The Second Shooter Read online

  "Then what, Jake? Talk to me."

  "I...I can't. I don't have time. But I really, really need you and Chris's help. Can you meet me?"

  "The Bureau put out a BOLO. Every cop in DC is looking for you, Jake. They said...that you shot two people inside WFO."

  "I didn't shoot anybody," Jake snapped. Then he took a deep breath. He had to calm down. If there were two people in the world he could trust they were Stacy and Chris. When he spoke again his voice was more measured. "Who was it I supposedly shot? Did anybody at the Bureau identify them?"

  "No."

  "Don't you find that strange?"

  "Yeah," Stacy said. "Kind of. I mean, I thought about that as soon as I heard it. I just...I don't understand what's happening, Jake."

  "I need your help, Stac. You and Chris."

  The line stayed quiet.

  "Do you trust me?" Jake asked.

  "Yes," she said without hesitation.

  Her confidence lifted Jake's spirits. Maybe there was a way out of this mess. "Can you meet me?"

  "Where?"

  Jake considered the problem. He needed a quiet place outside of the city. Somewhere no one would be looking for him. "Fort Marcy Park," he said. "As soon as you can get there. By the old fort. Next to the jogging and bike path we ran that time. You, me, and Chris. Remember?"

  "Yeah, of course I remember."

  "Come alone. I mean just you and Chris. Please."

  "We will. But, Jake?"

  "Yeah?"

  "If you didn't do anything, if this is all some kind of...terrible mistake, why not just turn yourself in? Chris and I could meet you at WFO or even Headquarters if you wanted. I know a lawyer who would probably be willing to help."

  "I already tried going to the office," Jake said. "Things just got worse."

  "Jake, this is really scaring me."

  "Just meet me, Stacy, please. I'll explain everything. But don't tell anyone. Whatever this is, it's big. And there are a lot of people involved, powerful people...including the ASAC."

  "Donahue?" Stacy said. "Are you serious?"

  "Yeah."

  "All right. We'll be there."

  "Thank you."

  Jake hung up.

  Favreau stared at him from behind the wheel of the van as Jake climbed into the passenger seat. "Who was that?" Favreau asked.

  "A friend?"

  "Can you trust him?"

  "Her," Jake said. "It was a her. And yes, I trust both of them."

  The Frenchman smiled. "Both of them? You have two mademoiselles as special friends?"

  "I spoke to two people. Both are friends. A guy and a girl. The guy is my roommate. We were at the Academy together."

  "And the mademoiselle?"

  Jake hesitated. "Somebody I care about."

  Favreau cocked his face up into an exaggerated wink and made a quick double clicking sound with his cheek, which had the effect of making him look and sound both very cartoonish and very French at the same time. Like the amorous skunk Pepe' Le Pew in those old cartoons Jake used to watch when he was in grade school, before he caught the bus in the morning.

  "Let's get going," Jake said. Then he eyed the broken steering column and the hanging ignition wires, which were twisted together to form a completed circuit. "We should leave a note for the owner."

  "I left the Nissan."

  Jake shook his head. "Drive."

  "Where to?"

  Jake pointed south down 17th Street. "That way."

  Favreau mashed the gas pedal. The old van shuddered as it accelerated into traffic.

  ***

  Wendell Donahue hung up the telephone and leaned back in his chair with a satisfied smile on his face.

  "What?" Blackstone said. Like a lot of people in the intelligence business, he hated secrets, unless he was the one keeping them.

  They were still in Donahue's office.

  "They're headed across the river to Fort Marcy Park," the FBI agent said.

  "Who told you that?" Blackstone asked.

  Donahue kept smiling, although Blackstone thought it had morphed into more of a condescending smirk, something that gave him a sudden urge to smack it off the man's face. "It's against Bureau policy to reveal a confidential source," Donahue said. "But trust me, they're on their way to Fort Marcy Park."

  Blackstone stood. "The chopper can get us there in ten minutes."

  "What happens to Miller?"

