What he didn’t know at that moment was that history had again been changed, and this time not in the way that he was expecting. Or by whom.
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
Washington, D.C. – November 1921
Vincent thought back to when he first woke up on the killing field during the war. The smell of death was so intense that even the cold couldn’t keep the stench at bay. He remembered emptying his stomach as he puked to the sight of burnt bodies.
That experience should have prepared him for what he saw. Only it didn’t.
He looked down at the slaughtered body of his wife.
At first it was hard to believe the mess of flesh and blood-soiled hair could be human, but it was. More, it was the President of the United States – the love of his life. The clothes and shoes confirmed it was her.
The woman that he had held in his arms a few hours earlier was now a lifeless shape of knife wounds. It was like her body was reversed; everything that should have been inside of her was on the outside.
Vincent imagined the fear and pain she must have experienced as she was carved up to the point of death. Vincent held out hope that she had been killed quickly and that everything he was now seeing was done after she was dead. But he knew better. Someone who could do this to another person would want to experience the cries of terror of the victim. It would be part of the thrill of the murder.
Anger seeped into Vincent’s soul. There was more anger than sorrow.
Vincent was not as young as he had been when he first arrived at the Battle of Passchendaele. He was not quite as driven or reckless as the man he had been when he had shot and killed Adolf Hitler, changing everything. But inside of him, the rage and quiet determination that existed as he was serving in the Howitzer unit during the Great War was still there. He could still draw on the raw ire that felt like hot steel when the time called for such action.
He would now use that inner-rage and determination that lived within him; he would use these gifts to hunt down whoever had killed his wife. He would find the man and just as he had killed men during the war – including Hitler in cold blood – he would kill that man.
The body of President Williams was taken away to the mortuary and afterwards Vincent was left with only his thoughts and an empty White House residence. President Roosevelt (fresh off being sworn in) had come by and expressed his deepest sympathy and resolved that they would stop at nothing to find the heinous individuals who had murdered the President.
Vincent was not given an official timeline but a week after the funeral, he was gently removed from the White House residence. It was suggested that he might be more comfortable in his own private home. Plus, Roosevelt needed his family with him as he went about the business of serving the nation as its President. As President, the Roosevelt family was now the legal resident of the White House.
With nowhere else to go, Vincent went to the home of Woodrow Wilson.
Wilson answered the door on Vincent’s third knock. The hour was late but Wilson didn’t seem to notice or care. “I’ve been expecting you,” Wilson said to Vincent.
With those words, Vincent felt the weight of the last few weeks slip away. His wife’s death was still heavy on him so it didn’t go away entirely but it was enough for him to relax. Wilson had welcomed him into his home. He had a place where he belonged.
Wilson showed him inside and took him upstairs to the room where he would sleep. When Vincent was settled, he joined Wilson downstairs for a very late dinner and a cup of coffee. Coffee didn’t affect Vincent’s sleeping habits – not that he could sleep much anyways. Vincent’s entire family had been that way. They would all drink strong, black coffee at all hours of the day and then fall asleep with little fanfare.
“How are you holding up?” Wilson asked Vincent as they were sitting on his front porch drinking the post-meal coffee.
“I’m surviving. That’s about all I can say.”
“Well, I admire you. You’ve gone through something that few people will have to face and you’ve done it with dignity.”
“How so?”
“You could’ve made a public display of the fact that your wife had just been murdered and now you are being put on the street with nowhere to go but you did not. You handled it well. I know it wasn’t easy.”
Vincent didn’t response. He was still numb and had little to say about anything he had been through. Plus, he wasn’t feeling particularly public-minded. In fact, for the first time in years he was not worried at all what the public thought of him.
The two sat quietly for several minutes when Vincent turned and looked at Wilson. “Where’s your wife? I thought she would be back in town by now.”
“She went back to our home in New Jersey. I told her that you might be coming to stay for a while and we weren’t sure you needed to see the two of us together.”
Vincent smiled weakly. “That’s very kind of you but unnecessary. Just because I’m a miserable person doesn’t mean everyone else has to be miserable.”
“She understood. Plus, sometimes it’s good for men to be around other men when they are grieving,
