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It was a good assessment. Lee had escaped Russia when he was tired of it; he would also be crafty
enough to escape the Book Depository after shooting the president in spite of the almost immediate
police and Secret Service response. Of course it was a quick response; plenty of people were going to see
exactly where the shots came from.
Lee would be questioned at gunpoint in the second-floor break room even before the speeding
motorcade delivered the dying president to Parkland Hospital. The cop who did the questioning
would recall later that the young man had been reasonable and persuasive. Once foreman Roy Truly
vouched for him as an employee, the cop would let Ozzie Rabbit go and then hurry upstairs to seek
the source of the gunshots. It was possible to believe that, if not for his encounter with Patrolman
Tippit, Lee might not have been captured for days or weeks.
“Sadie, the Dallas cops are going to shock the world with their incompetence. I’d be nuts to trust
them. They might not even act on an anonymous tip.”
“But why? Why wouldn’t they?”
“Right now because the guy’s not even in Texas, and he doesn’t mean to come back. He’s planning
to defect to Cuba.”
“Cuba? Why in the world Cuba?”
I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter, because it’s not going to work. He’s going to return to Dallas,
but not with any plan to kill the president. He doesn’t even know Kennedy’s coming to Dallas.
Kennedy himself doesn’t know, because the trip hasn’t been scheduled yet.”
“But you know.”
“Yes.”
“Because in the time you come from, all this is in the history books.”
“The broad strokes, yes. I got the specifics from the friend who sent me here. I’ll tell you the whole
story someday when this is over, but not now. Not while the machine with all those teeth is still
running full tilt. The important thing is this: if the police question the guy at any point before mid-
November, he’s going to sound completely innocent, because he is innocent.” Another of those vast
cloud-shadows rolled over us, temporarily dropping the temperature by ten degrees or so. “For all I
know, he may not have made up his mind entirely until the moment he pulled the trigger.”
“You speak as if it’s already happened,” she marveled.
“In my world, it has.”
“What’s important about mid-November?”
“On the sixteenth, the Morning News is going to tell Dallas about Kennedy’s motorcade down Main
Street. L— the guy will read that and realize the cars will go right past the place where he’s working.
He’s probably going to think it’s a message from God. Or maybe the ghost of Karl Marx.”
“Where’s he going to work?”
I shook my head again. That wasn’t safe for her to know. Of course, none of this was safe. Yet (I’ve
said it before, but it bears repeating) what a relief to tell at least some of it to another person.
“If the police talked to him, they might at least frighten him out of doing it.”
She was right, but what a horrifying risk. I’d already taken a smaller one by talking to de
Mohrenschildt, but de Mohrenschildt wanted those oil leases. Also, I’d done more than frighten him
—I’d scared the living bejesus out of him. I thought he’d keep mum. Lee, on the other hand . . .
I took Sadie’s hand. “Right now I can predict where this man’s going the same way I could predict
where a train is going to go, because it can’t leave the tracks. Once I step in, once I meddle, all bets are
off.”
“If you talked to him yourself?”
A truly nightmarish image came into my mind. I saw Lee telling the cops, The idea was put into my
head by a man named George Amberson. If it hadn’t been for him, I never would have thought of it.