Page 67 of Holmes, Margaret and Poe

The former coach raised his middle finger overhead and kept walking.

“Captain?” Fiona Plum said, smiling nervously as she looked past him at the headmaster glaring her way. “When did you get out?”

“An hour ago,” he said, brushing by her and exiting through the front doors.

She followed him. “I’m so happy. I knew that attorney was good.”

Davis, still furious, stopped halfway down the front steps of the school and looked at her. “The U.S. attorney released me for lack of evidence. My attorney had nothing to do with it.”

“Oh,” she said, her face falling. “Of course.”

He felt bad, but he wanted to punch something. “Look, Fiona, I really do appreciate you finding her for me. She’s smart and you are … something else for sticking up for me.”

Fiona Plum raised her chin a little. “I believe in you, Captain.”

“I know you do,” he said, and hesitated. “Someone’s been trying to frame me, Fiona, and I don’t get it. Why me?”

A police cruiser came into the parking lot. “He called the cops,” Davis said, and he started walking. “That little bug-eyed freak.” He waved at the officer in the cruiser as he passed him, saying, “Just leaving.”

The cop nodded. Fiona Plum ran after him. “Where are you going?”

“To get a drink and then a hotel room because my house is a goddamn crime scene, Fiona.”

“Don’t go to a hotel room,” she said. “We’ll rent you a car and you can stay at my place. I have an extra bedroom, and you know what? You deserve a drink after what you’ve been through. I think we both do.”

Davis turned to her and saw the way she was looking at him.

He finally surrendered. “Okay, Fiona. You’re on.”

CHAPTER 60

JOHN SAMPSON AND REBECCA CANTRELLwalked to a nearby café and sat outside next to a heater. Despite their different stations in life, he found her easy to talk to.

After ordering, they spoke about the missing machine gun, launcher, and missiles in North Carolina and about the police sketch artists that Mahoney had working with Parks’s neighbors to come up with a likeness of Ibrahim.

“The entire focus is on finding this guy now?” Sampson said.

“Has to be,” Cantrell said, nodding. “Unless there are third parties we don’t know about, he’s the only one who had access to a Vietnam-era Browning fifty-caliber.”

“What I want to know is what he’s got planned for the Stingers.”

“If they work,” she said. “They’re notorious for degrading over time.”

“So we’re praying for duds?”

“We’re determined to find Ibrahim before he even thinks of trying to fire one,” she said firmly. “And we will.”

Sampson got a text from Willow asking when he’d be home. He told her around six thirty. She was at Alex’s house with Nana Mama and Ali.

Even though they’d promised to keep the conversation focused on the AA 839 case, Cantrell asked about Sampson’s daughter. He told her how she loved ballet and summer camp and going to Alex Cross’s house to hang out with his family.

“You light up when you talk about her.”

“Willow is easy to light up about.” That led him in a roundabout way to talking about Billie’s sudden and tragic death from a heart attack brought on by complications of Lyme disease and how it had hit him like a sledgehammer.

“Ronny died just over three years ago. Drunk dump-truck driver T-boned his car on the way home from work. He died instantly. My entire life outside my job was gone.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Billie passed in the ER where she worked. I miss her.”

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