At the 59-second mark of an 11-minute, 59-second phone call on Friday morning, Butch Wells, member of the Augusta County Board of Supervisors, trying to intimidate me, I would soon come to realize, into giving him the name of a person who would have given me information that I had included in a Freedom of Information Act request made to the county on Thursday, told me, forebodingly, that he had “a file started.”

My natural question back: “You’ve got a file started?”

Wells’ cryptic response: “Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, I’ve got a file started. They’re playing, they’re playing political games. I don't play political games. I play criminal games. And, yeah, I've got a file started.”

As the conversation played out, Wells would not answer questions directed back at him about who “they” are, and left to interpretation what his “criminal games” might involve.