The President's Killers (11 page)

FORTY-THREE

Until he stopped at the roadside store, Denny had no idea which direction he should go.

It was safest to stay off the highway until nightfall, so he had spent most of the afternoon napping in the Mazda beside some trees on the shoulder of a dusty back road. When he set out again, he felt refreshed.

The sun was dipping below the horizon and the Iowa countryside was awe-inspiring. The dark green cornfields rose and fell in the soft light like ocean waves, with clusters of silos and farm buildings standing atop the crests like great ocean tankers.

The landscape, so tedious in the bright midday sun, was enchanting. On a distant hill the grazing cows looked like black buttons on green velvet. A massive silo loomed against the darkening sky like a Manhattan skyscraper. For the first time since the horrifying events in Forest Park, he felt glad to be alive.

Outside a tiny farm town, the signs in the window of the store beside the road made him smile. One said, “Drive-Thru Beverage-Liquor & DVDs.” The other, “Night Crawlers.”

He was thirsty and stopped to buy a couple bottles of water. Inside, three young couples were laughing and exchanging wisecracks. On an outing of some kind, they were stocking up on beer and snack foods.

“The Wisconsin game,” the young clerk explained after they left. “Half the cars on the road tonight are on their way up to Madison. It’s a big weekend. The place will be jammed.”

“How far is it?”

“About three hours.”

When Denny crossed the bridge over the Mississippi just outside of Dubuque, it was too dark to see much. The river seemed unremarkable at that point, no wider than dozens of others he had seen. There were few towns along the highway, and he drove for miles past sprawling farms and dark fields of corn.

When he reached the outskirts of Madison the black countryside was suddenly transformed into a jumble of street lamps and neon signs, brightly lit shopping centers, and shadowy residential streets. He followed the highway into the city, past several blocks of cramped, ramshackle houses, and found himself in front of a brilliantly lighted white capitol. It was as stunning as the pictures he had seen of the Capitol in Washington.

Madison seemed much larger than Iowa City. There was a large commercial area and block after block of what were probably university buildings. And even though it was nearly 11 P.M., the sidewalks and streets were crowded with young people in jeans, sweatshirts, and sneakers.

He didn’t want to squander his money on a motel room, and it was too late to check into one anyway. That might attract attention. He looked for a place where he could sleep in the car. There was an inviting lot behind a school building, but the police probably kept a close eye on school grounds. In a nearby neighborhood of modest bungalows, there were a dozen or so cars parked along the dimly lit streets. That might do.

He was about to slip behind one of the cars when a blue neon sign caught his eye. Up ahead of him, in the next block, was the Monona Motel.

It consisted of two oblong buildings, one behind the other, with a shadowy concrete parking area between them. He pulled into it, opened the car door, and crawled onto the rear seat, grateful for his good fortune.

FORTY-FOUR

“I’m gonna make the rounds, Bob, and then I’m out of here,” Officer Cliff Berry said

The motel desk clerk nodded without looking up from his crossword puzzle. “See you.”

It was almost 5 A.M. The Madison policeman was tired. He’d worked the four-to-midnight shift at Police Headquarters before coming to the motel.

Outside, the sky was beginning to lighten. Berry had been moonlighting at the motel for almost two years. He knew every inch of the property better than he knew his own yard.

He walked between the buildings. Beside a green Mazda, he noticed a white sock in the rear window. Somebody’s foot. Twice before, he’d caught couples making out in cars parked between the buildings.

The Mazda had Iowa plates. Someone in town for the football game. Through the window, he saw a young white male in an undershirt and bleached jeans lying on his back asleep. One foot hung on the floor. The other was propped against the window.

Berry tapped the glass with his nightstick.

The young man’s eyes opened with a start.

“Everything all right?” Berry asked.

The young man sat up. He leaned forward and opened the door. “Sorry. I didn’t hear…”

“Just wondering if everything’s all right.”

“Fine,” the young man said. “I… my wife and I, we had a little spat.” He pointed toward one of the motel units.

Berry grinned. “Looks like she won.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“You registered here?”

The young man nodded.

“What’s the name?”

“Long. Jim Long.”

“Sorry to bother you.” Berry backed away. “Good luck with the missus.”

When he returned to the office, the desk clerk looked up in surprise. “Thought you went home.”

“Some kid’s sacked out in a car back there. Let me see those registration cards a minute, will you?”

He went through the cards but found none for Jim or James Long. He checked them again.

“Damn kid is lying to me.” It angered him.

He left the office and returned to the spot where the Mazda had been. It was gone.

For Denny, the stunner came at a shopping center two miles from the Monona Motel. He spotted a Dunkin’ Donuts and pulled into the parking lot. Near the front door was a metal newspaper dispenser. He bent down to look at the front page. Staring out at him was a huge artist’s sketch of a man with a goatee and mustache.

“Suspected Assassin Identified,” the headline said.

