Present
November 22, 1963. 12:25-12:30 PM
he dark malignance was centered on the evil-looking man. Bell T could see it ooze and slide with each movement he made. She tried telepathic direction, but it had no effect. BB kept coming. He was now twenty feet away. Panic began building. She felt unprepared for this. Mind-to-mind control, which had never failed her, failed her now. She knew what he had in his pockets, what color tee shirt he wore, could see the tattoos and old scars on his body and the hair on his chest that ended just above his solar plexus. But she 40
couldn’t stop him, nor even slow him down.
She should turn and run. She was fast, she still had time. With BB only fifteen feet away, the words came unbidden, “I am one. I am old…” and the recital continued as BB closed the distance between them. Time switched to slow motion as BB began a round-house swing with the iron pipe and Bell realized she had dallied too long, that she had no options left except to quit thinking and fight…
She felt the passage of the pipe above her head, and she realized she had bent her knees in a crouch. The powerful swing, hitting nothing but air, spun BB in a complete circle. He raised the pipe overhead to prepare for a downward smash as he came around to face Bell again.
From her crouch, left foot in the lead, right hand drawn back to just below her shoulder, Bell stepped with her right foot and struck with all the force she could muster, forward and up, with the heel of her opened right hand, into the spot where the hair on BB’s chest ended. The solid blow to his solar plexus took away his breath and left him wide-eyed, disbelieving, and vulnerable. She quickly drew her right hand back again and committed all her body weight to another strike, this time at the base of BB’s nose. She felt the bones as they broke, and she saw the evil man’s head snap back as he fell backward. As his head struck the pavement, the dark malignance dissolved, and Bell gained access to the cop again.
He didn’t know about BB or the dark malignance that cloaked him. With his mind cut off from all sensory inputs, Casey didn’t even know he needed to breathe. The instant BB’s head struck the pavement, it felt as if he’d been struggling back to the surface from a deep dive. He began greedily sucking in oxygen, and there was that pesky voice in his head shouting GET UP HURRY HURRY
HURRY GET UP over and over. He regained his feet, shook off the grogginess and closed the remaining fifteen feet to the back door of the book building.
He reached for the door handle with his left hand, twisted it and pulled hard to throw it open to his left, then spun to his right, to take 41
himself out of the line of fire. The heavy closing arm acted as a shock absorber. The door made little noise as it opened, despite how hard Casey had thrown it open. As the closing arm brought the door closed, Casey took a quick peek around the door and pulled back.
Just a stair well, lighted, no one there. He stepped through as the door closed behind him.
Two voices vied for attention in Casey’s head. One told him to call his Sergeant, and the other told him to HURRY HURRY
HURRY! The second voice was louder.
It was a weekday. Some employees in the building had either no interest in, or no time for, the parade outside. Casey saw one of them walk past an open doorway that led to the first-floor spaces, to his right. He could also hear someone on the stairs, several flights up, moving fast. Had to be his man. 12:25.
He began to climb, quick and quiet as he could, noting the person on the stairs above him had either reached his destination, or had stopped moving. As a feeble gesture to thoroughness, he stuck his head through the doorway of each floor as he passed it, saw two employees, nothing more. He guessed he’d need to go to the highest floor, the seventh, if he expected to see the man in the dark shirt and trousers, and learn what he carried in his case.
When Casey passed the fifth floor and started up the steps to the sixth, he drew his weapon and held it pointed straight up over his right shoulder as he climbed. When he gained the sixth-floor landing, he poked his head around the doorway and looked down a long, empty hallway. He had turned back toward the stairs when he heard two distinct metal-on-metal sounds, four seconds apart, coming from a room with an opened door in the southeast corner of the building, off to his left. In another setting, Casey might not have been quite as certain of what he had just heard. But right here, right now, it was unmistakable. It was the bolt-action of a rifle drawing opened and then closed. The shooter was on the sixth floor, not the seventh. 12:27.
That’s when it all became real. Until now, Casey had clung to hope that this predicament would turn out benign. He’d find his man 42
and open his case to reveal a beautiful brass trombone. If that had happened, he’d have had to invent a little white lie, he supposed.
