The first shots were fired at the soldiers in a poorer section of northeast Washington around two p.m. A detail had halted a beat-up ’65 Cadillac containing two black youths and were marching them toward a truck when someone fired a shot. The soldiers dropped to the ground and began looking for the shooter. The two black youths ran. One of the soldiers in full combat gear ran after them. He had gone about fifty feet when there was another shot and he fell to the sidewalk.
His comrades sent a hail of lead into a second-floor window over a corner grocery, then kicked the door in and charged up the stairs. Inside the room they found a fifteen-year-old boy with a bullet-wound in his arm huddled on the floor. Beside him lay an old lever-action rifle.
“Why’d you shoot?” the sergeant demanded. “Why’d you shoot that soldier?”
The boy wouldn’t answer. He was dragged down the stairs and, in full view of a rapidly gathering crowd, was thrown roughly into a truck for the ride to the hospital. Beside him on a stretcher lay the man he had shot.
“Honkey pigs,” one woman shouted. “Arresting kids! Why you honkies here in our neighborhood anyway? Out to hassle the niggers?”
A brick sailed over the crowd and just missed a soldier. It took the soldiers twenty minutes to run the crowd off.
While this incident was playing itself out, a dope addict in a public housing project two miles away fired a shotgun through a closed door, striking the soldier who was knocking on it full in the face.
The second shot splattered harmlessly against the wall.
The soldiers kicked in the door while the addict wrestled with the lever to break open the double-barrel. His wife was sitting nearby in a chair. She watched silently as two soldiers with their M-16s on full automatic emptied their magazines into her husband from a distance of eight feet. The soldiers were hasty and inexperienced. Some of their bullets missed. However thirty-two of them — the coroner did the counting later — ripped through the addict before his corpse hit the floor.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
When darkness fell the number of incidents increased. The communications room at the armory became a beehive of activity as reports of shootings and angry crowds poured in over the radios.
At the Executive Office Building General Land conferred with the Vice-President. Lacking any other options, they agreed that more troops would be brought in and sent to each trouble spot. General Land ordered in a battalion that was on standby at Andrews Air Force Base.
Jake Grafton was at the armory poring over a map trying to learn which areas had been searched and which had not when he was called to the telephone.
“Captain, Special Agent Hooper.”
“Yes.”
“I thought you’d like to know. We’ve received over a dozen tentative identifications of the artist’s conception of the assassin. Two in the Washington area and others from all over. We’re checking all of them. But I thought you might want to swing by the local addresses. The agents are still there. You ready to copy?”
“Go ahead.” Jake got out his pen.
When the captain had copied and read back both addresses, Hooper said, “I think the most likely ID is one out of New Mexico. Very definite. From a game warden and a gas station proprietor. They think the guy is a rancher out there and a suspected long-time poacher. Real good with firearms. Ran a guide service for out-of-state high rollers for the last seven or eight hunting seasons. A deputy sheriff went out to his ranch this afternoon and looked around. No one there. Doesn’t appear to have been anyone there for a week or so.”
“What’s the name?”
“Charon. Henry Charon. The New Mexico Department of Motor Vehicles gives his date of birth as March 6, 1952. We’ve already got a fax of the driver’s license photo. I’ve seen it. This could be our guy. We’ve got agents showing it to our witness now.”
“Can I get some copies?”
“The agents checking out the local reports have copies. They’ll give. you one. We’ll send some over to the armory as soon as we can.”
“Like maybe a couple thousand of them.”
“Well, we’ll do what we can. Gonna take a little while.”
“As soon as you can.”
“Sure.”
“How about the national crime computer? This guy have a record or some warrants?”
“We tried. Didn’t get a hit. We’re checking.”
“Thanks for the call, Hooper.”
“Yeah.”
The nearest address was an apartment building on Georgetown Avenue. Jack Yocke drove. When they were stopped at a roadblock, he showed a pass signed by General Greer while Jake, Toad, and Rita displayed their green military ID cards. The sergeant examined the ID card photos and flashed a light in each of the officers’ faces. Two men, both with M-16s leveled, stood where they could shoot past the sergeant.
“You may go on through, sir,” the sergeant said as he saluted. Jake returned the salute as Yocke fed gas.
There was no parking place in front of the building, so Yocke double-parked. “A license to steal,” he gloated.
“Toad, write him a citation,” Jake said before he slammed the door.
The FBI agents were still talking to the apartment manager. Jake introduced himself. One of the agents took him out in the hall. He produced a sheet of fax paper with a picture in the middle. Much bigger than the little photo on a driver’s license, the picture still had the same look: a man staring straight at the camera, his nose slightly distorted by the lens.
“The lady in here says this guy has been a tenant for about a month. We’re waiting for a search warrant to arrive.”
“But I thought this was the New Mexico driver’s license photo?”
“It is. It’s the same guy.”
“Henry Charon.”
“Interesting name. But not the one he used here. Called himself Sam Donally. She asked to see a driver’s license when he signed the lease. She thinks it was Virginia, but isn’t sure. She didn’t write down the number. We’re running Virginia DMV now. Without a date of birth it’ll take a little time.”
“Maybe he used the same date of birth. Easier to remember.”
“Maybe.”
“When did she last see him?”
“Four days or so ago. But she’s only seen him about eight or ten times since he rented the apartment. He goes away for several days at a time. Says he does consulting work for the government. And — this is funny — of the ten other apartments in this building, six of the tenants are here — and not one can positively identify either the photo or the drawing. Three thought it might be him, but only after I suggested that it might be.”
“The manager expect him back at any definite time?”
“Whenever. He never says.”
“So he could just come waltzing in any ol’ time?”
“It’s possible.”
“Any chance he’s upstairs now?”
“I went up on the fire escape fifteen minutes ago and peeked in. Place looks empty.”
Jake stared at the picture. The face was regular, the features quite average but arranged in such a way that no one would ever call the owner handsome. He looked … it was hard to say. He looked, Jake decided, like everybody else. It was as if the owner of that face had no personality of his own. The eyes stared out, slightly bored, promising nothing. Not great intelligence, not wit, not … Nothing was hidden behind the smooth brow, the calm, unemotional features.
Wrong. Everything was hidden.
He took a copy of the artist’s rendering from his pocket and held it beside the photo. Well, it was and it wasn’t.
“Thanks,” Jake Grafton told the agent.
In the car he showed the picture to the others. They immediately whipped out their copies of the line drawing to compare.
“Oh yes,” Rita said. “It’s him. It’s the same man.”