The Fifth Assassin (15 page)

No question, the President would
always
look out for him. Always love him. But as his thumb skated across the keypad of the cheap disposable cell phone, Palmiotti knew there was one other person who loved him too.

Lydia. The woman he’d been seeing before all this.

She loved Palmiotti as well.

His cheeks lifted as he began dialing her number. He didn’t want to actually talk to her. No. Even he wasn’t that stupid. And even if he was, what would he say?
Hey, hon! I’m not dead. I’m alive!

No. All Palmiotti wanted was to hear her voice on her answering machine. The little singsongy way she said
Lydi-a
, like it belonged in a musical. He knew she wouldn’t be there. It was a workday.

The phone rang once… twice… As it picked up, there was that hollow pause that tells you the answering machine message is about to begin.

For Palmiotti, that’s all he needed. Just to hear her voice.

“This is
Lydia
,” the message announced as the singsong made his heart balloon, pressing against his sternum. “You called. Leave a message.”

He hung up before the beep even sounded, soaking in the irrational rush of emotions that comes from any mention of an old lover.

Stuffing the phone back into his pocket, Palmiotti told himself
that that was all he needed. Just to hear her voice. That was enough.

And as he felt that lump in his throat and that rise in his pants…

It
was
enough.

But then… it wasn’t.

I
knew
who
?” I ask, still lost.

“Riis,” Marshall says.

“
Pastor
Riis? From our hometown? Pastor Riis is dead?”

“Three weeks ago. Shot in the chest by an old obscure gun.”

He says something else, but I don’t hear it. My mind’s already tumbling back to Sunday school… to Riis’s sermons at church… to the fact that he always smelled like peppermint Tic Tacs and suntan lotion… and of course to that night in the basement when Pastor Riis and Marshall’s mom—

“Don’t look at me like that, Beecher. I didn’t kill him.”

“I didn’t say you did.”

“You think I don’t know that look? Get it out of your head, Beecher. When Pastor Riis left town—”

“He didn’t
leave
town. They
ran
him out of town! What he did with you… and your mom—”

“Don’t say those words,” he warns as I feel the rage rising off him. He keeps staring across the street, gripping the pole of the awning like he’s about to rip it from its mooring. Behind us, two patrons leave the restaurant and steer wide around us, sensing Marshall’s anger.

“You don’t know what happened back then, Beecher. To me… or my mom. You don’t know anything about what happened that night.”

“Your mom died, Marshall! She put a gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger! What else do we need to—?”

He whips my way, his fist cocked.

I jump back, holding my hands up to protect my face. But he drops his hands to his sides.

“You think I’d hit you?” he asks, annoyed.

“You did choke me.” When he doesn’t respond, I add, “I’m sorry for bringing up your mom like that.”

He forces a grin, but his skin is stiff and unpliable. Like he’s wearing a plastic mask of himself. Still, there’s something real in his eyes.

“And I’m sorry for saying that about Pastor Riis,” I add.

“I brought him up,” he points out. “But Beecher, would I have told you about Pastor Riis if I was the one who killed him?”

“I’m just saying, I know he’s not just some guy who means nothing to you.”

“That’s why I started looking. First at Riis, and then at the other two.”

“Two? What two? There’s Riis—and there’s the rector who was killed at St. John’s…”

“And then there’s the one from this morning,” he says, watching me carefully. He was testing me, to see if I knew that one. The thing is, I’m not sure if I passed or failed. Was I supposed to know or not?

“Someone else was killed this morning?” I ask.

“Pastor Kenneth Frick. They found him shot in the back at Foundry Church… up on 16th Street. But from what the paramedics said, he’s gonna survive—”

“Hold on. Back up. You said shot in the
back
?”

“Yeah. Why? What’s special about the back?” Marsh asks. Unlike before, there’s no calculus in his question.

I stay silent, replaying the facts.

“Say what you’re thinking, Beecher.”

“I’m not sure,” I tell him, though I have a pretty good hunch. In 1881, President James Garfield became the second sitting President to be killed in office when he was assassinated by a bullet wound… in his back.