  "If he keeps his mouth shut he can still come out of this in one piece," Blackstone said. It was a lie, but he was pretty sure Donahue already knew that. As a professional bureaucrat who had spent nearly his entire career behind a desk, looking for properly dotted i's and thoroughly crossed t's, the FBI agent needed to hear certain things to ease his conscience, and Blackstone was happy to supply him with what he needed to hear if it got the man off his ass and moving.

  "And Favreau?" Donahue asked.

  Now it was Blackstone's turn to smirk. "Who's Favreau?"

  Chapter 14

  "I had called the two people I trusted the most. I wanted to get the full story out of him, whatever he believed that to be, in front of witnesses. I still thought he was a nut. But obviously he had information that somebody high up wanted to suppress pretty badly. Whatever that information was, I figured it had to be the key to unlocking this whole thing. At the time, of course, I had no idea how right I was."

  ***

  THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2013

  Jake checked the luminous dial of his Submariner. It was just past midnight. He and Favreau were sitting in the front seats of the stolen van. Their second stolen vehicle of the night. They had all the lights out and were stopped at the end of a winding road deep inside Fort Marcy Park, with the van turned around and facing the entrance. The park was dark and quiet. Both of them were staring out the windshield, watching for car headlights in the otherwise deserted park.

  Jake felt a little better now, knowing that Chris and Stacy were on their way. He needed people to brainstorm this problem with, people to bounce ideas off of, people he could trust. He glanced at Favreau sitting behind the wheel. The man was either out of his mind or...No, there was no or to it, no alternative. Favreau was flat-out crazy. Delusional. Which meant there had to be some other explanation for everything that had happened tonight. Some logical explanation. There just had to be. And surely whatever that explanation was, it did not involve the fifty-year-old assassination of the country's thirty-fifth president. It couldn't. Because that was crazy.

  "I see you looking at me," Favreau said.

  Jake turned away, feeling like he'd been caught doing something wrong. Then he realized how stupid that was. He looked at Favreau again. "How'd you get out of the handcuffs?"

  Favreau smiled. "If I told you, I'd have to kill you."

  "That's not funny."

  The Frenchman slid a worn billfold from his back pocket. From a concealed slot inside the wallet, he pulled out a small piece of hard plastic and handed it to Jake. The piece was a quarter-inch wide by three inches long. Jake turned it over in his hand. In the dim ambient light he could see a magnetic strip on one side and part of a bank name and logo on the other. It was the top edge of a credit card, sliced off neat with a razor or a well-honed pair of scissors.

  Jake handed it back. "Your credit score must really be bad if that's all they gave you."

  "It's how I opened the handcuffs." Favreau flicked a thumb nail against the end of the strip of plastic. "The tip slides inside the ratchet mechanism."

  "You have to live pretty dangerously if you need to carry that in your wallet."

  "You've only spent a few hours with me and look how much trouble we've gotten into," Favreau said. "And remember, I've mostly been sightseeing."

  Jake smiled. It felt good to smile. He needed something to break the tension of the last...Reflexively, he glanced again at his graduation Rolex, built, according to his stepfather, to last his entire career and beyond, into his golden years, his retirement years. Now he had to wonder
if his FBI career had any chance of lasting past daybreak.

  Had it really been only six hours since he'd first laid eyes on this lunatic, this self-confessed "presidential assassin"? Yes, it had. Just six hours. Six hours that seemed a lifetime ago. Back when he had been on his way to RFK Stadium to watch the Redskins game with a beautiful girl and maybe lay the groundwork for a real date. Now he was here, hiding in a closed park, inside a stolen van, with a madman who was convinced he'd killed John F. Kennedy.

  "What's this really about?" Jake asked.

  "I told you what it's about."

  "And stop with all the Kennedy bullshit." Jake spun to face Favreau. "I've heard all I can possibly stand to hear about that. This isn't a fantasy about an assassination that happened...Do you know how old I am?"

  "Twenty-five."

  Jake was a little taken aback. "How do you know that?"

  "Research."

  "On me?"

  Favreau nodded.

  "So this thing you're going on about," Jake said, "the JFK thing, it happened twenty-five years before I was even born. It's ancient history. And it was solved. Case closed. Let it go."

