The President's Killers (6 page)

NINETEEN

With daylight seeping into the park, it was as if a picture were slowly forming in front of him.

Now Denny could make out the black-topped bicycle path. Like a gray creek, it twisted and curved on the slope above the road, cutting between two small trees near the base of the knoll and coming directly towards him. The white stakes he had noticed earlier were the white-washed trunks of a half-dozen saplings.

He looked up at the sky. The stars were gone now. In the woods behind him, a bird began to chirp. Two sparrows flitted above him to the trees across the road.

Then, at the base of the slope, a black sedan appeared and came towards him. Half-way up the slope, it stopped and a lean man in a dark suit got out, a small dark two-way radio in one hand.

The car continued towards Denny. There were three men inside. They went past him, stopping just beyond a road sign to his right. Another man in a dark suit stepped out of the car and disappeared from Denny’s view.

The first man stood in the road and looked at the woods. He turned and strolled up to the trees beside the bicycle path and talked into the radio.

A few minutes later, the street lamps went off. It was light now, even though there was no sign of the sun. Off in the distance, far away in some other part of the city, a siren wailed.

The sky was lighter between two large pines near the crest of the knoll, and as Denny watched, the top of the sun appeared. Within seconds it was so brilliant he couldn’t look at it.

He watched two large brown rabbits, barely visible on the sand-colored sidewalk below him. They had begun to hop towards him when he heard voices.

At the base of the slope, where the two roads intersected, a pack of runners burst into view. Nearly a dozen men in T-shirts and shorts and sneakers, bunched together like a flock of chickens. They were moving at a surprisingly fast clip.

He searched the faces until he saw the President, the fourth runner from the front. There was the famous mop of hair, the gaunt face.

Colin Patrick was very intent, puffing. He had the lean body and easy, fluid movement of an athlete.

They came up the bicycle path, between the trees, suddenly a thundering herd.

TWENTY

The President’s face disappeared among the other bobbing faces, then popped back into view.

He was smiling at the middle-aged black man beside him. When he looked straight ahead again, his face was serious. He was concentrating on his running.

Gunshots crackled.

Three quick pops, like firecrackers.

Then three more.

Half the runners went down, falling to the ground in almost perfect unison, as if it were a stage musical and their falls were choreographed. The others ran toward the President.

Denny froze, stunned.

More shots spat out.

The runners were piled on top of one another, some lying flat, some kneeling, their arms and legs outstretched to protect the President.

Everyone was shouting. Two runners pointed in the direction of the woods. Another pointed toward the top of the knoll. They all had pistols. A runner on one knee seemed to be staring straight at Denny.

Haul ass!
Lott had said.
Get back to the motel!

On his hands and knees, Denny scooted backwards, bulldozing his way through the underbrush. Then he sprang to his feet and sprinted down the trail.

In the daylight he could see a dozen faint trails through the underbrush and across the blanket of withered brown leaves. They crisscrossed one another. Which ones had he and Lott taken? He pushed through the bushes and thicket of slender, limbless trees, guided only by his instincts. He tripped and slammed into the ground, scrambled to his feet again, and started running again.

Suddenly, he burst out of the woods and felt a breeze. The white Hyundai was only thirty feet away.

He yanked the door open and slid behind the wheel. Off in the distance, he heard a faint burst of gunfire from an assault weapon. He hit the gas pedal and the car bolted forward.

Behind him, the rear window of the Hyundai exploded. Pieces of glass sprayed the seat beside him. He yanked the steering wheel hard to right and the car skidded around the corner.

TWENTY-ONE

“Four-two-one.” The voice of a male officer.

“Go ahead, four-two-one.” A woman dispatcher’s weary voice.

“Shots fired in Forest Park! We are enroute.”

Sal Conti put down the St. Louis paper’s sports pages and turned up the volume on his scanner. He was sitting in a car parked across the street from the Stardust motel.

“Four-two-six.” A different male voice. “We’re in the park by the Art Museum. Those shots are over by the Jewel Box.”

“Okay, four-two-six. Ten-four.”

Conti waited expectantly for nearly a full minute.

“Four-two-one,” said the first voice, excited. “We’ve got a firefight over here where the President is!”

The dispatcher sprang to life. “All units, Code 2! We have a 10-39 in Forest Park!”

“Back off, back off!” Rick Swayse yelled.

