The Fifth Assassin

by Brad Meltzer

  “Whattya mean?” Marshall asked. “Go where?”

  “I gotta go,” he said, pointing down. But it was the sudden panic in his father’s voice that set Marshall off.

  “You gotta poop?” Marshall asked.

  “No! I gotta pee.”

  “So don’t you…?” Marshall paused, feeling a rush of blood flush his face. “I-Isn’t that what the bag’s for…?” he asked, tapping the outside of his own left thigh, but motioning to the leg bag his father wore to urinate.

  “It ripped,” his father said, scanning the empty street and still trying so hard to keep his voice down. “My bag ripped.”

  “How could it rip? We haven’t even—” Marshall stopped, glancing back at their car. “You tore it when you got out of the car, didn’t you?”

  Racing behind his dad and grabbing the pushbars, he added, “Now we gotta get back in the car and go all the way home…”

  “I won’t make it home.”

  Marshall froze. “Wha?”

  His father stopped the wheelchair, keeping his head down and his back to his son. He’d say these words once, but he wouldn’t say them again: “I can’t make it, Marshall. I’m gonna have an accident.”

  Marshall’s mouth gaped open, but no words came out. For most of his life, because of the wheelchair, he had been nearly at eye level with his father. But he’d never noticed it until this moment.

  “I can help you, Dad.” Grabbing the pushbars, Marshall spun the wheelchair around, running hard up the sidewalk. The closest store was Lester’s clothing store.

  His father was silent. But Marshall saw the way he was shifting uncomfortably in his seat.

  “Almost there,” Marshall promised, running hard, his head tucked down like a charging bull.

  There was a loud krunk as the legs of the metal wheelchair collided with the concrete step.

  “I need help! Open up!” Marshall shouted, rapping his fist against Lester’s glass door. The small bell that announced each customer rang lightly at the impact.

  “Dad, tip back!” Marshall yelled as Dad popped a wheelie, and one of the employees, a thirtysomething woman with bad teeth and perfectly straight brown hair, opened the store’s front door.

  “It’s an emergency! Grab the front of the chair!” Marshall yelled as the woman obliged, bending down. He jammed his own palms underneath the pushbars. “On C…” he added. “A… B…”

  There was another loud krunk as the back wheels of the chair climbed the first step, wedging just below the second.

  “Almost there! Just one more!” Marshall said.

  “I’m not gonna make it,” his father insisted.

  “You’ll make it, Dad. I promise, you’ll make it!”

  “Sir, you need to stop moving,” the employee added, getting ready to lift again.

  “Here we go,” Marshall insisted, his voice cracking. “Last one. On C…!”

  “Marsh, I’m sorry… I can’t.”

  “You can, Dad! On C…!” Marshall pleaded.

  His father shook his head, his eyes welling with tears. As he clutched the armrests of his chair, his hands were shaking, like he was trying to claw his way out of his skin… out of the chair… Like he was trying to run from his own body.

  “A… B…”

  With one final krunk, the wheelchair slammed and bounced over the store’s threshold, a wave of warmth embracing them as they rolled inside.

  In front of them, Marshall saw a crush of customers, almost all of them moms with kids, weaving between the rows of clothes racks, all closing in on them.

  It was all okay.

  “Hold on, I think something spilled,” the employee announced.

  The sound was unmistakable. A steady patter that drummed against the wood floor. When he heard it, Marshall didn’t look down. He couldn’t.

  “Oh God,” the employee blurted. “Is that—?”

  “Pee-pee…” A five-year-old girl began to giggle, pointing at the small puddle growing beneath Marshall’s father’s chair.

  From where he was standing, behind the wheelchair as he clutched the pushbars to keep standing, Marshall could see only the back of his father. For years, he had wondered how tall his dad actually was. But at this exact moment, as his father shrank down into his seat, urine still running down and dripping off the stump of his leg, Marshall knew that his father would never look smaller.

