Frame 232 (17 page)

HAMMOND ASKED
Noah to arrange a new rental car and have it delivered to the hotel. Noah insisted on talking to Sheila to ask if she was okay. As they waited for the rental
 
—a nondescript sedan registered under the Bartlett pseudonym
 
—Hammond used the hotel’s public computers to locate a mall within reasonable driving distance that had both an Apple Store and several clothing outlets.

They got the clothes first, and Hammond insisted on paying for everything. Just before they reached the Apple Store, Sheila pointed out that the large purchase he was about to make
 
—a new MacBook, a pair of RAM expansion sticks for maximum speed, a color printer, and about a thousand dollars’ worth of software
 
—might arouse suspicion if anyone was watching. “The guy at my mama’s house knows you were using a Mac, and there aren’t that many Mac stores around here,” she reasoned, “so it would be pretty easy to monitor them.”

Hammond found this logic impenetrable and came up with an idea. Handing her fifteen hundred-dollar bills, he directed her to buy the software and the printer at a different store in the mall while he got the laptop and memory sticks.

The Apple salesman, in his early twenties, looked like he’d overdosed on happy pills when Hammond told him what he wanted. “This makes my commission for the day,” he said, his braces shining in the pendant lighting over the register.

Back at the Royal Crowne, they went to their respective rooms to shower and dress, then ordered a room-service lunch
 
—artichoke and olive salad for her, a grilled salmon sandwich for him. Hammond set up the new computer on the table while they ate. It took nearly two hours to bypass all the welcome screens, get the software and extended RAM installed, and download the .mov file from the FTP site.

“Okay,” he said, “now let’s see if we can figure out what this guy looks like.”

He launched the file, watched it once from start to finish, then went back to the first frame he wanted to improve
 
—Storm-Drain Man, turned to the right, offering a strong profile. This was frame 177 according to the counter in the lower right-hand corner. Hammond drew an isolation box around the head and enlarged it. Now it filled most of the screen. The image was blurry and soft, but two clicks of the sharpness filter improved it considerably.

“Wow,” Sheila said.

“Latin heritage for sure.” Olive skin, dark hair in low, tight curls. He looked rough and rugged, with a scowl that spoke of his grudge against the world. The image still wasn’t perfect, but it was the best view they had so far. Hammond saved it as a separate file on the desktop.

“Now for the other angle
 
—straight on.”

He advanced the film slowly, and the gunman turned. There would be a split second
 
—Hammond would know it when he saw it
 
—when a certain clarity of character was visible. Something in the eyes, perhaps. It occurred just before
the president’s limousine came into view. Hammond trapped the face again and brought it forward. Sheila gasped this time
 
—the man seemed to be looking
at
them, the eyes fierce.

“He’s just a boy,” she said, and Hammond caught a trace of what he thought was compassion in her voice. “Look at how young.”

“Yeah. And look at the frame number,” Hammond said, pointing.

“232?”

“That’s incredible.”

“Why incredible?”

“It was also a significant frame in the Zapruder film.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No
 
—it’s the one where the president has his hands balled into fists and pressed against his throat with his elbows sticking out, and the First Lady has just turned to see what’s wrong. Not
the
most important frame, but still noteworthy.”

“Does that mean my mother started filming about the same time that Abraham Zapruder did?”

“It’s very possible. Either way, I find it kind of eerie that both films have an important frame 232.”

“Tell me about it. This just gets weirder and weirder.”

“Maybe it’s a sign,” Hammond said, smiling. “A
good
sign.”

“Let’s hope so.”

Hammond studied the image more carefully. “The image still isn’t
that
good. Even the best software in the world can’t perform miracles. The best results come when you view it from about a foot or so away, where you can determine enough native details to fill in the rest with your imagination.” Hammond shook his head. “But wow, just look at that face. Those eyes . . .”

“Any ideas?” Sheila asked.

“About what?”

“About who he is?”

Hammond slumped back in the chair and gave it some thought, never taking his eyes off the screen. “No, not a clue. I think I’ve read every major book on the assassination, and I’ve scarcely even heard speculation about a possible Latino conspirator.”

“Cuban, maybe? Because of the Castro connection?”

“Could be, sure.”

“In the storm drain . . . incredible. Who would’ve thought?”

“Like I said at your mom’s house, that possibility has been discussed before. Most of those theories have been dismissed, but think about it from an assassin’s perspective. It’s actually a very good vantage point.”

“How in the world did he even get down there?”

“He could’ve entered through any nearby manhole. A schematic of the underground pipe network wouldn’t have been that hard to find. That kind of information was available to the public. He could’ve gone down the night before and just waited. A trained assassin would be patient like that.”

“It’s ridiculous, though. He could’ve gotten caught so easily.”

“Not necessarily. He could’ve had a silencer, which would have muted the shot. He might have been able to fire without sticking the barrel out that far. One dull thump in a noisy crowd would be nearly impossible to hear. And as soon as the president was hit, all attention would be turned to the limo. The ensuing confusion would have provided the shooter with enough cover to work his way through his arranged escape route.”

“Incredible.”

“There’s another possibility too.”

