The Inside Ring

Yikes. ‘Of course not,’ DeMarco said.

‘I sure as hell hope not. That boy would no more be involved in something like that than Ol’ Bullet here would turn himself into a cat. Ain’t that right, Bullet,’ Engles said, tugging on the dog’s collar.

DeMarco thought he saw Ol’ Bullet smile but the dog may have been choking.

DeMarco schmoozed around with Frank Engles another fifteen minutes trying to get him to remember nasty things about Billy Mattis. Nada. Billy Ray was the Muffin Man, Mr Goodwrench, sugar and spice and everything nice. And he probably was.

As DeMarco was driving back to Washington, picking dog hairs off his trousers, his cell phone rang. It was Banks.

‘Be in my office at one,’ Banks said. ‘The FBI has something new on the assassination attempt and they’re sending someone over to brief me.’

10 (#ulink_2009514b-a687-5235-aea1-fb5e772ee029)

The FBI briefing consisted of a single agent equipped with a spiral-bound notebook, and DeMarco could see that Banks was disappointed. The retired general had obviously been expecting a Pentagon PowerPoint presentation with multicolored charts showing maps, shooting angles, and enlarged copies of lab reports.

The agent, one Gregory Prudom, was a man of medium height with regular features. His hair was short and brown. His blue suit, white shirt, and red-and-gold striped tie were bureaucratic camouflage. He was so nondescript that his own mother couldn’t have picked him out of a lineup. At the same time, he had the air of a man who would hold the line if commanded, never giving an inch until directed to retreat. A titanium cookie cutter down at Quantico stamped out men like Agent Prudom.

Prudom started the briefing by glancing at DeMarco and saying, ‘General Banks, I was told to extend to you the courtesy of a progress report but I was of the understanding you would be alone. May I ask who this gentleman is?’

‘Courtesy, my eye,’ Banks said. ‘I run Homeland Security. I have a need to know.’

‘You do, sir, but does this gentleman?’

‘Yeah. He’s one of my assistants.’

Turning to DeMarco, Prudom said, ‘May I see some identification, sir?’ DeMarco smiled at Prudom but didn’t reach for his wallet. This son of a bitch didn’t look like anybody’s assistant, Prudom was thinking; he looked like guys he’d brought up on racketeering charges.

‘You don’t need to see his ID, Mr Prudom,’ Banks said. ‘You’ll take my word that he’s properly cleared and with a need to know. Now get on with it.’

Prudom sat a second pondering his options, looking Banks directly in the eye. He wasn’t intimidated; he was just trying to figure out if bucking Banks was in the Bureau’s best interest.

‘Yes, sir,’ he said at last, and opened his notebook. He flipped to a page with a few notes scribbled on it and said, ‘We finally figured out how Edwards pulled it off.’

‘That’s great,’ Banks said, but DeMarco thought he looked nervous.

‘The day the President was shot,’ Prudom said, ‘the agents never saw the shooter; they weren’t even sure where he fired from.’

‘Then what the hell were they shooting at?’ Banks asked.

‘The bluff above the river,’ Prudom said. ‘It was the only place that provided any cover so they saturated it with bullets in an attempt to keep the shooter from firing again. They were unsuccessful, as you know, because the shooter fired a third shot after the agents opened fire, killing Agent James, the agent who was lying on top of the President.

‘After the third shot, the shooting stopped but no one could get up to the bluff right away to go after the assassin. The remaining Secret Service agents had to get the President into the helicopter so he could be evacuated to the nearest hospital, and two of the three agents accompanied the President in the helicopter. The third agent stayed at the site and—’

‘Who was the agent that stayed?’ Banks asked.

Prudom consulted his notes again. ‘Agent Preston. Anyway, as soon as the helicopter lifted off, the agent, Preston, called the agents guarding the five-mile perimeter around the cabin and told them to start moving in toward the shooting site. After that Preston went up the bluff by himself to go after the shooter. It took him half an hour to climb to the top and by the time he got there the shooter was gone. Or so he thought.’

‘What’s that m—’ Banks started to say but Prudom raised a finger silencing him.

‘Our forensic people arrived on scene four hours after the shooting but they couldn’t find a thing: no brass, no footprints, no areas where the grass had been trampled down. Everyone figured Edwards had to have fired from the bluff, it was the only thing that made sense, but the Secret Service was adamant they would have spotted the guy. They said they’d patrolled the bluff right up until it was time for the President to leave, and the helicopter that was taking the President back to Washington had been hovering above the bluff until just prior to the President’s departure. Everybody figured Edwards must have done one helluva camouflage job not to be seen on top of that bluff before the shooting, either that or he was the fuckin’ Invisible Man. Excuse me, sir,’ Prudom added for his blue language.

