by Wil Mara
“Not a bit. What it will do is transfer it into a digital format. That way we’ll have a file to work with. Also, if anything happens to the original, we’ll have a backup.”
“Oh, okay. Sure.”
Hammond found an old table and dragged it over. Then Sheila located an extension cord and plugged it into an outlet by the washing machine. There was a pile of dirty laundry on the floor, which she found embarrassing even though Hammond appeared not to notice.
Another few minutes passed as he connected the devices and got them synced. He detached the film from the old projector with the meticulous care of a professional archivist. Once it was in place, he pulled up two chairs.
“Here, have a seat,” he said, getting behind the laptop.
Sheila hesitated—Do I have to?—but sat anyway.
He launched a program from the task bar, and a new window opened. Along the top were the words Avid Technology Digital Transfer. “This is industrial software. It’s designed to do nothing but transfer analog film into digital format. And this laptop is about the best there is for such work.”
He opened more screens, made further adjustments. “All right, I think we’re ready.” Then he turned to her. “Do you mind watching this again?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“I’d be very grateful if you did, just so you could point out the things you saw.”
“I’ll try.”
“I promise—just this one time.”
“Okay.”
He checked everything once more, then started the projector. When the reels began to rotate, he tapped the touch pad to initiate the transfer.
In a large window, the film that thousands of assassination researchers had sought for decades came to life once more.
“Amazing,” Hammond said, his voice barely above a whisper. “Look at the quality, the sharpness.”
The advance motorcycles disappeared, and the presidential limousine came into view again. Sheila’s throat went dry; she knew what was coming.
“There’s Bill Greer,” Hammond said, “and Roy Kellerman. They’re Secret Service agents. Greer is the driver; Kellerman is the one on the passenger side, up front.”
As the limo came closer, the camera panned left to follow it. The handsome president and his beautiful wife waved to the crowd, dazzling and vibrant in their youth and the promises they offered to an America that would remain idealistic and innocent for only a few more moments.
“Zapruder!” Hammond said. “There he is, as plain as—”
“Look down there,” Sheila interrupted, pointing.
He followed the imaginary line from her finger to the horizontal gap of the Elm Street storm drain, where the head of a dark-haired man appeared for the briefest instant. And to his right—Margaret Baker’s left—was the rifle. The man turned once, facing forward, then to the side again as he lifted the weapon. Hammond strained for a closer look, but the limousine rolled in front of the drain, blocking it. And as Margaret Baker continued panning, it passed out of view.
The president jerked as he absorbed Oswald’s second bullet. Then came the third, followed by the hideous explosion of flesh and bone. Sheila made a point of looking away.
Hammond leaned forward as the grassy knoll came into view. “No evidence of a shooter there. That takes care of Ed Hoffman’s story,” he whispered.
“Who’s Ed Hoffman?” Sheila asked.
“A deaf-mute who came to Dealey Plaza to watch the president from the shoulder of the Stemmons Freeway. He claimed he saw a man with a rifle moving in a westward direction along the stockade fence immediately after the shooting. He supposedly tossed the rifle to a second man, dressed in a railroad worker’s uniform, who disassembled it and placed the parts in a bag. Both men then moved off in separate directions. When Hoffman went to the FBI with this report, he was largely ignored. Rightly, as it turns out, based on what I’m seeing here.”
The crowd scattered as the limousine sped under the bridge on its way to Parkland Memorial Hospital. Then Margaret Baker’s film came to an end.
Hammond continued to stare into the monitor as if something were still there.
“Shouldn’t you stop the transfer now?”
“What?”
“The digital transfer.”
“Oh . . . yeah.” He reached over and tapped the touch pad. “Unbelievable. I don’t even know what to say.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s incredible.”
“I know.”
“Do you understand the magnitude of this?” His tone was in no way accusatory or condescending. “This changes everything we know about the assassination. All the theories, all the official reports—this isn’t just your mom’s film; this could be the key piece of evidence.”
“Do you have any idea who the man in the storm drain is?”
“No, no clue. There have been plenty of suggestions over the years about who else was involved—the Mafia, European hit men, Cuban soldiers of fortune, CIA operatives, stuff like that—but no one knows for sure.” He shook his head. “The mere fact that someone else was there, and with what almost has to be a rifle . . . That’s a very big deal.”
“I don’t think he fired a shot.”
“No, another shot would’ve been discovered sooner or later. But I’ve read a few things about the possibility of a shooter being down there. There were some conspiracy theorists who pushed the point, but they were usually written off as crazies. When I started studying the assassination, however, I thought it made some sense. First, if you look at the layout of Dealey Plaza, you’ll see that, from a sniper’s perspective, it’s actually an excellent position. Chances are you’d have a clear shot at the president at some point. Second, in all the mayhem that followed the shooting, it would be easy for such a person to escape. I don’t know where the pipes led, but they obviously went somewhere—maintenance crews had to get in there from time to time, so there were entrance and exit routes. And third, even with Secret Service checking out the site ahead of the president’s visit, the shooter could’ve gone down there a day or two before and simply waited. One quality that’s consistent with top assassins, I’ve learned, is patience. Also, the odds of the person being seen by the crowd were slim to none. Remember—the volume of spectators was much heavier along Main Street than in Dealey Plaza. In fact, on the side where your mother stood, there were no more than a handful of people. So her film is the only piece of visual evidence that even shows someone in the storm drain.” He checked the screen again. “I don’t know everything about the assassination, but I know enough to be sure that this represents a paradigm shift. This is huge beyond huge.”
