Part III, Chapter 26-39 Summary

Pitt looks at the information Heidi gave him as he is flying back to Washington after the Doodlebug's tests were over. He headed to Coles Point, where he finds a dead and decomposing John Essex sitting in his office chair. The thin, leather-bound volume in his lap is the missing diary of Richard Essex. Dirk reads the book for about an hour and then leaves.

He meets Joe Epstein, a reporter for the Baltimore Sun at a Fredericksburg, Virginia shooting range. Dirk had asked Epstein to check some information about the Richard Essex and Harvey Shields. Shields, Epstein says, drowned on the Empress of Ireland, which collided with a Norwegian ship on the St. Lawrence River. Essex died in a train wreck when a bridge collapsed. Both men died on May 28, 1914 and their bodies were never found...