Page 55 of Holmes, Margaret and Poe

Toof shook a finger at her. “Smart girl. Exactly my thought.”

“Okay,” Mahoney said. “So where exactly was the machine gun?”

The sheriff’s detective grinned again. “I came up here, you know, and I was looking for spent fifty-caliber rounds and I was finding nothing.”

“How long after the shooting?” I asked.

“Took us three days to figure it out,” she said. “So, four days, but again, I was looking for spent brass and finding nothing.”

“Get to it, Toof,” Mahoney said.

The detective got a sour look on her face. She walked along the cliff about ten feet, squatted, and dusted aside the leaves and debris there, revealing four bolts in a square pattern, each about a foot apart and sticking up out of the granite.

“The gun was here,” Toof said.

Mahoney came up beside her. “You think they bolted the gun down on those?”

“No, they bolted the frame and curved carriage of that same remote-control system I read was used to shoot the jet down.”

Ned squinted at the bolts skeptically until Toof showed him a time-and date-stamped photograph of the bolts as she hadfirst found them. Through the middle of the bolts and a few inches to either side, there was a wide U scuffed and scratched in the dirt.

“Look like the shape of the system he used?”

Mahoney nodded thoughtfully. “It does.”

“Where do we find Parks?” I asked.

Detective Toof sighed. “You can’t. He’s dead. Official cause was suicide, but I believe he was murdered. And if I’m right, the guy you’re after for the downing of the jet and the guy I’m after for killing Leslie Parks are one and the same.”

CHAPTER 51

Accokeek, Maryland

JOHN SAMPSON PULLED OFFthe road near a Maryland State Police cruiser with the lights on and several other unmarked squad cars as well as a Ford F-150 with the emblem of the National Park Service on the door.

Sampson got out and showed his credentials to the young trooper at the front gate. “Detective Hanson called me.”

“She’s waiting for you in there, sir,” the trooper said. “Watch your step on the walkway. Someone got sick up there. Probably the groundskeeper who found him.”

Sampson frowned. He went around the gate and up the little rise, smelling something sour and then seeing what looked like vomit with dirt and pine needles thrown on it. Looking past it, he spotted four people in Maryland State Police windbreakers, including Detective Marilyn Hanson, who was squatting aboutten feet back from the latest Dead Hours victim while a photographer recorded the scene.

Detective Hanson saw Sampson and walked over to him. “Thanks for coming on such short notice.”

“I’m actually used to being called in a lot earlier on these cases.”

“A park groundskeeper found him. ID says Henry Pelham. Business card says he’s an accountant for a firm in Waldorf. His phone is missing.”

“Security cameras?”

“One looking at the road over the front gate, another behind us a good fifty feet. We’ve called the superintendent to get access.”

“Who puked?”

“The trooper says it was here when he arrived. I think the groundskeeper saw the body and did it. Or the trooper. This is his first homicide.”

“Really?” Sampson said, then went back to the vomit.

He used a stick to move the coagulated stuff around, seeing chunks of what looked like sausage and strips of lettuce. After pushing the sausage aside, he saw something that made him stop and call over Detective Hanson.

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