Rawhide Down_ The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan - Del Quentin Wilber [95]
Colo asked whether he had ever seen a doctor. Hinckley told him that his parents had urged him to seek psychiatric help the previous year and that since then he’d been seeing a psychiatrist regularly.
“What was wrong?” Colo asked.
“I have no direction in life,” Hinckley said simply.
After about twenty-five minutes of questioning, Hinckley went quiet for a moment and then told Colo that he didn’t want to say any more until he consulted a lawyer.
Ragle left the interview room to tell others in the office what they had learned; as he did, George Chmiel returned.
“Is this on television?” Hinckley asked him.
“No, this isn’t being taped,” replied Chmiel.
“I didn’t mean that. Is this on television?”
Now Chmiel understood that Hinckley meant the assassination attempt. “Yes,” he said, “it is on national television.”
“Will this affect other people?” Hinckley asked. “Will they be pulled into it?”
Something about Hinckley’s question caught Colo’s attention. Earlier, watching as FBI agents inventoried the contents of Hinckley’s wallet, Colo spotted a note with a phone number scribbled on it—the kind of note a man jots down after meeting a woman in a bar. The number had a Connecticut area code, and Colo recalled that Hinckley had said that he’d visited New Haven several times and attended Yale’s “riding school.” Colo also remembered that the wallet’s plastic sleeve contained several photographs of a pretty girl. Investigators had initially assumed these were just filler photos of the kind that often come with a new wallet, but now Colo wondered whether they were pictures of a real woman in Hinckley’s life, perhaps a girlfriend.
“Yes, others will be pulled into it,” Colo replied. “Are you talking about your parents and your friends?”
“And others,” Hinckley said.
“I know about the telephone number in your wallet, the one that goes to Connecticut,” Colo said, bluffing.
“Well,” Hinckley shot back, his face tightening, “if you know about that, you know everything.” Then he slumped his shoulders and took a deep breath.
It was the first time Colo had seen his suspect show any emotion. Hinckley seemed relieved, as if he could finally let go of a long-held secret.
Silence filled the room.
“Yes,” Colo said, “but I have to hear about it in your own words.”
“That goes to a dorm at Yale University,” he said. “The girl is Jodie Foster, the actress.”
“Is she your girlfriend?” Colo asked.
“It’s really a one-sided relationship.”
“Does she know you?”
“She probably knows my name,” Hinckley said, adding that he had spoken to her two or three times on the phone. Then he told Colo that he had tape-recorded the conversations, and that the tapes were stashed in a suitcase in his hotel room.
“She was very courteous,” Hinckley added.
At last Colo understood. The assassination attempt wasn’t about politics or the presidency or even Ronald Reagan. It was about impressing a movie star.
Colo was flabbergasted. What kind of crazy motive was that? But now he was sure that Hinckley had been acting alone—no conspiracy would ever revolve around a fantasy of attracting the attention of an actress. He ran to find Ragle and an FBI supervisor. As they pieced together Hinckley’s story, Jodie Foster could prove to be a critical witness, but they had to get to her before the media did.
CHAPTER 15
“WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD?”
In a corner of the recovery room, behind portable screens, Ronald Reagan drifted in and out of consciousness. Nurses worked constantly at his bedside, checking his blood pressure, monitoring his respirator, offering words of reassurance. When the president seemed uncomfortable, doctors increased his pain medication; when the level of oxygen in his blood was still too low, they raised his air intake to 80 percent oxygen.