The Lost Journal

by Chris Blewitt

  “We’re discounting the family. The document is too important, and Willie said none of his family members have ever seen it,” Seth said.

  “Huh,” Madison said, “well, then it could be anyone. Willie, you said West died at Mount Vernon right?”

  “Yes ma’am, July 20th, 1863,” Willie replied.

  “There you have it,” Madison said. “We need to find every person that was at Mount Vernon to visit West Ford the last two months of his life.”

  “Piece of cake!” Arthur said, rising from the living room and clasping his hands together.

  <><><><><>

  It was a long night for Max, Evan and Chloe but an even longer one for Kohler and Pierce. Max had thrown in the towel at around one in the morning and left the surveillance to find a hotel. He planted his own surveillance on Kohler’s SUV and they monitored the action from the comfort of their hotel room. Kohler and Pierce pulled out right after them and went home to the comfort of their own beds in their own houses. They slipped another tracking device on the old man’s truck and monitored both cars.

  Next up, Kohler was going to put a trace on all of their calls.

  CHAPTER 28

  The Mount Vernon Ladies Association was formed in 1858 to preserve the historical site where George Washington lived and ultimately passed away. They made the land available for the public to come and visit and the society still exists today, 150 years later. They had collected letters between George and Martha, photographs and artists’ renditions of the Washingtons. Most importantly, Willie knew, they kept the guest registry of all the important guests who had ever visited the estate.

  When the offices opened at nine o’clock, Willie placed a call to his friend in the society, Betty Timmons.

  “Betty,” Willie began, “hey, it’s Willie. How are you?”

  “Good, Willie, good. What can I do for you?”

  “Well Betty, my grandson is doing a report on Mount Vernon, specifically the time period that you fine folks took over Mount Vernon. I was wondering if you had the guest registry for 1863.”

  “Huh,” she said. “That is a little unusual, but I’m sure we have it here on both microfiche and in soft copy.”

  “Soft copy?” Willie asked.

  “Yes, on a computer.”

  “Oh, I see, great.”

  “What is it you want this for again?” she asked.

  “They are public records, are they not?”

  “Why yes, they are. I was just wondering why you needed them.”

  Willie gave her no more information than what was necessary. “Can you send me the registry from 1863?”

  She hesitated. “Well, I guess there’s no harm in that. Where should I send them?”

  “To my email.” Willie gave her his email address and hung up the phone.

  “You have email?” Arthur asked.

  “Yeah, gotta have email these days, especially if I want to talk to my daughter.”

  Willie made them all scrambled eggs, Canadian bacon and toast. All of the men chowed down, but Madison passed on the bacon.

  Willie paced back and forth into the office checking his computer every ten minutes for the email from Betty. At around ten o’clock, he received it.

  “Here we go,” he said, pulling up the document. It was an Excel spreadsheet with multiple columns showing the person’s name, guests they brought, date and time of entry and date and time of departure. “Lotta names here,” he said.

  He printed all sixteen pages out and narrowed the list to the dates from May of 1863 to the day West Ford died on July 20th. Willie divided the remaining eight pages and gave them each two sheets of paper. Arthur sat in a chair and Madison and Seth sat on the floor, scanning over the documents.

  “We don’t even know who we’re looking for,” Madison said.

  “You’ll know it when you see it,” Seth added. “We’re looking for someone important. A Washington, a Ford, someone associated with this crazy chase.”

  Minutes passed and frustration set in for Arthur. “I’ve got nothing here,” he said.

  “Same here,” Madison said.

  “I’m just about done too,” Seth said.

  Willie scrutinized his list. He finished page one, and all eyes were on him as he flipped to the next page. His dark eyes darted left and right reading each entry with a thoughtful gaze. His eyes stopped about halfway down the page. His eyes not only stopped they expanded to almost twice their size, the whites increasing enough to show the red veins on either side.

  “What?” Arthur asked.

  “I think,” Willie said.

  “What?” Seth begged.

  “On July 18th, just two days before West Ford passed away he was visited by one important fellow.”

  “Who?” Madison asked.

  Willie put the sheets down on the table and folded his hands over his chest. “Just the sixteenth President of the United States, Mr. Abraham Lincoln.”

  <><><><><>

  July 18, 1863

  Two large powerful dark brown horses pulled the second carriage around the bend to the front of Mount Vernon. The first carriage had stopped at the rear of the house and another carriage came around to the front of the large house. At fifty-four years of age, President Lincoln was still limber enough to take the large step out of the carriage and onto the gravel drive without any assistance. He turned, extended his hand, and helped his wife Mary out of the coach. They made their way up the few steps of the house and turned to take in the beautiful view of the Potomac. Three men from the other carriage, the President’s security detail, followed closely behind.

  The door opened and they were greeted by two servants dressed in white. They paid their respects to the President and led them through the hallway and up the steps to the first bedroom on the right. The President walked in and touched the man on the bed.

  “Mr. President,” the man said in a hard gravelly voice. He had lost a lot of weight these past few months. Large tufts of white hair haphazardly crisscrossed his skull. He looked up at Abraham Lincoln who stood at his side.

