With that cryptic comment, Kaiser drops his arm and ushers me into room 406.
After moving through the short passage between the closet and the bathroom, I see a man who bears little resemblance to the one who saved my life in 1998. Back then Stone was a tough, tanned, wiry old bird who looked like he could whip men twenty years his junior. Now he’s so jaundiced that his face and hands look as though someone swabbed them with Betadine. He’s propped against the headboard with the covers pulled up to his waist. His eyes have sunk deep into his skull, and his silver hair looks thin and wispy. I haven’t seen many men who look this far gone emerge from a hospital again.
“Hello, Penn,” he says in a reedy voice that’s but an echo of his once powerful baritone. “Come over here and shake my hand.”
I walk around the bed and carefully take his right hand in both of mine. Gently squeezing the papery skin, I notice bruises at both inner elbows, probably from multiple needle sticks. His face, too, is bruised in places, but his hollow eyes still burn with the light of a gas flame. In my peripheral vision I note a plastic urinal behind the lamp on the bedside table and a folded wheelchair leaning against the wall. It’s hard to believe this is the man who took a bullet while trying to save my life in the icy river that ran beside his Colorado cabin.
“I appreciate you coming,” he says, obviously meaning it.
“Wouldn’t have missed it, buddy.”
Kaiser sits on a small sofa beneath the picture window on the wall to my left. Behind him the lights of Natchez glow high on the bluff across the dark river.
Stone gives me a weak smile. “I’d ask about your father, but John has brought me up to speed. You know, back in 1998, after your trial was over, Tom and I had lunch together. We found we had a lot in common. We’re exactly the same age, and we both spent 1950 freezing our asses off in Korea.”
“I’d forgotten that.”
“I know you’re probably baffled by his recent actions. I hope I can give you some insight into why he’s behaved as he has.”
“I sure need it. Is the answer good or bad?”
Stone drops his hand and takes a measured breath. “Once we get to the final truth, I believe that whatever Tom did will ultimately prove justified.”
“Are you referring to the Viola Turner case? Or the Kennedy stuff?”
“Both, I hope. Why don’t you sit down, Penn? I don’t have the wind I used to, so we’d better get to it.”
“Do you want me to sit on the bed? Or can you talk loud enough for me to use the chair by that desk?”
“The chair’s fine.”
As I move back to the desk chair, it strikes me that I’m sitting with the veterans of two wars: Korea and Vietnam. By being born roughly a decade after Kaiser, I won the lottery that spared my generation combat. Neither man comments when I take my .357 Magnum from the small of my back and lay it on the veneer desk.
As I settle back in the chair, Stone folds his hands in his lap, looks down at them, and begins to speak in the voice of a man who has paid a great price for his wisdom. “This meeting may be the last significant thing I do in my life outside a hospital. If it is, I’ll have no complaints. I’ve been certain who gave the order to kill John Kennedy for nearly two years. But I couldn’t prove it, because I didn’t know how he arranged it or who fired the kill shot.”
I glance at the sofa, where Kaiser is silently pleading with me to be patient. “Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy, Dwight. From the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. Anything else is fantasy.”
“No,” he says. “Oswald was in Dealey Plaza that day, and he did shoot President Kennedy. But he didn’t kill Kennedy.”
“Then who did?”
“Before I tell you that, let me tell you how I know Oswald didn’t. I’m not here because some old FBI gomers got together in the rest home and came up with a conspiracy theory.” He gives me a small smile. “Although I suppose you could make that argument. We’re old enough to have read most of the five million pages of public records pertaining to the assassination. But my group has also gained at least limited access to most of the ten thousand records that will remain sealed until 2017.”
This is the first thing I’ve heard that’s surprised me. “Is that where you got your new assassination theory? From the sealed records?”
Stone snorts with disdain. “God, no. Most of those records remain sequestered for one of two reasons. They deal with CIA and FBI operations that either were illegal or showed gross incompetence by still-living officers. Some of it makes waterboarding and drone strikes look like a tea party, but it’s ass-covering, Penn. Nothing more. Every conspiracy nut waiting to find the Dealey Grail in those sealed records is due for some serious disappointment.”
“Then why are we here? How do you know Oswald didn’t fire the kill shot?”
“I’m here because of one forensic fact. It’s been right in front of us—in front of the whole world—ever since we saw the Zapruder film.”
“It’s simple ballistics,” Kaiser interjects. “And undeniable proof of a conspiracy in the Kennedy assassination.”
“Well?” I prompt.
“Oswald fired three shots in Dealey Plaza,” Kaiser says. “He only hit President Kennedy with one of them—in the back. That was the so-called magic bullet that produced seven wounds between Kennedy and Governor Connally, and remained ‘fairly pristine.’ You remember that?”
“I saw the movie. How could I forget?”
“Exactly. Oliver Stone’s film did an even greater disservice to the head shot—the kill shot. District Attorney Jim Garrison created the theory of the improbable ‘magic bullet,’ then tried to prove that the shot to Kennedy’s head was fired from the grassy knoll. You remember?”