He was lying on the President, trying to squirm out from beneath another Secret Service agent. “We can’t breathe, for Christ’s sake!”

Swayse, the Secret Service agent-in-charge, had been five steps behind Patrick. When the gunfire erupted, he threw himself at the President, trying to wrap his body around him. Now he could feel the President under him, coughing and gasping for air. He was afraid he’d hurt him.

“Give us some air!”

Three other agents huddled around them. On the road and the slope below them, other agents fanned out, trying to figure out where the shots came from.

Swayse wriggled free. President Colin Patrick was lying face down in the grass. “Are you all right, sir?”

Kneeling beside him, Swayze saw frothy blood streaming from his mouth. He turned him onto his side, raised his head, and pressed a handkerchief to his mouth.

“Jesus Christ!” exclaimed an agent, gaping at the blood. The left side of the Patrick’s T-shirt was bright red. His chest was heaving in and out. The grass beneath him glistened.

“Holy, shit!” muttered limo-driver Tom Hitchcock, clutching a Uzi submachine.

“Let’s get him out of here,” Swayse shouted. “C’mon, let’s move!”

“The Mayor got it, too,” someone yelled.

“Somebody give us a hand!”

The limo and back-up car were already on the road below them. The drivers had moved forward as soon as they heard gunfire.

With two other agents providing cover, Swayse and Hitchcock carried Patrick like a sack of sand to the limo. Hitchcock fumbled with the handle of the door handle, got it open, and pushed Patrick onto the back seat. Swayse slipped into the car behind him. Kneeling on the floor, he propped up the President’s head.

Patrick looked bad. His face was gray, his skin clammy. He was still gasping for air, a panicky look in the famous blue eyes.

His appearance scared Swayse. “You’re all right, sir. You’re okay. Come on, get going, Hitchcock! Get the shit out of here!”

The limo shot forward.

“Barnes-Jewish Hospital,” Swayse yelled. “Get on the horn. Tell’em we’re en route.”

TWENTY-TWO

The intersection for the Hampton Avenue entrance to Forest Park was clear. Denny shot through the red light and sailed across the overpass.

On Hampton, traffic was light. He hit green lights all the way. Two minutes after he left the park, he flew up the ramp onto Interstate 44.

He was still in a state of shock. He’d witnessed an attempt to kill the President. He was almost shot himself. Who the hell fired at him?

On Interstate 44, the cars and trucks sped past him in both directions. The sun, still low in the sky, was directly behind him. He could see the Hyundai’s shadow racing ahead of him on the road.

Was Patrick hit? Denny punched the radio buttons.

Click. Click. Click.

There was nothing but country-western music, commercials, inane talk. He listened to a woman caller fawning over a disk jockey, telling him he was wonderful.

“Do you really think so?”

“You are!”

Click.
A news report, an announcer talking about a local highway fatality.

Denny waited anxiously for the next item. It turned out to be an interview with a county official about impending road repairs.

Click. Click.
Nothing.

He was still searching the radio frequencies when he passed the sign marking the Fenton city limits.

Click.

“… no details yet,” an excited male voice said. “But let me repeat. We’ve just received a report of a shooting in Forest Park, minutes ago, where President Patrick and Mayor Jordan were jogging. That’s all we know right now. We have no idea what it’s about, but we’ll let you know just as soon as we do.”

The voice was replaced by a commercial for a local plumbing outfit.

Click. Click.

A country-western song, interrupted for a news bulletin. Then a disk jockey interrupted himself. In both cases, the same scant information: a shooting in Forest Park where the President and mayor were jogging, police rushing to the scene, no details available.

Click.
“We don’t know if anybody’s been hurt,” a calm, perfectly modulated male voice said. “We don’t know if President Patrick or the mayor were targets in any way. But a car apparently was seen fleeing from Forest Park. We have reports, still unconfirmed, that authorities are looking for a small white car driven by a young white male with a beard.”

What the hell? Are they talking about me?

He switched to another station and heard a similar report. “…a young white male was seen fleeing from Forest Park in a white compact car.”

He was at the Interstate exit near the motel, coasting up the ramp. Ahead of him was a woman in a maroon van, waiting at a red light. It was the first red light he’d encountered since he left Forest Park.

He could see the woman’s eyes in the van’s rearview mirror. She was looking at him. He felt as if he were sitting there naked. He moved the Glock from the car seat onto the floor.

