Frame 232 (15 page)

He got into the car to wait.

They came down the steps, Hammond in front.

“What now?” Sheila whispered as they reached the first-floor hallway.

“We have to find a place to hide you. I don’t think it’s safe here anymore.” They entered the kitchen. “Then I’m going to
 
—”

Hammond stopped so abruptly that Sheila nearly ran into him.

“What’s wrong?”

He held up one finger and sniffed the air. “Do you smell that?”

“What?” She sniffed too. “I don’t
 
—”

“Oh no. . . .” Hammond saw the wide-open basement door. Training his hearing in that direction, he detected the hissing from the broken pipe.

He began pushing Sheila back down the hallway. “Out! Quick!
Go
!
”

Birk heard this and cursed again. He jumped from the car and began running toward the house, dialing the number at the same time.

They passed the enclosed staircase and crossed into a small sunroom. Each of the tall windows had summer screens on the inside and rows of rotating louvered glass on the outside. Hammond prayed the aluminum door, which had matching louvers for consistency, would open.

“HURRY!”

Sheila set her hand on the black lever just as the house phone rang.

Birk moved closer but made sure to keep a buffer between himself and the three-story bomb he had created
 
—a massive oak tree that stood in a neighbor’s front yard. When the gas ignited, the effect was greater than he could have imagined. There was a momentary flash of light in every window,
followed by the dusty sparkle of shattering glass. Then walls puffed outward, as if the house suddenly coughed. The explosion was thunderous and epic, tearing through the night with wretched fury. The part that fascinated Birk the most was the pyramidal roof. It went up like a spaceship gently taking off, and for a split second, the bare trusses were visible. Then it eased back down in the same dreamy motion, landing a few degrees off its original position.

Sheila had opened the back door and taken the first of the three brief stairs down into the yard. The force of the explosion blew them forward, where they tumbled along the lawn like beach balls. Sheila didn’t lose consciousness, but she was dazed. Hammond missed smashing into a stone birdbath by inches, and Sheila saw that he had sustained a slanting cut on his forehead from a piece of spinning glass. Blood streamed into his right eye.

Wiping it away, he grabbed Sheila by the elbow and pulled her up. “Come on
 
—follow me,” he said.

He had no idea where to go. The yard was dark now; the explosion had blown out the floodlights. Going on nothing but intuition, he led her deeper into the backyard. It was long and rectangular, outlined by rows of dwarf spruces.

“Where will this take us?” he asked, pointing to the northeast corner.

“Into our neighbor’s yard,” she said. Her voice was groggy. “Mr. Phillips.”

“Okay, good. Mr. Phillips will just have to
 
—”

The first muted shot came so close to Hammond that it sounded like a bumblebee flew past his ear.

“What was that?” Sheila cried.

“A gunshot! Keep moving!”

The second round wasn’t as accurate, and it ricocheted off something on the other side of the hedgerow.
He can’t see us,
Hammond realized.
He’s firing blind.

They reached the corner of the property and disappeared between the spruces.

There was a well-worn path that linked the two yards. It ran alongside Mr. Phillips’s large garden shed before terminating at the edge of his lawn. They ducked around the front as the third shot came.

“Get over here and stay down,” Hammond said, guiding her under the shed’s decorative window.

“What are you doing?”

“You’ll see.”

There was a wheelbarrow nearby, a hump of dirt in its carriage. A rusty hoe and round-point shovel formed an X on top of it. Hammond grabbed the shovel and went back to the corner of the shed.

“Are you out of your mind?” Sheila asked.

“Very likely.”

At first there was only silence, and Hammond wondered if their attacker had given up. Then rapid, lawn-softened footsteps became audible, and a man burst through the spruce wall. Hammond gripped the shovel combat-style, hands underneath and spaced well apart.

