The move might have saved his life. Mazorca’s dive was too high. The slash of his knife missed Rook entirely. Off balance, he fell to the floor. Meanwhile, Rook hopped to his feet and pointed his pistol directly at Mazorca, who rolled from his side to his back. The knife was still in his hand.
“Drop it,” shouted Rook.
Mazorca closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he opened them, he also appeared to loosen his grip on the handle of his knife. Instead of letting it fall, however, he flipped it up, grabbed the blade, and tried to throw it.
Rook pulled his trigger three times. Mazorca shuddered as each bullet hit its mark. The knife dropped harmlessly to the ground. The assassin’s body jolted. Then it slumped. It did not move again.
“There you are!” yelled Springfield from across the rotunda. The large room beneath the Capitol’s open dome was filling with soldiers. Lincoln had just passed through and was walking down a hallway toward the House chamber, away from Rook. The colonel gripped his left arm, as if by holding it he would lessen the pain.
Springfield ran over. Clark was with him.
“Where is he?” asked the sergeant.
“It’s done,” said Rook.
“You found Mazorca?”
“He’s dead.”
The sergeant explained that he had seen Rook chase a man into the Capitol and assumed the worst. He and Clark tried to catch up, but they started out too far away. By the time they entered the Capitol, they had no idea where Mazorca and Rook had gone.
“You’ve been shot,” said Springfield, noticing Rook’s wound for the first time.
For a moment, Rook said nothing. He just stared, first at Springfield, then at Clark, and then back at Springfield. “Where is Violet Grenier?” he asked.
The two soldiers looked at each other. They had forgotten. That was when Rook knew: she was gone.
EPILOGUE
SATURDAY, JUNE 1, 1861
Langston Bennett was surprised to hear the sound of gravel crunching beneath the wheels of a carriage. He had not expected visitors. Hughes remained confined to his bed, though after three weeks at the Stark farm he finally had moved back to his own plantation. Bennett had paid him a couple of visits but still had not given the young man the excoriation that he thought he deserved for letting Portia slip away.
Perhaps it was a man seeking employment. Ever since Tate had quit-abruptly, and immediately following the burial of that runaway Big Joe-he had let it be known that he wished to hire an experienced overseer. So far, nobody had come to him for the job. Many of the men in the region were gripped with war fever. They were signing up to fight the North.
A minute ticked by as Bennett waited for Lucius to walk through the door and announce a guest. Then he remembered that the old slave would not appear again. Bennett was still unaccustomed to his absence. He had made no attempt to replace him.
Bennett rose from his desk and hobbled to the front door. He opened it and looked upon one of the people he least expected to see: Violet Grenier.
“Hello,” he said, somehow making the greeting sound more like a question.
“Good afternoon, Langston,” said Grenier. “It has been an exceedingly long journey. Are you going to invite me in?”
He did, and they settled into chairs in Bennett’s office.
“This is certainly a surprise, Violet,” said Bennett. “I anticipated a letter, not a visit. It has been quite some time since you wrote. I feared that something had happened.”
“You wouldn’t believe how much has happened-everything and nothing, all at once.”
“What do you mean?”
“Mazorca is dead.” She handed him a Brady’s reproduction of the photograph. Bennett stared at it and sighed.
Grenier told her story: Mazorca’s arrival, his pursuit, and his disappearance. She neglected to say that she had been arrested or that she had escaped during the tumult on April 26-she simply said that life in Washington had become too difficult for someone of her views. Bennett did not probe her on this point.
“How do you know Mazorca is dead?” he asked.
“I suspect strongly that Rook and his men killed him and then covered it up. The entire episode has been kept out of the papers. It’s just rumors, really-about a lunatic who was shot in the Capitol and then given a pauper’s burial. Nothing is confirmed, but it hardly matters. The bottom line is that Lincoln is still alive.”
“How unfortunate,” said Bennett. “It is such a shame to have failed.”
Grenier narrowed her eyes and put her hand on Bennett’s knee-the one above the false leg. “Mazorca failed,” she said. “We have not.”
Bennett looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”
She smiled wickedly. “The war is young.”