When the band struck up “Yankee Doodle,” Mazorca realized that he had found his moment. He might not get this close again. One shot. He knew he could get away. The noise and the crowd would create the confusion he needed. And nobody would suspect a preacher who clutched a Bible.
He had thought seriously about giving up. After descending the Washington Monument early in the morning, he walked to the edge of the Potomac River. Unsure about what to do, he headed east, toward the Capitol. He passed a few people who took no particular heed of him. With his hat pulled down tight, his collar up, his spectacles on, his cheeks covered in stubble, and his eyes cast to the ground, he avoided suspicion. The Bible-or a book that appeared on the outside to be a Bible-was a fortunate coincidence because it matched his outfit. Mazorca did not like to rely upon luck, but in this case he welcomed it.
Luck seemed to strike again as he went by the Capitol. Soldiers were gathering by the hundreds. He did not want to go anywhere near them, but he stopped to watch. A few minutes later, a carriage pulled up. A tall man in a black stovepipe hat got out. Mazorca did not believe in fate, but Lincoln’s sudden appearance gave him pause. Rather than conceding defeat, he decided to claim victory.
He listened to Lincoln’s jokes, his brief remarks, and his swearing-in of the soldiers. It was impossible to get close enough. He needed to arrive at almost point-blank range, and ideally when the crowd was starting to break up. If all eyes were locked on Lincoln, there was no way Mazorca could succeed.
Then it happened. The soldiers fell out of rank, the band struck up a tune, and a mass of people swarmed the president. Most were soldiers, but not all-and Mazorca plunged in behind a few civilians. He noticed that Lincoln was heading toward the Capitol. He worked through the crowd to get in position for the president to walk right past him.
When Lincoln was a dozen feet away, Mazorca fixed his hat a final time. He reached for his book’s yellow ribbon and jerked it. The music muffled the click of the gun’s cocking. When Lincoln was ten feet away, Mazorca grabbed the red ribbon and held it taut. With the book at waist level, he slanted it slightly upward so that its bullet would rip into Lincoln’s chest. A soldier stood in front of him, blocking his shot. When Lincoln was five feet away, the soldier reached out to shake the president’s hand.
“Sir,” shouted the soldier, “I believe that God Almighty and Abraham Lincoln are going to save this country!”
Mazorca took half a step to his right. He remained behind the soldier, but the book had an angle. He pulled hard on the ribbon. The gun went off.
Rook did not hear the shot-nobody did, amid the noise of the crowd and the music of the band-but he felt the bullet dig into his left arm. What he heard, instead, was laughter: Lincoln had made another one of his wisecracks, telling the soldier who was shaking his hand, “Private, I believe you’re half right!”
At first, Rook merely felt the bullet’s impact. Uncertain about the pastor’s actual identity, he had tried to force his body in front of the president. When he saw the man turn and move away swiftly, he knew it was Mazorca. He wanted to point and yell, but it was too late: the searing pain of his wound made him clench his teeth and double over. Lincoln kept walking and his pack of followers streamed by Rook. Nobody knew that a shot had been fired or that the colonel had been hit.
When Rook stood upright, he saw Mazorca darting toward a door beneath the Capitol steps. The assassin opened it, went in, and slammed it shut. Rook raced after him, stumbling at first and then gaining his stride. He finally yelled, “Get that man!”-but still nobody heard. He removed his pistol from his holster as he approached the door. Reaching to open it, he felt the pain tear through his left arm. Somehow, he pulled the door open. The sound of running footsteps echoed down a hallway.
Rook chased after them. He figured that he had at least one advantage over Mazorca: he knew his way around the Capitol, and Mazorca presumably did not. It was a large building, and Rook certainly did not know every twist and turn, but he had a general sense of its layout. He knew where its passageways led, where its staircases went, and where its exits were. From what he could tell, Mazorca had bolted through a foyer, turned right where it intersected with a long hall, and was running toward the Senate side of the building.
Rook hurried to the intersection and stopped. He could still hear Mazorca’s footsteps, but he did not want to present himself as a target. On the ground, a book lay open-except that it was not really a book. Its pages were hollowed out. The gun was inside, with ribbons attached for cocking and firing. A hole on the bottom edge of its carved-up pages made Rook realize that this was the gun that had shot him moments before. Mazorca must have discarded it as he ran.
The sound of the footsteps grew fainter. Rook knew he needed to keep moving. He peered around the corner, down the long hallway. Mazorca was not in view. About forty feet in front of him, resting on the ground, he saw the black hat that Mazorca had worn.
The pain in his arm intensified. Rook tried to massage the wound, but the gun in his hand made it impossible. He knew he had to keep moving. If he stayed where he was, he would lose Mazorca. Again.
He sprinted down the hall past a series of closed doors that led to committee rooms. He still heard footsteps ahead, reverberating off the walls. It sounded like they fell on steps.
Rook knew exactly where Mazorca was headed: those stairs led up to a wide hallway just outside the Senate cloakrooms. When the colonel arrived at the staircase, he trained his pistol on the steps, but Mazorca was nowhere in sight.
Climbing the steps slowly, Rook kept looking upward. His arm throbbed, and he could feel blood begin to soak the sleeve of his uniform. It was not gushing out the way it would from hitting a major artery, but the warm dampness was becoming apparent. He did all he could to block the sensation from his mind.
At the top of the steps, Rook gained a view of the area just outside the Senate cloakrooms-it was technically a hallway, but it was wide enough to feel like an actual room. The bedding of soldiers covered the floor. The men who slept here were outside.
Rook wondered if Mazorca had gone to the right, through one of the cloakrooms and into the Senate chamber itself. Then he heard a door shut down a hallway to his left. If it was Mazorca, it meant that he was in the large room where the Supreme Court met. It was sometimes called the Old Senate Room because senators had used it before moving into their more spacious chamber at the north end of the building.
As he ran toward the room, Rook wondered why Mazorca would have chosen the door. If he meant to escape, there were better choices. Then he understood: ahead, in the rotunda, came the sounds of soldiers filing back into the Capitol. The assassin apparently wanted to avoid them. A new thought troubled him: if Lincoln had walked up the steps on the outside of the building’s east front, however, he might very well be in the rotunda with them. Was it possible that Mazorca would have another chance to shoot the president?
The thick wooden doors outside the Old Senate Room were shut. Rook moved to open one of them. The door was heavy, and he might have leaned into it with his shoulder but for his injury. He turned the knob and forced it open with his foot.
Inside, he saw the majestic chamber-a semicircular room with a vaulted ceiling. Yet it was in a state of disarray, with desks and chairs shoved to one side to make room for soldiers who needed a place to sleep. Rook raised his pistol and stepped inside. The door swung shut behind him. He did not see Mazorca, but there was no shortage of places to hide.
Something glinted on the ground, catching his eye. Rook looked down. It was a pair of spectacles. His mind had registered nothing more than that when he sensed movement on his left. Mazorca emerged from behind a pillar and rushed toward him with a large knife in his hand. Instinctively, Rook tried to raise his left arm to block the attack, but the pain from his gunshot wound was so sharp that his knees buckled.