Skip to content

Lawson cabin

The Lawson cabin is the Lawson family's stone-and-timber cabin in the Stately Acres community near Radford's ski lodge, where Dean Lawson buried $40,000 in cash and hid a briefcase of heroin in The Radford Horror.
Type Location (private cabin)
Aliases The cabin; Lawson family cabin
Region Stately Acres, near Radford
Owner The Lawson family
First appearance Radford Horror 06 (mentioned)

Description

The cabin is stacked stone and heavy timber with a big Lawson sign at the turnoff, a dusty porch, piled mail and an empty garbage bin. The backyard has a fire pit, log benches and a swing. Inside it is swanky: a giant CRT TV and VHS player, leather recliners and original art. The back door's locks are weak, and footprints in the dust lead to the kitchen and to a back bedroom that is Dean's unchanged childhood room from when he was about seven or eight (Radford Horror 07). Little used, but with recent tracks, it sits about a mile from the Alpine Lodge by the account of Matt McCready (Radford Horror 06). Cameras cover only the guard shack at the community entrance (Radford Horror 07).

History of events there

First mentions

Matt McCready tells the team that Dean has scary, "methy" friends and a family cabin about a mile from the ski lodge, which he marks with an X on a tourist map (Radford Horror 06). From the water tower, Dick "The Biz" Baxter notices a light on at the cabin (Radford Horror 06). The team lists finding Dean at his house in town and at the cabin as a next step (Radford Horror 06).

In Radford Horror 07 the team stops at the Stately Acres gate, where the guard Douglas Douglas says Dean has been seen several times carrying a shovel to the family cabin, adding, "Burying bodies? I don't know." He says he hates the Lawson kid, who "kicked one of my cats." He allows them to look around as long as he is not fired (Radford Horror 07).

At the cabin, Kurt Larson hops the back gate and finds a fire pit, disturbed earth at the tree line, cigarette butts in a child's plastic bowl and fresh fingerprints on the back doorknob. His own shovel breaks (snake eyes), so the Biz steals a fiberglass-handled shovel from the community tool shed while Andrew Howard keeps Douglas talking about aliens (Radford Horror 07).

Digging turns up several Ziploc bags of hundred-dollar bills, about $40,000, and a small key. Kurt then bump-keys the back door and, after an Investigate a Mystery roll of 12, finds a loose floorboard under the child's bed hiding a locked Samsonite briefcase. The key fits, and inside are four parcels of slightly cut South American heroin, with room for five or six. Kurt tastes it, puts the board and briefcase back in place and keeps the drugs, cash and key; he refills the hole (Radford Horror 07). See Dean Lawson's heroin and cash.

The team later offers some of the heroin to the pilot Freak to get him to fly them, and pays him $1,000 from the cash, before heading to the old-town church (Radford Horror 07). Deputy Molly Underhill radios that the sheriff is having the Whateley house dismantled for a forensic examination, which Kurt fears will expose "the garage" (Radford Horror 07).

Inhabitants

Appearances