come up with anything that ties it directly to Edwards – other than the fact that all the weapons that were stolen were in his damn house. The .45 he killed himself with? It came from the armory.’
‘Is the rifle the only physical evidence you have?’ Banks asked.
‘You mean besides the suicide note?’ Prudom said.
‘Yeah,’ Banks said.
‘Well, we found a receipt in his car from a gas station about thirty miles from Chattooga River. But the guy left nothing in the shooting blind, and when you think about it, that’s also amazing. He was in that hole digging, eating, shitting, pissing, and shooting – and he managed not to leave any trace. He took all his garbage with him when he left and while he was in there he must have been covered head to foot in some kinda suit because he didn’t leave any hair or skin or anything else we could get DNA from. We didn’t find the suit in his house, by the way.’
Prudom closed his notebook. ‘The good news, General, is that this helps the Secret Service. I mean it’s not like their procedures were sloppy or they were goofin’ off on the job. This guy Edwards may have been a whack job – but he was good. Really good.’
‘But how did he plan this thing?’ DeMarco asked. Banks almost gave himself whiplash as his head spun toward DeMarco.
‘What do you mean?’ Prudom said.
‘You said Edwards went down to Georgia the week before the Secret Service’s advance team arrived at Chattooga River, and that’s when he dug the shooting blind. How’d he know when to go?’
‘We’re not sure, but this thing the President did every year with Montgomery always got plenty of ink. And obviously lots of people here in D.C. knew when the President was leaving and where he was going. The other thing is, we found out the other day that when Montgomery was at some book signing he talked about going down to Georgia to do some fishing with the President. We got that from his publicist. So to answer your question, we don’t know exactly how Edwards figured out the President’s schedule but we do know that planning for the trip wasn’t controlled like the Manhattan Project.’
After Prudom left, Banks and DeMarco sat together in silence a moment thinking about what Prudom had told them.
‘You know,’ Banks said, ‘Mattis being in the reserve, same as Edwards, you need to follow up on that armory break in.’
‘If the FBI can’t find anything, I doubt I’ll be able to.’
‘Yeah, but you gotta check it out.’
‘Sure,’ DeMarco said.
He had no intention of checking it out.
The man sitting at the bus stop across from Secret Service headquarters wore a blue polo shirt, chinos, and sandals with white socks. He was in his sixties, had iron-gray hair, and a face that DeMarco could envision, for some reason, behind the plastic face shield of a riot helmet. This was Emma’s man Mike, last name unknown.
‘Hi,’ DeMarco said as he sat down next to Mike on the bench.
‘Hey, Joe,’ Mike responded, but he didn’t look at DeMarco. His eyes continued to scan the building across the street, moving from exit to exit, and occasionally over to a nearby parking lot. When you got a guy from Emma, you got a pro.
‘How’s it going?’ DeMarco asked.
‘Like watchin’ paint dry,’ Mike replied. ‘He leaves his house at six thirty and gets here at eight – 395 was a fuckin’ parking lot this morning. He goes directly to this building where he stays all morning. What he’s doin’ in there, I don’t know. At twelve he comes outside, grabs a burrito from a street vendor, takes a walk around the Mall, then goes back inside the building.’
‘Did Mattis see you tailing him?’
Now Mike looked at DeMarco; his stare answered DeMarco’s question.
‘And I take it no one approached him while he was taking his lunchtime walk.’
‘You take it right,’ Mike said.
They sat in silence for a while, Mike watching the building, DeMarco watching the women walk by. As he sat there, DeMarco thought back to the FBI briefing. What Edwards had done fascinated him. He couldn’t imagine a man lying in a dark, claustrophobic space for two days waiting for the opportunity to take a shot and then having the balls to stay in the shooting blind while the FBI scoured the bluff above him for evidence.
Which made DeMarco think of something else: Why did he take the shot he took? There must have been an easier shot Edwards could have taken while the President was fishing. Instead he waited until the day the President was departing, surrounded by his bodyguards. Then he remembered that Prudom had said that while the President was on the river the Secret Service had patrolled the bluff, so maybe that’s what had prevented Edwards from shooting earlier.
The skill it had taken to sneak into and out of the area was also remarkable. Prior to the shooting Edwards had to get past a Secret Service cordon to get to the shooting blind he had previously dug. After the FBI’s forensic people arrived on-site, Prudom said they worked sixteen hours a day, and when they weren’t there, the area had been patrolled to keep out sightseers and protect the crime scene. Yet the assassin had left the shooting blind, probably the day after the shooting, reconcealed the blind, and either climbed back up to the top of the bluff or down the bluff to the river, carrying his waste and all his gear with him. Then he waltzed past all the people guarding the site.
The rifle also intrigued DeMarco. Why would Edwards have taken the assassination weapon back to his house? Why didn’t he just dump it the first chance he got? It was almost as if …
‘You ever seen pictures of Mickey Mantle, Joe?’ Mike said. ‘I don’t mean right before he died of cancer, but when he was playing.’
‘Sure,’ DeMarco said.
‘Well that’s who this kid looks like. He looks like the Mick, ol’ number seven. Why am I tailing a guy who works for the Secret Service and looks like Mickey Mantle, Joe?’
DeMarco rose from the bench. ‘I’ll check in with you again tomorrow, Mike. Thanks for helping out on this.’
‘Sure, Joe,’ Mike said, ‘but if I gotta spend another day sittin’ in the sun on a concrete bench, I’m gonna go crazy. And when I do, you’re gonna be the first person I kill.’
DeMarco lived in a small town house in Georgetown, on P Street. The town house, a carbon copy of several others on the block, was a narrow two-story affair made of white-painted brick. Wrought-iron grillwork covered the windows; ivy clung to the walls; azaleas bloomed in the flowerbeds in the spring. It was a cozy place, and he and his neighbors pretended the artfully twisted black bars barricading their lower-floor windows were installed for aesthetic reasons. He had purchased the house the year he married.
The interior of DeMarco’s home looked as if thieves had backed a moving van up to the front door and removed everything of value – which, in a way, is exactly what had happened. A house once filled with fine furniture, Oriental rugs, and pricey artwork now contained only a few haphazardly selected pieces that DeMarco had bought at two yard sales one Saturday morning. The entertainment center in his living room had been replaced with a twenty-four-inch television on a cheap metal stand. A lumpy recliner sat a few feet from the television and on the floor near the recliner was a boom box that served dual purpose as a radio and a place to set his drink when he read or watched TV.
DeMarco tossed his suit coat on the recliner – the antique oak coat stand that had been by the door was gone – and walked toward his kitchen. Each step he took on the bare hardwood floors echoed throughout the house like punctuation marks in a sonnet to loneliness.
When