Henry slowly shakes his head. “No. One other person was scheduled to fly that morning.”

My mind races to fill in the blank. “Brody Royal?”

“No.” Henry is fairly bursting to enlighten me, but at last the picture is starting to come clear.

“Claude Devereux.”

“Right. After the crash, Devereux claimed that Congressman Dixon had a last-minute scheduling conflict, so Robb had decided they’d fish in Tennessee instead. So Dixon could still get in some fishing, right? Devereux told reporters that he’d had no desire to fish in Tennessee, so he begged off, and that decision saved his life.”

“How did he explain the girls?”

“Claimed they’d been doing PR work for the congressman down here and were simply being given a plane ride back to Knoxville as a favor. Dixon’s office denied this, but it supported the rest of the story, and the FAA wasn’t concerned with who was sleeping with whom, only the mechanics of the mishap.”

I take a minute to mull this over. “Claude Devereux’s a sharp lawyer. You think that when Robb changed their flight destination at the last minute, he figured Robb was planning to spill his guts to Dixon?”

“I do.” Henry’s perpetually sad expression has morphed into the alert stare of a hunter closing on his prey. “And Claude couldn’t let that happen. Frank Knox was dead by this time, but Brody Royal was still Devereux’s richest client—not to mention the source of his political power.”

“Do you think Devereux ordered the hit? Or that he told Royal about Dr. Robb, and Royal ordered it?”

“Devereux would have told Royal about the danger, to keep the blood off his own hands. He knew what Royal would do. We’re talking about a man who’d ordered the crucifixion or flaying of an eighteen-year-old boy.” Henry’s face has flushed with emotion. “All Royal had to do was call Snake Knox and tell him how things stood. Snake was always at the airport, because of his crop-dusting business. Snake probably laughed and told Devereux he’d better find an excuse to get off that plane—which he did. Eight hours later, Dr. Robb was dead.”

“Along with a pilot and two young girls.”

“Snake wouldn’t have hesitated a second over that. Unlike Ku Klux Klansmen, he was all cow, no hat.”

“No hood, you mean. I’m still not hearing proof, Henry. But I did hear several unsupported suppositions. What did the NTSB find at the crash site? Anything suspicious?”

“I told you, they accepted Snake’s story at face value.”

“You also said Snake sabotaged the plane. Any proof of that?”

“Three different pilots have told me the surest way to bring down Robb’s plane undetected would have been to put water in the fuel tank. It wouldn’t take much, and the evidence would burn away in the fire.”

“Can’t a pilot check for water in his tanks?”