  "Is that what you think I should do?"

  "Yes," Jake said, "because that's the only way we're going to figure out what's really going on. Because what happened tonight has nothing to do with what happened fifty years ago. It's about something that's happening now...today, tonight, right here, right now."

  Favreau sat still and silent, looking straight ahead over the steering wheel. After a long moment, he turned toward Jake. Their eyes met. "Your instincts are good. Just like your father's."

  "My father?" Jake said. "What could you possibly know about my father?"

  "I know he's a good investigator."

  "How do you know that?"

  "I told you...research."

  Jake recalled an article that ran in the Eastern Maryland Gazette the day after his graduation from the Academy. A short piece about how Jake, as the son of a retired FBI agent, was carrying on the family tradition within the Bureau. "Of course he is," Jake said. "He spent twenty-five years in the FBI." Maybe Favreau really had done his research and even found that obscure article in a low-circulation, three-day-a-week suburban DC newspaper. Maybe.

  "Why would you research my father?" Jake asked.

  "As I said, your instincts are good. And you're right. There is something else going on."

  "It doesn't take good instincts to figure out that you're in the middle of a shit storm after somebody shoots you with a Taser."

  The Frenchman didn't respond.

  At the FBI Academy, Jake and his classmates had all received training in interviewing and interrogation techniques, so Jake knew the power of silence, of just sitting there looking at the suspect. Most people were uncomfortable with silence, and they often felt an overpowering urge to fill it with something, with anything. And sometimes that anything was the truth they had been trying to hide all along. Evidently, Favreau knew the same thing. Probably better, because it was Jake who broke first. "So what is it?" he said. "What's the something else?"

  Headlights swept into view in front of them, down the road near the entrance to the park. Favreau turned toward the lights. "Your friends are here."

  Jake saw the close-set pair of headlights of a small car twisting up the road toward them. He hoped it was Chris's Honda.

  "Be careful when you talk to them," Favreau said. "Trust your instincts."

  "They're my friends," Jake said. "I trust them with my life."

  The Frenchman kept his eyes on the oncoming headlights. "Good, because that's exactly what you're doing."

  Jake turned to him. "I'm in this jam because of you. And my friends are risking a lot to help me. You need to tell us everything."

  "I'll tell you everything I know," Favreau said. "But you need to be willing to listen."

  Chapter 15

  Jake opened the door and stepped out of the van. He stood by the front bumper. Favreau joined him.

  For a moment the approaching car's headlights blinded them. Then the lights blinked out. Chris's Honda coasted to a stop ten feet in front of the van. Jake could see Chris behind the wheel and Stacy in the passenger seat. They opened the doors and stepped out of the car. Both eyed Favreau. Then Stacy rushed to Jake and threw her arms around him. He wasn't sure what to do. His arms felt awkward down at his sides. So he hugged her. When she stepped back she looked a little embarrassed. "Are you all right?" she asked.

  He nodded. "Thank you for coming." Then he looked at Chris, still standing beside the driver's door of the Honda. "To both of you."

  "What's this about, Jake?" Chris said. He pointed at Favreau. "And who's he?"

  "Like I told you before the game," Jake said. "I got a duty agent call." He nodded at Favreau. "From him. He insisted we meet face to face. Then four guys in suits showed up and said they were taking him into custody. I identified myself as FBI and asked who they were. Then everything went to shit."

  "What happened?" Stacy asked.

  "They tried to arrest me."

  "Arrest you?" Stacy said.

  Jake nodded.

  "And you're sure you told them you were FBI?"

  "I badged them," Jake said. "Then one of them shot me with a Taser."

  "Jesus Christ," Stacy said. "Who were they?"

  "I have no idea."

  She glanced at Favreau. "Why did they want him?"

  "They didn't say," Jake responded.

  "But you do know why," Favreau said. "Part of the reason, at least."

  Stacy's face hardened. "What's he talking about, Jake?"

  Jake didn't answer. If it didn't make sense to him, how could he explain it to his friends? Dallas? JFK? The grassy knoll? The whole thing was crazy.

