1963, November 22, Dallas
e heard them coming up the steps. His fellow cops. They were H coming to help. This would be difficult, but these cops, his brothers, they knew—even those who had never pointed their weapon at anyone—they knew how he felt. They would put a hand on his shoulder, say things like “hang in there man,” ask if he needed anything, bring him a chair, stand by him.
Casey stood up just before they turned the corner. They saw him and came to him. Three cops he hadn’t met before. They greeted each other somberly.
He had followed radio procedure, reported an officer involved shooting, adding no details.
“In here?” one said, pointing to the room. Casey nodded.
Two went into the room, one stayed with him. Only seconds later, the two came back out into the hall. One, Kurt on his nametag, said, “Ah, Peterson, you been in there since the shoot?”
“No,” Casey said. “I know I didn’t secure the weapon.”
“Yeah, about that…”
Two more cops came down the hall. One said, “Cap on the steps,” while he pointed back over his shoulder with his thumb.
Kurt said, “Yeah, we’re all gonna wait right here for the captain, ok guys?”
No one said anything, so they waited for the captain. In the back of his mind Casey thought it sounded a little funny, but he was in no position to call it into question just then.
He’d been in front of the book building when the call came in.
Captain Rodgers was a small, wiry man, a beat cop who had come 55
up through the ranks in this very city. He knew every street, every building, and nearly every person. He didn’t have a college education, and at fifty-six, he wasn’t about to get one. Precinct Captain was as far as he’d go, and he’d been damned lucky to get that far. If he had ambition, it was to run a clean, tight ship; to retire in ten years and be able to say, and have said of him, that he was a good cop, stood by his men when they were right, kicked their asses when they were wrong, and he always, always, could tell the difference.
He walked up to Casey, looked him in the eye and said, “Officer Peterson, this room?”
“Yes Sir,” Casey said.
“Anyone been in there?”
Casey opened his mouth to reply, but Kurt cut him off with a quick, loud “No Sir.” Casey let it slide.
“Ok, Officer Peterson, gimme the short version. Officer Kurt, write it down please?”
Casey gave it to him. Four sentences, starting when he noticed the man in the parking lot, and ending with the pulling of the trigger.
He managed not to stutter.
“Ok, I’m gonna take a quick look, we won’t get close, and then we’ll wait for the detectives.” He nodded to the two most senior cops in the hall, said, “With me,” and stepped into the room.
Ten seconds later, Captain Rodgers walked back to the door and asked Casey to step in. Casey did so. He kept his body angled to his right, away from the corpse. He’d barfed the last time he looked at that corpse. He wasn’t taking any chances.
“Officer Peterson, from your statement, I should expect to see a corpse and a rifle in this room. Is that correct?”
“Yes, Sir,” Casey said, just a little puzzled.
“Would you point those items out please, Officer Peterson?”
Casey stared at Captain Rodgers, tilted his head slightly, trying to decide what Cap was up to. Some kind of joke? Some sick initi-ation for rookies? Problem was, Cap wasn’t the joking type, and he looked dead serious, so Casey rotated his head to the left. He knew 56
from the Captain’s manner that something was wrong. He was prepared to see something shocking, an indication he’d made a mistake, almost anything but a clean, empty room.
The next three seconds were important to Captain Rodgers. He focused on Casey’s face as he turned to look where he’d said a body and rifle should be. He watched Casey’s eyes and facial muscles, and that was all he needed to see. The kid would never win at poker, but the Captain believed Peterson had told the truth, or what he believed to be the truth. Therefore, the Captain had a problem.
Casey walked to where the body should be, noticed the window was closed, and the rubberized sheet was gone too. Could Kurt and the other cop be responsible? No, they couldn’t. There were no other doors, no closets. Nowhere they could have stashed the corpse, rifle, and sheet. Unless they tossed them out the window before closing it. He tried to imagine that, the corpse splattering on the concrete, and no one noticing. No, not likely. He took a knee and touched the floor, expecting to feel blood, even though he couldn’t see it, but the floor felt clean and dry.
Cap Rodgers asked to see Peterson’s weapon. He held it near his nose and took a quick sniff. It had been fired recently.
“Peterson, what time was the shoot?”
“Exactly 12:30, Sir.”
