The Wrong Man

President Richard Halston is shot in Dallas, and John Washington III, who was in Dealey Plaza, learns of his death on television in a bus station. Police quickly arrest twenty-four-year-old former Marine Thomas Riggs and declare he acted alone, but John saw the sixth-floor window empty and undisturbed and watched a calm professional walk away from the plaza. With Dallas detective Harlan Pryce, John finds the cleanup already underway: motorcade films confiscated, witnesses re-interviewed until their stories change, and no fresh prints on the windowsill Pryce dusted himself. One witness, Elias Crowe, holds to his account of a different man - sandy-haired, with a scar through his left eyebrow. Riggs is then shot dead by Jack Ruby during a televised transfer in police headquarters. Following Dutch's leads, John identifies the real shooter as ex-Army sniper Ray Calloway and confronts him in a New Orleans bar. Calloway says he was paid through Hale Dynamics but the order came from above, pointing John to a ledger page for Meridian Holding Company and names including Aldrich Crane. The money, John learns, flows up, not down - above the presidency itself. Book 8 of The Authorization series by John Washington III.