  “Here…” a quick-thinking customer called out, pulling tissues from her purse. Marshall knew her. She worked with his mom at the church. The wife of Pastor Riis; everyone called her Cricket. “Here, Marshall, let us help you…”

  In a blur of guilt and kindness, every employee and customer in the shop was doing the same, throwing paper towels on the mess, making small talk, and pretending this kind of thing happened all the time. Sagamore was still a small town. A church town. A town that, ever since the Lusks’ accident, always looked out for Marshall… and his mom… and especially for his poor dad in that wheelchair.

  But as the swell of women closed in around him, Marshall wasn’t looking at his father, or the puddle of urine. The only thing he saw was the blond boy with the messy mop of hair staring at him from the corner of the store, back by one of the sale racks.

  It was one thing to be mortified in front of a roomful of strangers. It was quite another to be mortified in front of someone you know.

  “Marshall, we called your mom. She’s on her way,” the pastor’s wife leaned in and told him.

  Marshall nodded, pretending all was okay. But he never took his eyes off the blond boy in the corner—his fellow fifth grader named Beecher, who wouldn’t look away.

  There was concern and sadness in Beecher’s eyes. There was empathy too. But all Marshall saw was the pity.

  4

  Today

  Washington, D.C.

  Wait, you know him?” Tot asks as I stand in his cubicle, staring down at Marshall’s mugshot. My legs are stiff, my body’s numb, and my skin feels like all the blood in my veins suddenly went solid.

  “Beecher—”

  “His name’s not Ozzie. It’s Marsh. Marshall. In seventh grade, we used to call him Marshmallow.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?”

  “Not since junior high.”

  “And did he know her?” Tot asks.

  I look up from the phone. I thought this was a trap by the President. But from Tot’s question, he’s also worried it’s a trap by her—the other person who happens to come from our small town.

  Clementine.

  My childhood crush, my first kiss, and the girl who, two months ago, was the one who uncovered the President’s ruthless attack and tried to blackmail him with it.

  I know. I need better taste in women.

  “You think Clementine—?”

  The door to our office opens behind us. The other archivists are starting to arrive. I scratch the back of my blond hair and hold up a finger. Time to take this outside. As we head back into the hallway, it’s now swirling with the morning crowds. The Secret Service agents are long gone, but we both stay silent, beelining for the metal door that takes us into the dark library stacks at the heart of the National Archives. Motion sensor lights pop on, following us as we pass row after row of book-filled shelves.

  “You think Clementine had something to do with this murder?” I ask, still keeping my voice down as I make a sharp left, following behind Tot as he stops at our usual hiding spot, a rusty metal table at the end of the row.

  “She had something to do with the last one, didn’t she?” Tot asks. “Last time she showed up, she used your access at the Archives to blackmail President Wallace. Then she shot and killed Palmiotti, disappeared with the proof of the President’s attack, and nearly destroyed your life in the process. You really want to see what she does for an encore?”

  “You don’t know there’s an encore.”

  “Beecher, her father is Nico Hadrian,” he says, referring to the assassin who once tried to put a bullet in a P
resident and now has a permanent room at St. Elizabeths mental institution. “You know Clementine’s coming back. She knows about the Culper Ring. So if she’s still going after the President—”

  “She didn’t go after him. She was blackmailing him for information about her dad.”

  “And you believe that? Didn’t she also say she was dying of some newly discovered cancer, and that your own dead father is actually alive?”

  “She was lying about my father!”

  “I know she was, and I also know how much that one hurt. Clementine isn’t just a manipulator, Beecher—she’s a hunter, no different than her dad. She went after the President, she killed Palmiotti, and she’ll happily do it again. The only reason she reached out to you is because she needed a fall guy. Just like now,” Tot says, his gray beard glowing in the darkness of the stacks. “C’mon, you knew it was just a matter of time. Clementine wasn’t blackmailing the President for money. She wanted information about her own dad, which you know she’s still craving. So if she’s trying to offer something to the President, or simply to take a crack at you for stopping her last time, wouldn’t this be the perfect way to do it: help the President get you caught up in a murder that you can’t get out of? All she has to do is connect with her old friend Marshall—”

  “They’re not old friends,” I say.

