Caroline complied. “Bring your Bible with you. Be prepared to read his favorite psalms. Look him in the eyes. Smile. Hold his hands and let your strength flow from you and into him. I know you can do this.”
“I can do this,” Ida repeated, straightening her shoulders and composing her features.
Caroline kept up the stream of orders mingled with compassion as the carriage drove them to the Milburn house. To her surprise, Ida did not even request her wheelchair but walked into the home leaning only on her cane, her chin high and shoulders back.
Mrs. Milburn welcomed them inside. She was surprisingly young, with kind eyes and dark hair swept into a modest bun. “He is awake,” she said, ushering them toward the dining room that had been converted into a convalescent room.
Caroline paused outside the room. “Would you like me to go in with you?”
Ida hesitated only a moment, then squeezed Caroline’s hand. “Nonsense. I will be the soul of valor. An Old Testament heroine. Deborah. Esther. Ruth.”
She took a deep breath, then walked through the arched opening and sat beside the president’s bed. Caroline cringed at how pale and slack he looked, but he turned his head and managed a smile for his wife.
“Don’t you look lovely,” he murmured.
Ida clasped his hand. “We must get you better, my beloved. People back home are missing you.”
Her voice was gently teasing, and Caroline sagged with relief. Ida McKinley had risen to the occasion.
She backed away to give them privacy and headed to the kitchen, where a beleaguered cook kept a percolator filled with coffee.
“May I borrow a sheet of paper?” she asked.
The cook nodded, and a few moments later, Caroline found aprivate space to write out the telegram to send Gray. Despite the tragedy of McKinley’s shooting, the rest of the world carried on, and it was time to heed Luke’s warning about the danger of Captain Holland before it was too late.
Twenty-Nine
Nathaniel sat at the table in a room in the police station, a pad of paper on his lap as he watched John Wilkie calmly interrogate the shooter. The only other person in the room was a government stenographer who sat at the far end of the table. It was the stenographer’s job to capture every word the would-be assassin spoke, but Nathaniel looked for more: a change in inflection, a nervous tic. Anything that revealed the anarchist’s true thoughts. Surely a man this dull-witted couldn’t be working alone. Nathaniel would parse every word, looking for clues to an accomplice.
Leon Czolgosz was an unemployed millworker from Ohio with no formal education and limited vocabulary. He was only twenty-eight, with ordinary features, light brown hair, and large eyes. He might even be considered handsome, but Nathaniel’s flesh crawled even being in the same room with him. It was an effort to sit passively and watch for any hint of deception.
“Where did you get the gun?” Wilkie asked casually, and Czolgosz obligingly gave the name of the hardware store in Cleveland. So far Czolgosz had consistently answered all questions put to him with simple, direct language.
“Was anyone with you when you bought the gun?” Wilkie asked.
“No. I done it alone.”
“What about after you arrived in Buffalo? Have you any associates in the city?”
There was a pause, a look of confusion, and Wilkie rephrased the question using simpler words.
“Do you have any friends in Buffalo?”
“No. I done everything alone.”
Wilkie proceeded to ask the same question from a number of different angles, all designed to trip Czolgosz up if he wasn’t telling the truth. He asked how the gunman selected his boardinghouse and how he paid the bill, because it was too expensive for an unemployed millworker.
“Are you sorry you did it?” Wilkie asked, and Czolgosz snorted.
“I’m not sorry,” he said. “I’d do it again if I could. But do it better. Get the job done.”
“Really?” Wilkie asked. “How will your parents react when they learn what you’ve done?”
Shame flashed across the younger man’s face, but it was gone quickly, replaced by disdain. Czolgosz raised his chin and spoke clearly. “The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause.”
Wilkie leaned forward. “Keep talking.”
“People only have as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to take.”
