The Triggerman Dance

Through this rainsoaked tableau marched the Journal's most celebrated columnist, a tallish and solid woman named Susan Baum. She limped slightly, which gave her a kind of embattled dignity. She was wrapped in a tan Burberry, with the collar: turned up around a hot violet scarf. From beneath her hat bobbed sand-colored curls of hair that framed a square face, deep brown eyes, furiously thick brows, and a mouth set in a perpetual frown. Behind her trailed the Journal publisher, who was apparently too flabbergasted by what had happened to even put on a coat. His white shirt, sleeves still rolled to his elbows, clung to his body like old skin. Next to him was head of plant security and beside him, the executive editor. They approached Rebecca near the raised brick planter.

"M'am," said one of the officers. "Please remain behind the tape."

"Shut up, you fool," said Susan Baum, freezing him with a look of such hostility that the officer actually nodded and backed off.

Susan Baum barged past the TV crew, ruining the intro segment. The attractive on-air reporter, Ensley Moffett, shook he head, ducked under an assistant's umbrella and watched Susan with an air of respectful resignation.

Baum stood some ten feet away from Rebecca and looked down at the body. First she put her hands on her hips and leaned slightly forward, like someone measuring the depth of a hole. Then she stuffed her hands into the Burberry's side pockets and brought out a small notepad. She scribbled something. She gazed past the planter toward the massive Journal building, her eye settling on the young man in the felt hat and leather coat soaked all the way past the knees. She hadn't even known he was there just thirty feet away, stuck in the rain like a post. The "Sporting Life" writer, she thought—John? Jim? Mike?

She turned to her publisher and spoke in a quiet voice. 'I asked Rebecca to bring my car so I wouldn't have to go out in the storm. This was clearly intended for me."

She nodded to the new Lincoln Town Car the Journal supplied for her as a sign of her high status. It sat just to the right of the planter, behind a little sign that said, simply, "Baum." There was a small round hole near the top of the driver's side window, surrounded by an opaque aura of shatters and a spray of what could only be Rebecca Harris's blood. A bulky key chain dangled from the door lock.

With this, two large tears ran down her unquivering cheeks, and Susan Baum took one last look at her part-time assistant lying beside the planter. Then the columnist walked toward the TV crew, accurately assuming that they would want to interview her, limping due to chronically bad circulation in her left foot which today was aggravated by the cold wet weather.

Within an hour, the local police had assembled some apparent facts, scant as they were. Rebecca Harris was shot at least twice—once in the back as she unlocked the door of Susan Baum's Town Car, and once in the chest. The latter could have happened either as she turned when the first bullet hit her, or perhaps after she had fallen by the planter. Firearms and Tool-marks would determine the caliber of the gun. One of the crime scene investigators had already dislodged from the interior of the car next to the Lincoln, a slug which had apparently passed through the young woman, through the Town Car and into the Acura Legend beside it. It had stopped in the burnished wood of the sedan's right-side dash. To the police it looked like a big-bore rifle slug, but that was only a guess.

It was likely fired from one of the two .30/06 cartridge casings that had been collected in the gutter of Fairway Boulevard, where the parking lot ended and the homes began. This corner was easily over three hundred yards from the Lincoln, suggesting a very good marksman using a very good firearm.

Something had been skillfully etched onto the shells: The script was flowing, as if handwritten. It looked like the engraving inside a wedding band, but larger.

One case read, "When in the course of human events—"

The other, "—it becomes necessary."

"Constitutional scholar," said a cop."

“That's the Declaration of Independence," said another.

One neighbor described seeing an older Chevrolet van white, parked streetside before the shots were fired. There were two, three, four or five shots, she wasn't positive. Of course, they had sounded to her like firecrackers. Loud firecrackers. The van was there for "at least twenty minutes" before the shooting. It was gone, westbound on Fairway, just after the shots rang out. She hadn't gotten a look at the van's occupants because when the van was parked she didn't see anybody in it, and by the time she reached the window after hearing the shots, it was already blending into the traffic on Fairway, headed for the Interstate. It was quite possible that the shots had not even come from the van. No plate numbers, no distinguishing characteristics.