  “They didn’t know each other?”

  “If they did, they weren’t close.”

  Tot thinks on this, digesting the information. “You do realize that your hometown is full of crazy people, right?”

  I nod, still holding Tot’s phone and staring down at Marshall’s mugshot. From the puttylike texture that makes his face droop, to the way his right eye sags, Marsh looks at least ten years older than me. And the victim of ten times the suffering.

  “So if Clementine doesn’t have a hand in it, you think the President put Marshall up to this?” Tot asks.

  “I have no idea. All I know is, two minutes after you tell me the President’s about to kick me in the face, I’m suddenly being accused of a crime that should be handled by the D.C. Police, but is magically in the hands of the Secret Service. And did you hear what those agents said? The cops arrested Marshall for murder, but he’s somehow already out on the street? Doesn’t that seem a little smelly to you?”

  “Maybe he posted bail?” Tot offers.

  “He didn’t post bail,” a robotic voice says through Tot’s phone. Immaculate Deception.

  I shoot Tot a look. “You let him listen the entire time?”

  “There’s no record of bail being posted,” Mac interrupts. “All it says is released. Either they had nothing on him, or Marshall’s got big friends who don’t mind calling in big favors.”

  Tot doesn’t have to say it. This is it. The President’s hitting back.

  When I started at the Archives, I learned that good archivists follow the rules, while great archivists follow their hunch.

  “They said he killed a preacher?” I ask, still staring down at Marsh’s mugshot.

  “Yeah, with your name in his pocket. Why?”

  “No reason.”

  Tot’s blind in one eye, but he still sees all. “Beecher, I know that look. And I know that brain of yours never lets anything go—it’s what makes you a great archivist. But whatever you’re thinking with Marshall, you need to stop remembering. This isn’t your childhood friend anymore.”

  Of course, Tot’s right. I look at Marsh’s burned face now, almost like a mask. Then my mind flips back to Wisconsin, scouring old memories and searching for connections. Maybe this is another trap by Clementine. Or the President, who wants to shut me up and still blames me for the death of his best friend. Or maybe he’s after the Culper Ring. But as Marsh’s dead eyes stare back at me—

  “I can get us into the crime scene,” Immaculate Deception announces through Tot’s phone.

  He acts like it’s good news. And it is. The more information, the better. But in my head, I’m still replaying Tot’s earlier warning: that the President already knows how this ends. So as we rush out of the stacks and the automatic lights pop on in our wake, I can’t shake the feeling that everything we’re now doing…

  … is exactly what the President wants.

  5

  There’s a band of yellow police tape covering the side door. Tot’s too old to duck under it. He tugs it aside, letting it flap in the air like the tail of a kite. I follow slowly behind him, into the scene of the crime.

  As we enter St. John’s Church, it looks like an old colonial house filled with office furniture.

  “Y’mind signing in for me?” a friendly voice calls out.

  On our right, a guy with tightly cropped blond hair and an athletic build that stretches his dark suit approaches us with such an authoritative stride that even Tot takes a step back.

  “We’re here to see Hayden Donius,” Tot says, though I don’t recognize the name.

  “Just sign in. Clipboard’s over there,” he says, pointing to an antique side table, his arm muscles flexing from the motion. “Here’s a pen; don’t steal it,” he jokes, shoving a blue-and-orange University of Virginia pen into Tot’s hands.

  In a blur, he’s gone, leaving Tot and me alone with…

  “Hayden Donius…” a tall man with a soft voice and an out-of-date, gray, three-piece suit says. With an anxious both-hands handshake, he introduces himself as the executive director of the church. “And you’re the friend of—”

  Tot nods, cutting him off. The two men exchange a long glance, and I remember what Tot said when he first invited me into the Culper Ring. Their membership is small, but their friends are many.

