CROSS EXAMINATION
BY MS. CAPUTO:
Q. So you found yourself up in that steeple, did you, Alvin?
A. No, ma'am. I didn't "find" myself there. I put myself there. Like I already done told you, I went up there to shoot the President. I ain't ashamed of it and I ain't trying to hide it. The thing is though . . .
* * *
Alvin did the best he knew how. A hunter most of his life, he kept to the shadows. Shivering, for the weather had turned for the worse, he unrolled the rifle from the tarp and then rolled the tarp into a rest for the rifle. This he placed on the corner of the interior bar encircling the church's bell. Then, getting behind the bar, he checked for his line of sight to the podium. Satisfied, he placed the rifle, a scoped military .30-06 of a very old design, on the rest and waited.
* * *
Smythe had actually checked into the hotel twice on the prior day. The first time, to a room away from the land and toward the ocean, he had done so under his own face and credentials. The second time, checking into a room facing the Hilltop Cavalier's eastern side, he had used the press credentials provided by Carroll, a bit of makeup, and a false mustache.
He had also taken up two loads of baggage on those different occasions. On the first, it was the normal couple of bags anyone might have brought in, though what was in one of those bags was not precisely normal. The second load was not much of a load at all, just an overnight shoulder bag.
From the first load he produced a rifle. Not just any rifle, this was a custom–made 7mm Remington magnum, mounting a superb scope and modified to be dis- and re-assembled. It lay in its case, along with a small tripod, inside one of Smythe's bags. The case and its contents Smythe took to the room facing the Cavalier Hilltop.
* * *
Inside, and safe from prying eyes, Smythe put on a pair of gloves and a shower cap. Then he adjusted the blinds, moved a table and a chair, and set up the tripod. The rifle he removed in its two major pieces. These he joined together with the flick of a couple of latches and the easy tightening of a single screw.
The reassembled rifle then went into its custom cradle on the tripod.
Smythe went back and forth between the blinds and the scope, adjusting both fixtures and rifle until he had a clear sight picture of podium from which, he knew from Carroll, Rottemeyer was to address the press.
Smythe knew the range to the podium to within a meter and a half. Even so, he checked and rechecked that range with a small, hand-held range finder. Then he rechecked the scope adjustment to confirm it was properly set for the range.
The window was fixed, immobile, as Smythe had assumed it would be. This presented no obstacle. He placed a small, handmade wooden implement on a stand on the sill by the window. With two more trips back to the scope Smythe was able to place the implement precisely where he needed to cut away a small section of the hotel window's glass.
The attachment of a suction cup and the deft swirl of a glasscutter preceded the removal of a small piece of the window. This Smythe put gently aside.
Lastly, Smythe removed from the smaller bag, the one already in the land-facing room, a plastic body garment which he donned before settling down behind his rifle to wait.
* * *
Alvin had noticed one of the counter-snipers, the one on the roof of the Cavalier Hilltop. As he said later, he was uneducated, but not exactly stupid. Where there's one, there's liable to be more than one.
He promptly removed himself from view, trying to look as innocent as possible as he did so. From a window lower in the steeple, blending into the shadows at the far side, he kept a watch of the podium where he believed the President was going to stand during the press conference.
Alvin knew little of the personal security measures taken by the Secret Service where the life of a President of the United States was concerned. And he was a hunter. A center of mass shot was natural to his experience, though he had taken head shots when everything was perfectly suited to them. Yet the more he looked at that podium, the more he tried to picture the not very tall woman who was going to stand behind it, the more he realized that a center of mass shot just might not be possible.
Damn, damn, damn. I'm a good shot, Daddy always said so. But a head shot? At this range? I dunno. And, then too, I don't know if'n I can go through with it: looking a human bein' in the face while I shoot her. I dunno.
Alvin shook his head, uncertain. Then he reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. There was a little money in it, but, he thought, Ain't gonna have no use for money where I'm goin'.
