Page 74 of Holmes, Margaret and Poe

Sampson patted the roof of the car. “I’m sorry, Ms. Plum. And thank you for the talk. I think your sister and nieces are up there waiting for you.”

The English teacher looked toward the house. The drapes were open, and her sister and her sister’s daughters were looking out in concern.

Sampson returned to his car. As he did, he pulled out his phone and saw an alert from the software tracking the GPS signal from Davis’s rental car.

He swore, jumped in his car, and spun it around.

CHAPTER 66

CAPTAIN DAVIS WAS ONthe move, already a mile and a half from Fiona Plum’s house, getting on the George Washington Parkway, heading north.

Sampson threw a bubble on the roof of his car and lit up his sirens. He raced east until he reached the parkway and accelerated north, hoping to close the five miles that separated them —

He looked at his phone, saw Davis was getting off at Reagan National Airport. What was he doing there, of all places?

Sampson stomped on the gas and was trying to figure out how best to handle the situation when the signal from Davis’s car slowed to a crawl. He was going to catch up.

But two minutes before he reached the west entrance to the airport, the signal stopped. He shut down his sirens andthe bubble, looked at the screen. Davis was at 2500 National Avenue, parking garage A.

The Avis car-rental return.

Son of a bitch, he’s ditching the car,Sampson thought. He grabbed his radio, called dispatch, and asked them to send airport police to the Avis return and get eyes on Davis. Then he texted Rebecca Cantrell, asking the U.S. attorney to alert him if Davis tried to rent another car at Avis or another agency.

Traffic began to move. And then it stopped.

Sirens suddenly began to wail. Dispatch called Sampson to tell him someone had just called in a bomb threat to the airport and all police were responding.

Did Davis do that?

He could see parking garage A ahead of him, no more than two hundred yards away. He put the bubble up again and turned on his sirens.

Sampson drove up on a lawn, got around a knot of vehicles, went back onto the road, and made it to the entrance to parking garage A. He drove straight to the Avis rental return, spotted the Chevy Davis had been driving, and jumped out of his car, holding up his ID to a guy checking returns. “Where did the man driving this car go?”

The guy shrugged. “Terminal? He left his phone.”

As Sampson ran toward the exit, he said, “Do not touch it.”

“What about your car?”

“I’ll be back!” he yelled.

A minute later, he was running down the aerial walkway, scanning the people in the terminal. The scene had become angry and chaotic now that airport police were pushing the crowds back until the bomb threat could be cleared.

Captain Davis was a big guy. He would stand out. AndSampson was tall enough to look over the top of a lot of people. But he wasn’t seeing Davis in the crowd, and he didn’t see him when he got past the first line of airport police and scanned the passengers exiting the planes.

He looked everywhere for the former NFL long snapper. But after thirty minutes, Sampson had to admit defeat.

Davis had shaken the tail. He was in the wind.

CHAPTER 67

BREE CHECKED THE CLOCKin the kitchen. Alex was supposed to land at Joint Base Andrews in less than an hour.

Though he hadn’t been gone that long, she felt like they hadn’t connected beyond quick conversations for the past week, and between the Leigh Anne Asher case and the death of Iliana Meadows, she had a lot to talk over with him.

Jannie hurried into the kitchen and whispered, “She’s about to go on!”

Bree hurried after her stepdaughter into the dining room and stopped where they could both see into the front room. Nana Mama stood in the center of the room facing Ali’s laptop, which he’d set on the mantel above the fireplace. Someone had removed the shade on one of the table lamps, so it threw a nice warm light on Nana’s face and the simple dark blue dress and pumps she wore.

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