John Miller - The First Assassin

When Rook stood upright, he saw Mazorca darting toward a door beneath the Capitol steps. The assassin opened it, went in, and slammed it shut. Rook raced after him, stumbling at first and then gaining his stride. He finally yelled, “Get that man!”-but still nobody heard. He removed his pistol from his holster as he approached the door. Reaching to open it, he felt the pain tear through his left arm. Somehow, he pulled the door open. The sound of running footsteps echoed down a hallway.

Rook chased after them. He figured that he had at least one advantage over Mazorca: he knew his way around the Capitol, and Mazorca presumably did not. It was a large building, and Rook certainly did not know every twist and turn, but he had a general sense of its layout. He knew where its passageways led, where its staircases went, and where its exits were. From what he could tell, Mazorca had bolted through a foyer, turned right where it intersected with a long hall, and was running toward the Senate side of the building.

Rook hurried to the intersection and stopped. He could still hear Mazorca’s footsteps, but he did not want to present himself as a target. On the ground, a book lay open-except that it was not really a book. Its pages were hollowed out. The gun was inside, with ribbons attached for cocking and firing. A hole on the bottom edge of its carved-up pages made Rook realize that this was the gun that had shot him moments before. Mazorca must have discarded it as he ran.

The sound of the footsteps grew fainter. Rook knew he needed to keep moving. He peered around the corner, down the long hallway. Mazorca was not in view. About forty feet in front of him, resting on the ground, he saw the black hat that Mazorca had worn.

The pain in his arm intensified. Rook tried to massage the wound, but the gun in his hand made it impossible. He knew he had to keep moving. If he stayed where he was, he would lose Mazorca. Again.

He sprinted down the hall past a series of closed doors that led to committee rooms. He still heard footsteps ahead, reverberating off the walls. It sounded like they fell on steps.

Rook knew exactly where Mazorca was headed: those stairs led up to a wide hallway just outside the Senate cloakrooms. When the colonel arrived at the staircase, he trained his pistol on the steps, but Mazorca was nowhere in sight.

Climbing the steps slowly, Rook kept looking upward. His arm throbbed, and he could feel blood begin to soak the sleeve of his uniform. It was not gushing out the way it would from hitting a major artery, but the warm dampness was becoming apparent. He did all he could to block the sensation from his mind.

At the top of the steps, Rook gained a view of the area just outside the Senate cloakrooms-it was technically a hallway, but it was wide enough to feel like an actual room. The bedding of soldiers covered the floor. The men who slept here were outside.

Rook wondered if Mazorca had gone to the right, through one of the cloakrooms and into the Senate chamber itself. Then he heard a door shut down a hallway to his left. If it was Mazorca, it meant that he was in the large room where the Supreme Court met. It was sometimes called the Old Senate Room because senators had used it before moving into their more spacious chamber at the north end of the building.

As he ran toward the room, Rook wondered why Mazorca would have chosen the door. If he meant to escape, there were better choices. Then he understood: ahead, in the rotunda, came the sounds of soldiers filing back into the Capitol. The assassin apparently wanted to avoid them. A new thought troubled him: if Lincoln had walked up the steps on the outside of the building’s east front, however, he might very well be in the rotunda with them. Was it possible that Mazorca would have another chance to shoot the president?

The thick wooden doors outside the Old Senate Room were shut. Rook moved to open one of them. The door was heavy, and he might have leaned into it with his shoulder but for his injury. He turned the knob and forced it open with his foot.

Inside, he saw the majestic chamber-a semicircular room with a vaulted ceiling. Yet it was in a state of disarray, with desks and chairs shoved to one side to make room for soldiers who needed a place to sleep. Rook raised his pistol and stepped inside. The door swung shut behind him. He did not see Mazorca, but there was no shortage of places to hide.

Something glinted on the ground, catching his eye. Rook looked down. It was a pair of spectacles. His mind had registered nothing more than that when he sensed movement on his left. Mazorca emerged from behind a pillar and rushed toward him with a large knife in his hand. Instinctively, Rook tried to raise his left arm to block the attack, but the pain from his gunshot wound was so sharp that his knees buckled.

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.

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.