He pulled out an old picture of his wife. Even at the best of times, she had been no more than slightly pretty. Yet Alvin had loved her with all his heart. To him, she had always been beautiful, inside and out.
He gazed at the picture, longingly, for some appreciable time. His mind went back to a time he had been happy, to a time when he'd had a decent job, a normal family, a wife. He didn't so much think about as feel the indignation of being subjected to the whims of a doctrinaire and arrogant social worker, of being forced onto charity, of being threatened with the loss of his children.
Alvin closed his eyes, shutting off the image of his wife as she had been when he had first seen her and replacing it with the shrunken, pale, husk of a woman in a cheap hospital bed, with needles and tubes stuck into her as she had been when he had last seen her.
Finally, he was sure. Nope, these people, and especially that damned president, have got to take responsibility for what they done. They had all the power; they're responsible for what happened to me and my woman. I can do this.
Satisfied, he turned his eyes back to the podium.
* * *
Her feelings were all spilled out, from her speech to the convention, leaving the President to feel little but emptiness inside. Even the thought of going to her own, formal, political seppuku did not move her. For Wilhelmina Rottemeyer's impending press conference was for no other purpose than to announce her resignation from the office of President of the United States.
Though her body felt empty, her mind was full, full of thoughts and questions and wonderings. What went wrong? How did it all go so wrong, so quickly? I was at the top, the pinnacle. Not only at the top, but with more real power than anyone, even Roosevelt and Lincoln, had ever had.
Did I move too fast, as Carroll said once? Or did I move too slowly, as Vega insisted? One thing I know I did wrong; I underestimated that damned wetback from Texas. But who would have guessed that that little no-account, who wasn't even independent enough to keep her own name when she married, would have had the will to move her state almost to independence? Breaking me in the bargain.
Should I have left that old priest alone? Left the anti-abortion nuts alone? How could I? I had a constituency, not the least important part of it, my own federal law enforcement chiefs. How much hold over them would I have lost if I had caved in on the priest? Too much, I think.
And I had plans, I had dreams, for this country and for the world. Sure I was ambitious for myself, but who ever got anything worthwhile done that wasn't ambitious? I saw a world at peace, because why should anyone fight when everyone has enough? I saw a world where the environment was protected and cherished. I saw a world where everyone was equal . . . well, maybe women a little more equal than men. What was so wrong with that?
I wish sometimes that there really were a God so that I could ask him what I should have done.
* * *
Alvin saw the President's limousine as it turned west off of the main road and onto the hotel driveway. He watched as the President emerged from the vehicle and two men helped her on with an overcoat that seemed somehow very heavy.
He walked, calmly enough, to the rifle, getting behind it and letting the tarp on the bar serve as a rest for his nonfiring hand even as the pedestal holding up the bar served as a rest and brace for his body. Still unseen in the shadows, Alvin took up a solid firing position, looked in the scope, and rested his cross hairs first on Rottemeyer's torso. Then, that view being frequently interrupted by the movement of the security agents, he shifted his aiming point to the President's head. Then he waited, forcing himself to breathe calmly, the breathing itself serving to calm him.
* * *
Calm, still, silent—like a praying mantis in ambush, or a Shao Lin monk in training, Smythe had not so much as twitched a muscle since assuming his firing position. He had, in a real sense, become one with the rifle and the view in his scope.
That view changed. On the right side of the field of view a woman, easily recognizable as Wilhelmina Rottemeyer, entered it. Smythe remained still, however. If there were any minimal adjustments to be made, they would be made when Rottemeyer stopped at the podium.
There were none. Smythe had known her height in advance and placed his cross hairs at precisely the right place. Wilhelmina Rottemeyer, President of the United States, placed herself directly on them.
Smythe took a deep breath, let a quarter of it out, moved his finger to the trigger and began to apply a gentle pressure.
* * *
Alvin was no artist, no assassin, no highly trained oriental spiritualist. He was not even a predatory insect, however buglike a social worker had once made him feel. He was simply an angry man with a job he felt he had to do.
