The Fifth Assassin (7 page)

Until then, the Knight would do exactly what the assassin Guiteau
did when he was in the train station waiting to put a bullet in President Garfield.

Kneeling down on one knee, the Knight reached into his pocket and pulled out a small round tin and a horsehair brush that was about the size of a chalkboard eraser. With a twist of the metal tin, the bitter chemical smell of shoe polish filled the air. Dipping the brush into the tin, he dabbed a swirl of black shoe polish onto his loafers.
Small circles… then brush
, he reminded himself.
Small circles… then brush.

It was no different with the Knights.

Small circles were the strongest circles.

St. Elizabeths Hospital

Washington, D.C.

N
ico didn’t like the new building.

“Nico, you’re gonna love the new building,” the heavy male nurse named Rupert Baird called out. “It’s beautiful, right?”

Walking through the gravel parking lot, Nico didn’t answer. He preferred the old building—the redbrick John Howard Pavilion—which for decades had housed the most dangerous of the NGIs. Not Guilty by reason of Insanity.

Today, the John Howard Pavilion was being closed, and all of its patients were being moved to the brand-new facility that had been built directly next door.

“Wait till you see inside,” Rupert said. “New rooms… new TVs… a relaxation garden… You’re gonna think you’re at a damn hotel.”

Nico glanced up at the modern building. It was squat in shape and had only three floors, and from the flat shine on the windows, Nico could tell they were high-impact glass, maybe even bulletproof.

“
I don’t like it either
,” added the dead First Lady, whom he killed a decade ago.

Nico nodded at her, but didn’t reply. He knew what the nurses thought about him talking to his old victims.

“All your stuff, it’s being transferred as we speak,” Rupert added, leading him around the side of the building, near the loading dock that said,
New Patient Intake—Ambulance Parking Only
.

Nico knew why Rupert was being so nice. Just like he knew why they were entering through the loading dock instead of the main lobby. With all the VIPs and reporters who were watching during the grand opening, the last thing the hospital needed was to have their most famous patient—the man who, a decade ago, tried to kill the President—making a scene during his transfer.

“It smells different than the old building,” Nico said as they climbed the concrete steps that ran up to the loading dock.

“That’s kinda the point,” Rupert said, approaching a high-tech keypad and swiping his ID. There was a loud
ca-chunk
as the double doors popped open, swinging toward them and revealing a brand-new U-shaped desk at the front of the still-empty Intake Office. The desk and the surrounding chairs were still covered in plastic. As they reached the hospital’s main hallway, there wasn’t a staffer in sight.

“
You should ask to see your room
,” the dead First Lady said.

“I’d like to see my room now.”

“You will, Nico. But first they want you in—”

“You’re not listening. I want to see my
room
,” he growled. To make the point, Nico stopped in the hallway, refusing to move.

“Nico, I am so not in the mood for your nuttiness today. They’re waiting for us in TLC,” Rupert said, raising his voice as he referred to the Therapeutic Learning Center.

Nico still wouldn’t budge.

Rupert grabbed him by the biceps. “Can you for once not be a pain in my rear?” Tightening his grip, he added, “Y’know how many of us got fired to pay for this building? We used to have orderlies running the juice cart. Now I gotta do all that,
plus
haul you to TLC,
plus
—!”

“You need to let go of me,” Nico warned in a calm voice.

“Or what?” Rupert challenged, making sure Nico got a good look at the small electronic device—like a miniature walkie-talkie—that Rupert held in his left hand.

Nico had heard rumors that the new building would have those. To be used during patient transfers. It was called a “man-down
system.” If a staffer dropped it, or their body went horizontal, an alarm would ring through the building, while the hallway’s cameras would immediately zoom in within twenty feet of the device.

Nico checked both ends of the hallway. Brand-new cameras—encased in unbreakable glass cubes—on each side.

Nico stayed silent. Two years ago, he would’ve jammed his thumbs in Rupert’s eye sockets and pressed hard enough to hear the pop in his brain. But Nico’s therapies… all the drugs… He was a new man now. A cured man, is what the doctors called him. Cured. With a soft exhale, Nico unclenched his shoulders. Even the dead First Lady didn’t argue.