  “Mr. Ford, it is a pleasure to speak with you. You are an inspiration to us all, black and white.”

  “No, Mr. President, you’re the inspiration. You have freed thousands of us, and thousands more when this war is over. God will bestow upon you many great blessings.”

  They talked for a few more minutes on the effect of the Emancipation Proclamation that was signed a few months earlier, essentially ending slavery. Mary did not say much and just listened.

  During a brief break in conversation, West Ford asked Lincoln if he could speak to him alone. He nodded to his wife Mary and she left the room.

  “Mr. President, I have the document,” Ford said.

  “What document?” Lincoln asked.

  “The document sir. The one George Washington himself signed. I’ve had it since Mr. Bushrod passed away sir. Why it was given to me, I’m sure you’ve known by now.”

  “Well, I must say thank you for keeping it so long, and more importantly, keeping its contents secret.”

  “That was an honor. Mr. Washington was a great man, and I understand why he did not reveal his identity as a father to me. May I ask a question, Mr. President?” the ailing man continued without waiting for a reply. “If I had the document all this time, how did you know about it?”

  Lincoln leaned forward in the chair and replied, “Every President before me has passed on its contents to one another. Both the Vice-President and I know its secret, just in case anything happened to one of us. Now, if something happened to both of us, well, the folks on the other side of the Atlantic would raise a stink.”

  “So it’s true?” Ford asked.

  “Sure is,” Lincoln replied. “Even seventy years later and probably seventy years from now.”

  Ford told him where in the house to find the document and Lincoln brought it with him back to the White House. West Ford died two days later.

  <><><><><>

  “What?
” Seth exclaimed. They all looked at Willie who held the printed out roster in his hand and read from it again.

  “Says here, on July 18th at 12:30 pm, Abraham Lincoln was signed into Mount Vernon. Also at 12:30 were four other names. One of them his wife Mary, the other three I don’t seem to recognize.”

  “Wow,” Madison said.

  “Yeah, President Abraham Lincoln,” Arthur said.

  “So,” Seth said, the wheels turning in his head, “are we to assume that West Ford gave Lincoln the document?”

  “Well,” Madison said, “we have nothing else to go by so that’s the route I’m taking.”

  “So assuming Ford gave him the document, what did Lincoln do with it?” Seth asked.

  “The hell if I know,” Willie said, leaning back in the chair.

  “Let’s put our heads together people,” Seth insisted. “In 1863, The President had a document in his hand that was drafted by George Washington. At least, we think he did. Lincoln put it somewhere. Did he have any children?” he asked no one in particular.

  A lot of shrugs around the room. No one knew.

  “We’ll look that up in a minute. What else? Had he given it to his wife, Mary? And if he did, what did she do with it? Geez, we’re never going to get anywhere.”

  “Arthur, Willie, you guys know anything about Lincoln?” Madison asked.

  Arthur was the first to speak up. “Whoa, whoa. I know we’re getting on in years but we weren’t alive in the 1860’s dear.”

  “You know what I meant,” she said.

  Now it was Willie’s turn. “He was a great President and an even better man.”

  “How so?” Madison asked.

  “Look at it from a black man’s point of view. He freed the slaves. This issue was the main reason for the Civil War and he didn’t care. Washington wanted the slaves freed, he said so in his will, and they still were not free until sixty years after his death. Course, we still had issues until the Civil Rights movement one hundred years later.” Willie shook his head. “Lincoln died too early.”

  “John Wilkes Booth,” Arthur said.

  Madison fired up her laptop while finishing her coffee. Seth moved in close to her and watched as she waited for the wireless internet connection Willie had installed for his daughter.

  “All right,” Seth said, “so we know he freed the slaves, what else?”

  “The Gettysburg Address,” Arthur said.

  “Right, good.” He had Madison pull up a Word document and she started typing in everything that was thrown out there.

  “Emancipation Proclamation,” Willie said.

  “Good, keep ‘em comin’,” Seth said.

  Madison searched Wikipedia for Lincoln and read out the first fact she found. “Says here he created the Secret Service.”

  “Write it down, when was that?”

  “April 14, 1865,” she replied.

  “Huh,” Willie said, “that’s a little ominous.”

  “Why?” Seth asked.

  “He was shot that same day and died the next day.”

  “That is weird. Maybe he should have formed the Secret Service the week before.”

  “Ford,” Arthur said suddenly.

  “What about West Ford?” Seth asked.

  “No, not him. Ford’s Theater,” he said. “The place of his assassination.”

  Madison stopped typing and all eyes focused on the old man who tapped his skull and smiled. “I still got a little left up here you know.”

  “That’s good, Arthur,” Willie said.

  “Yes,” Seth said. “Lincoln had a ton of respect for West Ford. He paid him a visit on his death bed for cryin’ out loud. Madison, find out if Lincoln went to Ford’s Theater before he was assassinated.”

  She typed away and scrolled through various websites. “For one thing, Ford’s Theater was not named after West Ford.”

