The Fifth Assassin (25 page)

“Dr. Yoo.”

“He wasn’t there when the plankholders first started—he came after the experiments began. In South Carolina. In Charleston—at the Naval Shipyard.”

“My dad wasn’t in the navy. He was army.”

“So was mine. But from what Yoo said… this wasn’t just about the navy. It was about
privacy
.”

I nod, well aware that throughout history, when it was time to brief the President of the United States in true privacy, they’d put him on a ship since it was the one place they could guarantee he’d be alone.

“Nico was barely eighteen,” she explains. “Yoo said that even back then, they knew Nico was having trouble adjusting to life as a soldier. That’s why Dr. Yoo was brought in. He was an addiction specialist—one of the first to realize that methadone was a good way to help soldiers fight heroin addiction. But when it came to what they were giving Nico, no one had ever seen anything like it. One week, he’d be happy and easygoing; the next week, he’d stop sleeping… stop eating… and suddenly they’d find half a dozen dead possums all around the naval base.”

“Possums?”

“No one could explain it. Until one morning at breakfast, when Nico took a spoonful of his morning cereal and calmly announced he was killing them. With his bare hands and a cinderblock. That’s when Yoo was called in.”

“So what do possums have to do with John Wilkes Booth?”

“Nothing,” Clementine says, her eyes following me as I pace. “In fact, everyone thought Yoo had it all under control and that everything was back on schedule. But what they didn’t know—and couldn’t possibly know—was that a few months later, a hunter in the South Carolina woods was shot in the back of the head at around 10 p.m. while hunting coyote. Police assumed another hunter did it by accident. Then a month after that, a second man was shot in the back of the head—caught him right behind the earlobe—while he was out on a night jog.”

“Also at around 10 p.m.?”

“No one thought twice about it, but yes, around 10 p.m. Again, because it was South Carolina, they assumed another hunting accident. But soon after that, there was a third man shot in the back of the head, point-blank, in a local movie theater. Exact time of death was 10:11 p.m.”

“The exact time John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln.”

“Don’t you see?” she asks, starting to pick up the books that fell when she crashed into the bookcase. She knows I need the order. “Nico was practicing, Beecher. Working out the details so he could work his way toward the perfect kill.”

“And nobody put it together?” I ask, slotting an old red leather book into place. “Were all the deaths out by the shipyard?”

“No. That was the problem,” she says, gathering the last few books and a small picture frame. “They were all spread out. The first was over seventy-five miles away in Hampton County. The second was in the opposite direction. And the last one was right outside of Charleston. It got even harder when the fourth body turned up—this time in Georgia. A thirty-three-year-old dental equipment salesman was getting off his Amtrak train, and as the train pulls out of the station, he gets shot in the back…”

“Like Guiteau shooting President Garfield…”

“… and a month after that, up in one of the mountain areas of North Carolina, as the local county fair is shutting down, a drunk soybean farmer has to pee, so he darts behind one of the loading trucks… and gets shot in the belly…”

“Like Czolgosz shooting President McKinley at the World’s Fair…” I say, slotting another book into the bookcase.

“The whole thing didn’t come to a head until months later, when, back in Hampton County, some poor retired priest—”

“A priest? That’s what—”

“I know. Just listen. While the priest was working his garden, he got shot in the back of the head with something called a CE 573—a 6.5-millimeter caliber metal-jacketed bullet. Based on the way the priest’s head exploded, they think a sniper picked him off from something like two hundred and fifty feet away.”

“Or two hundred and sixty-five feet to be exact.”

She nods, cradling half a dozen books and waiting for me to finish. “No one else came close to connecting the killings—until the local sheriff started thinking that a shot like that, from two hundred and fifty feet, could only be made by someone who’s military. From there, he started making phone calls to all the local area military bases, where the young administrative assistant who picked up the phone happened to notice that the time of death was exactly 12:30 on the nose. For most people, that wouldn’t mean much. It’s
a standard time. But for this assistant, who was a certifiable JFK conspiracy enthusiast, it was a clarion call. He not only knew that 12:30 was the exact time that President Kennedy was shot, but that a 6.5-millimeter caliber bullet was the exact one that traveled two hundred and sixty-five feet and was used by…”

“Lee Harvey Oswald,” I say, slotting a book onto the top shelf. It hits with a
thunk
.

