The Assassin (Isaac Bell 8)

“I’ve had a very long day, Grady. What is going on?”

“I don’t know. Other than to say that the Army—or at least the U.S. Army colonel in command of the Washington Monument, whom Archie interviewed—gave the artist permission to paint the view privately behind canvas curtains because permission was requested as a personal favor by a famous Army sharpshooter.”

15

He won the President’s Medal in 1902.”

Isaac Bell sank in his armchair to ponder that. “In other words, he’s the best.”

“The most accurate marksman in 1902.”

“They shoot up to a thousand yards,” said Bell. “What’s his name?”

“Private Billy Jones.”

“People who are legitimately named Jones and Smith should be issued special identifying cards to prove they didn’t make it up.”

“Private Billy ‘Jones’ deserted the First Regiment of Newark, New Jersey National Guard, shortly after he won his medal.”

“Why did the Army give permission to paint in the monument? Why didn’t they just arrest him?”

“He didn’t ask the entire Army. H

e asked the idiot colonel in command of the monument. Mailed him a letter. The damned fool had not heard the news that their champion sharpshooter deserted. It happened three years ago and it’s likely the Army covered it up, being embarrassed.”

“Not to mention terrified to tell TR,” said Bell.

A smile lit Forrer’s solemn expression. “Grim thought, Isaac. Teddy is not a president that a career officer would want to disappoint.”

“So no one saw the bars jacked open behind the canvas erected for an artist no one saw. Therefore, no one saw whether old Lapham jumped or was thrown.”

“Two men brought him there. Doctors.”

“Then we’ll start with the doctors.”

“Unfortunately, no.”

“Now what?” asked Bell.

“The Army hasn’t informed the police yet, so the news reporters don’t know, but Archie’s friend the half-wit colonel admitted the doctors vanished, and no one knows if they really were doctors or merely carrying medical bags.”

“Further suggesting it was murder,” said Bell.

Forrer repeated a saying Bell had heard from him often: “The job of the chief of Van Dorn Research is to sort fact from assumption.”

“You are provoking me toward sarcasm, Grady. If it wasn’t murder, then the men pretending to be doctors who delivered Lapham to the top of the monument carried a barn jack in their medical bag and left it with Lapham, who used it to jack open the bars so he could jump out the window.”

“Seen that way, it does suggest murder,” Forrer admitted.

“But like you just said, why go to so much trouble to kill one old guy? You could pop him on the head and say he fell off his chair . . . In fact, it’s less complicated than showy.”

“Did our assassin use the name of a famous sharpshooter, gambling that the colonel didn’t know he was a deserter?”

“Or is our assassin the deserter himself? He’s proven himself a champion marksman.” Bell shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense. Why would he draw such attention to himself if he’s been safely disappeared for three years?”

It struck Isaac Bell that the assassin’s remarkable shooting was merely a means. He had been thinking about him as a sniper. Now he had to think about him as a murderer who would use various means to kill.

“You were going to tell me the supposed artist’s name.”