Smiling and still holding Nico’s biceps, Rupert steered him up the—

“What do you think you’re
doing
!?” a southern voice shouted behind them.

Following the sound, Rupert and Nico spun to find a tall man with tight curly black hair and a fine gray wool suit. Around here, only doctors wore suits. And among those doctors, only this one wore a vintage 1950s King Kong tie.

“Rupert, you have half a second to get your hands
off him
!” Dr. Michael Gosling barked.

“Sir, you don’t understand,” Rupert pleaded, letting go of Nico’s bicep. “I was just taking him to TLC—”

Gosling’s hand shot out, gripping Rupert by his own bicep and tugging him aside, just out of Nico’s earshot. “Was he putting himself or anyone else in danger?” Gosling challenged in a tense, low voice.

“That’s not the point.”

“It’s
always
the point. We have rules here, Rupert—and first among them is, don’t put your hands on the patients… especially the ones who’re making actual progress.” Turning to Nico, Gosling forced a smile and added, “You okay, Nico?”

“I want to go to my room.”

Rupert could barely keep from rolling his eyes. Every doctor was careful with Nico, but Gosling was one of the few who built a career
on it. A decade ago, Gosling had been the junior member on Nico’s team—and the doctor credited with persuading Nico to stop plucking his eyelashes and using them to form tiny crosses that only he could see.

These days, Gosling was one of the hospital’s top administrators, in charge of not just the new facility’s operations but also making sure it opened without incident. And though Gosling insisted that his vintage movie ties were a way to seem accessible to the patients, everyone knew that he preferred the King Kong tie over the others. That’s how he saw himself: King Kong.
The biggest of them all.

“Take him to his room, then you can go to TLC,” Gosling told Rupert.

“I want my calendar, and my book too,” Nico said, his voice back to its usual steady monotone.

“We’ll get those both to you,” Gosling promised.

“
He will
,” the dead First Lady said. “
He means it.
”

Nico’s chocolate brown eyes, set so close together, stayed locked on Dr. Gosling.

“Keep up the beautiful progress,” Gosling added, patting Nico on the back and heading up the hallway.

“You’re supposed to take me to my room now,” Nico told Rupert.

“I heard him,” Rupert said as he led Nico toward the elevators.

“Let me know if there’s anything else you need!” Dr. Gosling called out.

Nico looked down at his watch. 9:25 a.m. The exact time Charles Guiteau shot President Garfield.

Nico’s lips curved into a thin smile. After all these years, he would finally have everything he needed.

Three minutes earlier

Foundry Church

P
astor Kenneth Frick wore a little digital monitor on his left shoe that counted his steps. Two hundred and twelve steps for him to get dressed, comb his sandy blond hair, and mix his Cheerios with blueberry yogurt in the morning. Twenty-three steps to get from his kitchen to the front door of his small Capitol Hill townhouse. Then the full 1,958 steps that it took him to walk the three miles from Capitol Hill to the front door of Foundry Church every morning. Unlike St. John’s, the site of last night’s attack, across the street from the White House, Foundry Church was in a struggling neighborhood, not one most people walk to.

The monitor wasn’t Pastor Frick’s idea. It came from the church’s insurance company, which for every step he (or any of his employees) took gave a wellness discount (up to a total of twenty thousand steps per month). If he expected his staff to do it, the pastor had to lead the way.

It was the same when he was a boy. He wasn’t from an overly religious family, yet Frick was the one who used to drag his mother to Sunday sermons, making him the only five-year-old in their poor Indiana town who could tie his own tie. Back then, Kenneth was drawn to the church because it was the only place his father wouldn’t lay hands on them. But as he got older, Frick was captivated
by the
mystery
of the church—the way it could broaden life beyond what you can touch, feel, and grasp.

“Anybody here besides God?” Frick called out with the same old joke he used every morning. He knew the answer. Except for the custodian, he was always the first one in. Right at nine, which was now his custom.

