“What? Oh sorry, the snow pile. I remember we did the same thing once only it was in Queens, and the beat cop took half a dozen of us down to the precinct house to scare us. My dad tanned my butt. You know, you guys aren’t too old for me to hide.”
Rob said, “We’re too old, Dad, really. Besides, you always say that then never do.” He grinned. “If you really want to teach us a lesson, why don’t you toss us in jail for a night? That would be the ultimate punishment, you know?”
“Punishment as in really cool?” Ruth asked.
Dix rolled his eyes. “You were lucky I was the first one through your little snow fort and flattened it out for everybody else.”
“Bummer,” Rob said around a hot dog loaded with French’s mustard and sweet relish.
“We had our test on Othello today, Dad,” Rafe said. “I think I did really well. I think I knew the answers to all the questions.”
“I’m not surprised,” Dix said. “I’ve told you you have your mother’s brains.”
“Yeah, well,” Rafe continued, “if I get at least a B minus can I take that after-school job at Mr. Fulton’s hardware store?”
Dix’s cell phone rang, and he stepped away to answer it. When he returned, he pointed his finger at Rafe. “No part-time job until you have at least a B in biology and a B in English, as we agreed. Not a B
minus, a good, solid B. Your report card’s out in three weeks, so you’ve got a goal. And don’t whine about it. Sherlock and Savich have a little boy a lot younger than you guys, and we don’t have to show them what’s in store for them.”
“We’re not that bad, Agent Savich,” Rob said. “Dad just pretends we are.”
Rafe shot his brother a look, then leaned forward, his eyes on his dad’s face. “We heard about you finding that murdered student in Winkel’s Cave. Everyone’s talking about it—first those two guys who tried to kill Ruth on Saturday night, and now this girl. What’s happening, Dad?”
His father said, “Yes, we found a body in Winkel’s Cave. It wasn’t pleasant.”
“You sure are lucky you’ve got FBI special agents here to help you,” Rob said.
“Yeah,” Dix said, his voice dry as a bleached bone, “I’m very lucky.”
“Do you see dead bodies all the time, Agent Savich?” Rob asked.
“Not all the time, no,” Savich said easily. “Actually I do a whole lot of work on a computer, a laptop named MAX. He and I have tracked down a good number of bad guys over the years.”
“As for us,” Sherlock said, “Agent Warnecki and I have noses like bloodhounds. They set us on a trail, and we sniff the bad guys right out.”
“Dad, this is pretty scary,” Rafe said. “What happened to that girl?”
“I’ve got to keep some things close, boys. I don’t want the media to get ahold of everything I’ve got.”
“But—”
Dix shook his head. “I’ve got some questions for Ruth about treasure hunting. Are there clubs, newsletters, that sort of thing?”
She nodded, more to the boys than to their father. “Yes, there’s all of that. Have you guys ever heard of the buried treasure at Snow Hill Farm, about a mile south of the village of New Baltimore, right here in Virginia?”
The boys, who’d been sprawled long and skinny in their chairs, sat up and leaned toward her, Rafe’s chin on his hands. “Silver coins,” she said, “gold ones, too, valued at about sixty thousand dollars.”
“Who buried it?” Rafe wanted to know. “Did you find it?”
“A Scottish pirate named William Kirk buried it back in the 1770s for safekeeping. But when he died, there was no sign of the treasure, and his widow sold Snow Hill Farm to Colonel William Edmonds, whose heirs still own the property. People have searched over the years, but still no sign of it, only an occasional eighteenth-century coin.”
“I could find it,” Rafe said, “not just one or two stupid coins.”
Rob punched his brother in the arm. “There isn’t any treasure, Dumbo. It’s a myth, otherwise someone would have dug it up by now.”