The time between their attacker’s appearance and Hammond’s reaction was infinitesimal. The shovel swung around in a blur and connected with the man’s face with both an almost-comical clang and a sickening crunch. The assassin’s feet went out from under him, and he fell in a heap. The gun flew away, landing in a patch of Mr. Phillips’s marigolds.

To Sheila’s astonishment, the man rolled over in spite of
the strike and was on his feet in an instant. Blood poured from his nose and down his mouth, making him look like a wolf at a kill site. Hammond swung the shovel again, but the assailant dodged it with near-inhuman dexterity. He karate-kicked Hammond in the knee, and Hammond cried out as he went down. Another kick sent Hammond sprawling, and a third to the stomach curled him into a fetal position.

The shooter stepped back, wiped the blood from his chin, and muttered a curse. Then he moved in for a fresh blow, but Hammond was expecting this and rolled aside. He got to his feet and turned to face his attacker. The man landed another shot on Hammond’s side, an almost-successful attempt at a kidney punch. Then he made his mistake
 
—he tried to strike Hammond in the face with his open palm in a martial-arts style that reminded Sheila of the poorly dubbed Japanese TV shows she and her father used to watch in the seventies. Hammond dodged it, albeit somewhat clumsily, and the attacker, in his overconfidence, lost his balance.

Sheila wondered if Hammond was outmatched as he brought the shovel back up. Flat iron slapped hard against the shooter’s lower jaw, driving his teeth together. Hammond swung again as the man staggered back, this time with the handle. Wood met bone at a point on the man’s forehead, and he froze as if hit with an alien stun ray. Then he toppled backward and lay still, his arms extended.

Hammond dropped the shovel and was on him instantly, hands swarming around his hips.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m looking for ID, although I don’t expect there to be any. See if you can find the g
 
—” But she was already going through the marigold patch. “Okay, good,” he said.

Sheila found the weapon at the base of a colorful
pinwheel. She did not pick it up in a pinch between her thumb and forefinger like most who are terrified of firearms. She wrapped her fingers confidently around the butt and kept the barrel pointed downward in the event of accidental discharge. Then she undid the catch at the base of the grip and released the magazine. Finally she worked the slide to see if there was one more round in the chamber. There was, and it popped up in a brassy twirl before falling to the grass. As she bent down to retrieve it, it occurred to her that this bullet could’ve just as easily ended up in the back of her head.

The frisking of Birk now complete, Hammond got to his feet. “Let’s get going. Did you find the
 
—?”

Sheila held out the pieces in two hands. “Some assembly required,” she said.

“Wow. Annie Oakley, I presume?”

“Every other Saturday morning with my father at the local firing range.”

“Good man. Okay, come on.” He took her by the elbow again. “I don’t want us here when he wakes up.”

They started toward the front of the Phillips property. Then Sheila stopped and looked back. Her mother’s house
 
—her childhood home
 
—was blazing. The flames were oddly artful and seemed to be embracing it more than consuming it. Fire engines were fast approaching, their horns and sirens wailing in the distance.

“Sheila, we really can’t hang around.”

“I know.”

“We’ll take care of it, I promise.”

She lingered another moment, and then the assailant behind them began to stir.

THEY TURNED RIGHT
at the end of the Phillipses’ driveway.

“Where’s the best place to catch a cab?”

“What? Oh . . . Montgomery Avenue.”

“And where’s that?”

“Four blocks over.”

“Okay. We need to get another laptop. Then we have to
 
—” More blood ran into his eye from the cut on his forehead. He reached up to feel it, and his fingertips came down bright red.

He put pressure on the wound as best he could, and they kept moving. Another siren began screaming, and then a police car zoomed down a bisecting street about a hundred yards ahead of them.

“As I was saying, we also need a place to stay.”

He pulled out his phone and pressed a speed key. Noah answered on the second ring.

“Yes?”

“I need your help right away, please.”

“Okay.”

“Book a hotel in the Dallas area. Not downtown
 
—on the outskirts. Someplace quiet and unassuming.”

