Killing Lincoln - Bill O'Reilly [100]
The president’s funeral procession down Pennsylvania Avenue
Immediately after the funeral, Lincoln’s body was escorted by a military guard through the streets of Washington. One hundred thousand mourners lined the route to the Capitol, where the body was once again put on view for the public to pay their last respects.
And now, two days later, there is the matter of the train. In a trip that will re-create his journey to the White House five years earlier—though in the opposite direction—Lincoln’s special train will stop along the way in twelve cities and pass through 444 communities. In what will be called “the greatest funeral in the history of the United States,” thirty million people will take time from their busy lives to see this very special train before its great steel wheels finally slow to a halt in his beloved Springfield.
The unfortunate mementos of his assassination remain behind in Washington: the Deringer bullet and the Nélaton’s probe that pinpointed its location in his brain will soon be on display in a museum, as will the red horsehair rocker in which he was shot. He also leaves behind the messy unfinished business of healing the nation. And while Abraham Lincoln has gone home to finally get the rest he has so long deserved, that unfinished business will have to wait until his murderer is found.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
FRIDAY, APRIL 21, 1865
MARYLAND COUNTRYSIDE
NOON
Samuel Mudd is not home when Lieutenant Lovett and the cavalry return. Lovett sends farmhand Thomas Davis to find him.
Mudd is having lunch nearby and quickly returns to his farm to face Lovett.
The terror of their previous encounter returns. He knows that Lovett has spent the previous three days searching the area around his property for evidence. Mudd’s face once again turns a ghostly white. His nervousness is compounded as Lovett questions him again, probing Mudd’s story for discrepancies, half-truths, and outright lies.
This time Lovett does not ride away. Nor is he content to search the pastures and outer edges of the farm. No, this time he wants to go inside Mudd’s home and see precisely where these strangers slept. Lovett gives the order to search the house.
Mudd frantically gestures to his wife, Sarah, who walks quickly to him. He whispers in her ear, and she races into the house. The soldiers can hear her footsteps as she climbs the stairs to the second floor, then returns within just a moment. In her hands are two items: a razor and a boot. “I found these while dusting up three days ago,” she says as she hands them to Lovett.
Mudd explains that one of the strangers used the razor to shave off his mustache. The boot had come from the stranger with the broken leg.
Lovett presses Mudd on this point, asking him if he knew the man’s identity.
Mudd insists that he didn’t.
Lovett cradles the long riding boot in his hands. It has been slit down one side by Mudd, in order that he might pull it from Booth’s swollen leg to examine the wound.
Lovett asks if this is, indeed, the boot the stranger wore.
Mudd agrees.
Lovett presses Mudd again, verifying that the doctor had no knowledge of the stranger’s identity.
Mudd swears this to be truth.
And then Lovett shows Mudd the inside of the riding boot, which would have been clearly visible when Mudd was removing it from the stranger’s leg.
Mudd’s world collapses. His story is shattered in an instant.
For marked inside the boot, plain for all to see, is the name
“J. Wilkes.”
Dr. Samuel Mudd is under arrest.
And while Lieutenant Lovett has just made a key breakthrough in the race to find John Wilkes Booth and David