As soon as Rottemeyer reached the podium, he—as had Smythe—took a single deep breath, let much of it out, and began to squeeze the trigger on his rifle. Not so highly trained as the professional was, Alvin's trigger moved more quickly.
* * *
The only man or woman present at the scene who had cause to expect a shot, Carroll had placed himself well behind Willi and slightly to her right. He had less than no desire to be either in the way, or immediately behind.
Unlike the others present, Carroll also knew exactly why Rottemeyer had called this press conference—to resign. Thus, as a memorial to the ages he forced his face into a regretful, somber mask as he watched Willi open the folder containing her resignation speech. It was either force the mask, or risk showing the nervousness that threatened to take him over.
Willi had just looked up from her notes when three things happened: the top of her head flew off in a shower of blood and brains, there was the report seemingly of a single rifle shot, and the entire scene immediately and instantaneously devolved into bedlam.
Carroll especially noticed the fourth thing that happened. A bullet, unspent, passed—only slightly deformed—through Rottemeyer's head, through the intervening space, and right through Carroll's stomach. Only the fact that the air was knocked from his lungs kept him from screaming in agony.
With the next breath he drew, the screams began.
* * *
Smythe's finger stopped tightening as soon as he felt the recoil and saw the top of his intended target's head fly off. Off to the right side of his scope he saw a man he recognized easily as James Carroll go down flopping like a dying fish.
"What the . . . ?"
Immediately realizing from the obvious angle of the other shot that he must have had an unknown competitor, Smythe grumbled something about "amateurs." Although his original plan had been to leave the rifle in the room and make his escape, he knew that that might be a mistake now. There was always a chance that the weapon, however "underground" it may have been, could be traced to him. Therefore, while insanity erupted below, and while he knew all eyes would have to be focused on the true assassin, he reversed the steps he had taken in preparation for his shot.
Off came the rifle from its cradle. Quickly it was broken down into its constituent parts. These were stowed in the case, to be followed by the tripod as soon as it was collapsed. The case was then closed.
Tearing off the shower cap and the plastic garment, Smythe stuffed these into the overnight bag. There was nothing inherently suspicious about them anyway, so he determined to leave them in the room, at least for now. The rifle case he slid under a bed. He could return for it later, if possible.
Smythe went to the door and opened it, looking down the hall. Good. No excitement here yet.
Lastly, as calmly as may be imagined, Smythe opened the door, stepped into the hallway, and began to walk to his own room.
* * *
Alvin had no desire to kill anyone but the President. In fact, he expressly did not want any truly innocent blood on his hands. Thus, when a fusillade of shots from what he thought might be three different vantage points began to impact on the church steeple, instead of returning fire, he crawled to the steps and began to slither down them to the main church. Already he could hear sirens, both police and ambulance, converging on the area.
They'll be along for me soon. I wonder if they'll arrest me or just shoot me. Guess it don't much matter, no how. I ain't afraid.
* * *
Caroline McCreavy could not at first believe the news reports. Over the next several hours after the shooting, she might be said to have been in a state of denial. Finally, the reports became too consistent, as well as too insistent.
At that point, McCreavy went to her desk drawer, removed a pistol from it, and with a sobbed, "Oh, Willi, I never stopped loving you," placed the pistol to her own head.
* * *
The news traveled around the floor like wildfire. Juani could not at first believe it. She came to believe it, though, when a representative from Massachusetts, a woman, walked up to her and, first spitting on Juani's face, announced, "So it wasn't enough to drive her from office and ruin everything she's done for the people. You Texan bastards had to kill her, too, just like you did JFK."
Putting a restraining hand up to prevent Jack from flattening the Yankee, woman or not, Juani just shook her head in negation.
"It's all over the news. The President is dead and one of you Texas rednecks killed her."
Juani didn't, couldn't, make a verbal answer. She turned to Jack and pleaded, "Please take me to my hotel room."