Cap looked at his watch. 12:50. Not good.
“Did you at any time leave this room unguarded?”
He had known they’d ask that question, and he’d already decided to do the right thing: tell the truth. When it came time, however, what with the Captain and all those other cops listening, he just couldn’t admit he had barfed in the janitor’s sink. It looked bad enough with the body and rifle missing, but if he admitted he’d been in the janitor’s closet for two minutes, it would look even worse. It shouldn’t make any difference if he told that little white lie. He didn’t know what happened to the body and rifle, but it couldn’t have anything to do with his leaving the room unguarded for two minutes. He would have heard something if someone entered the 57
room and removed the evidence. There had to be a different explanation. He knew he might regret it later, but he needed to decide quickly, so with no hesitation, he told the lie. “No Sir. I… I couldn’t go back in,” he said, with an apologetic look on his face, “but I was in the hall, just outside the door, until you arrived.”
The Captain decided. Raising his voice, and speaking fast, the Captain said, “Listen up! I want the building sealed. Now! No one in. No one out until we have an inspection station set up. Go! I want it ten minutes ago!”
Everyone jumped. They sealed the building and then searched it, roof to basement. They brought in dogs and searched the building again. They interviewed cops who’d been at the front entrance at 12:30; they were certain no one came out of the building with anything larger than a lunchbox. They interviewed Ron; the cop Casey had shouted to before he ran into the book building. He had watched the back door of the book building so he’d know when Casey came back. He was sure no one went in or out the back door after Casey went in. They interviewed Casey too, at great length.
Lab technicians examined the room. They found nothing noteworthy. Late in the afternoon they shut down the operation, having found not one bit of evidence to back up Casey’s story. Word got around fast in the department.
Cap Rodgers would have liked to keep the situation in his own station house. He liked the kid, despite the obvious problems he had created by reporting a police-involved shooting with no supporting evidence. Cap would have placed Peterson on desk duty while he began evaluation by the department shrink. If that evaluation indicated the kid could still become a good cop, Cap would have given him another chance. But the story was just too juicy. Somebody, probably a lot of somebody’s, gave it to the press—Rookie Cop Claims He Saved the President. Casey never said that, but that’s how the press characterized his report of the incident. By November 25 the Commissioner got involved. It became a circus with Casey Peterson hanging by his thumbs in the center ring. Made the department look silly. The Commissioner wanted it gone.
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“We dodged a bullet!” the Commissioner yelled at Cap. “Can you imagine the black eye Dallas would have if that wacko rookie had interfered with the president’s motorcade? Christ! And we posted him less than three hundred yards from the route!”
Casey was still a probationary hire. The department could dismiss him for any reason they cared to give. Someone came up with the clever idea of reviewing Casey’s entrance interviews and psyche evaluations. Casey’s answers and statements that had painted him as a poster boy for uncompromising honesty, like he was born to be a cop, now made it look like he might have been trying too hard, was perhaps covering something up; a loose cannon, unstable. All of which dovetailed nicely with his audacious report of killing an invisible assassin with a shot between the eyes, department shrinks pointed out. If Casey had only known the body and rifle would disappear, he could have avoided the entire ordeal by not reporting the shooting. But then, he wouldn’t have been Casey any more.
Bell Houston went back to her family and her career. In the days afterward, she spoke of the incident with Brit. He wanted to know everything. They scoured Dallas papers for additional information, but the only item that hinted of anything unusual was the report about the cop, Casey Peterson. Bell felt sorry for him, for his ordeal and the role she played in it. She wished she could help him, but she decided the kindest thing she could do was to stay out of his life. By November 25, stories related to JFK’s visit dropped off the front page, and by Thanksgiving, the 28th, they disappeared. Brit and Bell grew weary of discussing so many questions with no answers, and they too let the issue drop.
Brit was confident Dallas had been Bell’s main event, and he was sure there would be no additional incidents. Bell agreed with only the first of those conclusions, but she saw no reason to worry her dad about it. Determined to be prepared when the next challenge came, she intensified her training, physical and cerebral. She discovered that in addition to humans, certain animals responded to her ability: predators like cats and dogs, and primates such as those 59
found in zoos. Between her own environment and those she visited, she found all the test subjects she needed to hone her skills.
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