Page 160 of The 9th Man

He stared at the weapon.

“Not many people get to see this,” she said. “This gun has quite a history.”

He was listening.

“The FBI kept it from November 1963 to November 1966, except for a short while when it was loaned to the Warren Commission and test-fired. Then in late 1964, Oswald’s widow, Marina, sold whatever rights she had to the rifle. The buyer, a Denver oilman and gun collector, sued in court for possession. But Oswald had used fictitious names when purchasing the weapon, in violation of the Federal Firearms Act of 1938, which allowed the government to seize the rifle. The buyer then sued the government for damages of $5 million for the taking of the weapon, but his claim was rejected by the courts.”

He never knew any of that.

“It’s an interesting opinion,” she said. “The court said the whole thing was unconscionable, and it was. That $5 million figure was based on some projected market value that could only have been acquired from exhibiting the gun on a profit basis. Which was hideous to think about.”

He agreed.

“Since 1966, it has stayed here, under lock and key,” she said. “Why did you want to see it?”

“Curiosity more than anything else. Kind of a once-in-a-lifetime thing. But it’s the other weapon that really interests me.”

She opened the second case to reveal a military-style semi-automatic Colt AR-15. A civilian version of the M16. And old. First or second generation. From the early to mid-1960s.

“The provenance on this one is equally clear,” she told him. “This particular model was issued in 1959 to the 1st Special Forces Group in Nha Trang, where the first Vietnamese Army troops were trained. Then it made its way to Laos with a mobile training team. In 1962 it returned stateside. Sometime in early 1963 the rifle was issued to the Treasury Department, specifically to the United States Secret Service. On November 22, 1963, Thomas Rowland carried this weapon in the trail car.”

“There’s no way to do any ballistics on this, is there?” he asked.

“Ray and David looked at that in great detail. Benji even managed to buy one quite similar. But the rounds this gun fires disintegrate on impact for maximum killing effect. No way to match a thing. But they did perform experiments and fired the one Benji found from the same distance, at the same angle, as that day and it obliterated the target.”

He would have expected no less.

“All that is detailed in the manuscript, with photos.”

He stared down at the two weapons, both of which contributed to the death of the thirty-fifth president of the United States. Finally, the truth. No great conspiracy existed. The whole thing was a tragic, fateful accident. Would Oswald’s first shot through Kennedy’s neck have resulted in death? That was hard to say. But there was no doubt that the third shot was absolutely fatal.

“Everything we have is going to be returned to you,” he said. “Including an audio recording where Rowland confesses to the whole thing.”

She was amazed.

“So you have some edits to make in that book. We assume you still plan to publish?”

She nodded. “That’s what David, Benji, and Ray wanted. They will be the named authors. I was always supposed to be a ghostwriter.”

They talked for a little while longer, then he said goodbye, wishing her well.

He was still sad about Jillian. Sure, she’d used him.

But he hadn’t wanted her to die.

Shooting Rowland? His first cold kill? Or first murder, depending on how you viewed it? He had no qualms or reservations in the least about pulling that trigger, either time. Some people just needed to die and Thomas Henry Rowland was, without question, one of those.

But like Cotton Malone would say—

Killing people ain’t easy. So don’t get used to it.