Manhunt (42 page)

I
T WAS A BEAUTIFUL DAY, REMEMBERED ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD
Richard Baynham Garrett: “That day was bright and warm. It was an unusually early spring that year, and the grass in the yard was like velvet, while the great orchard in front of the house was white with apple blossoms.” Booth relaxed by entertaining his little audience. “All the forenoon,” recalled Richard Garrett, “our visitor lounged upon the grass under the apple trees and talked or played with the children … he had a pocket compass, which he took pains to explain to the children, and laughed at their puzzled faces when he made the needle move by holding the point of his pocket knife above it.” Booth took special delight in three-year-old Cora Lee Garrett. “He called her his little blue-eyed pet,” recalled her nine-year-old sister Lillian Florence Garrett, or Lillie. “At the last meal he took with us, she sat by his side in her high chair.” At the dinner table, Cora's mother spoke sharply to the girl and, Lillie reported, the child “burst into tears. Booth at once began to soothe her, and said, “‘What, is that my little blue eyes crying?'”

Early in the afternoon the Garretts and their guest took their seats at the dinner table. John, back from Acres the shoemaker, sat down next to his brother William, and opposite Booth. He had heard some exciting news while on his errand, John announced. A man told him that a recent issue of a Richmond newspaper reported that the U.S. government
was offering a $140,000 reward for Abraham Lincoln's assassin. The Garretts had heard rumors about the murder as early as April 22 or 23, but without confirmation until John heard the story about the reward a couple of hours ago. William boasted that if the reward was that big, the assassin “had better not come this way or he would be gobbled up.” Booth smiled wryly. How much was that reward, again? he asked. John restated the figure. “I would sooner suppose more like $500,000,” suggested Booth, suppressing mild hurt at what he felt was too modest an amount. Surely the president's assassin, the most wanted man in America, was worth more than $140,000? Had Booth known the true, much lower figure—a mere $50,000—he would have been truly insulted.

The family began a lively discussion of the assassination. “While at dinner the tragic event was commented upon, as to the motive which prompted the deed and its effect upon the public welfare,” Lucinda Holloway observed. Booth listened attentively, not speaking a word. Then one of Garrett's daughters suggested that Lincoln's assassin must have been a paid killer.

Booth gazed at the girl, smiled, and broke his silence: “Do you think so, Miss? By whom do you suppose he was paid?”

“Oh,” she replied witlessly, “I suppose by both the North and the South.”

“It is my opinion,” Booth replied knowingly, “he wasn't paid a cent.” Instead, he speculated, the assassin “did it for notoriety's sake.”

Booth improvised this little bit of theatre flawlessly. The Garretts did not know it, but the actor-assassin had just staged a spontaneous, unscripted performance at their dinner table. “I did not notice any uneasiness about him,” admitted John Garrett.

Ingeniously, while masquerading as another man, the assassin commented on his own crime, and analyzed, for the pleasure of his private audience, and also for his personal amusement, the motives of Lincoln's killer.

After dinner Booth went outside and relaxed on the porch bench, by now his favorite place at the house. He was in no hurry to leave Locust
Hill. He needed rest. Considering his ordeal over the last eleven days, he would happily spend a month with the Garretts recuperating from his injury and regaining his strength. Plenty of sleep, good cooking, some pipe tobacco, clean clothes, and leisurely rests in the fields would revive his body and spirit. And perhaps an occasional shot of whiskey or brandy, his favorites. Reluctant to break the spell of this idyll, Booth said nothing to the Garretts all morning or at the afternoon dinner table about leaving Locust Hill.

But it was time. Booth asked John Garrett if he had a map of Virginia. Booth owned one, but his copy of “Perrine's New Topographical War Map of the Southern States,” a handy field guide that folded into a pocket-size booklet protected by yellow, paper board covers, was back in Washington, in the hands of U.S. detectives who had discovered it in George Atzerodt's room at the Kirkwood House. Garrett told Booth that he owned no map of the state. Then what about that big map of several Southern states hanging on a wall in the house, suggested Booth. Would John be kind enough to take it down so that Booth could study it? Garrett went inside, unpinned the school map, and spread it on a table.

Booth's eyes ranged over the map and he asked Garrett for a piece of paper. John obliged, asking why Booth wanted the map. He explained that he was plotting the route from Locust Hill to Orange Court House. There he hoped to obtain a horse from one of the many Marylanders who he heard frequented the area. Then Booth told John, just as he had told William Garrett that morning, that he refused to return to Maryland because he would never sign an oath of allegiance to the Union. From Orange Court House, Booth planned to ride for Confederate General Joe Johnston's army, still in the field and, unlike Lee's surrendered Army of Northern Virginia, still a viable fighting force. And from there he would cross the border into his ultimate destination, Mexico. Booth declared that it was better to leave the country than swear loyalty to the Union. Garrett left the room and Booth remained hunched over the table, staring at the map, writing notes on the routes to distant places
he hoped to reach. Alone, Booth tore a piece out of the map and stuffed Virginia in his pocket.