Last night it was Abraham Lincoln… now James Garfield… two lethal attacks that have now been re-created within twenty-four hours. I knew we had a copycat killer. But whoever’s doing this isn’t
just trying to imitate John Wilkes Booth—he’s imitating, in intricate detail, the worst murderers in U.S. history. The only thing that doesn’t make sense…

“How does this tie back to Pastor Riis?” I demand.

“Three murders. All three of them clergy.”

I nod. Of course that’s how he sees it. He doesn’t spot the copycat assassin part. He just sees dead pastors. But as I replay the facts, St. John’s is known as the Church of the Presidents. Foundry Church, I’m pretty sure, is where FDR used to take Winston Churchill for services, and where Lincoln was also a member. That means both churches have ties to the commander in chief. “How about Riis?” I ask, trying to fill in my own sketch. “Where did he die?”

Marshall cocks his head at that, his sparse eyebrows fighting to knot together. “You see something in those two recent deaths, don’t you?” he says.

“You just told me about them. What can I possibly know?”

He looks back up at the windows across the street.

I wear a key around my neck. I found it back in Wisconsin when I used to work at Farris’s secondhand bookshop. It was hidden in an old dictionary, and good things happened on the day I found it—the kind of good things that helped me escape our little town. So, as whacky as it sounds, since that time, I’ve worn the magic key on a thin leather necklace. The only time I notice it is when I’m sweating bad and it sticks to my chest. Like now.

“Tell me more about Riis,” I add. “How’d you find out he was killed?”

“Jeremy Phillip’s dad called me,” he says. A name from our past.

“And did Riis—?”

“Riis didn’t work in Washington. Had nothing to do with D.C. churches, if that’s where you’re sniffing. He was living out in North Carolina. Retired years ago. As far as I can tell, the only thing these two pastors might’ve had in common was that Riis spent a few years in Tennessee, teaching at Vanderbilt Divinity School out in Nashville. And when I looked at the rector who was killed at St. John’s last night…”

“He graduated from Vanderbilt too, from the Divinity School. I saw the diploma when we were at his office yesterday.”

Marshall stops at that, still staring across the street. “You still have that amazing memory, don’t you, Beecher? No detail too obscure,” he says with a smile that actually feels kind.

“So when you were at the church last night,” I say, “it really was because you were doing your own investigation.”

“You know what I do for a living. It’s good government work. And important work. But this one—with Riis—whatever else you think happened with him all those years ago, no one deserves to die like that. So yes, I’m doing this one by myself. But if you have any extra resources, with whatever organization you said you were working with, please jump in.”

“And what happens when you catch him?”

He turns away from the street, his gold eyes hooded as he locks on me. “I told you: I’m taking a steak knife and slicing out his larynx.”

He doesn’t blink. But after a good ten seconds, his lips press into a thin grin.

“I’m joking, Beecher. Can’t you take a joke?”

I think about the Abraham Lincoln mask I found in his house, and how he already knows about this so-called “new” murder this morning. But more than anything else, I think about that night in the basement and the real reason Marshall has so much hate for pastors. And for me.

“I don’t like jokes like that.” I pause, searching his face. “Just answer me one thing: Clementine Kaye. You really don’t remember her?”

He taps what’s left of his pale tongue against the back of his teeth. “Short black hair. Always wore short skirts. You really think I’d forget who your first crush was, Beecher? I looked her up after you left my apartment. Nice job keeping it from going public—it took nearly every clearance I have to read the report, but… Nico Hadrian’s daughter? She screwed you up pretty good too, huh? You never had good taste in girls.”

I shake my head. “Why’d you lie?”

“For a smart guy, you know very little. So know this: Just because you had one devil from your past, doesn’t mean you now have two.”

Before I can reply, my phone vibrates in my pocket. I know who it is.

Tot starts talking before I can even say hello. “You still with Marshall?”

“I am. Everything okay?”

“Not sure,” he says, though I know that tone in his voice. “We’ve got another murder. Some priest got shot in the back. Like President Garfield.”

“I heard,” I say, eyeing Marshall, who, as he walks back to his car, is still staring at the empty building across the street.