“What’s wrong? What’s happening?”

“I’ll tell you later
 
—right now we’re on the move. Get something nice, but not
too
nice. Two rooms.” It occurred to Hammond that whoever had the means to discover Margaret Baker’s secret identity, follow Sheila’s discovery of her film, and blow their house into splinters very likely also had the ability to access hotel records. “And use one of the aliases.” He paused to think about which false IDs he’d brought along. “Use Bartlett.”

“Okay.”

“Reserve for four people, not two. Tell them there will be two couples. You can make up a name for the other two if you need to. And prepay, okay?”

“All right.”

“Please do this right away and call me back with the information.”

He severed the connection but kept the phone in hand. It rang when they were one block shy of Montgomery.

“The Royal Crowne in Coppell. Everything’s ready.”

“Thank you. I appreciate it.”

“Don’t forget to call me back.”

“I won’t.”

Montgomery Avenue was the closest thing to a business district in the neighborhood. No outlets, superstores, or national chains except for a lone Burger King. Hammond spotted a pay phone outside a convenience store and thought about calling in a tip about the man who had attacked them. The odds of him still being there were slim to none, however. Also, there was no need to risk a horde of police descending upon the area in search of whoever had made the anonymous call.

As Hammond searched for an oncoming taxi, it occurred to him that Sheila hadn’t spoken a word in the last twenty
minutes. She was leaning against the front window of a jewelry store called the Diamond Den with her arms crossed and her eyes cast downward. She looked like a petulant teenager.

In that expression he saw it all
 
—the fear, the confusion, the despair, the anger
 
—and the tremendous toll it was taking. The death of her mother, the revelation and subsequent encumbrance of her mother’s mortal secret, the understanding that she, Sheila, would now be hunted because of it. She had been suffering all along but had been too occupied to feel it. Now the cracks in her facade were beginning to show.

A cab finally stopped, and Hammond took her gently by the arm. She went without resistance.

“To the Royal Crowne in Coppell, please,” he said.

“That’s twenty-two miles,” the driver replied in accented English. “There is a surcharge for any trip more than ten.”

“Fine,” Hammond said.

The fare came to just over forty-two dollars. Hammond paid with a fifty and told the driver to keep the change. Sheila did not speak during the trip. At the Royal Crowne, the concierge commented on the nasty cut on “Mr. Bartlett’s” forehead. Hammond told her he got it playing baseball earlier in the day. “That’s what high school reunions do to a person my age,” he said gregariously. “They make you think you’re eighteen again.” The woman laughed along and got him a small first-aid packet with the hotel’s crest on the packaging. It contained two Band-Aids and a handful of antiseptic wipes.

The last of Sheila’s resolve crumbled when she got into her room. Hammond handed her a box of tissues from the bedside table as she sat on the edge of the bed. For some reason
he found the Beach Boys’ “The Warmth of the Sun” going through his mind. Always fascinated by the machinations of the subconscious, he realized that the song’s author, Beach Boys’ guiding light Brian Wilson, had said in several interviews that he came up with the beautiful but despondent melody after hearing radio reports of Kennedy’s assassination.

Sheila hitched and shuddered like a stray dog in a thunderstorm. When she finished off the tissues, he retrieved a fresh box from the bathroom. She apologized for the indignity of the purge, and he told her she was crazy. When the worst of it had passed, he pulled back the sheets, tucked her in, and turned off the lights. She was out in an instant, her face lying against her open palm in a peaceful, childlike fashion.

Hammond closed the adjoining door between their rooms and checked his watch. It was nearly eleven, so he would have to wait until morning to buy another laptop.

“I’ll get some new clothes for both of us too,” he said to himself. “And food. And she might need a new cell phone. . . .”

He fished through his pockets to find his Bluetooth headset, worked it into his ear, and redialed Noah.

This time, the old man picked up on the first ring. “What’s happening?”