This was no time for a geography lesson. Booth should have departed Locust Hill at first light, and certainly no later than several hours ago, when he awoke in late morning. He was still too far north, and Garrett's farm sat within striking distance of Union troops. In truth, as the afternoon lengthened, Booth shouldn't be there at all. The manhunters could appear at any moment without warning. He
should
leave at once; he dare not remain there any longer than one more night. Finished with the map, Booth came out onto the porch and sat on the bench. John Garrett saw him remove from his pocket “a small memorandum book” and begin writing. From his position, sitting below Booth on the front steps, John could not see what he wrote.

Distracted by noise from the road, Garrett looked up and saw a few riders moving past their front gate. “There goes some of your party now,” John said, guessing the riders were the same men who had dropped Booth at Locust Hill yesterday afternoon. Booth looked up from his book. He asked John to go into the house, walk up to the bedroom, and get his pistol belt. Confused, Garrett asked why Booth wanted his revolvers. “You go and get my pistols!” the assassin commanded without explanation. Garrett obeyed, but when he got to the bedroom and looked out the window, the men were gone. They had ridden past the gate, in the direction of Port Royal, without turning into the farm. He left the gun belt hanging on the headboard, returned to the front porch without the pistols, and told Booth that the men were gone. The assassin and Garrett took their seats.

Five minutes later John Garrett noticed a stranger, on foot, walking from the gate toward the house. Booth rose from the bench and shouted for eleven-year-old Richard Garrett to run upstairs and bring down his pistols right away. In a flash, the child was back on the porch carrying the heavy gun belt. Quickly, Booth swung the belt under his coat and wrapped it around his waist, cinching the buckle tight. Then he stepped off the porch and began walking toward the approaching stranger. John
and little Richard Garrett watched transfixed, expecting a gun battle to break out in their yard at any moment. Booth and the stranger, who had a carbine slung around his shoulder, met midway between the road's inner gate and the farmhouse. Booth did not draw his pistols and the stranger did not level his long arm. It was David Herold, who was back from his overnight stay a few miles southeast of Bowling Green at the home of Joseph Clarke, a friend of Bainbridge. After waiting for Davey all day, Booth had begun to wonder if he was coming back.

Booth and Herold stood in place about fifty yards from the house and talked for several minutes. “What do you intend to do?” asked Davey.

“Well, I intend to stay here all night,” Booth announced.

Herold did not like the sound of that plan. Lingering in one place too long increased their risk of capture. And he was losing heart for life on the run: “I would like to go home. I am sick and tired of this way of living.”

Then, together, they walked to the house. Booth introduced Davey as his cousin, David E. Boyd. Booth asked John Garrett if cousin Boyd could spend the night, too. Naturally, after the regal treatment the Garretts had accorded Booth, the assassin assumed that Garrett would offer his cousin similar hospitality.

John's reply shocked him: “I told him that father was the proprietor of the house and that I could not take him in.” John adopted a sudden, brusque manner and cold tone of voice to convey an additional message, “intending by what I said to let him see that I did not want to take him.”

Booth's panic at the sight of the riders and of the stranger walking up the road had made Garrett suspicious. To discourage the Boyds, John added that his father was away and he had no idea when he would return to approve or veto Booth's request. Unperturbed, Herold offered to sit on the porch steps and wait as long as it took for old man Garrett to come home. After eleven days of hiding out, he was used to waiting.

a
ND AFTER ELEVEN DAYS OF SEARCHING, SOME OF THE MANHUNTERS
were getting frustrated. Captain William Cross Hazelton of the Eighth Illinois Cavalry, one of the units pursuing Booth in Maryland, wrote a letter to his mother that typified the exasperation felt by many of the soldiers and detectives in the field:

Captain Hazelton's hope was in vain. Booth had crossed the Potomac days ago, leaving behind him and the hundreds of other troops, detectives, and policemen who still, clueless, hunted for him in Maryland. Unbeknownst to them the theatre of action had shifted across the river, to Virginia.

T
HE
S
IXTEENTH
N
EW
Y
ORK
C
AVALRY RODE INTO
P
ORT
C
ON
way, Virginia, on Tuesday, April 25, between 3:00 and 4:00 P.M. William Rollins, sitting on his front steps, watched their arrival. Luther Baker spotted him and walked over to his house. Had Rollins seen any strangers cross the river at this spot in the last couple days? Baker asked. The detective was not interested in any parties crossing from Port Royal to
Port Conway, just those that crossed over from the Port Conway side. Of course he had, said Rollins: “There were a good many people crossing there.” How about a man with a broken leg? Baker continued. Yes, he crossed yesterday around noon, the fisherman revealed. The report jolted Baker. It must be Booth. Finally, eleven days after the assassination, and more than a week after Booth seemed to fall off the face of the earth for several days during his pine-thicket encampment, the manhunters picked up a fresh scent of their prey. If it was Booth, then Lincoln's assassin was only a little more than a day's ride ahead of them.

Rollins offered additional details: “[T]wo men came … in a wagon the day before … and … crossed the river … I had some conversation with them.” Only yesterday, Booth and Herold had stood on this spot, in front of these same steps, conversing with Rollins just as Baker spoke to him now. The detective devoured every morsel of intelligence that Rollins could recall. These men wanted to go to Bowling Green, said Rollins, and they offered to pay him to take them there in his wagon. But, impatiently, they refused to wait for him to set his fishing nets. Instead, the lame man and his young companion made other plans as soon as they fell in with three Confederate soldiers, each mounted on horseback. They all crossed over the Rappahannock together on Thornton's ferry.