Part 39 (1/2)
Chapter Twenty-Two.
From the transcript at trial: Commonwealth of Virginia v. Alvin Scheer CROSS EXAMINATIONBY MS. CAPUTO:.
Q. So you found yourself up in that steeple, did you, Alvin?
A. No, ma'am. I didn't ”find” myself there. I put myself there. Like I already done told you, I went up there to shoot the President. I ain't ashamed of it and I ain't trying to hide it. The thing is though...
Galilee Episcopal Church, Virginia Beach, Virginia Alvin did the best he knew how. A hunter most of his life, he kept to the shadows. s.h.i.+vering, for the weather had turned for the worse, he unrolled the rifle from the tarp and then rolled the tarp into a rest for the rifle. This he placed on the corner of the interior bar encircling the church's bell. Then, getting behind the bar, he checked for his line of sight to the podium. Satisfied, he placed the rifle, a scoped military .30-06 of a very old design, on the rest and waited.
Cavalier Oceanfront Hotel, Seventh Floor,
Virginia Beach, Virginia Smythe had actually checked into the hotel twice on the prior day. The first time, to a room away from the land and toward the ocean, he had done so under his own face and credentials. The second time, checking into a room facing the Hilltop Cavalier's eastern side, he had used the press credentials provided by Carroll, a bit of makeup, and a false mustache.
He had also taken up two loads of baggage on those different occasions. On the first, it was the normal couple of bags anyone might have brought in, though what was in one of those bags was not precisely normal. The second load was not much of a load at all, just an overnight shoulder bag.
From the first load he produced a rifle. Not just any rifle, this was a custommade 7mm Remington magnum, mounting a superb scope and modified to be dis- and re-a.s.sembled. It lay in its case, along with a small tripod, inside one of Smythe's bags. The case and its contents Smythe took to the room facing the Cavalier Hilltop.
Inside, and safe from prying eyes, Smythe put on a pair of gloves and a shower cap. Then he adjusted the blinds, moved a table and a chair, and set up the tripod. The rifle he removed in its two major pieces. These he joined together with the flick of a couple of latches and the easy tightening of a single screw.
The rea.s.sembled rifle then went into its custom cradle on the tripod.
Smythe went back and forth between the blinds and the scope, adjusting both fixtures and rifle until he had a clear sight picture of podium from which, he knew from Carroll, Rottemeyer was to address the press.
Smythe knew the range to the podium to within a meter and a half. Even so, he checked and rechecked that range with a small, hand-held range finder. Then he rechecked the scope adjustment to confirm it was properly set for the range.
The window was fixed, immobile, as Smythe had a.s.sumed it would be. This presented no obstacle. He placed a small, handmade wooden implement on a stand on the sill by the window. With two more trips back to the scope Smythe was able to place the implement precisely where he needed to cut away a small section of the hotel window's gla.s.s.
The attachment of a suction cup and the deft swirl of a gla.s.scutter preceded the removal of a small piece of the window. This Smythe put gently aside.
Lastly, Smythe removed from the smaller bag, the one already in the land-facing room, a plastic body garment which he donned before settling down behind his rifle to wait.
Galilee Episcopal Church, Virginia Beach, Virginia Alvin had noticed one of the counter-snipers, the one on the roof of the Cavalier Hilltop. As he said later, he was uneducated, but not exactly stupid. Where there's one, there's liable to be more than one. Where there's one, there's liable to be more than one.
He promptly removed himself from view, trying to look as innocent as possible as he did so. From a window lower in the steeple, blending into the shadows at the far side, he kept a watch of the podium where he believed the President was going to stand during the press conference.
Alvin knew little of the personal security measures taken by the Secret Service where the life of a President of the United States was concerned. And he was a hunter. A center of ma.s.s shot was natural to his experience, though he had taken head shots when everything was perfectly suited to them. Yet the more he looked at that podium, the more he tried to picture the not very tall woman who was going to stand behind it, the more he realized that a center of ma.s.s shot just might not be possible.
d.a.m.n, d.a.m.n, d.a.m.n. I'm a good shot, Daddy always said so. But a head shot? At this range? I dunno. And, then too, I don't know if'n I can go through with it: looking a human bein' in the face while I shoot her. I dunno.
Alvin shook his head, uncertain. Then he reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. There was a little money in it, but, he thought, Ain't gonna have no use for money where I'm goin'. Ain't gonna have no use for money where I'm goin'.
He pulled out an old picture of his wife. Even at the best of times, she had been no more than slightly pretty. Yet Alvin had loved her with all his heart. To him, she had always been beautiful, inside and out.
He gazed at the picture, longingly, for some appreciable time. His mind went back to a time he had been happy, to a time when he'd had a decent job, a normal family, a wife. He didn't so much think about as feel the indignation of being subjected to the whims of a doctrinaire and arrogant social worker, of being forced onto charity, of being threatened with the loss of his children.
Alvin closed his eyes, shutting off the image of his wife as she had been when he had first seen her and replacing it with the shrunken, pale, husk of a woman in a cheap hospital bed, with needles and tubes stuck into her as she had been when he had last seen her.
Finally, he was sure. Nope, these people, and especially that d.a.m.ned president, have got to take responsibility for what they done. They had all the power; they're responsible for what happened to me and my woman. I can do this.
Satisfied, he turned his eyes back to the podium.
Presidential Limousine, Atlantic Avenue, Virginia Beach, Virginia Her feelings were all spilled out, from her speech to the convention, leaving the President to feel little but emptiness inside. Even the thought of going to her own, formal, political seppuku did not move her. For Wilhelmina Rottemeyer's impending press conference was for no other purpose than to announce her resignation from the office of President of the United States.
Though her body felt empty, her mind was full, full of thoughts and questions and wonderings. What went wrong? How did it all go so wrong, so quickly? I was at the top, the pinnacle. Not only at the top, but with more real power than anyone, even Roosevelt and Lincoln, had ever had.
Did I move too fast, as Carroll said once? Or did I move too slowly, as Vega insisted? One thing I know I did wrong; I underestimated that d.a.m.ned wetback from Texas. But who would have guessed that that little no-account, who wasn't even independent enough to keep her own name when she married, would have had the will to move her state almost to independence? Breaking me in the bargain.
Should I have left that old priest alone? Left the anti-abortion nuts alone? How could I? I had a const.i.tuency, not the least important part of it, my own federal law enforcement chiefs. How much hold over them would I have lost if I had caved in on the priest? Too much, I think.
And I had plans, I had dreams, for this country and for the world. Sure I was ambitious for myself, but who ever got anything worthwhile done that wasn't ambitious? I saw a world at peace, because why should anyone fight when everyone has enough? I saw a world where the environment was protected and cherished. I saw a world where everyone was equal...well, maybe women a little more equal than men. What was so wrong with that?
I wish sometimes that there really were a G.o.d so that I could ask him what I should have done.