Chapter One
November 22, 1963
Dallas, Texas
The weather is really something special today, Sarah Jones thought as she strolled through downtown Dallas. She breathed in the wonderfully fresh air and squeezed her husband Bruce’s hand. Bruce leaned over and kissed his wife on the head with a smile and led them across the street. Fifteen years of marriage and not a missed step along the way for them. Bruce was the same as when they had met in college, Sarah would always say. A tall, handsome soldier just back from defending the world from Hitler. He seemed a little out of place trying to find his way around the Oklahoma campus back then and Sarah was more than happy to help him. Fiercely independent and smarter than most people in her classes, Bruce was instantly attracted to Sarah’s confidence and smile. Of course, he was also attracted to her hypnotic eyes and state track champion frame but if he led with that Sarah would smack the back of his head. “Be attracted to my brain not my body,” she would say whereupon he would reply with, “Can’t I do both?” She could never really get mad at him but in a world where women were not supposed to be smarter than their husbands, she didn’t want to simply be a trophy wife.
A little girl bumped into Sarah as she ran by, proudly waving an American flag. She yelled back her apologies and continued on her way. The streets were filled with happy, patriotic Dallas residents today. The excitement was overwhelming for everyone in the city. Sarah and Bruce couldn’t help but get caught up in at as they crossed Houston Street and stood at the top of a hill leading to a park below. Sarah watched the little girl with the American flag bounce down the hill and skip to her parents sitting on a blanket in the freshly cut grass.
It’s funny, Sarah thought. She had lived in Dallas for a few years now and had never been to Dealey Plaza before last week. It was a small, triangular shaped park where Elm Street and Commerce Street converged together while Main Street split it down the middle. There was not much to do in the Plaza on any other day, yet today it was filled with eager citizens hoping to get a good view of President John F. Kennedy’s motorcade as it made its way through the city. They would cheer and scream as the President passed by then go about their days. Sarah scoffed at how little they really knew. That none of them knew, in a short while, when they would be yelling Kennedy’s name, Sarah would be shooting him dead.
She hadn’t always wanted to kill the President. In fact, she and her husband had voted for him. They fell in love with his charismatic personality and confident persona just like most people in America. Sarah even wore a Kennedy button during the election season. Even when the Kennedy administration was reeling from the failed Bay of Pigs invasion Sarah stayed loyal to her President.
“What that Castro man is doing is awful” Sarah would say to her friends over martinis. “Kennedy should be commended for trying to help the people of Cuba stand up to him.” It was not until September 12, 1962 at Rice University in Texas when Sarah knew he had to die. On that day President Kennedy stood in front of 40,000 people and gave an impassioned speech committing America to landing a man on the moon. And that was one thing that humanity could never do. For the safety of our existence we could not travel to other worlds. This was something Sarah knew with every fiber of her being. She was already angry and scared that the Russians were sending men into space but now America? When Kennedy first approached Congress about his desire to go to the moon Sarah was relieved the reception from the public was cold. Yet Kennedy kept pushing the idea. And then he stood in front of that large crowd and yelled ‘We choose to go the moon’ and suddenly the American people were excited and eager to do what he said. It was at that moment President John F Kennedy needed to die and Sarah and Bruce began planning it almost immediately.
They couldn’t just kill him, otherwise thy would make him a martyr. They also couldn’t use space as their motive. People would think they were insane, and the next president would just continue the path. What they needed was a realistic enemy to blame it on. Then, just a few weeks after the moon speech, they got their angle. The Cuban Missile Crisis had knocked the entire country to its knees in October of 1962. The fear of a nuclear war starting with Russia over a few missile sites in Cuba was enough to terrify anyone. Sarah and Bruce watched, along with the rest of the country, as Kennedy addressed the nation about blockades and lines in the sand. Sarah was reminded why she supported Kennedy as he spoke on her television. He was calming and confident with his words and it made Sarah sad she would have to kill him. A few weeks of tension passed, and the world was still standing and Russia was our enemy.
