His .357, filled with cement, along with Collins 9mm, was at the bottom
of the Severn River at the most remote point they could find. To most
perhaps an unnecessary precaution, but to Burton, no precaution was
unnecessary. The police had one useless slug and would never find the
other. Even if they could, the barrel on his new pistol would be squeaky
clean. Burton wasn’t worried about the ballistics department of the
local Virginia police bringing him down.
Burton hung his head as the events of that night raced through his mind.
The President of the United States was an adulterer who had roughed up
his lay for the night so badly she had tried to kill him and Agents
Burton and Collin had to blow her away.
And then they had covered it all up. That’s what made Burton wince every
time he looked in the mirror. The coverup. They had lied. By their
silence they had lied. But hadn’t he lied all this time? All these
late-night trysts? When he greeted the First Lady each morning? When
he played with their two kids on the rear lawn? Not telling them that
her husband and their father was not nearly so nice and kind and good as
they probably believed he was. As the whole country believed he was.
The Secret Service. Burton grimaced. It was an apt title for an unlikely
reason. The crap he had seen going on over the years. And Burton had
looked the other way. Every agent had, at one time or another. They all
joked or complained about it in private, but that was all. That
particular, if unwelcome, function came with the job. Power made people
crazy; it made them feel invincible. And when something bad happened it
was the working stiffs of the Secret Service who were expected to clean
up the mess.
Several times Burton had picked up the phone to call the Director of the
Secret Service. Tell him the whole story, try to cut his losses. But
each time he had put the phone back down, unable to say the words that
would end his career and, in essence, his life. And with each passing
day, Burton’s hopes grew a little brighter that it might all blow over,
even though his common sense told him that could not possibly happen.
Now it was too late to tell the truth, he felt. Calling in a day or two
later with the story might be explained away, but not now.
His thoughts turned back to the investigation of Christine Sullivan’s
death. Burton had read with great interest the findings of the autopsy,
courtesy of the local police at the request of the President, who was
so, so distraught over the tragedy.
Fuck him too.
A shattered jaw and strangulation marks. His and Collins shots had not
inflicted those injuries. She had good reason to want to Ml him. But
Burton couldn’t let that happen, under no circumstances could he let
that happen. There were few absolutes anymore, but that was sure as hell
one of them.
He had done the right thing. Burton told himself that a thousand times.
The very action he had trained virtually his entire adult life for. The
ordinary person couldn’t understand, could never possibly comprehend how
an agent would think or feel if something bad went down on their watch.
He had talked to one of Kennedy’s agents a long time ago. The man had
never gotten over Dallas. Walking right beside the-President’s limo,
nothing he could do. And the President had died. Right in front of his
eyes, the President’s head had been blown apart. Nothing he could do,
but there was always something. Always another precaution you could have
taken. Turned to the left instead of the right, watched one building
more closely than you had. Scan the crowd with a little more intensity.
Kennedy’s guy had never been the same. Quit the Service, divorced,
finished his human existence in obscurity in some rat’s hole in
Mississippi, but still living in Dallas for the last twenty years of his
life.
That would never happen to Bill Burton. That was why he had hurled his