The laptop finally finished processing, and the file with the meaningless name WRT0004.mov appeared on the desktop.
“I’m going to take another look at it and try to zoom in closer,” he said. “If you don’t mind, that is. You don’t have to watch.”
“Sure.”
The transfer was perfect, even slightly improved over the original by enhancement features native to the software. Hammond fast-forwarded to the point just before the second gunman appeared, then paused it. “I’m already thinking of him as Storm-Drain Man, just as so many of the other figures in Dealey Plaza have been similarly anointed. There’s Umbrella Man, Black-Dog Man, and of course, your mom, the Babushka Lady.” He clicked on the Forward button to move the images one frame at a time.
The storm drain stood empty. Then the gunman’s head came up. Dark hair, thick on the top and sides. He also appeared to have heavily rendered eyebrows. “Of Spanish descent?” Hammond wondered aloud. “Latino? Or maybe Italian? Italian might lend credence to the theories of Mafia involvement, although it certainly wouldn’t prove it.”
The man was initially turned sideways, offering a reasonably good view of his left profile. Then he looked toward the road, which offered a decent shot of the top three-quarters of his face. That was when the man lifted his weapon.
“That has to be a rifle,” Hammo
nd said. “No doubt.”
The nose of the limousine inched into the right side of the frame, and Storm-Drain Man appeared to follow it. The rifle barrel was still being held at a slight angle, a nonshooting position. Then the storm drain disappeared behind the passing vehicle.
“Is there any way to go back and get a closer look at him?” Sheila asked.
“Exactly what I’m thinking.” Hammond returned to the first frame that offered a clear view of the man—the left profile—and enlarged it. The image pixelated into a blur of meaningless blocks. “No, that’s no good.” He browsed further, found the spot where the man’s face was clearest—the three-quarter shot just after he turned toward the limo—and tried again. The result wasn’t much better. “Also no good.”
“Is there anything you can do to improve it?”
“Yes and no. Yes, it’s possible, but not with the software I have on the machine now. Like I said, this is what they use to make transfers of people’s home movies and stuff like that. It cleans them up to a degree, but it’s not meant for advanced work.”
“So what now?”
“Is there a wireless router in this house?”
Sheila laughed. “Uh, no. . . . My mom had little interest in computers. It was hard enough getting her to use a cell phone.”
“That’s too bad. I need to get a better image-enhancement program. There are several that will do the job, and I could’ve downloaded one if I had Internet access. Actually, hang on a second.”
With the help of AirPort Extreme’s search feature, he discovered that one of Sheila’s neighbors had an unprotected router. The signal was weak, however.
“I could probably get the program I need through this, but it would take a while and, by the look of the signal strength, probably cut out a few times.”
Sheila closed her eyes and sighed. “Sorry.”
“No, that’s okay. There’s another option—we could go to the nearest Apple Store. There’s one about twenty miles away.”
“How do you know that?”
“I checked before I came.” He stood. “Care to come along for the ride?”
“Yeah, I could use the break.”
Hammond smiled. “I had a feeling.”
“Let me change, though. I’m not exactly dressed to go out. I’ve been cleaning out cabinets and closets all day. I don’t even feel clean.”
“All right. I’ll hang here and check out the film again.”
Hammond returned to the laptop after she left. He went through the file several times but couldn’t get an improved image of Storm-Drain Man, no matter what he tried. It occurred to him that he might want Noah to take a look at it at some point, and that meant posting it on the Internet. While there were security risks to this, they were, he estimated, infinitesimal. He had his own FTP site, password protected and with military-strength encryption. Plus, what were the odds that some hacker would be on the lookout for the Babushka Lady film at this moment?
He opened the Fetch program. Then, by carrying the laptop around the room, he found that the signal strength improved a little by the washer and dryer. He logged in to his storage site, created a new folder called “BLF”—Babushka Lady Film—and started the transfer. A progress box appeared, and he realized the upload was going to take some time. The file was huge. To keep himself occupied, he opened a browser and started going through sites associated with the assassination.
A short time later, he heard Sheila ask, “Everything going okay?” He turned to find her standing on the bottom step, now dressed in faded jeans and a dusty-purple scoop-neck T-shirt.
“Everything’s fine. Are you ready?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be under the circumstances.”
“Okay, let’s hit the road.”
Birk’s employer didn’t react well to the news of Hammond’s arrival. While he said it confirmed his suspicions about Margaret Baker, it also meant getting his hands on the film would be considerably more complicated. He also said he knew of Hammond, his reputation—he had recently heard a newscaster refer to him as a “seeker of truth and righter of wrongs”—and the considerable resources at his disposal.