The light changed and the van pulled onto the overpass across Interstate 44. He waited for her to get a safe distance ahead of him before he followed.

From the overpass, he could see part of the Stardust motel’s red roof. It was still only 6:35 A.M. There was nobody on the street. The scene was perfectly serene.

When he was a half-block from the Stardust, he saw a blue-and-white police car halted in front of the motel office.

TWENTY-THREE

“Come on, come on,” Sal Conti muttered. “Get your black ass back in the car and get to hell out of here.”

He was watching the cop and the young woman in a gray and white uniform in front of the motel. When the police car drew up, Conti had pulled away and driven around the block. When he returned, he discovered the cop was only a skinny black kid flirting with a young cleaning woman.

The cop was draped over the open door of his patrol car as if he had all the time in the world.

Conti swore. Damned spade should be off patrolling somewhere, not screwing around with the ladies. He didn’t care what color people were. But those damned blacks had messed up his life enough.

The truth was, most of them didn’t have their heads screwed on straight. If it weren’t for them, his life would be a lot better right now.

The cop got back into his car.

“About time, ass wipe,” Conti mumbled.

When the patrol car disappeared down the road, Conti moved his car closer to the Stardust. He reached under the seat to be sure his pistol was there and checked his watch. It was almost seven. If Kinney were coming, he should have been here by now.

In the woods in Forest Park where the ambush occurred, dozens of police officers and federal agents searched the underbrush for spent cartridges, trampled grass, or other signs that would help them determine the location of the sniper’s nest.

Sergeant Roy Lenox of the St. Louis Police Department spotted a beer can near one of the trails. He bent down to examine it, then tossed it aside. It looked as though it had been lying there for months.

“How about this?” another cop yelled. “Think he left this?” He pointed to a blue condom hanging from a tree branch five feet above the ground.

Lenox made a face. “Yeah, right.”

“Anybody get a look at the guy?” another officer shouted.

“One of the Secret Service guys did,” Lenox said. “Got a couple of shots at him when he came out of the woods.”

“Son-of-a-bitch would have been a hero if he knew how to shoot.”

“He must shoot like you, Roy.”

The last thing Denny wanted was to get involved with cops.

When he saw the police car in front of the Stardust, he had driven past the motel and kept going. Driving up and down neighborhood streets, he had no idea what he should do.

What if everybody really thought he was the madman trying to assassinate the President?

When he made a right turn, he spotted a pay phone in a parking lot next to an automobile muffler shop.
Always use pay phones, Lott said. Nobody’s going to tap a pay phone.

He maneuvered the Hyundai next to the iron poles in front of the phone so he could reach it without getting out. Then he fished his special ten-dollar bill out of his wallet. He’d transferred the SIG number to the bill, penciling it in a margin.

He inserted his prepaid-call card, listened to recorded instructions, and punched the SIG number. In Washington, it was eight-ten. He hoped someone was in the office.

“Executive office.”

“Mrs. Shamburg, please.”

“One moment, please.”

“Sylvia Shamburg,” a pleasant voice said.

“This is Clay Willis. I work with Jerry Lott.”

“Who?”

Her response didn’t surprise him. Lott probably wasn’t high enough on the totem pole to be known in the Washington office.

“I work for Mr. McQueen.”

“Afraid I don’t know that name either.”

Damn, he didn’t even know what McQueen’s first name was. Lott had always referred to him only as Mr. McQueen.

“You don’t know McQueen?”

“No, I don’t.”

“He’s with SIG.”

“Who?”

What was with this woman? Was she stupid?

“Special Intelligence Group.”

“Afraid I’m not familiar with it.”

“You’re Mrs. Shamburg?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Is there someone else there named Shamburg?”

“No.”

“Look, this is an emergency. They told me to call you. Who is there who might work with SIG?”

“I’m sorry. I can’t help you.”

She said she was a secretary in the administrative section of the National Security Council. He asked her to switch him back to the operator.

“I need to talk with someone in SIG, please.”

“Who?” the operator said.

“S-I-G.”

“I have no listing for that name.”

“Special Intelligence Group.”

“No sir.”

“Wait, don’t hang up on me! This is an emergency. I work for Mr. McQueen and Jerry Lott.”

Neither name meant anything to her.

“They gave me this number to call and I don’t —.”

“I’m sorry, sir.” She hung up.