“On a hunch, the investigative folks checked Nico’s locker. And his belongings. All were clean. Until they ran a metal detector over his mattress and found, burrowed deep inside it, a Mannlicher-Carcano bolt-action military rifle.”

Now I’m the one nodding, recognizing the rifle that Oswald used on JFK. My brain swirls, thinking about the current killer going after rectors and pastors. But that still doesn’t explain…

“Why’d they let Nico go?” I ask. “If they knew he did it, how come they didn’t tell anyone? Or arrest him?”

“Back when it was open, do you have any idea what the navy used to use the Charleston Shipyard for?”

“I assume to dock our ships?”

“Yes, of course that’s where we docked our ships. And when our ships and submarines were there, they’d also clean them, upgrade them, whatever they needed for upkeep. But according to Dr. Yoo, there was also something called the Weapons Station.”

“We have some of their files in the Archives. They upgrade the ship’s weaponry.”

“Again, yes,” Clementine says, still cradling the half dozen books that she picked up from the floor. “But even within the Weapons Station, there’s a hierarchy. Some places did
regular
weapons. Others did nuclear weapons. And then there was Subgroup 6.”

“Subgroup 6? That sounds like a fake name.”

“It’s real. Look it up. At one point, it was run by Admiral Thomas Coady, whose goal was to take Subgroup 6 and use it to produce the one weapon more dangerous than even a nuclear weapon.”

“Which is?”

“The ultimate weapon, Beecher: the human weapon.”

At the bookcase, Clementine dumps the stack of books on a chest-high shelf.

“You think that’s what our dads were working on?” I ask.

“No, not at all. My dad, your dad, and Marshall’s dad were eighteen- and nineteen-year-old grunts. Subgroup 6 didn’t hire children. Think about it: When you’re putting together your top-secret team, you choose people you know. Veterans with experience. For Admiral Coady to bring our dads there, c’mon, Beecher. You know what they call an eighteen-year-old who’s drafted into something that top-secret? They were the
experiments
. The guinea pigs.”

Her words pop the imaginary membrane I didn’t even realize I kept around myself whenever she’s around. I’ve kept it there as a shield. But as the membrane ruptures and reality seeps through it, there’s nothing more emotional than hearing her talk about my own dead father. And the unspeakable things that might’ve been done to him. No one wants to hear that their dad was in pain.

“I know it’s a nightmare, Beecher. It’s a nightmare for me too. But now you know why they couldn’t let him be arrested. Whatever they put inside Nico—whatever they’d invested in him—if their top lab rat showed up on the front page of the newspaper with a story about how he was a homicidal maniac copying Lee Harvey Oswald, every eyeball in the country would’ve been staring at Subgroup 6. And that was a risk no one in the program was willing to take.”

I look down at the note—the suicide note—that I’m still gripping in my hand. “You think that’s why my dad died? Because of some cliché military cover-up?”

“No… I don’t think so. From what Dr. Yoo said, your dad died a year later. When Nico flipped, the Subgroup was split up. Nico got punished internally, locked away for nearly a year until they were convinced that whatever they put inside him was out of his system. Everything else was wiped.”

“And when Nico shot the President, none of this came out?”

“This is the government we’re talking about. You really think they’ll admit they created the monster that attacked their own President?
Back when they thought Nico was cured, they sent him into the regular army as if he was a brand-new recruit showing up on day one. Your dad and Marshall’s dad were sent elsewhere.”

“And that’s the big finale? They buried the records, hoping no one would ever find them?”

“But don’t you see, Beecher? When it came to Nico’s records, someone
did
find them! You know this better than anyone. No matter how hard you hide them, or where you bury them, the files are always found. So for someone to be re-creating the crimes of John Wilkes Booth… and killing pastors on top of it… someone clearly knows what Nico did!”

“Or maybe they’re just copying the original assassins. Don’t forget, when Timothy McVeigh blew up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, he was wearing a T-shirt that said
Sic Semper Tyrannis
. These assassins have never been forgotten.”

