The Warren Omissions

by Jack Patterson

  “Fine, then,” Livingston conceded. “What were you doing at Ms. Taylor’s house last night?”

  “She contacted me about some documents she wanted to give me.”

  “Documents pertaining to JFK’s death, I presume?”

  “You can presume all you want, but I’m not going on the record with that.”

  Livingston jotted down a few notes and continued.

  “What was the nature of your relationship with Ms. Taylor?”

  Flynn furrowed his brow and stared at Livingston. Man, does this guy watch too many cop shows .

  “I told you that she contacted me because she wanted to give me something.”

  “Yes, but she stated on Twitter that you were friends.”

  Flynn shifted in his seat and sighed.

  “Look, she was excited to meet me. I do have fans, you know. But I had never met her before.”

  “Yet you met at her private residence?”

  “Yes, she had some documents that she didn’t want anyone to see, not in public anyway. So she suggested that we meet at her place.”

  “What time did you leave Ms. Taylor’s place?”

  “I wasn’t there more than thirty minutes. Maybe seven-thirty. I don’t know for sure.”

  “Can you tell me for certain?”

  “How did you even know I was there?”

  “Other than your admission now? Surveillance cameras in the neighborhood captured you going into her house.”

  “So, wouldn’t the surveillance cameras have the time I came out of her home?”

  Livingston refused to look up, scribbling something in the corner of his pad. Flynn rolled his eyes in disgust and continued. “What kind of questions are these anyway? You already have all the answers to everything you’re asking me.”

  “Just answer the question, Mr. Flynn.”

  “I already did.”

  “What did you do after you left?”

  “I went straight back to my hotel and went over my notes from our conversation. Then I went downstairs and had a drink in the bar before retiring to my room for the evening.”

  “What time were you in the bar?”

  “About ten o’clock.”

  “Can anyone verify you were there?”

  “Yes, plenty of people.” Flynn grew more agitated with each amateurish question. “Are we done here? I think it’s pretty obvious I didn’t kill her and I know nothing else.”

  “Fine. We’re done. But I don’t want you leaving town for a week. I may need to bring you back in for more questioning.”

  Flynn huffed as he grabbed his briefcase and walked out of the office. He didn’t like the order to stay around in Washington, but he didn’t put up much of a fuss. It would be a good excuse to stay and do more research without his editor climbing all over him. Flynn glanced around the office to see if anyone was watching him. Nobody looked suspicious, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t being watched. He exited the building, looking over his shoulder one last time.

  ***

  INSIDE THE PRECINCT, Livingston waited until Flynn left the building. He stared out the window until he observed Flynn crossing the street below. He fished out his cell phone from his pants pocket and placed a call.

  “So, what did you find out?” the voice on the other end asked.

  “I don’t think he knows anything, but you can never be too sure. I told him not to leave town for a week, so we should be able to figure out what he knows by then.”

  “Good. Keep an eye on him. We can’t have him revealing more secrets. And if he does, I have a man who can take care of him.”

  CHAPTER 4

  IVAN STOOD ON THE Washington street corner surveying his next victim. He wasn’t exactly proud of what he did. No one ever really grows up with aspirations of becoming an assassin. But such labels disgusted Ivan. He prided himself on being part of a cause, something bigger than himself. And the cause needed him. More precisely, it needed his dedication.

  Ivan could count on two hands the number of people he killed while serving the cause. They were brutal murders too. He once killed a man by dragging him behind a truck on a dirt road for three miles, traveling 60 miles an hour. He cut the man loose and tossed his body into the woods for the animals to devour. Another one of his signature kills came when he choked a man to death by cutting off the man’s fingers and ramming them down his throat until he couldn’t breathe. But it wasn’t how he killed his victims that earned him the nickname, Ivan the Terrible—a nickname he hated. No, it was how he tortured them. Sometimes he killed them. Sometimes they would kill themselves—anything to avoid a second of torture at his hands. But when you’re six-foot-four with a weightlifter physique, you have a presence that frightens most people with your mere appearance.

