proceed.”
CHAPTER
62
METRO POLICE CHIEF of detectives Bree Stone and Metro detective John Sampson walked the perimeter of the DC arena as a mix of FBI, Secret Service, and Metro investigators manned a system to get the children out of the venue while interviewing anyone with any information, anything at all.
The main security checkpoint was clogged with kids and their parents and chaperones trying to get out of the arena. Bree spotted Secret Service Agent Lance Reamer, who looked beyond agitated.
“Anything?” she asked.
He shook his head. “They cut the—”
“Please, coming through!” a woman called out.
Bree looked up to see two paramedics flanking a man on a rolling gurney who had bloody bandages all over his head and face. A DC SWAT officer trailed them.
Several of the children got upset at the sight of the wounded man.
The paramedics pushed the gurney through. Bree walked with them toward a waiting ambulance. “What happened?”
The SWAT officer said, “We found him in the basement in a pool of blood from four different head wounds. Name’s Kent Leonard. Works here. Lost some teeth, probably some broken bones in his face. Looks like he was hit with a piece of iron. They destroyed his hearing aids too. Guy’s stone-deaf without them.”
“Hearing aids?” said a Secret Service agent coming their way.
Another agent came over too. “We know this guy.”
They introduced themselves as Agents Crane and Lewis, then Agent Crane went to the wounded man’s side, made eye contact, and nodded.
Leonard looked at him fuzzily, then reached his hand up to the side of his head and said in a duck-like voice. “Where are my hearing aids?”
Bree tugged out a notebook, scribbled: They’re broken. Do you sign?
He shook his head no.
“Can we do this later?” the EMT said. “He could have a skull fracture.”
“And the president’s been shot,” Bree said to him, scribbling again. “I just want him to answer one question.”
She flipped the pad around. What happened?
He gazed at the question a moment before coughing and saying in that nasal quacking voice, “I was down getting paper towels from storage when the lights went out. I used the light on my watch to go to the room with the big electrical panels. I got there and started to open the door. Someone hit me from behind. I bounced off the door, and then fell to the ground, and he just kept hitting me until I blacked out.”
He? Bree wrote. You saw him?
He nodded. “In the watch light. Blond guy. Weird blue eyes. I …” His eyes fluttered, and he moaned. “My head hurts.”
The EMT said, “I need to get him to a level-one trauma center.”
Bree wanted to ask him more questions, but Reamer said, “Go ahead.”
She looked at the man’s face, which was swollen and an angry purplish color.
“Load him,” she said. “But I want someone with him in case he remembers anything else. He’s the only one who’s come in direct contact with one of the assassins.”
“You think there were two?” Sampson said.
“Someone shot the president upstairs in the arena. A blond man with weird blue eyes cut the lights. Mr. Leonard surprised that person and got beaten.”
“I’ll go with him,” Agent Crane said.
“No,” Reamer said. “I need you here. The Secret Service may not be in charge, but we are involved.”
“I’ll go,” Sampson said.
“I need you here,” Bree said. “I’ll get a uniform to go with him.”
“I’m off,” Reamer said as he turned away. “I’m still looking for an eyewitness to the shooting.”
CHAPTER
63
IN THE CONFERENCE room off the hangar at Joint Base Andrews, I looked at the president and the country’s leaders and saw them all studying me.
I said, “If I had unlimited resources, I’d bring in the best investigative coordinator the FBI has to oversee four distinct teams. One team should focus on forensics and generating swift, accurate test results. The second team should be composed of the Bureau’s best investigators dispatched into the field, starting at the three assassination sites. Intelligence analysts from the FBI, CIA, NSA, and Homeland Security should staff the third team and should have an eye on every piece of evidence that comes in.”
President Larkin nodded. “And the fourth?”
I said the last team should be composed of a smaller group of elite investigators, analysts, and forensics specialists assigned to look at the crimes from a loftier perspective. What was the purpose of the assassinations? Why did they have to happen? Whom and what did they benefit? Whom and what did they destroy?
Mahoney agreed with my rough design but added, “That fourth