“Here’s the kicker, though,” Tot says, his voice dropping to a near whisper. “We did some homework on that photo you emailed,” he adds, referring to the plaster Abraham Lincoln mask that I found in Marshall’s apartment. “I know where Marshall stole it from.”

D
iagonally across the block on H Street, Secret Service agent A.J. Ennis kept his head down as he stood under the awning at the greeting card store and watched Stewart Palmiotti press the buttons on his phone.

It wasn’t hard to double back around the block after they ate at Wok ’n Roll. Maybe A.J. was just being paranoid. But as he learned a few years ago when he was paranoid enough to check his fiancée’s text messages, sometimes paranoia pays off.

Across the street, from what A.J. could tell, Palmiotti was clearly worked up as he dialed a phone number. A.J. had no idea who Palmiotti was calling. But when you have a guy who’s not supposed to be interacting with any parts of his old life, nothing good is going to happen when he’s punching at a cell phone.

From his pocket, A.J. pulled out his own phone and dialed a ten-digit number that didn’t ring. It clicked.

Click-click-click… Click-click-click…

“You saw him?” the President of the United States answered.

“I saw him.”

“He doing okay?”

“Actually,” A.J. said, “that’s what I’m starting to worry about.”

Y
ou agree something’s wrong with him?” Tot asks as we fight through traffic in the pale blue Mustang.

“I don’t know about
wrong
,” I say from the passenger seat, still picturing the scars on Marshall’s face, and the way his tongue looked like it was rebuilt with lighter skin. “Something definitely happened to him. He’s different.”

“No, he’s not just
different
, Beecher. That job he has… to do what he does… he’s missing the part of his brain that tells him to stay away from danger. And in my experience, when you’re missing that, your problems are just beginning,” Tot says, jerking the wheel and cutting off a muted green Range Rover that wasn’t doing anything but going the speed limit. Since the moment I picked him up at the Archives, he’s been in a mood.

“Tot, did I do something wrong?”

“Just answer me this: Do you know what the worst part was of what happened with Clementine?”

“I told you, this isn’t Clementine.”

“I’m not trying to scold you, Beecher. I’m asking you to take a look at who you are. Because to me, of all the things Clementine did, the very worst was this: She showed them your weakness. When she reentered your life, she showed the President and everyone else that when it comes to an old friend or someone you’re emotionally involved with, you’ll ignore all logic and reason, even in the face of facts that’re telling you otherwise.”

“That’s not true,” I say, stealing a quick glance in the rearview just to make sure we’re alone.

“Beecher, we’re looking for someone who’s been killing pastors
while wearing an Abraham Lincoln mask and, for some reason, carrying nineteenth-century playing cards. Earlier today, in your friend Marshall’s apartment, you found a Lincoln mask that—oh yeah—perfectly covers the scars on his face, plus those same cards with the missing ace of spades. Do you really need the smoke to be twirling out of the barrel of his gun before you’ll realize what he’s doing?”

“I hear what you’re saying, Tot, but aren’t you the one who also taught me that even when the whole world is telling you one thing, sometimes you need to follow your gut?”

“Hhhh,” he says, turning the small grunt into a full sentence. In the distance, even though it’s getting dark, I spot the tall black metal gates on my right. “Beecher, have you ever really looked at the men who’ve tried to kill our country’s leaders? Experts put them into two categories:
howlers
and
hunters
. The howlers threaten us by sending scary notes and calling in bomb threats, but the good news is, they rarely follow through. They just want attention, so for them, howling and making noise is enough. It’s different with hunters. Hunters
act on it
. They research, prepare, plot—and follow that path to a goal. But what’s most interesting is that howlers aren’t interested in hunting. And hunters aren’t interested in howling. So now that you spent that time with Marshall, which do you think he is?”

I stay silent, staring at the red taillights of the cars in front of us. But all I see is the hollow smile on Marshall’s face as he made his joke about killing the President with a steak knife.

“He had your name in his pocket for a reason, Beecher. And he wears those gloves for a reason. Now
your
prints are the ones all over that Lincoln mask. So in case you hadn’t realized it, when it comes to any murder, even the worst hunters know the benefits of bringing along a fall guy.”