  As he watched the man across the street, he wondered if it would ever come to that point. He preferred to persuade and cajole people to do what he wanted them to do. His moral appeals often found acceptance in a society full of people who wanted to do right. However, what seemed right to him didn’t always seem right to others. That resistant attitude required a different type of persuasion, the kind of persuasion that earned him his nickname and made others fear him. He hoped his next victim would succumb to simple persuasion.

  He popped the collar up on his blue athletic warm-up jacket and followed his assignment. Being careful to stay far enough back to avoid being seen was an art he’d perfected. A Nationals baseball cap and large sunglasses helped Ivan blend into the Washington streets. Who wasn’t wearing a Nationals cap these days? He’d even seen a few senators sport them before yanking them off at the last minute and dashing into the Capitol. This is what he did—observe. He needed to gain every possible access point to his victims without being identified. He needed to be a ghost.

  As he meandered behind his target, he realized the guy was a pro. Very aware of his surroundings, the man kept looking over his shoulder in Ivan’s direction. Ivan grew uneasy with the constant checking and jumped in a cab. It was one thing to identify someone following you on foot. But it took a specially trained person to realize someone in a car was following you. Ivan doubted the man was that special.

  Ivan instructed the cab driver to follow the man on foot but not get too close. The driver let out an exasperated sigh but complied, staying far enough away that the man on foot never seemed to identify them as slowly following him along the streets of Washington. After ten minutes, Ivan realized his victim was headed into a hotel. He ordered the cab driver to stop so he could chase the man down. Throwing a $20 bill at the driver, Ivan dashed across the street in pursuit of the man.

  Without a second to spare, Ivan managed to catch the man just before he stepped onto an elevator in The Liaison hotel lobby. He tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Flynn,” Ivan said. “May I have a moment of your time?”

  ***

  FLYNN SPUN AROUND to see the same man he spotted the moment he came out of the police precinct nearly twenty minutes earlier. He certainly wasn’t a fan since the man was well skilled in tailing someone. Flynn suspected he might be after him, but couldn’t conceive why. Maybe he was CIA or FBI. Flynn couldn’t be sure. The only certainty was that the man standing in front of him now had tailed him to this point and had impeded Flynn from getting on an elevator.

  “What can I do for you?” Flynn asked, doing his best to act as if the man’s interruption was a completely delightful surprise.

  “Well, I’m a big fan of your books, Mr. Flynn, and I wanted to give you something that you might find interesting.”

  Flynn did his best to act as if this was all the conversation was about.

  “Oh? What is it?” he asked.

  The man held a folder leaned in close, speaking slightly above a whisper.

  “This is a group of documents that shows how the CIA created the Bay of Pigs crisis. It wasn’t an accident. It was a well thought out and planned operation. And the American people have never known the truth about what ha
ppened during that time. I thought you might be the one to tell them.”

  Flynn tried not to act too excited. First the JFK assassination, now the Bay of Pigs? If this was real, he’d have his next two book deals set. Somehow Flynn wondered if the man wasn’t trying to throw him off. Could the man’s information be trusted, especially since he spoke with a thick accent—an accent he struggled to place?

  The man moved to hand the folder to Flynn before it slipped out of his hand and spilled onto the floor. He apologized to Flynn as the two men knelt down and scooped up the pages.

  “Thank you for this. I appreciate it,” Flynn said as he stood up. “What’s your name again? I didn’t catch it.”

  “It’s not important,” the man said. “In fact, it’s best that you not know me. Good bye.”

  He patted Flynn on the shoulder before turning and walking away, leaving the folder in Flynn’s hands.

  ***

  IVAN HEARD THE ELEVATOR BELL ring again, signaling its arrival. He didn’t turn around to look back at Flynn. He only smiled, reveling in his two-fold victory.

