"Couldn't hurt to ask. He's coming this way."
Pepsie grabbed her minicassette recorder off her desk, thumbed the Record button and dropped it into a desk drawer, which she did not close.
A gaunt-faced man with white hair stepped in and said, "Ms. Dobbins?"
"Of course," said Pepsie, wondering what kind of a stiff wouldn't recognize her famous face.
"Smith. Secret Service."
"I never reveal my sours, so you can forget it," Pepsie snapped. "My lips are sealed."
"I am here to review the tapes of yesterday's Presidential coverage," Smith said stiffly. "Your news director has given his permission."
"Oh," said Pepsie, sounding vaguely disappointed.
"I would like privacy."
"Then you're going to have to wait until I'm through."
"This is a national-security matter. I must ask you to leave."
"Suit Yourself," said Pepsie, half closing the drawer and exiting the room. "Feel free to use the telephone if you need to."
"Thank you," said Smith, dropping his lanky frame into Pepsie's chair.
Harold Smith frowned at the stack of half-inch videocassettes. It was criminal how much tape the networks consumed and wasted on trivia. Examining the labels, he sorted the death-watch footage from those of the assassination attempt itself.
Smith popped the tape marked JFK Shooting into the deck, his mouth thinning over the irony of the label.
The footage was raw and unedited. Of course, only the gruesome head shot had been aired, which was the main reason Smith had been making the rounds of the networks all morning. Perhaps some clue could be gleaned from the unaired tape stock.
Smith watched the decoy Secret Service agent step out of the Presidential limousine six times before he spotted something strange in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.
Rewinding the tape, he hit the Pause button. Instantly the picture froze, wiggling in the middle as if the tape stubbornly resented being freeze-framed.
The corner remained perfectly clear.
Smith saw a man with a Minicam. He wore aviator sunglasses, jeans and a red-checker work shirt. The camera caught him as he was taping the Presidential car door opening. But as the door came open, abruptly he turned his camera away and seemed to be shooting something high and to the west.
Smith hit Pause. The tape resumed. Immediately the crack of the rifle shot came, and the unfortunate Secret Service agent's head came apart.
The cameraman instantly swung his camera toward the Secret Service agent lying facedown in a pudding of his own blood and brain matter. Pandemonium broke out, and the agent was hauled into the Presidential limousine. The cameraman was quickly lost in the bedlam that followed.
From his coat, Smith drew a diagram of the University of Massachusetts campus and Kennedy Library complex and fixed the spot where the cameraman had been standing when the fatal rifle shot came. He traced the camera angle with a bony finger.
There was no mistaking it. The man with the camera had swung around to film the sniper's nest atop the Science Center a full four seconds before the first and only shot came. He had foreknowledge of the attempt. His cue had been the opening of the limousine door. There was no other possible explanation for his unprofessional actions.
Smith rewound the tape and hit the Pause button again. He advanced the footage frame by frame. At no point did the man's face show clearly. What could be seen was heavy beard stubble on cheeks that looked as plump as a chipmunk's mouth pouches. Beneath an L.A. Dodgers baseball cap, impenetrable Ray-Ban sunglasses covered his eyes. He could be anyone.
"Why would someone film an assassination in which he is a co-conspirator?" Smith muttered.
There seemed no logical answer, so Smith ejected the tape and returned it to its black plastic case.
Exiting the office, he told a loitering Pepsie Dobbins, "I am confiscating this tape."
"Which one?" asked Pepsie.
"National security forbids me from answering, but here is a receipt."
Pepsie accepted the receipt and said, "Good luck."
Smith said nothing as he left the building.
After he was gone, Pepsie hissed, "Did you get him?"
"Yeah," said Buck Featherstone, popping up from behind a row of steel file cabinets. "I shot through the crack between these files. Hope he comes out okay."
"Let's see what my tape recorder tells us."
Pepsie listened to her minicassette recorder play back the sound of Smith popping videotapes in and out of the office deck.
"He keeps watching the footage just before that Secret Service guy gets nailed," Buck muttered as they listened.
Then came Smith's lemony mutter.
"Why would someone film an assassination in which he is a co-conspirator?"
"What does that mean?" Buck wondered.
"Let's find out," said Pepsie. "We have backup on all tapes."
They played the JFK Shooting tape, rewinding the footage before the sound of the gunshot for exactly as long as the minicassette tape recording told them Smith had rewound it.
"Whatever he found," Pepsie murmured, "it's coming up soon."
They both saw it at once. Smith's muttered question gave them the hint.
"Look at that," Buck said. "The guy in the L.A. Dodgers cap is trying to film the shooter."
"Yeah. Before the guy even shoots."
"You know what this means? He was in on it. That's proof of a conspiracy."
"There's only one question."
"Yeah?"