A Trigger Pulled
Texas, United States
November 1963
The man’s hands tightened on the rifle.
Despite his anticipation, his index finger lay along the barrel rather than tucked into the trigger guard. He’d been trained well.
There was one other person in the small room with him, a dark-haired man in his forties who paced nervously behind the sniper.
“Stop,” the sniper said. His English was American and unaccented.
“Be quiet,” snarled the other man, also in English, though his had the faintest trace of a Russian accent from the recent decade he had lived in Minsk.
The sniper did not turn, and the pacing man did not seem to notice the increasing tension in the room.
“I don’t understand this,” the pacing man said, half to himself. “How are we going to get away?”
The sniper did not respond. He alone knew the whole plan.
Well, he and one other. But she was not here.
The sniper forced thoughts of his partner from his mind - they would only be a distraction - and checked out the window. A man on the street glanced up and saw him standing there. The sniper wondered in passing if the pacing man had noticed that the sniper’s hair had been cut and dyed to match the pacer’s. They looked similar enough from the distance between the window and the third man’s place on the sidewalk.
“I mean, I just get in the cab and say my address? And that’s the only code word?” the pacing man continued.
The sniper fixed the little man with a dead gaze.
The pacer was oblivious. “You’re sure of this? The driver will get me out?”
The sniper nodded once, stiffly.
“And you’ll get out on your own?” The pacing man pointed his finger at the sniper. “If you’re captured, you must not talk. Not a word of me, or that an employee let you up here, or anything, got it?”
The sniper nodded again and turned back to the window.
The car came into view.
The sniper leaned forward. He settled the rifle neatly along the windowsill. Lined up the sights.
Pulled the trigger once, twice, again.
The first shot went deliberately wide, to disguise his own pinpoint accuracy. The second punched through the President and into his male companion. The third completed the mission, splattering the inside of President Kennedy’s head across the car.
“Go.”
The little man left.
The sniper stowed the borrowed rifle beneath the boxes that had concealed his nest, checked that the floor was empty, and jogged for the stairwell.
The man who exited the stairwell on the first floor looked very different from the one who had entered it up on level six. He was sandy blond instead of dark-haired and wore a jacket of pale blue rather than brown. The dead eyes were gone, replaced by a cheerful crinkling, and his previously expressionless mouth now looked like it could curl at any second into a smile. He was unassuming, bought a bagel at the employee cafeteria, and left the building minutes before the police cordoned it off.
In the upheaval following the assassination of President Kennedy, a witness on the street alerted the police that he had seen a man with a rifle in the window of the book depository, and gave a description. Witnesses said they’d observed a man who worked at the book depository named Lee Oswald who matched the description leaving the building just before the police station. He was traced as having taken a bus, disembarking two blocks later, and hailing a cab. The cab driver reported that Oswald got increasingly nervous as the drive went, and was reluctant to exit the cab at the address he gave. He was the first witness to have seen any nervousness or upheaval in the demeanor of the suspect.
The landlady at the ex-Marine’s home claimed he was nervous and rushed, and left soon after he returned with a different jacket.
Oswald shot a police officer who apprehended him just minutes later.
He was dragged into the police station shouting about police brutality and how he’d been set up, that he was a patsy.
In the dramatic media coverage and the grief of a nation, no one remembered the man in the sky-blue jacket.