Free The Inside Ring by Mike Lawson

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    “How’s it going?” DeMarco asked.
    “Like watchin’ paint dry,” Mike replied. “He leaves his house at six thirty and gets here at eight—395 was a fuckin’ parking lot this morning. He goes directly to this building where he stays all morning. What he’s doin’ in there, I don’t know. At twelve he comes outside, grabs a burrito from a street vendor, takes a walk around the Mall, then goes back inside the building.”
    “Did Mattis see you tailing him?”
    Now Mike looked at DeMarco; his stare answered DeMarco’s question.
    “And I take it no one approached him while he was taking his lunchtime walk.”
    “You take it right,” Mike said.
    They sat in silence for a while, Mike watching the building, DeMarco watching the women walk by. As he sat there, DeMarco thought back to the FBI briefing. What Edwards had done fascinated him. He couldn’t imagine a man lying in a dark, claustrophobic space for two days waiting for the opportunity to take a shot and then having the balls to stay in the shooting blind while the FBI scoured the bluff above him for evidence.
    Which made DeMarco think of something else: Why did he take the shot he took? There must have been an easier shot Edwards could have taken while the President was fishing. Instead he waited until the day the President was departing, surrounded by his bodyguards. Then he remembered that Prudom had said that while the President was on the river the Secret Service had patrolled the bluff, so maybe that’s what had prevented Edwards from shooting earlier.
    The skill it had taken to sneak into and out of the area was also remarkable. Prior to the shooting Edwards had to get past a Secret Service cordon to get to the shooting blind he had previously dug. After the FBI’s forensic people arrived on-site, Prudom said they worked sixteen hours a day, and when they weren’t there, the area had been patrolled to keep out sightseers and protect the crime scene. Yet the assassin had left the shooting blind, probably the day after the shooting, reconcealed the blind, and either climbed back up to the top of the bluff or down the bluff to the river, carrying his waste and all his gear with him. Then he waltzed past all the people guarding the site.
    The rifle also intrigued DeMarco. Why would Edwards have taken the assassination weapon back to his house? Why didn’t he just dump it the first chance he got? It was almost as if . . .
    “You ever seen pictures of Mickey Mantle, Joe?” Mike said. “I don’t mean right before he died of cancer, but when he was playing.”
    “Sure,” DeMarco said.
    “Well that’s who this kid looks like. He looks like the Mick, ol’ number seven. Why am I tailing a guy who works for the Secret Service and looks like Mickey Mantle, Joe?”
    DeMarco rose from the bench. “I’ll check in with you again tomorrow, Mike. Thanks for helping out on this.”
    “Sure, Joe,” Mike said, “but if I gotta spend another day sittin’ in the sun on a concrete bench, I’m gonna go crazy. And when I do, you’re gonna be the first person I kill.”

    DEMARCO LIVED IN a small town house in Georgetown, on P Street. The town house, a carbon copy of several others on the block, was a narrow two-story affair made of white-painted brick. Wrought-iron grillwork covered the windows; ivy clung to the walls; azaleas bloomed in the flowerbeds in the spring. It was a cozy place, and he and his neighbors pretended the artfully twisted black bars barricading their lower-floor windows were installed for aesthetic reasons. He had purchased the house the year he married.
    The interior of DeMarco’s home looked as if thieves had backed a moving van up to the front door and removed everything of value—which, in a way, is exactly what had happened. A house once filled with fine furniture, Oriental rugs, and pricey artwork now contained only a few haphazardly selected pieces that DeMarco had bought at two yard sales one Saturday morning. The