The Second Shooter
By Chuck Hustmyre
* * *
Published by
Salvo Press
www.salvopress.com
Copyright © 2016 by Chuck Hustmyre
Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 (five) years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.
Names, characters and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
ISBN: 978-1-68299-431-3
Credits
Cover Artist: Kelly Martin
Editor: Miranda McLeod
Printed in the United States of America
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Epilogue
Author's Note
"From Dallas, Texas...President Kennedy died at one p.m. Central Standard Time, two o'clock Eastern Standard Time, some thirty-eight minutes ago."
-Walter Cronkite, CBS News
November 22, 1963
Chapter 1
PRESENT DAY
Jake Miller stared at the two men seated across the table from him. He could barely tell them apart. They wore nearly identical dark suits, crisp white shirts, and unadorned dark ties. Both had short hair and were clean-shaven. They even appeared to be about the same age. Jake pegged them as late thirties or early forties. They hadn't introduced themselves, nor had they shown him any identification.
The table was government issue: gunmetal gray with a scarred Formica top, also gray. The three of them were in a nine-by-nine interview room, barely big enough for the table and three matching chairs. The door was solid and had a lock that could only be operated from the outside. No two-way mirror, but a tinted glass dome in the corner of the ceiling concealed a camera.
"Do you know why you're here, Agent Miller?" the one on Jake's left said. Since they hadn't offered their names, Jake decided to give them names. Smith and Jones. The one who had spoken first was Smith.
"Special Agent Miller," Jake said.
"Excuse me?"
"As long as you're using my title, I would appreciate it if you used it correctly. I'm Special Agent Jake Miller, Federal Bureau of Investigation."
"Do you know why you're here, Special Agent Miller?"
"I have no idea."
"Tell us about the book," the other one said, the one Jake had dubbed Jones. And they kept going like that, shoulder to shoulder, like a two-man firing squad, one shooting off a question or a statement, then the other. Back and forth.
"How about you tell me who you are," Jake said.
"We'll get to that later. First, tell us about the book."
"What book?"
"The book your father is writing."
"If my father is writing a book, maybe you should ask him about it."
"We can't find him."
"But we intercepted an email he sent to you, so you know about the book."
"Intercepting private electronic communications is a federal offense," Jake said. "I hope you had a warrant."
"We were operating under FISA authority," Smith said, pronouncing the acronym for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. "We didn't need a warrant."
"So does that mean you think I'm a foreign spy? Or a terrorist?"
"Not necessarily. But we do know that you had extensive contact with one."
"One what, a spy or a terrorist?"
"You know who we're talking about."
Jake shrugged. "He's dead."
"We want to know everything he told you."
"Told me about what?"
The two men stared at Jake for a long time. He wasn't sure they even blinked. Then Smith said, "Are you a patriot, Special Agent Miller?"
"I guess that depends on your definition of patriot. If you mean the my country right or wrong kind of patriot, then no, I'm not. But if you mean the support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, then yeah, I am. Which is why I took that very oath when I became an FBI agent."
"We're patriots too, Agent Miller," Jones said, and when Jake didn't bother to correct him, he added, "And we need your help."
"Help with what?"
"Closing something out. Once and for all."
"Are you with O.P.R.?" Jake asked, referring to the FBI's internal affairs unit, which went by the rather vague, non-threatening name of the Office of Professional Responsibility, but which some agents casually referred to as the Rat Squad.
"We're not with the FBI. But we do work for the United States government."
"So that means you're CIA," Jake said.
"We didn't say that."
"You didn't have to. You both have spook written all over you." Jake glanced down at his watch. It was 8:00 a.m.
"Do you have somewhere else to be?"
"You mean like work?" Jake said.
"We'll write a note for your boss."
Jake didn't say anything.
"What's the book about?"
"It's about the truth," Jake said.
"Whose truth?"
"The truth is the truth. It doesn't belong to anybody."
"But who says it's true?"
"I was there," Jake said.
"Just because you think you saw something, or somebody told you something, doesn't make it true. That's just your perception."
"My perception? Is that what we're talking about?"
"Tell us what's in the book."
"Why
don't you guys wait for it to come out and read it for yourselves? I don't want to spoil it for you."
"That book will never get published," Smith said.
"Then why are we talking about it?"
Jones leaned closer and rested his elbows on the table. "Tell us how you got involved."
