Frame 232 (14 page)

Sheila shivered. “I can’t stand stuff like this. It’s terrifying. Dark, sinister figures getting away with dark and sinister things.”

“That’s not the half of it. The number of people connected with the assassination who have died under mysterious or unusual circumstances over the years is enough to send you diving under the bed. For example, there was a man named Gary Underhill, a Harvard graduate who worked for military intelligence during World War II. After the war, he did some freelance work for the CIA. Shortly after the assassination, he began telling friends that he believed the agency took part in the killing and that he was terrified because they knew
he
knew. In May of ’64, he was found dead with a bullet hole behind his right ear. The death was officially ruled a suicide, but Underhill was left-handed, making it extremely difficult for him to have fired that shot.

“Then there was Jim Koethe, a reporter for the
Dallas Times Herald
. He interviewed several people while researching the assassination, including a man named George Senator, who was a friend of Jack Ruby’s. Senator visited Ruby in jail after
he killed Oswald, but it isn’t known what Senator told Koethe about the visit. Senator did, however, allow Koethe to search Ruby’s apartment on the evening of November 24, 1963. Eventually, Koethe began writing a book about his findings on the assassination, but he never got the chance to finish it
 
—he was murdered in his home in September of 1964.

“Dr. Mary Sherman’s case is particularly interesting. She was an orthopedic surgeon from New Orleans who had apparently been involved in a CIA-funded project under the Kennedy administration to secretly develop biological weapons for the purpose of killing Cuban leader Fidel Castro. As you may know, the Kennedy administration tried several times to eliminate Castro after he overthrew Fulgencio Batista’s regime in 1959 and seized all American-owned property, claiming it for his new government and costing its original owners billions. In July of 1964, members of the Warren Commission came to New Orleans to obtain testimony from Dr. Sherman
 
—but she was murdered
the same day
. Quite a coincidence, to say the least. She was stabbed multiple times, and her apartment was set on fire. Her lab was also destroyed, erasing all evidence of the project. To this day, her killing remains unsolved.”

Sheila looked at him incredulously. “That’s insane.”

“I know. The evidence certainly suggests there were some very evil people involved in the president’s death. The kind of people we pretend don’t exist so we can sleep at night.”

“I never should have contacted you about any of this. I should’ve just burned the film and forgotten about it.”

“No, what you did was absolutely right, Sheila. If there’s a chance that your mother’s film will help to finally solve this case and maybe catch those responsible, then how can it be wrong?”

“But at what cost? How many more lives will be put in danger? Yours? Mine?”

“You won’t be involved in any of this
 
—I promise. Your name and your mother’s will never come up.”

“What if someone asks where the film came from?”

“None of their business.”

“Then they won’t believe you. They’ll think it’s a fake.”

“I’ll prove that it isn’t. I’ll get historians and film experts involved. I’m not worried about that.”

“And what will it matter in the end? Will it bring the president back?”

“No, but maybe figuring out who was behind his murder will finally give the Kennedys
 
—along with a whole generation of Americans
 
—some peace of mind.”

“I think that’s the only reason my mother kept it. She figured it might help catch the people responsible one day.”

“And why you couldn’t bring yourself to destroy it either, right?”

“I guess.”

As they turned onto her street at last, Hammond said, “Well, let me gather up my things and get out of your hair. I think you need for this day to be over.”

“I really do.”

AS THEY WENT
down the basement steps, Hammond said, “If you give me your cell phone number and e-mail address, I’ll make sure you get regular updates.”

“That’d be great.”

The laptop was sitting on the washing machine, the screen blank. Hammond thought this was odd, since he didn’t use the automatic standby feature. At most, it should’ve launched the screen saver.

“How did that get turned off?” he asked aloud. He checked the power cord.
Still plugged in. Maybe the outlet’s faulty.
He turned on an old radio that was sitting on the shelf above the dryer. It worked fine. “What the
 
—?” He hit the power button.

Then Sheila said, “What did you do with the film?”

He turned. “Huh?”

She pointed to the bare spindle on the projector. “Wasn’t it on here? Or did you move it?”

“I
 
—” he began. Then he froze as he spotted the error message on the laptop’s screen.

DISK ERROR. NO DISK FOUND.

Hammond began to understand. “Oh no.”

“What’s wrong?”