Tell Ron and the others he’d had an extra bowl of chili last night and needed to find a crapper double time. He knew he’d be flirting close to an ethical grey area with that lie, and he knew there would be a reckoning with himself later. But that was ages ago, at 12:24, when his only worry was getting the hell back down the stairs and out to his parking lot. He longed for the serene, uncomplicated life he lived three minutes ago.
Pushing off, feeling like a condemned man led to the gallows, Casey moved quick and light, mindful of squeaky spots in the floor, and grateful for crowd noises coming in through an open window of his room, the target room, the room of the metal-on-metal sounds.
Street noise would be louder there, closer to the source, and might mask his approach. He stopped outside the opened door. The wall concealed him, but also the person in the room. Casey would have to step into the doorway, and whatever he found would be his to deal with. 12:28.
Weapon held in the air, his back against the wall, he placed his right foot on the floor near the hinge side of the door, pivoted on that foot and spun 180 degrees to his right, into the center of the doorway. He’d meant to scan the whole room, wall to wall, as a cop should do in this situation. The first thing he saw when he pivoted into the doorway was a man, his man, on the left side of the room, crouched on the floor in front of an opened window, holding a bolt-action rifle with a scope. Even though this is what he should have expected to see, and should have been prepared for, it still shocked Casey so he forgot all about the rest of the room. If the man with the rifle had had an armed partner in the room…
The man pointed the scoped rifle out the window at a steep downward angle. In the instant before the man reacted to Casey’s presence, Casey saw the man holding his head above the scope, with his trigger finger resting on the trigger guard, indicating he had not yet found his target, or he did not yet have his shot lined up. He was not likely to shoot in the next second or two. A huge relief to Casey.
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The president might be out there where the rifle pointed. If Casey had found the rifleman squinting through the scope, finger on the trigger, his duty would have been clear to him. He would’ve had to take the shot with no warning. Protect the president, with no regard for his revulsion over the very concept of shooting a man with no warning.
He is relieved he will not be forced to fire his weapon. He has time, a few seconds. Time to end this without shooting, if the rifleman understands his predicament and reacts the way he should, and chooses life over death. The next three seconds seem to last forever.
In the first second, Casey has pivoted into the doorway. The rifleman picks up the movement and pivots his head to his right. As Casey pulls back the hammer and brings his weapon to bear on the rifleman, he shouts “Police, put the weapon on the floor!”
Point of note: Casey had trained well, from an early age. This is the first time in his life he has ever pointed a weapon, loaded or unloaded, at anyone. It still feels wrong. He also thinks he cannot pull the trigger, not unless the other guy shoots first. Wait, if the other guy shoots first, that could be bad. This is getting complicated.
Not at all like he’d thought, or wait. Had he ever really thought about something like this? He isn’t sure. He thinks they covered nothing like this in his training, and he wonders why not, as the first second creeps toward its end.
The rifleman struggles with no such moral dilemma. Before he has finished turning his head toward Casey, he pulls the rifle back out of the window and swings it toward Casey.
As second number two begins, with the echo of Casey’s words hanging in the air, Casey has seen the rifleman’s head turn, and the rifle begin to swing his way. Still convinced the rifleman will realize that Casey has the advantage, that he will drop his weapon and surrender, Casey shouts again, “Freeze. Drop the weapon!” But the rifle continues to swing until it points at Casey, who still cannot pull the trigger of his own weapon, dwelling on the finality of the pulling of the trigger, dwelling on the never-being-able-to-go-back of it. In the closing mille-seconds of second number two, Casey watches the 44
rifleman move the rifle up a few inches to level it at his chest, he sees the rifleman’s finger wrap around the trigger, and with tele-scopic-like vision he zeros in on the finger as it clenches and pulls the trigger.
The third second begins as the second ends, with shock showing on the faces of both men as they realize the shot the one expected to hear, and the other expected to feel, did not happen. As mille seconds advance, there comes to each the knowledge that the rifleman has forgotten to disengage the safety tab before pulling the trigger. Even assassins make use of the safety. Even assassins don’t want their weapons to discharge accidently. And even assassins, under duress, can forget to disengage the safety.