His name, the first sentence of the story said, was Clay Willis.

FORTY – FIVE

Uncertain what his reaction would be, agent Jim Moran filled Bambrick’s coffee cup.

“Some good news,” Moran said.

Bambrick didn’t look up from his cup.

“They found maps of San Francisco and Chicago in Kinney’s apartment in Jersey,” Moran said. “The President was in both cities in the past couple weeks.”

The thick eyebrows behind the huge eyeglasses rose only slightly. “Not surprising.”

“There’s also evidence Kinney is a gun nut. Involved in some militant groups in Jersey.”

“Have they found him?”

“His apartment was empty. The neighbors think he’s out of town. He travels a lot.”

“What else do we know about him?”

“He’s clean. No arrest record. We’ve got lots of prints from his apartment. Don’t know yet if they match up with the prints on the Remington. The neighbors can’t tell us much. We’re still looking for people who know him.”

“That it?”

“There’s some bad news, too. Our Newark office has done some checking. Somebody named Clay Willis walked into their shop a couple weeks ago and offered his services as an informant.”

Bambrick spilled coffee in his lap. “Jesus Christ!”

On the terrace behind the University of Wisconsin’s Student Union in Madison, Denny Kinney couldn’t tell whether the redhead with the wrap-around glasses was staring at him or merely looking at the sailboats bobbing on the lake.

The terrace was filled with young people lounging at red and yellow metal tables, enjoying the beautiful sunny morning.

Most were students in shorts or bleached cutoffs and wildly colored t-shirts staring at textbooks or jotting things down in notebooks while they sipped coffee. Some just gazed at the lake in front of them.

When Denny discovered the terrace and sat down with the newspaper to stare at the artist’s sketch of Clay Willis, there had been only a dozen people at the tables. Now there were more than a hundred.

The redhead with the wrap-arounds was alone at a table on the tier above him, twenty feet to his right. She was wearing skimpy navy shorts, and his eyes were drawn to her long, shapely legs and well-stuffed white T-shirt. There was a black book bag on the ground next to her platform shoes.

She reminded him of the snapshots of his mother taken when he was still an infant. He had gazed at those pictures many, many times, long after the car accident that took her life. The redhead’s dark hair curled around her forehead and ears just the way his mother’s had.

He could feel the redhead’s eyes on him and fought the impulse to look at her again.

The newspaper sketch of him was lousy. It didn’t look at all like him.

Was she trying to decide whether he looked like the sketch?

FORTY-SIX

He was getting paranoiac. Everyone wasn’t looking at him. Most people don’t give strangers a second look.

He watched a chipmunk pause on a flagstone step on the slope below him, then scurry into the grass at the base of a tree.

Getting to his feet, Denny made a show of stretching his arms and gazing at the lake. Then he turned and strolled away.

On State Street, the main artery leading into the campus, he ducked into a drug store. He searched its shelves and bought a bottle of hair dye and an eleven-dollar pair of reading glasses, the weakest and most owlish-looking ones he could find.

Driving randomly up and down Madison’s streets, he came across a dingy gas station in a run-down neighborhood. In the rest room, he bolted the door and read the instructions on the bottle of dye. Squeezing the thick liquid onto his head, he worked it into his hair until his entire head was covered with messy goop.

Someone jiggled the handle of the restroom door and tried to open the door. Denny didn’t move. Moments later, he heard footsteps departing.

He sat on the toilet seat and waited. According to the instructions, he was supposed to wait twenty minutes before rinsing his head. The results were startling. His once dark-brown hair now had a weird bronze tint.

He put on the round, rimless glasses and looked at himself in the mirror. It wasn’t him. It was a nerd.

FORTY-SEVEN

The campus streets were totally deserted. The silence and stillness were spooky.

A co-ed with a cocker spaniel provided the explanation. Everybody was at the Wisconsin-Iowa football game.

The immense campus was a mixture of old red brick and limestone buildings and sleek, tan structures with curved walls and elongated windows. The classroom buildings were separated from massive, dormitory complexes by grassy knolls and vast manicured lawns high above the lake.

The more he walked about the campus , the more he realized it would be an excellent hiding place. The whole area usually was teeming with students, a drugstore clerk had said. Denny could pass himself off as one of them, dress like a student, and take a room somewhere.

State Street ran from the campus to the State Capitol, less than a mile away. The street was lined with book stores, fast-food places, record shops, and foreign restaurants — German, Italian, Indian, Thai.

On a park bench, three scruffy-looking students in sweatshirts and threadbare jeans sucked on joints. Several others — a mix of shaved heads, pony tails, and baseball caps — loitered near a water fountain. Two young panhandlers, on opposite sides of the street, squatted on the sidewalk.

By 4 P.M., the weather had turned chilly. Ten minutes later, State Street was transformed.

