Page 146 of The 9th Man

“Thank you. Would you be up to answering a few questions?”

“Fire away.”

He laid a photo on the table. “This is the one I saw at the national archives.”

“I remember it. In fact, I remember everything from that day like it’s a movie in my head. Sometimes wish I didn’t.”

“Sorry for bringing it all back.”

“You’re taking them away. That’s a kindness. What else do you want to know?”

“These other three photos are the missing ones. And now I know why they’re gone.”

“You want to explain it to me?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“I kinda do.”

He laid the three other photos out on the table before her. All three showed the same Cadillac limousine. The trail car. And the same men. But from different angles.

“What made you focus on them in the first place?” he asked.

“Everyone in that parking lot was anxious, scared. Those four were too, but their body language was different. That gun drew my attention. Somebody told me they were the president’s bodyguards. So ten minutes earlier they’d seen a man get his head shot off.”

“How far apart were these pictures taken?” asked Luke.

“The first two about a minute or so. The other two about five minutes after that.”

“And you took only four photos of these men?”

Pearl nodded. “Right after I took the fourth picture, they moved off, talked for a while longer, then they went inside the hospital.”

He studied each of the missing three images.

The first showed the car as it came to a stop at the hospital. He counted. Eight men. One had fled the trail car and hopped into Kennedy’s limousine during the shooting. Rowland was there, among the others. The second image was snapped a minute or so later. The agents were out of the car. Six in the frame. And there he was, Thomas Rowland, exiting the vehicle holding the AR-15. The third image showed more of the surroundings with the car still in the frame, but other vehicles and people were also visible. In the final image, the one he’d seen back in Maryland, four of the agents were at the car, only now the rifle was no longer in Rowland’s possession.

“It’s strange,” Pearl said. “I haven’t looked at these in a long time. I now realize my memory’s been stuck at thirteen years old, if that makes sense.”

“What do you mean?”

“At the time I was just a kid. What did I know about how adults act during a crisis? But now, after seven decades on this planet, and fifty inside a hospital, I see it different. I look at those four men, particularly the one with the rifle, and they just give me the willies.”

The older woman paused a moment.

Then stared straight at him and asked, “What does it all mean?”

71

LUKE LEFT NORTH CAROLINA AND HEADED BACK TO HIS APARTMENTin DC. He leased near Georgetown in an ivy-veined brick building brimming with tenants in their seventies. He liked the quiet and appreciated the fact that everyone seemed to mind their own business. He spent only a few days there each month, between assignments, mostly on the downtime Stephanie Nelle required all of her Magellan Billet agents to take.

He hadn’t been able to answer Pearl’s question,What does it all mean?

Simply because he wasn’t sure.

Not yet.

Victoria Sandberg had turned over her manuscript. Both a word processing file and a hard copy that she kept as a backup. She told him that a publishing contract had been secured and they were readying the book for a final submittal. But no one outside of her, Ray, Benji, and Eckstein had seen the manuscript. All that remained was contact with Rowland and the securing of all the pictures that would appear in the book. He’d promptly emailed the file to Stephanie, who told him she’d be reviewing the manuscript while he headed back to DC.