances murder. Fifty one abductors are either in prison or awaiting trial on serious sexual offenses. Four serial killers have been rendered permanently inoperative.
Was this gift that befell Howard Abbott optimally utilized? How would have another embraced this talent? Surely some would have devoted a life to science, dissecting the Mayan language or the searching out demise of the Anasazi Empire. Others might have labored to seek the Christ, or any of a thousand potential projects of mind bending awe. The ability seemed so out of worldly that for us to flail about, making God-like decisions seemed to be a sin. But it was Howie's gift, he made the choice and we were part of it.
Howard Abbott was an enigma in many ways and his death by far the greatest conundrum. I re played the recording of our aborted final session and had judged it incorrectly when I first listened. While the last words, "sleeping, just sleeping," said prior to the interruption by Grasso seemed to denote failure, the earlier recorded observations suggest otherwise. Howie thinks he hears movement outside at one point but sees nothing. Later, he hears his sister cry out upstairs! He moves to second floor. There he finds his sister, sitting up in bed, looking frightened. He whispers the telling words, "I remember." In a second bedroom, he sees himself, cowering beneath the cover, and biting back tears.
"I wasn't gone! I was there," he whispered. There followed the infamous final words, "Sleeping, just sleeping."
I pondered the meaning long and hard. I surmised Howie had guessed his mother and others faulted him, as Martha had, for being remiss and abandoning his job of watching out for his younger sister. While his teenage action was untrustworthy, it was venial compared to abandoning the child to an abductor if that was what the cowering, younger Howie had done!