The third second is nearly half finished by the time the assassin has comprehended his mistake and moves a thumb to flick off the safety. His problem now is he must perform two actions—disengage the safety and squeeze the trigger—in the same space of time Casey, who has with crystal clarity observed that thumb moving toward the safety tab, has only to squeeze the trigger. Now, there is no hesitation left in Casey. He has seen the malice in the other’s heart. But for the position of the tiny safety tab, Casey has seen himself die, and the other kill. With no further thought of ever doubting this moment, Casey steels himself to pass from life as he knows it now, to life after pulling the trigger. He knows it will change him, for how could it not? But the act he must perform has become easy, and he silently thanks the other and his wicked heart for providing that ease. Casey’s shot takes the other between the eyes, for a shot anywhere on the body could have left the assassin with several seconds of life, and even one second would have been ample time for him to pull the trigger of the rifle still aimed at Casey’s chest. Casey had given him fair warning, had allowed the assassin more opportunity than he had a right to expect, to lay down his weapon and surrender. There couldn’t have been a more righteous shooting.
As the cop climbed the steps, Bell inspected the man she had 45
knocked out. He was alive; she could see the steady rise and fall of his chest. She worried about his ability to breathe, given the condition of his nose, but he seemed to be managing ok. She thought it best that she leaves quickly. As she walked, she could tell the evil man was still unconscious, and she knew when the cop fired the shot that killed the assassin, because she felt the sense of horror he felt. She wanted to help him, but she couldn’t think how, and she was too far away, anyway.
In the back seat of the cab she hailed five blocks from the parking lot, she leaned her head back, closed her eyes, and wondered if this would be the end. She thought not. She thought the evil man was only a minion of a greater evil, and she was linked to it, much as she was joined to the force responsible for her telepathic ability.
She would be tried again. When, she didn’t know. She would begin preparing, mentally and physically. When it came, she would be ready.
Casey’s shot caused no disturbance to the activity on Elm Street. The walls of the building had muffled the noise. A few heard it faintly. The thing about hearing a first shot, when additional shots do not follow, is the average person perceives it as a noise that could have had many causes. Without additional shots to confirm the first noise was a shot, or without visual confirmation like people scram-bling for cover, those few who thought they heard a shot dismissed it as unimportant.
In the first few seconds after he fired the shot that killed the would-be assassin, Casey remained frozen and held his weapon in a two-handed grip pointed at the dead assassin while he tried to comprehend the enormity of what he had just done. After about fifteen seconds, he forced himself to think of nothing but the correct protocol to use in this situation.
The first task should have been easy. Casey kept his weapon pointed at the dead assassin while he walked toward the rifle, noticing for the first time a rubberized sheet taped to the floor on that side of the room. He intended to move the rifle with his foot, just 46
far enough to be out of the assassin’s reach, as his training demanded. When Casey got closer to the body sprawled on its back, and saw the blood still gushing out the back of its head, he lost control. He held his hand over his mouth, rushed out of the room, and was fortunate enough to see a janitor’s closet a few steps away. He dropped his weapon and ripped open the door just as the contents of his stomach reversed course and landed in the washbasin.
He stayed in the closet, and after two minutes he had regained some composure. He rinsed out his mouth and the sink, splashed cold water on his face, and dried off with paper towels he found on a shelf. Closing the door to the closet, he retrieved and holstered his weapon, and walked back to the room where he had just killed a man. He didn’t go in, however. He decided the assassin was not in any condition to harm anyone, no matter how close the rifle was to him. Instead, Casey unclipped his radio and called his Sergeant, but not before rehearsing what he would say. He thought he did that well enough, considering he’d almost barfed all over the corpse. He was still jittery, and could have used some fresh air, but he couldn’t leave the room unguarded. After he called in the troops, he sat with his back to the wall outside the corpse room, and practiced deep breathing while he awaited their arrival.
As the activity level increased around the back door of the book building, tough guy Billy Bob Blacker, aka Billy Walker, was just regaining consciousness. That a skinny girl had knocked him out was the last thing he remembered before losing consciousness, and the hope she was still around was his first coherent thought upon regaining it.
As he began rising to his feet, he noticed the heavy police activity in another section of the parking lot. Curious though he was, he slinked out of the area. Slinking was one of his natural talents.
He paid cash for a hospital ER to clean and bandage the back of his head and front of his face. Then he caught the next flight to the west coast. He couldn’t even remember why he’d gone to Dallas, but he’d carry a grudge against that city for a long time.
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