“What’s your friend’s name?” Sarah had asked Bruce as they ate dinner one night. “The one who lived in Russia?”
“Lee?” Bruce replied. “Lee Oswald?” That’s when Sarah knew what to do.
Sarah looked out over Dealey Plaza with a sense of pride. They had many of the pieces in place for their assassination plan from the start except the location and Kennedy’s vanity tour across Texas gave it to them. Dealey Plaza was a small, confined area with tall buildings surrounding it. Ample locations for their patsy, Lee to take the shot. Bruce was the one who suggested the Book Depository building to Lee. He explained how Lee would have the perfect spot to watch the motorcade approach from the top floors and follow it as it moved through the plaza. Lee was eager to prove his worth and jumped at the opportunity to help. It was easy to spin his head in circles and make him think he was in control.
Bruce thought there would be more people in the plaza than there were. There were still a lot, but he had wanted more. More people meant more yelling and cheering when the President drove by. More yelling and cheering meant more chance that nobody would hear their gunfire from behind the rickety wooden fence at the bottom of the hill. The size of the crowd would not change their plans though, so he wrapped his arms around Sarah’s shoulders and smiled like any other happy citizen. The news had already reported that Kennedy’s plane had landed at the airport which meant soon he would be heading towards the city. Sarah surveyed the crowd as they walked until she saw the man she was looking for. She nodded to the man in the black suit carrying the black umbrella as if they were strangers being polite and continued on her way. At first they thought using an umbrella to signal all parties involved would be suspicious if the forecast was calling for clear skies but fate was on their side and it rained during the morning. As Bruce and Sarah walked by the man with the umbrella, he opened it up and began gently spinning it. A little boy having a picnic with his parents nearby thought that peculiar and curious but his mother told him to eat his carrots so he stopped staring. Of course, the boy was correct in finding it odd since the spinning umbrella was a signal to the others that everyone was in place. Six stories up in the Book Depository Lee Harvey Oswald watched Bruce and Sarah cross Elm Street and sneak behind the wooden fence along the grassy knoll. He turned up his radio broadcasting the President’s visit to Dallas and gently cleaned his rifle.
Behind the fence, three menacing looking men in black suits emerged from an expensive sedan and tried to look as normal as possible. They obviously failed and that’s why Sarah had them parked behind the plaza and out of sight. Sarah never really liked them so when they exited the sedan, she ignored them completely and went straight to the car’s trunk. Bruce, on the other hand, seemed to want to be best friends with the overly muscled hired henchman wearing sunglasses in the shade. Male machismo is so idiotic, Sarah thought as one of the henchman opened the trunk and handed her a rifle exactly like the one Lee Oswald was cleaning a few hundred meters away.
“Honey?” she said to her still schmoozing husband. “Do you want to keep talking shop or would you like to shoot the President?” Bruce snapped back into focus and reached for the rifle like a child wanting to hold his new puppy. Sarah rolled her eyes and glared at the henchman her husband was talking to. “Do you have any updates?” she said, the disdain heavy as it came off her tongue. Surprisingly, the man seemed nervous as he replied. A nice suit and big muscles don’t give you a backbone apparently. “Yes ma’am,” he said. “The president’s motorcade left the airport without incident and should be here within ten minutes.”
“And Lee?”
“In position as planned,” the henchman answered. Sarah smiled and stood in front of her husband who was examining the weapon. “Remember,” she instructed for the five hundredth time. “Wait until Lee fires first.” Bruce tried to make her relax with a funny face as if he were telling her not to worry but was met with a hard slap across the cheek. “Don’t!” Sarah snapped. “We have one shot at this, and I will not have you pretending you’re shooting paper targets with your war buddies on a Friday night. Understand?” Bruce tucked his tail between his legs and walked to the fence.