  "There's a Bureau-wide alert out for you," Chris said, still standing by the driver's door. Like he was afraid to come any closer because he might catch whatever bad shit Jake had. "We're under orders to arrest you on sight."

  "Arrest me for what?" Jake said, hearing the hard edge in his own voice. "Those men tried to kill me, Chris, on the street and again at WFO. We barely got out alive."

  "We?" Chris jabbed a finger at Favreau. "He's a terrorist, Jake. And you helped him escape."

  "Terrorist," Jake repeated as he turned to Favreau. "That's the third time I've heard that. Why does everybody keeping saying the word terrorist?"

  "He tried to kill the president of France," Chris said.

  "The guy with the hot wife?" Jake asked, and he saw Stacy roll her eyes.

  "No, not Sarkozy," Chris said. "He's not even the president anymore, but I don't mean the new one either. I'm talking about Charles de Gaulle."

  Jake looked back and forth from Favreau to Chris, not fully comprehending his friend's words. "The guy from World War Two?"

  "Yeah," Chris said. "But he was president after the war."

  "He's dead, though, right?" Jake said. "I mean he's been dead for a long time. I think."

  "Yeah, he's dead now." Chris said. "But in 1962, when he was president, a dozen French soldiers ambushed his car. Being French, they missed their target, but they did manage to kill a couple of motorcycle cops." Chris pointed at Favreau. "He was the only one who got away. The rest were executed by firing squad. He's had an international warrant out for him for fifty years, Jake."

  Jake turned to Favreau. "Is that true?"

  The Frenchman nodded. "We hit the car with more than a hundred rounds. The bullets just didn't penetrate."

  "So you really are a...terrorist," Jake said, his head reeling. "And all that nonsense about Kennedy..."

  "Was also true," Favreau said.

  "Wait," Stacy said. "What nonsense about Kennedy?"

  Favreau looked at her and said in a calm voice, "I killed President Kennedy."

  "Oh, my God," Stacy said, her tone unmistakable. Not the Oh, my God of someone who just realized the truth behind a great mystery. But the Oh, my God of someone who knows for certain that the person
she's talking to is batshit crazy. She looked at Jake, eyes brimming with pity. "Jake, what have you gotten yourself into?"

  "I know it sounds crazy but—"

  The beating of a helicopter cut off the rest of Jake's words. The sound was incredibly close. Helicopters buzzed around Washington all the time, and like everyone else in the nation's capital, Jake had learned to mostly ignore them. But this one sounded like it was coming down right on top of them.

  The big helicopter, a Bell UH-1 "Huey," bounded over a line of trees and swept toward them. For an instant it was just a dark silhouette. Then the night exploded with blinding light. Jake threw his hands up to shield his eyes, but all he could see was a swirling mishmash of cascading colors. Over the whoop-whoop-whoop of the helicopter's rotors, he heard a metallic voice booming through a loudspeaker, "Drop your weapons and lie facedown on the ground."

  Jake didn't have a weapon. Neither did Favreau. They had left the stolen pistols inside the stolen van. They were unarmed. Their hands empty. So why was the guy in the helicopter shouting for them to drop their weapons?

  "I'm sorry, Jake," Chris said. He was clutching his FBI-issued Glock in a two-handed combat grip and pointing it at Jake and Favreau.

  Stacy's face was white with fear as she stared at the pistol. "Chris, what did you do?"

  "He told them where you were meeting us," Favreau said.

  "I did my duty," Chris shouted over the thump of the rotors. "You're an intel analyst, Stacy, not an agent. It's my responsibility to make arrests. Jake is a fugitive. They're both fugitives."

  The helicopter hovered fifty feet above them. The voice boomed from the loudspeaker again. "Get on the ground now!"

  "You heard him," Chris said as he glanced up at the helicopter.

  That's when Favreau moved. He was amazingly fast for an old man, crossing the eight feet of empty ground between himself and Chris almost faster than Jake's brain could register the movement. And clearly faster than Chris could register it. Favreau swept the Glock aside and drove the heel of his palm into Chris's chin. Then he twisted the gun from Chris's hand as the FBI agent collapsed to the ground.