Fair Winds of Doubt by Billy R Wade

Helping a local sheriff solve several gruesome murders, Navy Commander Colt uncovers a terrorist conspiracy that stretches from South America to Canada.

In a town that feels peaceful, a hidden danger is about to surface. Commander Marcus Colt, a top investigator for the Naval Investigative Service, returns to his hometown in Princeton, West Virginia, thinking his visit will be brief. He is instead pulled into a conspiracy of terror that will change him.

His childhood friend, now the sheriff, asks for his help investigating awful crimes and missing children. With no suspects and no good evidence, Marcus and his wife, Kelly, start digging. They uncover secrets the town has kept buried for decades. Each clue draws them into a dangerous situation where it is hard to tell what is real and what is a myth.

The case expands into a threat that reaches from South America to Canada. Marcus is in a race to stop a terrorist plot that could kill tens of thousands of people. He must read people's behavior and face creatures once thought to be just folklore. His investigative skills are all he has to save the innocent from the dark forces threatening them. This suspenseful story will make you question truth and reality with its constant twists.

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Excerpt from Fair Winds of Doubt © Copyright 2025 Billy R Wade

1

POINT PLEASANT, WEST VIRGINIA
15 DECEMBER 1967

Ten days before Christmas, 1967, at around 5 p.m., workers and shoppers in Point Pleasant, WV were driving home. Truck drivers were completing their runs. The aging, aluminum-painted steel structure known locally as the Silver Bridge, which connected West Virginia to Ohio, was filled with traffic. Then the unthinkable happened: the bridge collapsed. Thirty-one vehicles dropped into the icy waters. At final count, the disaster left forty-six dead. Two bodies were never found. The only good news: twenty-one of those who dropped into the river survived.

The investigation showed that several factors caused the collapse, including lax maintenance. But no inspectors could have noticed the small defect, about a tenth of an inch, in one of the eyebars. That was the first piece to give way.

But perhaps the biggest factor was the load: rush-hour traffic was much heavier than the weight the bridge had been designed to handle forty years earlier. The load caused that one defective eyebar to break, and the failure cascaded to other eyebars.

The Silver Memorial Bridge replaced the collapsed bridge. This new bridge opened in 1969, restoring easy travel across the Ohio River. But the deaths and injuries permanently scarred the locals and fed a local legend.

For over a year prior to the 1967 collapse of the Silver Bridge and the death of forty-six people, there had been sightings of an unusual creature. Some felt the sightings were premonitions of the bridge collapse. Others attributed supernatural events to the sightings.

It all started when two young couples on a drive in November 1966 reported seeing a ten-foot-tall, man-like creature with huge wings. They claimed the car’s headlights made the creature’s eyes glow red, and that it followed them for a distance as they drove away.

The first newspaper report, published in the Point Pleasant Register on November 16, was titled “Couples See Man-Sized Bird … Creature … Something.” Later, someone in the media coined the name that stuck: the Mothman.

Sightings increased after that first published report. A couple of volunteer firefighters reported seeing something, perhaps a huge gray bird with red eyes. Scientists theorized that a sandhill crane, which fit the fledglings’ description, may have strayed into the area.

Mothman sightings continued until the Silver bridge fell in December 1967, then suddenly stopped. Unofficially, there had been over one hundred sightings of the Mothman, including several of him sitting on the doomed bridge. That created, in local lore, a supernatural connection between the Mothman and the bridge disaster. Many believed the Mothman was a harbinger of doom. West Virginia folklore had been born.