  “I-I truly… we appreciate you coming…” Hayden says, his voice shaky as Tot breezes past the side table, ignoring the sign-in sheet and eyeing the wide window on our right.

  I see what Tot’s looking at. Through the window, past the barren trees of Lafayette Park, there’s a perfect view of the city’s most famous landmark. The White House. Home of President Orson Wallace.

  “Pretty darn close to the murder,” I say with a glance.

  Tot nods, well aware of how fishy this is—and how familiar.

  Two months ago, it was Clementine. Today, it’s Marshall. Two murderers, both from my same tiny hometown, and both this close to the President of the United States. It gets even worse when I think about how fast they let Marshall out of jail even though he’s supposedly a murder suspect. Even if Tot didn’t tell me the President was gunning for me, how many people have pull like that?

  “We should get started,” Tot says, knowing that the only way to stop the President is to prove what he’s really doing.

  Leading us inside, Hayden looks tired, like he’s been up all night.

  I glance around. There are barely six offices in the entire church. This place is small. The rector who had his throat slashed wasn’t just some coworker. He was Hayden’s friend.

  “Sorry, fellas,” a young black policeman says as we approach the office at the end of the main hall. “Detectives said no one gets inside until they’re back from lunch and the techs are done.”

  “But that’s my office,” Hayden protests. “I need to be able to do my job.”

  The officer nods but doesn’t budge. “They say no one, they mean no one. I don’t make the rules until they give me the suit and tie.”

  He waits for us to argue, but from our spot near the doorway, we can see everything inside: Two evidence technicians—one Asian, one bald—flit around the office, making notes and taking a few final photographs. In the corner, a few yellow plastic evidence placards are marked with a directional arrow that shows the blood spatter sprayed across the bookcase and the window. That’s where the killer slit the rector’s throat.

  It’s all in the police report that Mac got for us on the way here. One shot in the back; throat slashed in the front. Hayden heads up the hallway toward the actual church and pews, but it’s not until we reach a set of open double doors, with a strip of yellow
police tape across them, that he suddenly slows down.

  To bring us in here, he’s breaking the rules. Breaking the law. Luckily, he knows that some things are more important.

  “Promise you’ll be fast,” he begs as I lift the police tape and rush inside. The ceiling rises, revealing ornate balconies, the wide dome, and the stained glass windows that fill the Church of the Presidents with a kaleidoscope of morning light. The room stretches back with half a football field worth of pews, but it’s the familiar church smell of rose candles, old books, and stale air that takes me back to childhood and fills me with memories of my own dead father.

  “They think the killer started here,” Hayden says, leading us up the aisle. On both sides of us, on the armrest of each pew, a small gold plate identifies donors. Every pew is spoken for, except for the one that’s about a third of the way from the altar: Pew 54. The gold pew plate reads simply, The President’s Pew.

  “I’m surprised the President doesn’t sit in the front row,” Tot says.

  “Blame James Madison,” Hayden explains. “When he was President, they gave him first dibs on one of the pews, but he said, ‘Pick one for me.’ So they put him as a person of the people. Right in the middle, like everyone else.”

  “And President Wallace abides by that?” I ask.

  “He’s only been here once. Some leaders worship more than others. But even Presidents want to be a part of history.” As he says the words, he points inside the pew. On the floor, there are four kneelers with needlepoint cushions for people to pray on. Each cushion has a different name in bright gold letters: George W. Bush. Barack Obama. Leland Manning. And an ancient one—the very first one from two hundred years ago—that says James Madison.

  “Where’s the one for President Wallace?”

  “You only get it when you leave office,” Hayden says, still anxious to keep us moving as he strides toward the back of the room. In every pew are more kneelers. Ronald Reagan. Woodrow Wilson. Bill Clinton. Harry Truman. At one point in time, every single one of them came into this room and bent a knee to God. It should be humbling. But as I picture our current President—and the power he threatened to level against me—I don’t even want to think about it.