Birk had never heard the man use so much profanity.
“So what do I do?” Birk asked when the storm subsided.
His instructions were brief, explicit, and even by Birk’s standards, chilling.
11
THE APPLE STORE was crowded, so Hammond wore glasses and a baseball cap. He found the necessary software and, handing Sheila a folded sheaf of hundreds, asked her to pay for it.
“So tell me about yourself,” he said in the rental car on the way back. “I know the last few days have been very hard on you. What do you do when you’re not discovering family heirlooms that change how we look at history?”
She laughed. “I own a few fitness centers in the Dearborn area of Michigan.”
“Is that right?”
“Yeah. I almost lost them a few years back when a national chain tried to muscle in on my territory.”
“And you fought them off?”
“I did.”
Hammond looked at her briefly, a look that said, My opinion of you just went up a notch. “That’s great—good for you. You like running a business, then?”
“Well, it’s better than the job I had before that, working in a big corporation. I did that for seven agonizing years after college.”
“Not your cup of tea?”
“No, although I thought it was at first. I was so excited when I got it. High-profile organization, good salary, health benefits. It seemed like I was heading in the right direction. Then I got into the actual day-to-day aspects of it, and I was miserable by the end of the first year.”
“I’ve heard stories.”
“You sit there from dawn until dusk and spend maybe four hours on actual work. The rest is nonsense. Paperwork, meetings, office politics. Dealing with the bureaucracy is like arm-wrestling an octopus. My department spent so much time talking about work that it never actually did any. I remember one week when I was in meetings every hour of every day. Never even got near my desk. And at the end of all those discussions, nothing was different. Just a bunch of overpaid freeloaders trying to make it look like they were being productive.”
“Sounds like big business these days.”
“Everything that’s bad about the modern workplace could be found in abundance there.” She shook her head. “Another big ship sinking slowly, and no one on board cared. Their plan was to scuttle it on the way down, then jump to the next one.”
“Why did you stay?”
“Because I thought that’s what I was supposed to do with my life. The big important job that would turn you into a big important person. I didn’t even consider getting married or having children, and I love children. I have a cousin in Allen Park with three wonderful daughters, and I try to see them as often as I can. But I never had any of my own. I just poured myself into my career. I got the house I couldn’t really afford, the car I couldn’t really afford, the jewelry, the clothes, the shoes. I bought into the whole spend-now-and-pay-later thing in the early 2000s. The new American dream. Next thing I knew, I was drowning in debt.” She sighed. “If you could see one of my old credit card bills, you’d have a heart attack. I still can’t believe how much money I blew through.”
“But you still managed to start a business?”
“Not right away. A few years into that first job, I began to realize how pointless it all was. I remember sitting in my living room late one night, unable to sleep, surrounded by all my expensive toys, and thinking, I’m unhappier now than I’ve ever been. I couldn’t stand the company, couldn’t stand most of my coworkers, couldn’t stand my neighbors . . . couldn’t stand my whole life.”
“Sounds awful.”
“It was horrible. So I just decided, then and there, that it was time for some big changes. The next day, I sat down and made a plan to get out. I began selling off all my junk, set a strict budget, and slow
ly crawled out of the financial hole I’d dug. I was nearly back in the black when I learned the local gym where I was a member was about to go bankrupt. It was potentially very profitable, but it was poorly managed. So I talked to a banker friend and got the money to buy the place. It was cheap, too, because the owner was in even more financial trouble than me. He was a drug addict.”
Hammond gave a disapproving snort. “Drugs—don’t even get me started. One of the greatest evils of our society.”
“I agree completely. Anyway, within a year the business was doing great again, and a few years after that I was able to unlock my corporate cage, walk out, and open more locations.”
Hammond was smiling. “That’s an incredible story. You must be very proud of yourself.”
“The gyms were a good opportunity. I figured they’d be a way to eliminate my remaining debt and build up some savings again. And I’m very nearly there—almost all my debts paid off, including the initial loans for the business itself. But I’m not so sure I want to be running them ten years from now. It’s good money, but there’s nothing satisfying on a personal level. I’m not passionate about it.”
“Then what are you passionate about?”
“I don’t know. Something where you make a positive difference in the world, I guess. I volunteer at the homeless shelters around Detroit once in a while, but I’m not having any significant impact. They’d survive just fine if I stopped showing up. All I know for certain is that I did the it’s-all-about-me thing for years, and it left me feeling as hollow as a rotting log. Expensive home, expensive car, expensive jewelry . . .” She shook her head. “Pretty pathetic, huh?”
“Why do you say that?”
“A love of material things. Sad, right?”
“No. What’s sad is that people are programmed from a very early age to do what you did. You can’t go anywhere without seeing an advertisement of some kind. You can’t turn on the TV without being told you need ten things you really don’t. Phone calls from companies trying to sell you all sorts of junk, a thousand pounds of flyers stuffed into your mailbox. Frankly, I’m surprised you weren’t more in debt.”