“You know the woman who called you? Sheila Baker? Her mother passed away the other day, and she was the Babushka Lady.”

“What?”

“That’s right. And that’s not the half of it. She was making a film while she was there. A film that no one else has ever seen. At least not until today, that is.”

“Really.”

Hammond detected genuine interest, which delighted him.

“She was standing about thirty feet from the president when he was struck, and the images are crystal clear. I’m talking pristine.”

“Wow.”

“I digitized it and put it on the FTP site. I need you to download the file right away and store it someplace safe.”

“Okay.”

“Best of all
 
—are you sitting down?”

“Should I be?”

“I would recommend it. Ready?”

“Go ahead.”

“There was another gunman.”

Noah’s immediate response
 
—as Hammond expected
 
—was no response at all. Just the empty silence of the miles between them. Then, “You’re kidding.”

“Nope.”

“Tell me you’re kidding.”

“I’m not.”

“A second gunman.”

“A second gunman. He doesn’t actually fire a shot, but he’s there with what is almost certainly a rifle. I’ll know more when I work on the images.”

“Where is he positioned?”

“In the storm drain. Remember we talked about that once? You’ll see it in the film. It’s the one on the side of Elm Street just before the president is hit. No other images from that day show that drain in detail. That’s why he’s never been noticed before. Remember, he was hiding. And he’s only visible in Margaret Baker’s film for a few seconds.”

There was another long pause while Noah absorbed this heavyweight punch of information.

Hammond, smiling now, went to the wet bar and opened a bottle of water. “Incredible, huh?”

“This changes everything we know about the assassination.”

“Tell me about it.”

“So she hasn’t told anyone else about it? No one else knows?”

The bottle stopped halfway to Hammond’s mouth. “I wouldn’t go quite that far,” he said.

“What does that mean?”

“Someone else knows. At least one person for sure. Besides you, that is.”

“Who’s that?”

Hammond took a deep breath, then recounted everything
 
—the trip to the Apple Store, the discovery that the film and hard drive had been taken, and the part he dreaded telling Noah the most.

“. . . obviously filled the house with natural gas and sparked it by calling the house phone.” He could feel the growing absurdity of his attempt to sound casual but plowed ahead anyway. “I have to say, it was pretty clever if you think about it. I never would have
 
—”

“Jason, do you hear yourself? Do you hear what you’re saying?”

“Huh?”

“You’re in way over your head. I know you’ve learned a thing or two over the years, but you’re not exactly James Bond. And this guy, whoever he is, is a
professional
.”

“I know he is.”

“Are you aware of the risk involved?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not so sure. What about Sheila? Are you aware of the danger
she’s
in?”

“Noah, if I hadn’t been there, she’d already be dead.”

“Sure, I’ll give you that. But you’re both very lucky to be alive.”

“No argument there.”

“How much longer do you expect your luck to hold out?”

“I’m hoping luck won’t enter into it anymore.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You need to come back here, and you need to bring her with you. We can keep her safe.”

“No, that’s the first place they’ll look.”

“Jason . . .”

He went into the bathroom and flicked on the light over the mirror. The cut had stopped bleeding and was now just a thin red line. It could’ve been drawn on with a pen.

“The most obvious places to find her will either be the estate or back at her home in Michigan. For all I know, the people behind this even know who her friends are. We have to remain in hiding.”

Noah sighed. “I suppose. But I really don’t like any of this.”

“I don’t like it either. There’s nothing to like here.”

“You have to be more careful.”

“I will
 
—I promise.”

“And these people in the shadows
 
—you don’t have any idea who they are?”

“The guy who tried to take us out had no ID on him. Nothing.”

“I doubt he’s the one making the decisions anyway.”

“I agree. He’s the hired gun, and I’d love to know who did the hiring.” Hammond tore open one of the antiseptic wipes from the first-aid packet and pressed it onto the wound. “But more importantly, I have to figure out who’s on that film. So let me work on that now and I’ll get back to you.”