Page 25 of Holmes, Margaret and Poe

“Missing military weapons,” I said.

“Keep going,” Mahoney said. “Read the chitchat.”

I flipped the pages and found a printout of a thread from a chat forum called Silent Warriors. The motto at the top read “Only Dead Fish Swim with the Current.”

I scanned the page and found a series of nine posts Hand of Fate had made since AA 839 was shot down. After reading them twice, I tasted metal at the back of my tongue.

“You’re right,” I said. “This could be our guy.”

“Hundred percent.”

CHAPTER 25

CAMERON BLADES OWNED Adilapidated farmhouse on twenty acres of oak, pine, and overgrown fields in a rural part of Virginia south of the site of the Battle of the Wilderness, one of the fiercest clashes of the Civil War.

Mahoney had the pilot put the helicopter down two miles from the farmhouse in a field by Orange Plank Road. Dusk was coming on.

We were met by FBI special agents Patty Denfeld and Kurt Hawkins, both out of the Richmond office. They’d been keeping an eye on the long gravel driveway that led up to Blades’s place, which they said was well back and hidden from the road.

Ned said, “You’ve met Mr. Blades before?”

“Twice last year,” Denfeld said. “After he threatened American Airlines.”

“The same airline,” I said.

Denfeld nodded.

“What’s his beef with them?”

Hawkins said, “They lost his mother’s ashes. Even so, he’s tightly wound. He never made any stupid moves around us, but I felt like we were poking a rattlesnake every time we asked him a question.”

“Capable of shooting down a jetliner?” I asked.

The agents looked at each other.

“He’s got a history of violence,” Denfeld said. “And he likes guns. Got a bunch of them, mostly AR-style. They’re locked up. He’s a gunsmith and a welder. But I could see him being good for an illegal machine gun and a bomb or two.”

We got in their Suburban and drove down the road in the last good light of day.

“We just going to pull in unannounced?” I asked.

Mahoney said, “I want to stop and take a look at this place, get the lay of the land first.”

“We can show you on Google Earth,” Denfeld said. “House. Barn. Two sheds.”

“I’ve seen it on Google Earth,” Ned said. “Now I want to see it for myself. You, Dr. Cross, and I will walk up the driveway until we can see the house, then we’ll call Hawkins forward in the car.”

The three of us got out and started up the gravel driveway. We were almost immediately swallowed by a grove of dense pines that made what little light there was gloaming and murky at best. Fifty yards into the forest, we crossed a creek. From there, the driveway got steeper.

Ahead and up the rise, a single light shone through the trees. Denfeld whispered, “There’s an ATV trail on the left here. Takes you to a knoll forty yards from the farmhousewhere you’ll have a better view than you’d have from the driveway.”

Mahoney signaled to her to lead the way. We left the relatively even surface of the drive for the rutted ATV trail, which hooked around and climbed to the knoll.

The closer we got, the slower we walked, and soon we were barely creeping along. We saw the silhouette of the farmhouse roof in the dying light, the sagging front porch lit by a single bulb. No light shone in any of the windows.

The wind barely rustled in the last leaves clinging to the oak trees that flanked the farmhouse. The only scents in the air were pine and overturned soil.

Denfeld said, “I’m going to peek up there a little, enough to see the barn. He parks his pickup in front of it.”

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