The Lincoln Deception by David O. Stewart

can talk about what you think.”
    Cook gave him a long look. “All right, Doc.”
    â€œYou know, my friends call me Jamie, not Doc. Why don’t you?”
    â€œAll right, then. I go by Speed.”

Chapter 6
    F raser tried to ignore the stares and nervous glances. He and Cook were unsettling the train’s first-class car. The other passengers might have started out thinking that Cook was his servant, but they couldn’t hold on to that idea very long. In his sober black suit, right leg crossed over left, and arm stretched over the back of the seat, Cook sat in first class like he was born there. When the conductor punched their tickets, Cook ignored the man’s fish-eyed look.
    Fraser had never traveled with a Negro before. At the Wheeling station, waiting in the honey sunshine of an early June morning, Cook grumbled about riding on the Baltimore & Ohio. During the war, he complained, Confederate sympathizers ran the B&O, and they still did. When Fraser replied that no other railroad went where they were going, Cook glared at him.
    They were headed for Brunswick, Maryland, in the southwestern corner of that state. From Brunswick, they would have to get to Burkittsville and the home of the writer George Alfred Townsend, who was expecting them.
    Cook had hurled himself into solving the Lincoln conspiracy with the confidence that comes when a man is good at most things he tries. Fraser had never been with someone who could be so contrary, always ready for an argument. From the start, Cook insisted that Fraser was missing important parts of the puzzle.
    â€œSo, Mr. Bingham thought the Confederates did it,” Cook said early on, over Fraser’s kitchen table. “So that’s what you want to prove, to prove Mr. Bingham was right all along, right?”
    â€œI just want the truth,” Fraser said.
    â€œSure, sure,” Cook said impatiently. “Mr. Bingham’s truth. But the problem with that truth is that he was relying on liars, right?”
    â€œJust because they were lying, that doesn’t mean Mr. Bingham was wrong.” Fraser cringed inwardly at his own words.
    â€œActually, I agree with that,” Cook said, “especially since one of those witnesses wasn’t ever shown to be a liar. He didn’t ever take it back.”
    â€œWas that . . . Finnegan?”
    â€œNo, no, named Finegas, Henry Finegas. He said some Confederates up in Canada said—this was, like, in early 1865—they said that with luck Lincoln wouldn’t be around any longer, and that Booth was bossing the job.”
    â€œWho was Finegas?”
    â€œGot no idea. But Mr. Bingham put him on the stand.” Cook got a far-off look and pulled his lips in tight. “What if . . . what if whoever killed Lincoln arranged for those other liars to turn up? That way, when they tell the true story, then get caught in their lies, they throw mud all over the explanation that was the right one. Throws everyone off the trail. D’you think about that?”
    No, Fraser hadn’t thought about that. It might explain Mr. Bingham’s unshakeable belief in his own correctness. But maybe not. “If you’re right,” Fraser said, “then the people who recruited Booth and Mrs. Surratt and Lewis Paine also framed them so they would get hanged or sent to prison as traitors and assassins.”
    â€œExactly,” Cook said. “If there were other men arranged for Lincoln to get killed, then they needed those folks to get hanged and hanged fast, same as they’d want Booth out of the way. That takes away the risk that anything tracks back to them. And it wasn’t any trick getting those folks convicted. They’d just helped kill Father Abraham. They’d’ve hung if old Bingham recited nursery rhymes at the trial.”
    â€œSo, you think it was more than just Booth?”
    â€œHad to be. Remember that thing you said from Sherlock Holmes, that you