Jake stared at Jones for a moment. Then at Smith. They were Agency, just as surely as if they'd been wearing ID badges around their necks. But the truth was the truth, right? He'd just said so. And wasn't the truth what everyone was always chasing? In fact, the CIA itself was so dedicated to the power of the truth that carved into a stone wall inside the Agency's headquarters building just across the Potomac were the words:
And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.
"Okay," Jake said. "I'll tell you." Then he pulled a pack of Lucky Strikes and a battered Zippo from the inside pocket of his suit coat. He took his time shaking a cigarette from the pack and sticking it between his lips. He raised the lighter.
"You can't smoke in here."
Jake flicked the Zippo's thumbwheel. A flame leapt from the wick. He held it still a moment, just in front of his Lucky Strike, then touched the fire to the tip of the cigarette. The paper and tobacco crackled. He sucked in the smoke and held it. He'd promised his wife he was going to quit. Maybe this was his last cigarette. Maybe not.
"It's illegal to smoke in a government building."
Jake blew the smoke at them. Then he leaned back in his chair and got comfortable. "What are you going to do, arrest me?" Then he started telling them the story.
Chapter 2
"It started November 20, 2013, two days before the 50th anniversary. I was the duty agent that week. I was brand new, straight out of the Academy, and it was my first time in the duty rotation. I figured the guy was a nutjob, but I knew I had to go through the motions, even if it was going to make me late for the game."
***
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2013
FBI Special Agent Jake Miller hurried down the crowded street in Northwest Washington, D.C. The air was much colder now that the sun had set, and he was glad he'd brought his heavy jacket. By the fourth quarter it was going to be freezing up in the nosebleed section of RFK Stadium.
At the corner of H and 7th, Jake pulled his Blackberry out of his pocket and punched the preset button for his roommate, Chris Stanley. Jake and Chris had been classmates at the FBI Academy, and when they graduated six months ago and both landed the Washington Field Office as their first assignment, they decided to save money by splitting an apartment.
Chris answered on the first ring. "Where the hell are you?"
A gust of wind whipping down the street made Jake shiver. "Chinatown."
"Chinatown?" Chris said. "Fuck are you doing in Chinatown?"
"Duty agent call."
"The game starts in an hour."
"It's the first duty agent call of my career," Jake said. "I got to make a good impression."
"My first week in the barrel I got nothing but crackpots," Chris said.
"That's what this one is."
"Let me guess, he knows where Hoffa's buried."
"Worse. He knows who killed Kennedy."
"So do I," Chris said. "My seventh-grade history teacher told me."
"Except this guy says he knows who really killed Kennedy."
"Oh, Jesus," Chris said. "Still, what's the big deal? Take down the information, write up a three-oh-two in the morning. We got a game to get to."
"He's insisting on a face-to-face."
"Christ on a stick."
"Don't worry," Jake said. "I'll make it fast."
"You tell Stacy you're going to be late?"
"I'm about to call her." Stacy was Stacy Chapman, an intelligence analyst with the Bureau whom Jake had been trying to persuade to go out with him for two months. They were friends, pretty good friends, in fact. But Jake was hoping for more. Word was, though, that Stacy did not date agents, not since she broke up with her last boyfriend, who was, or so rumor had it, a member of the elite Hostage Rescue Team, the badass, gunslinging FBI tactical unit, many of whose members were former Special Forces, Navy SEALs, or Marine Recon. A few, or so yet another rumor went, had even been members of Delta, the ultra-secret Army counterterrorist team. But no one could ever seem to confirm that because Delta operators didn't even admit there was such a thing as Delta.
Jake dreamed about one day getting on the HRT. But with no prior military or police tactical experience, he was a long shot at best. HRT didn't take a lot of accounting geeks. Still, it would be really cool.
"Don't worry, I'll tell her," Chris said. "And keep her warm until you get there."
"Hey—" But the line clicked as Chris hung up. The nerve of that guy joking around like that. Still, Chris might bear watching. It had been hard enough to get Stacy to agree to go to the game with him, and he had only succeeded after stressing just how much of a non-date this outing was going to be. After all, Jake had said, his goofy roommate was going to be there. He didn't need Chris messing things up now that he was finally making some progress.
