The Big Bad Wolf

CHAPTER 89

THE EARLIEST ABDUCTION CASES we tracked had occurred in Texas, and dozens of

agents and analysts went to work investigating them in depth. Everything about the case was

larger in scale now. The surveillance details on the suspect’s house and place of business were

the most impressive I had ever seen. I doubted that any police force in the country, with the

possible exceptions of New York and Los Angeles, could afford this kind of effort.

As usual, the Bureau had done a thorough job of finding out everything possible about the

man who had received money from us through the Caymans bank. Lawrence Lipton lived in

Old Highland Park, a moneyed neighborhood north of Dallas proper. The streets there

meandered alongside creeks under a canopy of magnolias, oaks, and native pecans. The

grounds of nearly every house were expensively landscaped, and most of the traffic during

the day consisted of tradesmen, nannies, cleaning services, and gardeners.

So far the evidence we’d gathered on Lipton was contradictory, though. He had attended St.

Mark’s, a prestigious Dallas prep school, and then the University of Texas at Austin. His

family and his wife’s were old Dallas oil money, but Lawrence had diversified and now

owned a Texas winery, a venture capital group, and a successful computer software

company. The computer connection caught Monnie Donnelley’s eye, and mine as well.

Lipton seemed to be a straight arrow, however. He sat on the boards of the Dallas Museum

of Art and the Friends of the Library. He was a trustee for the Baylor Hospital and a deacon

at First United Methodist.

Could he be the Wolf? It didn’t seem possible to me.

The second morning I was in Dallas, a meeting was held at the field office there. Senior Agent

Nielsen remained in charge of the case, but it was clear to everyone that Ron Burns was

calling the shots on this from Washington. I don’t think any of us would have been too

surprised if Burns had shown up for the briefing himself.

At eight in the morning, Roger Nielsen stood before a roomful of agents and read from a

clipboard. “They’ve been real busy through the night back in Washington,” he said, and

seemed neither impressed nor surprised by the effort. Apparently this had become SOP on

cases that got big in the media.

“I want to acquaint all of you with the latest on Lawrence Lipton. The most important

development is that he doesn’t seem to have any known connections to the KGB or any

Russian mobs. He isn’t Russian. Maybe something will turn up later or maybe he’s just that

good at hiding his past. In the forties, his father moved to Texas from Kentucky to seek his

fortune on the prairie._ He apparently found it under the prairie, in West Texas oil fields.”



Nielsen stopped and looked around the meeting room, going from face to face. “There is one

interesting recent development,” he went on. “Among its holdings, Lipton’s Micro-Management owns a company called Safe Environs in Dallas. Safe Environs is a private

security ?rm. Lawrence Lipton has recently put himself under armed guard. I wonder why?

“Is he worried about us or is he scared of somebody else? Maybe like the big bad Wolf?”