  “That’s fine,” Seth said. “It’s still the name Ford that provides the link we need.”

  “Says here that Lincoln first went to the theater in 1862 and frequented it often until his death in 1865,” Madison read aloud from her computer.

  “That means he definitely could’ve hidden the document some time before he died.”

  “That theater has been renovated probably a couple of times,” Willie said. “There could be nothing left of what was there in 1863.”

  “Only one way to find out,” Seth insisted.

  CHAPTER 29

  Both cars were now positioned about a block apart from Willie’s suburban home. It was an overcast day, and the cool temperature caused the drivers to turn on the ignition and fire up the heat every fifteen minutes or so. Kohler had gotten a trace on two calls from the home this morning. The first an outgoing call to Mount Vernon, the second, a call back from the same number. Neither call told him much. Could be just the old man calling out of work or phoning a friend. They decided to sit and wait.

  Vice President Castle called Kohler’s phone and he updated the man.

  “I’m getting impatient,” the VP said.

  “You are? Try sitting in a freezing car waiting to follow someone to God knows where.” Kohler wanted to say more but caught himself. This was the Vice President after all. “Sorry sir,” he said. “We’re just tired.”

  “I understand. Hopefully these folks are pretty close to finding it.”

  “Sir, can I ask a question?” Kohler stated.

  “If it’s not about what’s in the document.”

  Kohler sighed, “Then I guess I don’t have a question.”

  “Listen Kohler, you will know about this soon enough. It will be broadcast throughout the world. I’ll give you a little teaser though.”

  “Yeah,” Kohler perked up.

  “There are actually two of these documents, and someone found one in London a few months ago. I was contacted and told about a second document. They’re identical in nature. But, they will not reveal the document until we find the same one over here.”

  “How did you get on the fact that these people we’re following were looking for the document?”

  “Good question. I did my homework. Found out a little about the journal. I had Bunkley follow that Willie Wright guy and search his house but he turned up nothing. Started following the daughter around, nothing. Bunkley’s the computer geek so he looked into Willie’s past and saw he was in the Marines. Did a thorough search of his platoon and came up with Arthur Layton. Didn’t think nothing of it but we still had to investigate it. Turns out, he stole some liquor at the old folks home he’s in, got wasted and told a nurse that he once had a book written by Washington. The nurse told Bunkley and you guys came into the picture.”

  “Interesting,” Kohler said.

  “Yeah, so find it already, would you? You guys will be at the top of my list when this all comes out.”

  <><><><><>

  The drive over to 511 10th Street Northwest in DC traffic took a long time. It usually didn’t matter the time of day with how bad traffic was, Willie explained in the car. They left Madison’s car at his house and they piled into the pickup truck with the extended cab. He told them to never live in DC, he didn’t want another car on the road. The beltway was always jammed day and night. It seemed like people got out of work at three in the afternoon he complained.

  There was no good time to enter the heart of DC. If it was during the week, the roads were mobbed with commuters, buses, and messengers on bikes. On the weekend, tourists from all over the world came to see the White House, the Capitol and countless museums in the area. Ford’s Theater was certainly an attraction, but it didn’t garner as much attention as the Smithsonian or other national landmarks. They pulled down 10th Street Northwest and Willie parked his pickup in a parking garage and they walked the short distance to the front of Ford’s Theater.

  It was a three-story red brick building with a domed roof that possibly doubled as an attic or storage area. The outside of the first floor was white concrete with five circular archways that l
ed to five sets of double doors. The glass entryway before the theater on the left was where tourists first walked in. They entered the building and were given four tickets to the museum and the theater, free of charge.

  “Please turn your cell phones off or to vibrate,” the aging security guard said. “Cameras are allowed but not during the presentation which starts in about twenty minutes. The presentation is optional and is located in the main theater. Have a splendid day.”

  He raised the retractable cord and allowed them to proceed down a ramp toward the museum. They went down a short flight of stairs and started their tour. A few other people were milling about and Seth took notice of everyone here. A young couple and what looked like grandparents and their two grandchildren were the only ones so far that he noticed.

  It was dark and quiet in the museum, except for the televisions playing historical features throughout their walk. They proceeded onward through the maze that described Abraham Lincoln’s life from childhood through his Presidency. His dealings with former slave Frederick Douglas, the Gettysburg Address, and the Emancipation Proclamation were all showcased throughout the floor with plaques and pictures on the walls. Actual artifacts from everything to do with Lincoln including White House plates were behind glass cases.

  They finally turned the corner and started to read about John Wilkes Booth and the plot to kill Lincoln.

  “Actually,” Willie said, “he first tried to kidnap him. Look here.” He pointed to the wall and they read that Booth did indeed plot to kidnap the President, but after General Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House, the point was moot. So, he decided to kill the President.

  “Look, they were also going to kill others too,” Madison read aloud, “They were going to murder Vice-President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward. Wow.”

  Willie again chimed in, “Seward ended up being stabbed but survived, and the guy that was supposed to kill Johnson got scared and failed to carry out his portion of the plot.”