  His cause didn’t like the idea of anyone getting close to figuring out who they were. They also preferred to use every other means necessary to persuade people rather than murder. Murder was messy and created more problems. More trails. More nosy people sniffing around in places they shouldn’t be. The CIA knew about them and that was more than enough.

  Unfortunately, Emma Taylor required the messy kind of removal. Conspiracy theorists would use her untimely demise as a way of pointing out that her death had something to do with JFK’s assassination plot, based on her final tweet. But nobody ever believed those people anyway. They thought everything that happened was somehow related to an overarching government conspiracy to keep the public in the dark. Most of the time they were right. Yet Emma Taylor needed to be dealt with—and she was private enough of a person that her murder looked like a mugging gone wrong. At least, that’s how Ivan made it look.

  But he couldn’t stop smiling as he walked away from his “chance” meeting with James Flynn. Not only did he deliver him papers that were sure to make him ditch his digging into the JFK assassination plot, but he also managed to swipe his phone and plant a bug on it. It was simple really. A surprise touch on the shoulder always gave him access to snatch whatever he was after. Then an accidental drop of the papers gave him all the time he needed to switch out Flynn’s phone cover with one embedded with a bug. All without Flynn knowing it. Even a trained CIA operative like Flynn couldn’t detect his sleight of hand. The tricks he learned growing up on the streets of Moscow served him well now.

  If Flynn now decided to restart his investigation into who was behind the JFK assassination, Ivan would know about it immediately. Not that it would matter soon.

  CHAPTER 5

  FLYNN WAITED UNTIL HE WAS in his room with the door shut before he began thumbing through the papers handed to him by the mystery man. For most people, this would be a rare occurrence, perhaps a once-in-a-lifetime event. But this happened to Flynn all the time. His public image made him a dumping ground for every tin foil hat-wearing nut job. Theories about Area 51 scratched out on a bar napkin were handed to him in an airport. Strangers accosted him with doctorate-level dissertations about how NASA faked the moon landing. Others emailed grainy pictures showing proof of life of everything—from Jimmy Hoffa to Sasquatch. It was enough to make most people crazy. But not Flynn. He enjoyed the ideas, knowing shards of truth were lodged in the bevy of theories. Just pull each string until someone sings. It just took patience and a relentless commitment to uncovering believable evidence to posit on the public.

  The documents on the Bay of Pigs invasion were interesting, but nothing to distract him from his main pursuit. Perhaps it was a smoke screen, designed to throw him off the trail. If whoever this man was thought a conspiracy about the Bay of Pigs was going to derail his pursuit of JFK’s assassination, he had severely underestimated Flynn’s resolve. However, Flynn wouldn’t waste the information. He called his editor, Theresa Halston, and told her that he learned some interesting things about the Bay of Pigs invasion that might make for a nice cover story. He told her that he had to stay in Washington per the orders of local law enforcement and could use the time to dig into the story a little more. Flynn received an earful from a disgusted editor who vowed to call the detective and raise “holy hell” if he wasn’t released to leave immediately. He passed along the number on Detective Livingston’s card so she could follow up on her promise. Flynn smiled as he said good-bye before hanging up. If there’s one thing he appreciated about Theresa, it was her loyalty to her reporters.

  Spending years serving as a spy, Flynn never could shake those habits ingrained in him by the agency. Protocol for speaking on the phone when you suspected your room might be bugged was to go into a bathroom and turn the water on. If there was an overhead fan, all the better. Anything to muffle your voice. But Flynn added his own precautions, starting with the purchase of a burner phone. He knew either a spy or a criminal came up with this brilliant idea. Even the NSA couldn’t track burner phones purchased in cash. Flynn purchased a new one each month, writing it off on his expense report. He reasoned with Theresa that it was actually a cost-saving method since he never saddled the magazine with his personal phone bill. With Theresa unconvinced, Flynn went on to say that it prevented the government from obtaining his phone records and putting his sources at risk. Apparently, that was enough to win her approval and add it to Flynn’s monthly expense account. Flynn knew just how much snooping the government did—and he feared what might happen to his sources if he ever broke a story that was big enough to truly upset higher-ups in the federal government.

