Stephen Hunter - The Third Bullet

“Let us consider such an object, the case in which the rifle is stored. It’s leather, possibly from Abercrombie and Fitch, about a yard long and half a yard wide, able to contain the two parts of the rifle, stock and action/scope, plus the tube of the suppressor, in parallel on velvet cushion. There’s plenty of room for the bolt, for the screws, maybe a two- or three-piece cleaning rod, a pack of patches, a brush, a small container of Hoppe’s 9, a small bottle of lubricating oil, and a rag or chamois for mopping up.

“Maybe in the case as well are two or three extra rounds, that is, of the counterfeit iteration on which you have such provocative insights. Suppose, further, a metallic residue could be removed carefully from the uncleaned barrel, and that residue, by neutron-activation hocus-pocus, would link it to only one kind of bullet at the exclusion of all others, the Mannlicher-Carcano 6.5 manufactured by Western Cartridge Company in the mid-fifties. That’s the point, if I understand it, right, Jack?”

“That’s right, Marty.”

“Let us further allow that in those days they always put a luggage destination tag on every suitcase, which one can fairly guess bore the initials of the ultimate destination – in his case, Richmond – and wrapped it around the handle, and there was some kind of adhesive or stickum by which the two ends were joined. And suppose they were always dated. And Lon’s name and address would have been validated by another tag.

“We have this object, linked by dated tags to Dallas, November 22, 1963, never opened, because Lon never again used or touched the rifle. It is physical proof that Lon was in Dallas that weekend; Lon, one of the greatest shots in the world. We have physical proof that he had a rifle capable of firing a bullet into the president. We have several samples of the cartridge, possibly with Lon’s fingerprints. We have the rifle itself with his fingerprints or DNA traces on it. The barrel of the rifle will contain metallic traces that can be linked metallurgically to the bullet that assassinated the president. Your Honor, I rest my case: whoever has possession of that case has physical proof of the conspiracy to murder the thirty-fifth president of the United States and, by fair inference, the identity of the man who pulled the trigger. Such a discovery would force a reopening of the case, and reopened, the case would lead straight to wherever it would lead, perhaps to the CIA cousin Hugh Meachum. The jig, as they say, would be up. Do I have your interest yet, Jack?”

Swagger stared at Marty intently. His mind was abuzz. Was this bullshit, a setup, or had the silly fool stumbled on exactly what he’d said and had the key to the whole goddamn thing?

“It’s very interesting,” said Swagger. “Are you saying–”

“Let’s continue. As I’ve said, Lon doesn’t like to look at it, so it’s stuffed away somewhere, in a closet or a storage room. In a few years, his paranoia gets the best of him, and he does some research and then clumsily fakes his own death and takes up a new persona. He’s not a professional, and that’s why it will be easy for anyone to learn that ‘John Thomas Albright’ is Lon Scott, cousin to the mysterious Hugh.

“After he ‘dies,’ a lot of Lon Scott’s shooting material – his beautiful rifles, his notebooks, the drafts of the articles he wrote for the gun press, his reloading and experimental records, all that is left to the National Rifle Association, and some of it is displayed in the National Firearms Museum, first in D.C. and later in Fairfax, Virginia.

“As for the gun case, it is incriminating, so he wouldn’t give it to the NRA. When he ‘died’ and became Albright, he took that with him, unopened. It was at his new very fine home in North Carolina when he died for real, this time as Albright, in 1993.

“To whom would he leave the case? He had no living relatives, no children, there were no women in his life; maybe Hugh? Maybe a faithful servant? A loyal lawyer? Another shooter? Another shooter’s son?

“Hmmm. Let’s go with that one. Maybe this son dumped it in an attic, having no interest in it but unwilling to dispose of it. Some years later, he was contacted by a writer. Not a real writer but one of those fellows whose obsession with the arcana of firearms impels him to pen volumes like Winchester, An American Tradition and The Guns of Ruger and so forth, and they are such beautiful volumes and he has such great connections in New York that he can get big firms to publish them. Maybe this writer has tumbled to the fact that famous shooter Lon Scott, mysteriously dead in 1964, became John Thomas Albright, famous shooter, who lived another thirty years before dying in a hunting accident in Arkansas. What an interesting life the fellow had, even absent the minor detail of November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas. He’s decided to write the biography.

“As I say, this writer contacts the son of another shooter who has unwittingly inherited all the John Thomas Albright material, and he sells the young man on his project. The young man agrees to turn over all the stuff – the gun case, a few other rifles, the Albright manuscripts, whatever is left, everything for and by and of John Thomas Albright – for research purposes. The deal is that when the book is published, the stuff will be returned to the son, he will donate the papers to the NRA, and sell whatever other goods remain at auction, and the provenance of ownership by Albright/Scott will make the stuff very valuable. Everybody wins: the writer gets his book, the son gets the profits of the sale, John Thomas Albright/Lon Scott gets his place in history.

“The writer is in receipt of the material at his domicile, and the first thing he does is make a catalog. That’s when he discovers the gun case, unopened, and he’s about to tear into it when he sees the date on the tag and the originating city. Ding-dong! Something goes off in his head. He puts it down, his own mind racing.

“He thinks and he thinks and he thinks. He sees how Lon Scott, later known as John Thomas Albright, could have been the Kennedy triggerman. That would explain the otherwise baffling, clumsy midlife identity change. He’s sitting on the scoop of the century. But he doesn’t know enough. He reads books, he tries to master the gears and flywheels of the event, he tries to figure angles and so forth. He realizes he needs help. So he goes to Dallas and discreetly looks around. He locates Richard Monk, who is, after all, a responsible figure in the assassination community, and after they bond, the writer tells him his story and admits he can’t handle it himself, he needs a better investigator, someone he can trust, someone with practical ballistics knowledge and experience, etc., etc. And that is where we are right now.”

Swagger said, “Wow. That’s a lot for one bite.”

“Oh, there’s more,” said Marty. He reached under the table to remove a briefcase, opened it, and produced two items. The first, unrolled, was an X-ray. It clearly delineated a Model 70 broken down into action and Monte Carlo stock, a tube that had to be a Maxim silencer, a disassembled cleaning rod, a few spare brushes, two small bottles, and three cartridges of oddly blunt configuration. The second was a photograph that displayed the sealed travel tag in close-up, with its inscription dated November 24, 1963, and its Braniff DFW-RIC route indicator and Lon’s name and signature and phone number, MOuntaincrest 6-0427.

Swagger’s response was explicit. “Do not open it. Do NOT open it.”

“Of course not,” said Marty.

“Is it secure?”

“It’s in my gun vault in Connecticut. In the country house.”

Swagger thought, feeling overwhelmed: Is this it? Does this idiot actually have it? He could only come up with security-arrangement questions. “Is the house guarded professionally?”