Keith Karl Rawlins, aka Krazy Kat, entered the room a few moments later. Rawlins usually worked in a subbasement at Quantico; he was a very highly paid contractor who offered his unique expertise exclusively to the FBI.
Rawlins had dual PhDs from Stanford, one in physics and a second in electrical engineering. In his spare time, he was working on a third doctorate from MIT in computer science.
The last time I’d seen him, he’d cut his hair in a Mohawk and dyed it flaming red. That was all gone now. He’d shaved his head, grown a beard and braided it, and he wore camo fatigues, sandals, and two new nose rings.
You could tell from the expressions on the faces of the people in the room that they didn’t know what to make of Rawlins, even if Director Sanford had described him before he came in as “possibly the smartest person on earth when it comes to harnessing data.”
Rawlins nodded to me, said, “Good idea, Dr. Cross.”
“It worked?”
“Well enough,” Rawlins said as he got out a laptop and started typing.
“What are you talking about?” President Larkin demanded.
“Dr. Cross asked if I could harvest pictures and videos from cell phones in the DC arena being posted on social media. The challenge was putting it all together in a meaningful way. But even that wasn’t like learning to speak Cantonese in ten days.”
Rawlins hit a button and looked up at the screen on the wall. The NSA director’s map showing the ballooning dark-web activity among the U.S., Russia, North Korea, and China vanished.
In its place we saw a digital, somewhat disjointed, almost 3-D rendition of the inside of the DC arena and the crowd of excited youngsters as President Hobbs came down the rope line surrounded by Secret Service agents.
Rawlins slowed it after Hobbs took a selfie with a young boy, then spun the view around so we were looking over shoulders and around heads at the president, who shook hands and talked with three tween girls.
A grinning blond man, camera left, reached over the girls to shake President Hobbs’s hand. Hobbs smiled at the man, who wore a cleric’s collar and tinted glasses.
President Hobbs released the blond man’s hand, moved toward the next person, and then suddenly fell backward into his bodyguard. The blond man’s smile turned puzzled and then alarmed before the screen froze.
“I didn’t see a gun,” Chief Justice Watts said.
“Swing us around,” I said. “Let’s see him from the front.”
Rawlins gave his computer an order. The media swept back in time and went around again before zooming in on the blond man reaching for the president’s hand. We watched the same events unfold: the handshake, the release, President Hobbs stumbling.
“I still don’t see it,” the chief justice said.
“I think I did,” I said. “Take us in super-slo-mo. Watch his right hand, his loose shirt cuff, and the belly of his coat sleeve right after the president ends the handshake.”
They all leaned forward as Rawlins rewound the footage and stayed on President Hobbs, still smiling as he released the blond man’s hand. When their fingers had drifted ten, maybe twelve inches apart, the minister arched his hand backward as if to wave. The belly of his sleeve billowed. The cuff distorted.
A split second later, President Hobbs staggered back into his Secret Service agents. Rawlins froze the image.
“No one heard a gunshot,” Director Sanford said.
“Because there was no gun,” I said. “No conventional one, at least. Can we see him shoot the secretary of defense?”
Rawlins said, “I didn’t look.”
He stayed with the suspect as he moved with the crowd past the fallen president. Then the shooter shifted his hips toward the stage and raised his left hand toward Harold Murphy.
The footage got a little jerky, but you saw the blond man’s hand arching again, and the secretary of defense going down.
“What’s he doing with his hand?” President Larkin said.
“I think he’s triggering an air gun of some sort,” I said.
Sanford looked up from his phone. “Which explains the pieces of bullet they took out of President Hobbs twenty minutes ago.”
The FBI director forwarded an image to Rawlins, who put it on the screen: a photograph of dark gray pieces lying in a steel pan.
“It will have to be analyzed, but I’ll bet that’s graphite or carbon,” I said. “His weapons were probably made out of polymers that are undetectable by current methods.”
Rawlins typed again. The screen filled with a clear shot of the blond man in the tinted glasses.
He said, “I’d get this picture in the hands of all law enforcement at that arena and everywhere else in the country.”
“Wait,” I said, studying the picture. “He’s posing as a cleric, presumably. Who says he really has blond hair and wears glasses?”
Rawlins smiled. “I’m barely a half a step ahead of you, Dr. Cross.”