Hundreds of noisy students filled the sidewalks and pedestrian mall, most of them in red sweatshirts or red windbreakers. Some had even painted their faces red and white, clearly the school’s colors. The students were smiling, chattering away. The game was over, and Wisconsin must have won.

Denny followed three students into a crowded bratwurst place. Inside, dozens of jubilant students and parents were huddled around tables, each with a floor-to-ceiling iron pole through the center. The open area in front of the long bar was filled with beer drinkers.

On the walls, the somber posters — Che Guevara in a black beret, Marlon Brando as Don Corleone in a tux, Albert Einstein in front of a blackboard — seemed totally out of place.

At the far end of the bar was an empty stool. Denny sat down and sipped German beer, ate brats, and took in the noisy, chaotic scene.

Before long, the pictures on some of the TV sets changed, college football giving way to reports on the assassination. On the TV behind the bar were fleeting shots of President Patrick arriving at Lambert-St. Louis field before the assassination, of the hospital where he was taken, of his coffin being removed from Air Force One.

The grim scenes produced only a momentary lowering of the noise in the crowded room. Within a few minutes, it was as noisy as it had been. Denny watched the animated talking heads on the TV, but couldn’t hear what they were saying.

Pictures of the new president flashed on the screen. Shots of Merrill being sworn in as president. Shots of a younger Merrill giving a speech, shaking hands in a crowd, questioning a witness at a Senate committee hearing. Each scene depicted a stage in his long career.

Behind Denny, a waitress yelled out a beer order. Her shout was so loud he twisted around to look at her. When he turned back to the TV, there on the screen was McQueen.

It was a crowd scene. McQueen was standing near the center.

Denny stared at the picture, stunned.

A bartender with a pitcher of beer in each hand stepped in front of him, blocking his view.

Denny whirled around to look at the TV sets mounted on the walls. He searched frantically for the picture of McQueen, but didn’t see it.

When the bartender moved away and Denny was able to see the TV behind the bar again, the picture had changed. McQueen was gone.

FORTY-EIGHT

The questions stunned her, but Meesh kept smiling, trying to look unconcerned.

When the forty-something white woman and the young black man rang her doorbell and identified themselves as FBI agents, she immediately thought of the bizarre notes she’d found in Denny’s apartment.

As soon as they were seated in her living room, however, it became clear they were interested in the President’s assassination. Why in the world would they think Denny knew anything about that?

The woman agent matched Meesh’s pleasant smile with one of her own. “Do you know where Denny is?”

“He’s out of town. On a business trip.”

“Where?”

She felt her cheeks blushing. The truth sounded so incriminating. “He had some business in St. Louis.”

She told them about his job with Erickson. The woman agent asked what the job involved, where Erickson was located, who its clients were, how long Denny had been an employee, and what his salary was.

The questions made Meesh realize she knew even less about Denny’s job than she realized.

“When did you last talk to him?” the black agent asked.

How much should she tell them? They were very friendly, very polite, but why were they so interested in Denny? Just because he was in St. Louis? That was absurd. The agents were nice, but she had no idea what their real purpose was. Were they trying to help Denny or hurt him?

“Have you talked to him since he went to St. Louis?” the male agent said.

“No.”

The woman, suddenly more brusque, said, “He hasn’t called you?”

All her life Meesh had regarded law-enforcement officers, even the security personnel at Korn-Ritter, as the good guys, people who protected you. She had always been completely honest with all of them.

“No,” she lied.

“You haven’t been in touch with him since he left for St. Louis?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Do you know where he stayed in St. Louis?”

“A motel. I don’t know the name.”

“When’s he coming back?”

“I’m not really sure.” He was supposed to return today, but Meesh wasn’t positive about that.

“You’re not sure?” Lowell said.

She hesitated. Was this a lie? “No. His schedule has always been subject to last-minute changes.”

The woman agent gave her a stern look. “It’s a federal offense to lie to an FBI agent, Meesh. The best way to help Denny is to tell us as much as you possibly can. Are you leveling with us?”

“Of course. Denny has nothing to hide.”

Watching Michelle Walker’s apartment building from a rental car, Groark thought there was something odd about the couple who came out the front entrance.

The white woman was more than ten years older than the black man, and they seemed a bit too well-dressed on a Sunday evening to be residents.

The woman was doing all the talking, the young black man nodding. When they reached the sidewalk along the street, they turned and started towards him.

Groark pulled the latch that released the hood of the car and got out. Leaning under the hood, he fiddled with the distributor cap as they walked past.

They were talking about a woman, but he couldn’t make out their words. He watched them cross the street and get into a dark car. When they drove past him, he saw the Government license plate. They were FBI.

He was impressed. The Fibbies had been very efficient. It had taken them only a few days to identify Kinney and locate his girlfriend.

By tomorrow morning, there would be agents posted outside the building keeping Michelle Walker under surveillance. He would have to move even quicker than they did.