“But that’s the thing about treasure,” Ruth said, her voice dropping low, “sometimes you wonder how all the talk of a treasure even got started. An old guy in a tavern two hundred years ago spun a story so he could get a free mug of ale? And then you sometimes wonder if it isn’t all magic. When you think it’s magic, you’re ready. You go to Fauquier County and find William Kirk’s will that’s still there, and read that he not only left his wife a large property, he also left her a big bundle of currency. Where is it?”
Rafe said, “Didn’t the wife know her husband was a pirate? Everyone knows pirates always hide their gold, like Captain Kidd did somewhere on Long Island. She shouldn’t have sold the farm, she was stupid.”
Ruth grinned. “Maybe. Or maybe she didn’t believe there was a treasure, like Rob. Or maybe she believed, she simply didn’t know how to find it.”
Dix said, “Knowing Ruth for only three days, boys, you can already tell the most important quality of a successful treasure hunter: You’ve got to believe. You’ve got to be the eternal optimist, and you have to be able to stand lots of disappointment.” He cocked his eyebrow at her. Ruth stared at him, lounged back in his chair, his fingers laced over his lean belly, his long sleeves rolled up to his elbows.
She started to say something, but found she had to clear her throat first. “Well, yes, that’s about it,” she admitted.
“So you think the gold’s still there, Ruth?” Rob wanted to know.
She nodded. “Oh yes, it’s there. I think it was in leather pouches, a number of them, and some of them have split open, scattering the coins. But the big cache is under there, still waiting.”
Dix rose. “With that, it’s time for some carrot cake from Millie’s Deli. You can each take a piece, then it’
s off to do your homework. We’ve got some work to do down here ourselves.”
Rob stopped long enough on the bottom step of the stairs to tell Ruth that Billy McCleland had come by today to fix the window frame in his bedroom. “No more cold leaks,” he told her. When the boys were out of earshot, the four adults moved into the living room, taking coffee and tea with them. The house was warm and quiet, except for Brewster’s snoring from his seat of honor on Ruth’s lap. Savich began, “So Dix, you told us the doctor at Loudoun County Community Hospital did a toxicology screen on Ruth when she was admitted. You hear from him yet?”
Dix nodded. “Actually, it was the ME who called earlier. He ran what was left of your blood sample, Ruth. You had the same drug in your system that Erin Bushnell did—a drug called BZ.”
Sherlock said, “I don’t know much about it except I think it’s a gas they used in Vietnam that affects the nervous system. Did he tell you more about it, Sheriff?”
Dix paused for a moment, smiled at her. “Actually, Sherlock, while Savich’s corn on the cob was boiling, I googled it on the Internet. I printed some of it out, so you can look at it later. It’s officially called quinuclidinyl benzilate, but for obvious reasons it’s known simply as BZ. It’s a colorless and odorless gas that’s usually delivered as an aerosol and was developed for the military in the 1960s. It works fairly quickly, causing increased heart rate, blurry vision, lack of coordination. The unusual thing is that it’s what they call a psychochemical—it affects perception and thought, causes hallucinations, confusion, forgetfulness, and eventually stupor.
“BZ didn’t turn out to be much use in war, though, because the effects are unpredictable, ranging from overwhelming fear and panic to all-out rage that led exposed soldiers to attack without regard for their own safety.
“The Russians used an agent similar to BZ against the Afghan guerrillas during the eighties, and get this—
it’s possible they pumped this gas into that theater during the hostage crisis in Moscow, probably in really high concentrations because they ended up with hundreds of people dead.”
“But Erin wasn’t dead when she was stabbed,” Sherlock said.
“No, but there was a lot of it in her system, more than in yours, Ruth. From what you told us about how terrifying it was for you in that cave chamber, how you were imagining God knows what coming after you, I hate to think what Erin Bushnell went through.”
Ruth let out a long breath. “So I guess I didn’t just go crazy. But how does anyone get ahold of a gas like this?”
Dix shrugged. “The ME said chemicals like this are available from pharmaceutical companies and on the Internet. Apparently they have some legitimate uses for research. It’s unusual enough to warrant looking into but
