"What most people could never know is that some of the shooters were armed with blank rounds, too. This meant that no one could really know who fired the fatal shot that killed Kennedy, giving every single one of us plausible deniability. We'd covered every eventuality, so the whole op was pretty much flawless." Heller explained.
He realized the old man was making a lot of sense here, but in everything he'd heard about the Kennedy assassination, Jason had never come across anything about these “ZR Rifle” guys Heller had just casually mentioned a few moments ago.
Heller seemed to sense his confusion. “"ZR Rifle” was a covert military unit, controlled by Richard Nixon and several other members of the National Security Council. The unit was put together to train anti-Castro fighters to overthrow the Communist government in Cuba, but we never got to use them because Kennedy put a halt to the whole thing. That meant those guys were ready and willing to take action against Kennedy, even without our help. An entire team of trained killers, eager for a little bit of revenge.”
"The funny thing is, or at least it's funny to me, is that even the doctors at Parklands hospital said the wound on Kennedy's throat looked like an entry wound and not an exit wound,” Heller snorted. “Lucky for us, no one paid attention to those doctors. Hysteria and ignorance did most of our work for us. If the Internet had existed back then, we'd have been exposed overnight. It didn't, so we weren't."
A few frames from the famous Zapruder ran through Jason's mind. This was the footage taken by Abraham Zapruder, which showed the moments of Kennedy's assassination, and his death. It had been hidden away for years until it was used in evidence as part of the Garrison investigation into Kennedy's death. He remembered the scene where Kennedy's head exploded. Everyone pays attention to that scene more than anything else. Morbid curiosity, he figured, the same as passing a car wrecked on the road and not being able to look away from the carnage. It’s the morbid monster inside each of us. The worst angel of our nature.
"Everyone pays attention to that split second of footage, frame 313 I believe, but no one ever seems to pay attention to the handful of frames before this that show Kennedy grabbing at his throat first. It's right there for people to see. They just choose not to see it because people don't always want the truth, no matter how much they bleat on about it," Heller said.
The penny dropped with Jason right then. Just that single piece of information, that single tiny wound to Kennedy's throat, proved that there had to be multiple gunmen. Surely other people had noticed this, too. Why hadn’t anyone done anything about it? Why hadn’t anyone spoken up?
"I remember something about people hearing three or five shots, but no one could ever say for sure if they'd heard three shots or nine shots. So let's say that I believe your story, how many shots were fired?" Jason asked.
"Jason, did you know that several members of the crowd in Dealey Plaza were injured by stray bullets and ricochets that day? You see, the image that people have of assassins and snipers is that they can kill anyone, from any angle, and from any distance with a single, well-aimed shot. That's nonsense, I'm afraid. Even the most highly-trained marksmen will miss now and again. It could be bad timing, a change in wind direction, or a split second of conscience, but a shot can always go wide. We took no chances though and each gunman was given the order to fire three rounds at their target, but no more. We knew that with at least 10 rounds going his way, we'd get two or three kill shots."
Jason found himself leaning forward, gesturing in disbelief at the old man. "But that would have meant his body was riddled with bullets like he'd been put in front of a firing squad. A blind man doing that autopsy would have seen that.”
"Tell me what you know about the findings of the Kennedy autopsy, Jason," Heller said. "Everything you know about it.”
He sat there staring blankly at Heller and tried to remember the details of what happened on November 22nd, 1963. He remembered seeing documentaries on the assassination. Kennedy had been shot. Tearful announcements from newscasters across the United States, and Lyndon B. Johnson being sworn in as President. He didn't remember any documentary or movie talking about an autopsy. The old man was looking straight into Jason's eyes, clearly seeing that he wasn't able to remember anything about an autopsy either.
"Exactly, Jason…what autopsy? We knew before Kennedy was killed that we could have a "private" autopsy on the body because LBJ was already involved with what we were doing, so he'd want it all swept under a giant rug as soon as possible. We knew we could keep Jackie Kennedy quiet because she was torn apart with grief, and we also made sure she was pretty heavily medicated. The autopsy at Bethesda Naval Hospital took place behind closed doors, and was done and dusted within a few hours of the shooting. Photos were taken, but we only published the ones that suited the single bullet theory."
Jason sat there mute, but listening to every word. The information was just flowing from the old man now and he didn’t want to interrupt. The only thing that risked interrupting this now was a couple of bored police officers wondering why a taxi cab was parked here for longer than a few minutes.
"America had its answers and moved on in sadness. A single assassin killed Kennedy with three shots. One of the shots was a magic bullet that hit two men, passed through at least 15 layers of clothing, skin, tissue, and muscle, and still inflicted multiple wounds on other people in the car.” Heller rubbed his hands against his face and continued, “We knew that the shock of Kennedy being killed would leave America stunned, and even if someone did discover the truth, it was going to take a long, long time because the files were kept locked away from prying eyes. Plus, even if someone did get close to the truth, we'd just silence them, too. If you can kill a president, anyone else is just child's play." Heller said.
“But surely the coroner’s photographs and other photographs taken by reporters would have shown a different story?” Jason said while he scanned the scene outside.
"There were multiple photographs of the autopsy made available afterward, but because we'd used a John Doe for some of the shots, we needed to make sure some of the photographers disappeared afterward, too. That's exactly what we did. Once we'd remove the evidence, and the president was buried, the case was closed - Warren Commission and Jim Garrison be damned! They were never, ever going to exhume Kennedy's body. We knew that for a fact."
Jason found himself nodding morbidly in agreement, and then snapped himself out of it. He didn't like the fact that this elderly hitman in the back seat of his car was making so much sense. He seemed so logical and rational in everything he said. He also didn't like that the old man almost seemed familiar in some weird way.
Jason replied, squeaking out, "...but you killed the president. You shot him." It was the first time he'd actually acknowledged Heller's story as being real, as being actual fact. It gave him chills to think that this old man was quite possibly part of one of the greatest conspiracies in human history.
"I can see you're disturbed by the idea of me being a killer, Jason. It's not something I set out to do, you see. All I wanted to do was serve my country as best I could. However, I possessed certain skills that made me more valuable than just being cannon fodder. People like me are born this way in as much as we're shaped and created. That's just the nature of the world. A few twists and turns of fate, before I knew it, I was zeroing my sights on Kennedy's upper body, and getting ready to change history."