It’d been barely four months since Frick—only an associate pastor in title—had been assigned to the church, taking over while the head pastor was traveling in New Zealand. Frick felt blessed to be selected, but it took him over a month to work up the courage to cancel the free fruit smoothies that brought in parishioners to the late Sunday service. This was still Lincoln’s Church. Wearing a digital monitor on your shoe for an insurance discount was one thing. Bribing people with fruit smoothies was another.

Down the main hallway, with the bathroom behind him, Pastor Frick entered the main office suite, made his way through the maze of desks, and headed for his office in back. Through the frosted glass doors, he could tell the lights were off inside. The glass was too old and thick to see anything else.

Every pastor has rituals. At 9:05, as he stepped into his office and the door closed behind him, Frick did what he did every morning: He hung his coat—always on the middle hook—grabbed his Bible off the bookshelf, and began his morning prayers. For nearly twenty minutes, he stood praying and looking out the wide glass window that was directly behind his antique maple desk. He could see the reflection of his round face and dimpled chin in the window.

On his left was a door that led to his private bathroom. It was usually open. This morning, for some reason, it was shut.

Frick didn’t give it a thought. In the midst of his prayers, he looked down at the digital counter on his shoe—not to count his steps, but to see what time it was.

Onscreen, it clicked from 9:24…

… to 9:25.

On the floor, a needlepoint carpet covered with green and yellow
leaves kept the office warm and mostly silent. The oak floor creaked from a nearly imperceptible shift in weight.

Then the Knight pulled the trigger. Twice.

The pastor’s body convulsed as one of the bullets entered his back.

Another mission complete. For the second time, history had repeated itself.

Six days ago

Ann Arbor, Michigan

S
ir, you ready to order?” the thin black woman with splotchy skin asked from behind the counter.

“Not yet. I’m waiting for someone,” Dr. Stewart Palmiotti replied from the bright red booth as he again scanned the small fast-food restaurant located just inside the entrance of Target.

He knew why she had picked it: It was well lit and safe, with plenty of people watching them. Plus, by doing it in Ann Arbor—Wallace’s alma mater—the message was clear. If the President didn’t deliver, she’d take apart every piece of his life.

“You need to try the hot dogs,” a female voice eventually announced behind him. “They’re better than you think.”

Before Palmiotti could turn, a woman in a stylish brown overcoat was standing over him, looking down. Her hair was short and dyed blonde. But he knew that grin: same as her father, the presidential assassin known as Nico.

“Y’know, after your funeral, I read your obituary. They made you sound nicer than you really are,” Clementine said, sliding into the empty seat across from the President’s oldest friend and most trusted doctor. “By the way, I mean it about the hot dogs,” she added, pointing to the counter, where a dozen thick hot dogs twirled on the grill’s treadmill. She was enjoying herself now, which annoyed Palmiotti even more.

Both A.J. and the President had warned him about this. Everyone
thought that Nico was the monster, but it was his daughter who had tried to blackmail them, threatening to expose their secret unless she got the information about her father. And in the end, during her escape, it was Clementine who fired the shot that nearly killed Palmiotti.

But Clementine was different from Beecher, and far more dangerous. If they had any hope of containing this, they needed to make peace, not war.

“The blonde hair looks good,” Palmiotti offered. “Quite a change from the black.”

“Same with yours,” Clementine said, pointing at his own dye job. “Though I also like the scar on your neck. Isn’t that where I shot you?”

Palmiotti cupped his hands, intertwining his fingers, refusing to take the bait. “Y’know, I remember the last thing you said to us: about the cancer that was eating at your body. I lost a niece to brain cancer. She was four years old. When her hair fell out, she used to cry, ‘Why can’t I have pigtails?’ So you can talk as tough as you want, but I’m a doctor. From your skin alone… I’m guessing oral chemo, yes? I know what it does to you. I’m sorry for that.”

Across the booth, Clementine studied him, her eyes narrowing. “Did you bring what I asked for or not?”

“Of course I did.” From underneath his coat on the bench, Palmiotti pulled out a thick manila envelope.

From the back of her pants, Clementine took out a similar envelope that looked slightly thinner, with a water stain on it.