‘Go on,’ Banks said.

‘From the beginning,’ Prudom said, ‘one of the guys in our lab said the shooting angles didn’t make sense. He did a bunch of computer simulations, and kept saying that in order for the angles to make sense, the shooter would have to have been about three feet below the top of the bluff. Everybody blew the tech off, figuring his calculations were screwed up. Yesterday this tech got permission to fly down to Georgia, and he finds a hole in the side of the bluff, three feet below the top.

‘You see,’ Prudom said, excited now, ‘Edwards had burrowed this hole – it was about six feet long and three feet in diameter – into the side of the bluff sometime before the President arrived at Chattooga River. He camouflaged the opening so you couldn’t see it unless you were about two inches away, looking straight at it.’

‘Jesus,’ Banks said.

‘Yeah,’ Prudom said, abandoning any attempt at formality, ‘this bastard lowered himself over the side of the bluff, probably suspended from a rope, and dug a damn shooting blind into the side of a hill. Based on the timing of the President’s trip, the arrival of the Secret Service’s advance team at Chattooga River to secure the area, and patrols performed while the President was there, we think he dug the blind at least a week before the President arrived. Then, just before the President arrived, the son of a bitch snuck in at night, right past the guys guarding the perimeter, and entered the blind. He hid in the blind the two days the President was fishing on the river with Montgomery and then – and this is the really amazing part – he stayed in that damn hole for at least a day after the shooting. He got away the second night when all the evidence techs had knocked off for the day, and he went right by the FBI’s perimeter guards. It’s the only way he could have gotten off that bluff.’

‘I saw pictures of this guy Edwards in the Post,’ DeMarco said. ‘He didn’t look all that athletic. You know, kinda hefty.’

It was the first time DeMarco had spoken, and Banks gave him a look that said assistants should be seen and not heard. DeMarco pretended not to notice.

Prudom shrugged. ‘He was small enough to fit in the blind. We measured. And every chubby guy you see isn’t out of shape either. Plus this guy was a hunter and he was in the reserve, which brings me to the next thing,’ Prudom said. ‘The rifle he used was a Remington 700 with a Leupold Mark 4 tactical scope. We traced the serial numbers and found out it was stolen a month ago from an Army Reserve armory.’

Banks looked over at DeMarco. Billy Ray Mattis was a member of the Army Reserve.

‘Which reserve unit was it stolen from?’ DeMarco asked.

‘Edwards’s old unit. The one over at Fort Meade in Maryland,’ Prudom said.

DeMarco remembered from Billy’s file that his Army Reserve unit was based in Richmond, Virginia.

‘I thought Edwards was a hunter,’ DeMarco said. ‘Why didn’t he use one of his own guns?’

‘He hocked ’em,’ Prudom said, ‘because he’d been off work so long. All he had in his house were a couple of shotguns.’

‘And I suppose the Bureau is investigating the armory theft?’ DeMarco said.

Prudom nodded impatiently. ‘Of course, along with army CID, but we haven’t come up with anything that ties it directly to Edwards – other than the fact that all the weapons that were stolen were in his damn house. The .45 he killed himself with? It came from the armory.’

‘Is the rifle the only physical evidence you have?’ Banks asked.

‘You mean besides the suicide note?’ Prudom said.

‘Yeah,’ Banks said.

‘Well, we found a receipt in his car from a gas station about thirty miles from Chattooga River. But the guy left nothing in the shooting blind, and when you think about it, that’s also amazing. He was in that hole digging, eating, shitting, pissing, and shooting – and he managed not to leave any trace. He took all his garbage with him when he left and while he was in there he must have been covered head to foot in some kinda suit because he didn’t leave any hair or skin or anything else we could get DNA from. We didn’t find the suit in his house, by the way.’

Prudom closed his notebook. ‘The good news, General, is that this helps the Secret Service. I mean it’s not like their procedures were sloppy or they were goofin’ off on the job. This guy Edwards may have been a whack job – but he was good. Really good.’

‘But how did he plan this thing?’ DeMarco asked. Banks almost gave himself whiplash as his head spun toward DeMarco.

‘What do you mean?’ Prudom said.

‘You said Edwards went down to Georgia the week before the Secret Service’s advance team arrived at Chattooga River, and that’s when he dug the shooting blind. How’d he know when to go?’