You know those moments in your life when you are positive you have everything accounted for? All the planning and worrying and here you are in that moment and everything is going exactly as planned and then something completely out of nowhere happens and everything falls apart? Sarah and Bruce were about to have that moment. Sarah’s heart was filled with excitement and anticipation watching as Bruce removed a section of the fence plank and pointed his rifle towards the plaza. Gone were her feelings about the President being a smart, confident, attractive leader. She was protecting humanity, even if they didn’t know it. John F Kennedy’s death would put a stop to the outrageous idea of space travel being pushed to the ignorant public. She whispered encouraging words into her husband’s ear and smiled as she examined her surroundings. She watched the growing crowd of bystanders gathering in the streets, American flags waving in the air. She glanced to the Book Depository and wondered if Lee had any idea what was about to happen to him. She looked back at the idiotic four henchmen trying to look casual from the sidewalk. She nodded at Elvis Presley posing next to the Sedan in a glorious, bedazzled white jumpsuit, his sideburns and dark sunglasses as mesmerizing in person as they were on television. She looked up at the clear sky ahead and smiled. ‘Wait, what?’ she thought and shook her head. Elvis? She turned around and froze.
It was Elvis Presley. The King of Rock and Roll. And he was looking right at her and smiling. “Sorry to intrude,” Elvis announced, startling the silly looking men in black suits. This was always his favorite part about revealing himself to criminals. The longer they stared at him in disbelief, the greater he smiled. And today, they were statues.
A little girl stood on the edge of the sidewalk and eagerly searched for the first car of the presidential motorcade to appear at the entrance of the plaza. She had woken up before dawn and had been talking her mother’s ear off all morning about facts regarding John F Kennedy. “Did you know he was a soldier in World War 2?” she asked her mother as she made pancakes? Her mother would listen with feigned curiosity as her daughter brought up fact after fact after fact. Even as they stood on the lawn at Dealey Plaza the little girl talked about the President. Nothing was going to distract her today. Not even the commotion she heard behind the fence near them. It sounded like someone was fighting. It definitely sounded like someone was falling against the fence. But then a car honked its horn in the distance and the little girl remembered why she was there and lost interest in the weird sounds she heard. Her mom always complained about how easily she was distracted, and she certainly didn’t want to have her mother scolding her this morning. Of course, someone had fallen against the fence. The little girl was correct about that. Or rather, was thrown against the fence.
It took nearly thirty seconds of silence before any of the would-be assassins audibly reacted to Elvis standing among them. Sarah let out the slightest gasp of air as if she were trying to say something as Elvis strutted up to the Stones. Bruce was the first to be able to speak. “Elvis?” he blurted. Elvis removed his sunglasses and winked.
“You have the right,” he said, before pausing for dramatic affect. He loved pausing on his signature line. “The right to a JUDO CHOP!”
A lighting quick strike to Bruce’s head knocked him out before he hit the ground. Elvis lunged forward and grabbed the rifle from Sarah and delivered a snap kick to the gut of one of the suits. One minute ago, Sarah thought she was going to kill John F Kennedy and now her entire plan was crashing down by a karate chopping Elvis Presley. He was so fast, she thought, as he skillfully took out the four men she had hired to be her muscle. It almost seemed like he was dancing as he fought. In a matter of seconds, the four men in suits and her husband were sprawled at her feet. Elvis continued to dance, maybe for her or maybe just for himself. He took apart the rifle like it was tinker toys and threw the pieces to the ground. Pulling his sunglasses back on he spoke into the cuff of his jumpsuit. “Hostiles have been neutralized, baby. Tell Lee he can stand down.”
Elvis strutted up to Sarah who still hadn’t moved. He moved in so close she could smell his cologne and he looked deep into her eyes. “But, what,” she finally muttered, so confused. Elvis smiled. Another satisfying performance.
“Thank you,” he replied. “Thank you very much.” She didn’t even notice the man behind her until he had her in handcuffs and was walking her away to a van that had arrived to help clean up the mess. Elvis spun around to the street as the Presidential Motorcade entered Dealey Plaza. Kennedy’s car slowly drove by, the President smiling and waving to the crowd. Nobody would notice his gentle wink in the direction of the Grassy Knoll. A silent thank you to his friend.