“That he expected to get caught?”

“Exactly. That he was essentially on a suicide mission, so escape wasn’t even a factor.”

She shook her head. “Insane.”

“Tell me about it.”

Hammond studied the photos of the gunman again, raking through his memory. There were so many peripheral figures among the numerous outlying theories. But this man was completely new, found along a road few conspiracists had ever traveled.

Perhaps just one,
he thought with a smile.

“I know what we can do.”

“What’s that?”

“Print out the two images, then go see my friend.”

“Oh yeah, you mentioned him before. Who is he?”

“I’ll show you.”

Hammond went to the web and did a Google image search for the name Dr. Benjamin Burdick. The two most common results were a portrait of a bearded, bespectacled, sandy-haired man in his midforties and the cover of a book that looked as though it had been printed at Staples instead of by a formal publishing house. The title was
The Truth behind the Lies: Your Government’s Involvement in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy
, with Burdick’s name along the bottom.

“It’s more than three hundred pages long, but it was self-printed because none of the publishers would touch it.”

“Too far out there?”

“Too realistic. I’ve read it from front to back, and it gave me the shivers. Ben’s not one of the crazies, believe me. He’s got two PhDs and knows how to research better than anyone I’ve ever met. And he’s very serious about what happened in
Dallas that day. After the public reaction to this first book, he started a second one. It’s supposed to be the definitive work on the assassination.”

“How do you know him?”

“I found the first book online years ago while I was digging up other sources. Most of the self-published stuff was garbage, but not this. After I read it, I got in touch with him. Within ten minutes we were hitting it off like old friends. He
is
a little crazy, but good crazy. My kind of crazy. He’s got the most wicked case of OCD in the world, keeps his house so neat I think he vacuums the lawn. He’s a health nut, too. Eats nothing but vegetables and works out three times a day. And he collects Pez dispensers. He has hundreds of ’em. But underneath all that is one of the most brilliant and kindhearted people you could ever meet.”

“Sounds like a fun guy.”

“He really is. I came out here a few years ago to meet with several academics who’ve studied the assassination, and he was one of them.”

“You mean he lives in Dallas?”

Hammond nodded. “On the outskirts. He’s a professor at Southern Methodist. Here, take a look.”

He found the SMU site and navigated to the faculty page, then to Burdick’s. One of the photos from the Google image search was in the upper left-hand corner
 
—a smiling Burdick leaning against a loaded bookcase. In the right column was a brief vita, and beneath that was his office phone number and e-mail address.

Hammond took his cell phone out of his pocket. “Let me give him a call and see if he can pull himself away from his Pez dispensers long enough to talk with us.”

It rang four times before voice mail took over. Hammond
was surprised to hear a young woman’s voice instead of Burdick’s. His first reaction was that he had dialed the wrong number. “You have reached the office of Dr. Benjamin Burdick. Dr. Burdick is on extended leave from the university until further notice. If this is an urgent matter, please call Dr. Alma Sentis at . . .”

Hammond flipped the phone shut. “Huh.”

“What’s wrong?”

“The message said he’s on extended leave.”

“Is that strange?”

“Very strange. He loves his job, and he’s a workaholic. Prime candidate for a stroke.”

“I don’t mean to sound morbid, but maybe he had one.”

“I sure hope not.”

Hammond got on the Internet again, this time navigating to Burdick’s personal site. What came up took his breath away
 
—

ERROR 404
 
—PAGE NOT FOUND

“That can’t be right,” he said firmly. “No way.” He double-checked the address bar along the top of the browser. The URL was correct
 
—www.drbenjaminburdick.com.

“He had tons of stuff on here
 
—articles, photographs, links. And a lot of stuff about the new book. Teasers and things like that, hints about all the new information it contained. You could also download the first book as a free PDF file. He didn’t even care about selling it. He just wanted to get the word out.” Hammond shook his head. “Something’s definitely wrong.”

“You said he lives around here. Do you know where?”

“I do.”

“Let’s go knock on his door.”

Rydell’s secretary tensed when she heard her boss’s approaching footsteps in the hallway. He had never caused her to tense before, not even when he interviewed her back in 1991. She had worked for a corporate CFO before Rydell, and that man knotted her stomach every minute of the day. He was a jerk of the highest order who knew how to get to people and loved doing it. When a friend recommended this job, she figured it couldn’t be any worse. Frederick Rydell turned out to be the best boss she’d ever had, and that familiar sense of dread gradually withdrew into hibernation. Now it had awoken from its long sleep. He hadn’t said anything nasty to her in the last two days, hadn’t even raised his voice. But she could sense that his mood was like that of a rabid dog on a frayed leash. After all these years, their relationship was more like a marriage than anything else.

He was frowning when he appeared and walking at an accelerated pace toward his door.

“You received a few messages,” she said with a smile, holding out a set of little pink slips. He took them without looking at her and mumbled a thank-you, then opened the door and went inside. On any other day, he would sort through them on the spot and give instructions on each, sometimes with colorful and funny comments thrown in. Not today, though. He still had the good manners to close the door quietly, but under the circumstances he might as well have kicked it shut.