  Once Flynn prepared the bathroom, he pulled out his burner phone, hoping that Natalie Hart wouldn’t be on her lunch break yet. Several years before, Flynn met Natalie at the National Archives while working on a research piece about Pearl Harbor. She seemed eager to help him on his story, even bending the rules and helping him sneak a few papers out one night. She trusted him to return them, which he did. That week kindled a new friendship, one Flynn hoped might evolve into something more some day.

  As good as he was at reading people when it came to telling the truth, Flynn failed miserably when trying to determine if a woman liked him romantically or not. Natalie often twirled her long brunette locks with her fingers while talking with him. Was that a sign that she likes me or a nervous twitch? Flynn never could be sure. The only thing he was sure of was that he liked her. He enjoyed her company at dinner, an event that Flynn made sure happened every time he was in town if staying for more than a couple of days. Yet he feared if he pressed the issue with her that she might decline any forward advances and ruin their current platonic relationship. I can stare a combatant in the face pointing a gun at me without blinking but I can’t get up the courage to give Natalie a goodnight kiss. Flynn couldn’t be more embarrassed over that fact. But it never stopped him from asking her out to dinner when he was in town.

  He dialed her number and listened to the rings. On the third ring, she picked up. She sounded glad to hear from him and hinted that she had no plans for dinner that evening. After quickly planning to meet up for dinner, Flynn told her the second reason for his call.

  “I also was wondering if you could authenticate a document for me,” Flynn said.

  “Oh, what kind of document?”

  “An FBI document from a polygraph test.”

  “Still trying to solve who was behind JFK’s assassination, are we?”

  “How did you know?”

  Natalie chuckled. “When it comes to asking me for favors, that’s the only subject that ever pops up with you. Are you ever going to give this up?”

  Flynn sighed. “You know my obsession all too well. And since it’s an obsession, I probably never will—at least until I find out who was behind it all.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” Natalie said. “I’ve got some free time this afternoon and I’l
l be happy to take a look at it for you. Just bring it on down.”

  “Is a copy fine?”

  “If all you’ve got is a copy, why don’t you just email it to me?”

  “Are you crazy? My email connected to your government account with a top secret document leading to who was behind the JFK assassination? I don’t want you to be found floating in the Potomac River next week.”

  Natalie laughed. “How chivalrous of you. OK, fine. Bring it down on your phone or computer or whatever. We’ll look at it without linking my account to yours so I don’t end up as fish food.”

  Flynn was relieved. He knew more than a half-dozen reporters who died of strange circumstances when they began digging into JFK’s assassination. He wasn’t about to put Natalie—or himself—at risk. Not when something potentially as big as this found its way into his hands.

  ***

  STAYING DOWNTOWN WASHIINGTON at The Liaison, Flynn made the short one-mile walk to the National Archives. He didn’t sit down to eat lunch, instead grabbing a hot dog from a street vendor as he walked. Natalie consumed his thoughts, so much so that he passed on the onions, which was his favorite garnishment. He couldn’t wait to see her again, though he knew his stomach would knot up. He often wondered how anyone could have such a physiological effect on him. Pushing those thoughts aside, Flynn went over a few one-liners he heard in the movies that earned a laugh from the ladies in the audience. He picked one out that he liked before beginning to wonder if they were laughing because it was absurd or because they thought it was charming. Undecided, Flynn decided to ditch the charm and compliment her on her clothes or hair before jumping into business.

  Upon reaching the downtown branch of the National Archives, Flynn waited five minutes for the hourly shuttle that transported researchers to the archives branch in Annapolis. While the downtown building was iconic, serious researchers knew the juiciest information sat in a 2-million-square-foot facility forty-five minutes away.