"You know what this means?"
"Yeah," Workman said. "I know exactly what this means. It means the end of the Secret Service as we know it. That's Lee Harvey Oswald lying there."
And Win Workman reared back and gave the dead man the hardest kick he had in him.
"Don't look now," another agent said in a dull, drained-of-emotion voice, "but I think this guy in the funny helmet looks kinda like Jack Ruby."
There was a stampede to the body of the man in the helmet. Enough of it had shattered to show one side of the man's face.
"Looks like Ruby. But a younger Ruby," Win observed.
"And that guy back there is the spitting image of Lee Harvey Oswald-if Ruby hadn't shot him dead back in '63"
"How old was Oswald when he got it?"
"Maybe twenty-three, twenty-four, something like that," Win said.
They went back to the corpse that resembled an older Lee Harvey Oswald.
"Add thirty years and you get a fifty-five-year-old guy."
"This guy looks about that."
"Can't be Oswald."
"Looks just like him. Right down to that simpering-idiot grin of his."
Win Workman looked from the face of the dead man to the wallet he was opening in his hands. He had brought it out of his pocket woodenly, as if afraid of what it would reveal.
"The driver's license says he's Alek James Hidell," he said.
A collective sigh of relief began to slip out of open mouths. Then someone snapped his fingers. It was so loud it might have been a gunshot.
"What is it?" Win asked angrily.
"Alek Hidell. That was one of the aliases."
"What alias?"
"Oswald's."
They rushed back to the body of the other dead man.
He carried his wallet in his back hip pocket. They could feel it, but they couldn't get at it without turning the body over.
"Better leave it," Workman said. "This is too much for me. "
"Man, this can't get any worse," an agent muttered.
But it did. Almost at once.
An agent reported, "I found the shooter's weapon."
"Stay there. We'll be right up."
WORKMAN ALONE stepped out onto the Science Center roof so as not to disturb evidence.
He walked over to the agent who was half kneeling over the weapon. It was a bolt-action clunker with a makeshift strap.
"Damn. That's an old one," Workman said, crouching over the rifle.
"Look at the barrel."
"What about it?"
"Look at the name of the make stamped on the barrel."
Workman twisted his head around until he could read it.
"Man-"
"Mannlicher-Carcano," the other agent finished.
Win Workman said, "Get out of here!"
"That was what it said. I swear."
That was what it said: Mannlicher-Carcano 6.5 Cal. Made in Italy.
"Mannlicher-Carcano was the rifle Oswald used in Dallas," Workman said dully. "If it was Oswald-"
"What do you mean?" the other agent asked.
"We got the shooter. Add thirty years, and you have the spitting image of Lee Harvey Oswald."
"There's something else," the other agent said. "Look at this spent shell casing."
"What about it?"
"There's something scratched in the metal."
"What?"
"Two letters. Looks like RX"
"RX?"