When I walked into the meeting room I was pleasantly surprised to see the boys in carry seats on one of the tables, sound asleep. Our meeting would be a quiet one, for sure.

I listened to Marcy’s updated finance report. She ran some kind of program daily. Then I was surprised again when she told us that she was negotiating with another utility to take over their leasing package. This utility was a big one, compared to the other two we had under contract.

Southern Power and Gas had 4000 vehicles; a mix of everything. There were trucks, trailers trenchers, excavators, bulldozers, cranes, hybrid cars and trucks, boring and pipe pushing equipment and the list just went on. It was spread over four states.

Their turn around was five years on light equipment, seven years on midsize and 10 on heavy equipment, unless it was problem prone. The proposed contract even had JBG to handle disposal of the retired equipment.

Marcy had all the percentages calculated out and an agreement for Midwest Banking to supply the financing at a rate that made my head spin. I wondered how Jeanna could do financing for that rate.

All that meant that Marcy would need more employees in her division and someone was going to spend a lot of time tagging changing titles, evaluating equipment and spending time in the south, a lot of time. Jeanna always reviewed those kinds of contracts for us as a second opinion from a financial standpoint.

Jenny suggested we get Howard, Howard and Fine to look at all the leasing laws and rules into the four states as well as the tagging rules. I seconded that suggestion very quickly.

Lorrie received a text, and then had to stifle a giggle to keep from waking the boys up.

“Robbie is up to no good again. Look at the picture he sent me,” she said as she sent it to the plasma.

It was the C17 with our big JBG logo taped on the side of the fuselage, with both of the C130s parked with it in the same picture.

The text with from Robbie said, “Looks good to me”

“Looks like wishful thinking to me. You are going to set off a fire storm in Washington with pictures like that LOL,” Lorrie sent back.

I sent the picture to Frank and Eric, “What do you think? Will that make the NSA boys jumpy or what?” as the text with the picture.

It only took Frank a few seconds to respond, “I already have that picture – it came a few seconds ago; say it is not so, you are going to drive those NSA guys crazy. They still have not come to terms that you had more information than they did, let alone the action that you took.”

“The guys at the aviation shop were having fun today, that’s all,” I sent back.

We spent a lot of time on the items needed for the debate security. Five thousand invitations had been sent out by the criteria that we had put forward at the meeting with the candidates. 4500 had accepted and the plan was to run all of them and all bags through a body scanner.

East Coast Security was going to supply the scanning equipment. Robert Bradberry was going be on-hand to do training and make sure the scanners worked and stayed working. Each body scanner would have a bag scanner next to it.

Half the scanners would be operated by female employees; they would handle the female guests so there would be none of the controversy associated with scanners.

All of us girls would work that night plus all of the female administrator’s clerks in the offices and all of the female college security personnel from Frost Borough, Altoona, Warrington, Greensboro Community and Johnson Tri-County, to make sure that the progress was fast.

All the male administrator’s and clerks and half of the male security people from the same colleges would be there. I was also going to use any part-time employees from KCC who wanted to work.

The rough things that needed a lot of advance work had been discussed. As the date drew closer the finer points would have to be worked out.

There was one more security issue that needed to be worked out long term. Of all the embassy security people that JBG supplied, only three were women; Alice Dorsey, Ellen Mills and Linda Charms at Quito Ecuador. Those three definitely were going to get a complete training course, and it was going to take more than two weeks.

To add to the dilemma I had no one to put in their place for the three weeks they might be here. The only solution was to add women to the rapid response team to be able to fill in. I could pull several from the college section but most of them were married and had small children.

To pull them away for three weeks would be tough, but I would do it if I had too. Another thing that would be tough would be to change the college security mentality to one of personal bodyguard.

I had made the decision several weeks ago to make that happen. Roseanne, along with Jason’s help had had scoured the employment applications and had 15 female former military personnel who looked interesting.

Roseanne was going to call of the applicants to see if they were still interested. If so, she would mail them a multi-page questionnaire. It would include questions like: Do you have a current passport? Is there any reason that you cannot get one? Can you travel, be away from home for extended periods of time? Are all your shots up to date?

Anybody that went to Africa or central or south America needed a boat load of vaccinations before they were sent there. Our company doctor who did our pre-hire physicals was now an expert on all those vaccinations and administered them for us over several days. Most family doctors were simply out of the loop as to what was needed for extended visits to Africa.

On top of all that there was the new Zika virus that there was no vaccine for yet. That meant more questions. Are you on birth control? Are you pregnant? Then one more test before any women were sent anywhere; a pregnancy test each and every time before they shipped out. I wanted no part of any complications to a baby from exposure to the virus. This was one of the many problems going forward.

Friday started off good enough, but went downhill before noon. One of the male students – Herbert Carter – failed to report for class. After missing the first three classes, the college’s computer system flagged his name.

When the flag hit my screen I checked the location of his ID card. His ID card was showing on the screen as still in the dorm room. I found one of my male counterparts and together we opened the dorm door with my master card. There was no response from inside the room.

The door had only opened a couple of inches when the safety hook stopped the door. It was the same kind of setup that all motel rooms had. Its use meant that someone was in the room. I had brought a special set of bolt cutters made especially to shear the device and allow the door to open.

Before we cut the latch I called Bob Jackson to inform him what was happening. A quick snip and we were in. Herbert Carter was still in bed. He had no pulse and the body was cold. Rigor mortis had already started.

The next call was to 911 and the call after that was to Bob Jackson and the college’s medical staff which consisted of a registered nurse.

The rest of the afternoon was tied up in the investigation. The room was searched not just once but by the town police and the state police, all with Bob Jackson’s blessing.

The medical examiner pronounced Herbert dead and estimated that the time of death to be around 1 AM.

After the body was removed and the door was locked the State Police officer, Bob Jackson and I went to my office to check the computer logs to see what time Herbert used his ID car to enter the dorm and his dorm room.

According to the log he had entered the dorm at 10:10 PM and his dorm room a couple minutes after 10:12. There was no log of the door being opened after that until my master ID opened the door.

While I was in the computer I changed the door codes to the room so that only Bob Jackson’s and my card would open the room and lock it down so no one could change it. Then I wrote instructions to the night crew to that effect.

It was time to go home and I was glad. I needed to see two little boys.

Edit by Alfmeister

Proof read by Bob W.