“But to kill pastors…”

“Nico only killed
one
pastor.”

“No. He only killed one that
we know about
. Look at the similarities, Beecher. You think someone just happened to have the same crazy idea, using the same ancient weapons, targeting the same innocent pastors? This isn’t Timothy McVeigh. Whoever’s doing it read Nico’s files!”

“Maybe,” I say, my voice slowing down. “Or maybe they just heard the story from their father.”

She looks at me. “Wait. You don’t think I—?”

“I didn’t say
you
.”

“So you think Marshall—?”

“I’m not saying it’s Marshall either. And when it comes to who he could’ve heard it from, from what he told me, Marshall’s dad is dead.”

“So? His dad could’ve told him the details before he died,” she says, grabbing one of the books—a narrow book about the cartography of battlefields—and slotting it onto the bookshelf.

I snatch it back out. “
It’s in the wrong spot
,” I say with a verbal shove.

I wait for her to shove back. She always shoves back. But instead she just stands there, chastised, like she’s physically shrinking in front of me. She shifts her weight, and I get the feeling that
this
—right here—is the first real and honest reaction she’s shown me. She knows the pain she’s caused. But as I study this petite, broken girl who, back in eighth grade, pulled me close and gave me my first real kiss… I can’t help it. Even now, even bald, I forgot how stunning she is.

“So what happens now? How do you figure out if Marshall’s the killer?” she finally asks.

“You go to the source. The only one who’s left.” From the way her face falls, she knows who I’m talking about.

There’s no avoiding it. We know a third murder is coming. If we want to stop it…

“We need to go see Nico.”

A
nd if you had to rate the pain on a scale of one to ten?” the doctor with the bald head and thin beard asked.

“Probably a five,” Pastor Frick said, walking down the hallway toward his room, on the fourth floor of George Washington University Hospital.

The doctor watched the pastor carefully, motioning for him to walk the hall one last time so he could see how Frick was breathing. “And no shortness of breath?” the doctor asked.

“No. No more problems than I usually had,” the pastor joked, though the doctor, like most doctors, didn’t laugh. It was late. These were clearly the last of the doctor’s rounds.

“What about pain anywhere else?” the doctor asked.

“I told the nurses, I’m sore, but otherwise just fine. The thing I feel worst about is taking this bed. If you need it for someone else—”

“We can spare the bed,” the doctor reassured him, motioning Frick back into his room. As Pastor Frick took a seat on the bed, the doctor pulled his stethoscope from his pocket. “I just need to listen to your lungs and we can—”

There was a loud ringing: the hospital phone on the side table.

From the look on the doctor’s face, plus the late time, he didn’t want Pastor Frick to pick up the phone, but the pastor had been away from the church all day. If someone needed him, or needed help…

“Sorry, it’ll just take a minute,” the pastor promised. “
Hello…?
” he asked, cradling the phone.

“Pastor Frick, I’m sorry to bother you at this hour, but my name
is Tot Westman. I’m working on the investigation of today’s shooting and was just wondering… is now a good time to chat?”

The pastor wanted to help, was determined to help. But he took one look at the doctor, who held up his stethoscope, not even bothering to hide his impatience.

“Actually, is there a way we can do this a little later, or maybe tomorrow?” Frick said into the phone.

“Tomorrow sounds perfect,” Tot replied. “If you want, I can come by first thing in the morning.”

“That’d be great.” Hanging up the phone and turning back to the doctor, he added, “My apologies. Just trying to help them catch who did this.”

“No worries at all,” the doctor replied as he pressed his stethoscope against Pastor Frick’s chest. “We all have our jobs to do.”

I
t’s nearly midnight as I head downstairs clutching an old comforter, fresh sheets, and a waffle-thin pillow against my chest.

“Beecher, I really appreciate that you’re—”

“Please stop thanking me. And stop pretending we’re friends. You have information about my father. And information about these murders—information which I hope will save innocent lives.” I dump the sheets and comforter on my black art deco sofa.

“I can stay in a hotel if you want,” Clementine says. “I’ll be fine there.”