As Jake walked down the crowded sidewalk on H Street, he pulled back his coat sleeve and checked his watch, a Rolex Submariner his stepfather had given him when he'd graduated from the FBI Academy. Jake still got nervous just wearing the $8,000 timepiece. His stepdad, an FBI agent who had retired a few years ago, called it a career watch. "It's got automatic movement," Lee Miller had said at a restaurant near Quantico during a celebratory lunch with Jake and his mother right after the graduation ceremony. "Means no winding and no battery. If you take care of it, it'll still be running when you retire in twenty-five years."
Jake's Rolex showed six o'clock.
***
The diner was on 11th Street, between E and F streets. Painted letters on the plate glass window identified it as Louie's Café.
Jake stood at the edge of the big window and peered through. The caller had given him a recognition signal, a pack of Lucky Strikes set on top of a copy of The Washington Post. But the diner was crowded and Jake couldn't see any Lucky Strikes. There was one guy, though, who looked like the type to make crazy calls to the FBI hotline about the Kennedy assassination. He was old-late sixties, at least-sitting at a two-topper in back, facing the door, with long gray hair pulled into a ponytail and a bushy white goatee. He was looking down, pen in hand, scribbling on something Jake couldn't quite see. Everyone else in the place seemed relaxed, eating, drinking, and chatting. Not this guy. He had that frenetic, nutty professor look about him.
"That's got to be him," Jake mumbled to himself. "Just my luck." Then he took a deep breath and stepped through the door.
At least it's warm inside, Jake thought as he made his way between the tables. He had to scoot around a busty waitress carrying an overloaded tray of coffee and food. "Sorry, honey," she said as she squeezed past Jake, giving him a long brush with her equally overloaded bosom.
Nearing the old man's table, Jake saw what he was looking for, an unopened pack of Lucky Strikes perfectly centered on the folded front page of the Post. Next to the newspaper sat a nearly empty coffee cup. Jake also saw what the man was scribbling in, a tattered black and white composition notebook, the same kind Jake had used for countless English assignments in high school and college. The writing was small and dense, with the same look as the written ravings of loonies like Charles Manson and Richard Ramirez, which Jake and his classmates had studied at the Academy.
Jake stopped beside the table, but the man didn't look up. He just kept writing. Jake cleared his throat. The man kept writing, pressing down even harder on the pen. Jake tried to read the upside-down words, but they weren't in English. When the man reached the end of his sentence he stabbed a period onto the page and looked up. He had the bluest eyes Jake had ever seen.
"Are you going to stand there all evening, Agent Miller," the man said in a strong French accent. "Or are you going to sit down?" On the phone, Jake had half-thought the ac
cent was fake, but in person it sounded real enough.
"Are you Henri Broussard?" Jake asked.
The old man pushed the extra chair out with his foot and gestured for Jake to sit. Jake glanced over his shoulder at the door behind him, wishing he hadn't agreed to this meeting. Then he sat down.
Chapter 3
A block from Louie's Café, a Ford Explorer with blacked-out windows idled in a fire zone, its exhaust blowing vapor and dripping water from the tailpipe. Two men sat in the front seats. Both wore dark suits and ties over starched white shirts.
The passenger was looking through a digital Nikon that was connected by a USB cable to a laptop computer sitting on the console between the front seats. The camera was zoomed to maximum and focused through the front window of Louie's Café. "Guy just walked up next to him."
The driver looked down at the laptop, where the image from the camera's viewfinder was displayed. A young man with short hair and wearing a heavy jacket stood next to the old guy. He was turned mostly away from them so that they could only see the back half of his profile. "He's kind of young to be hanging with this geezer," the driver said.
"That's what I was thinking."
"Can you get a shot of him?"
"If he turns around I can," the passenger said.
A few seconds later the young guy looked over his shoulder toward the front of the diner. With the image zoomed in so tight, it seemed as if the guy was looking directly at them. The camera clicked and whirred, snapping five shots per second. Ten photos of the newcomer's face arranged themselves on the laptop's screen.
"Good job," the driver said.
"Good enough for an ID?" the passenger asked.
"Let's see." The driver used the laptop's touchpad to drag the best of the photos down to the taskbar and dropped it onto the icon for the facial recognition program.
***
The old man seated across the table from Jake placed his pen inside his notebook and closed it, then stretched a rubber band around the cover to keep it closed. "Can I see your identification, please?"
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