He cut the power, turned the unit over, and took a Swiss Army knife from his pocket. Using the tiny flat-head screwdriver, he removed the bottom panel. There was a rectangular gap where the hard drive should have been.

“The hard drive’s been taken out.”

“What?”

He showed her. “Someone was in here.”

“No, don’t tell me that.”

“Yes. Someone actually came into this house and took it. And the film. They knew what we were doing. Somehow they
knew
.”

Hammond ran back up the steps with Sheila close behind. He grabbed a knife in the kitchen from the wooden block by the toaster oven. Then, methodically, they went from room to room. After he was satisfied the intruder had gone, they returned to the basement. As Sheila looked on, he took his phone from his pocket and checked his FTP site.

The file was there, and it was complete.

“Thank goodness.”

“Did the file fully upload to your storage si
 
—?”

“Wait, no!” Hammond put a finger to his lips, but he knew it was too late. His shoulders sagged.

“What? What’s wrong?”

He leaned in close and whispered in her ear. “This house is probably bugged.”

The look she gave him said,
Are you serious?

He nodded. “I’d bet anything on it, and I’ve seen it before. Listening devices can be planted anywhere these days. It’s the only way they could’ve known what we’ve been doing.
That’s why I didn’t want to say anything about the online file. C’mon, we’ve got to get moving.”

Out in the street, Birk heard the comment about the file and cursed out loud. He got his employer on the phone, and the old man erupted again. Birk imagined him with veins bulging in his neck like cables.

“Take them out,” he said. “And make sure it looks right.”

Back upstairs, Hammond and Sheila went from room to room, turning off lights and pulling down shades.

“Why don’t we just get in the car and take off?” she whispered.

“We don’t know who’s out there. Maybe no one is. But I’m not willing to take that chance. Not yet.”

It would be so much easier to just blow them both away,
Birk thought as he moved toward the house. But that wouldn’t “look right,” as his employer had ordered. That would look like they’d been murdered. He knew the authorities would figure it out in the end regardless. With investigative science being what it was, it was almost impossible to perform a clean homicide anymore. But he was obligated to try.

He moved in the darkness to the side of the property, the earpiece still in place so he could continue monitoring their movements. They were upstairs, hiding in the dark.
That’s good,
Birk thought. It would make his job that much easier.

Kneeling along the foundation, he pushed open one of the basement windows. When he was down there earlier, he
had unlocked it in case he needed to reenter. This kind of forward thinking was a critical skill in his profession, and those who didn’t practice it usually ended up in a body bag. When he was going through the house to plant the bugs earlier in the day, he’d made scores of mental notes. You never knew when something was going to be useful.

He had formulated the method of their execution in the short walk from the car, and now he was excited to see the plan unfold. He passed through the window, his black sneakers barely making a sound as they hit the floor, and found the dryer. There was a flexible hose behind it, which he snapped off. Gas began breathing out, and Birk propped the hose over the dryer’s control panel to direct it more efficiently. Then he went to the steps and crept to the top. He grabbed the door along the side rather than at the knob
 
—knobs could be noisy
 
—and pushed it back in one smooth, decisive motion. Opening a door too slowly, he had learned long ago, gave the hinges a chance to groan.

In the attic, Hammond went to the bare bulb glowing in its ceramic fixture and pulled the string to snuff it. Then he moved to a window and looked out. The landscape was bathed in moon glow.

“Anything?” Sheila asked.

“No, no movement of any kind. Even the trees are still. Just shadows out there.”

Birk went back down to perform the last step. There was an old couch along one wall, and next to it was an end table. Sitting on the table was a rotary telephone. In the home of
a modern family, such an item might have been kept around as a novelty. Birk suspected Margaret Baker hadn’t thought of it that way.

He picked it up once to check for a dial tone. Then he popped off the case, set that aside, and replaced the receiver in its cradle.
One spark
 
—that’s all we need,
he thought. He had already memorized the number.

With the sour scent of natural gas growing thicker, Birk descended the basement stairs and crawled out the window.

They saw nothing out the other attic window either.

“I really don’t think anyone’s there,” Sheila said.

Hammond continued scanning, then nodded. “Yeah, maybe.” But his gut told him otherwise. Something just didn’t feel right.

“Should we go downstairs?”

“I guess.”

As Birk approached his car, he took out his cell phone. He did not dial the number but rather checked the time. The gas had been running for about ten minutes. He’d give it a few more to let the place really fill up.
Then the fun begins.