The Truth Beneath the Blood

The room smelled of antiseptic and regret, a sterile prison where the sun dared not penetrate the heavy drapes. As the machines beeped their monotonous dirge, I sat in the corner, watching my father drift between worlds—one foot still planted in the realm of the living, the other teetering on the precipice of whatever lay beyond. He was a shell of the man who had once chased me through the yard, laughter echoing like gunfire. Now, all that remained was a gaunt face, pale and waxen, and a voice that trembled like a leaf in a winter wind.

“Jake,” he croaked, eyes flickering open, their blue color dimmed with age and secrets. “There’s something you need to know. “I leaned closer, a chill creeping up my spine as I braced myself for another tale of my father’s wild youth—the kind that had filled family dinners with nervous laughter and sideways glances. But this time, the air felt heavy, charged with a truth that twisted in the pit of my stomach like a snake coiling tight. “What is it, Dad?”

His gaze faltered as if he were struggling to pull a memory from the depths of his mind, something dark and slippery. “It was Dallas. November 22, 1963. I was there, Jake… and I had a part in it.”

My heart thundered in my chest. This was no drunken confession, no rambling of a man desperate to unburden himself, or was it? This was history, horrifying yet fascinating. I leaned even closer, the fear in my gut replaced by a desperate need to grasp the enormity of what my father was saying. “What did you do, Dad?”

At that moment, as the truth hung heavy between us, I realized that my father’s legacy was not just one of love and laughter but something far darker—a history rippled through time, touching everything in its wake. This revelation would change everything I thought I knew about my family. This sixty-year-old fabrication created by a corrupt government would also shed light on how far the leaders of the free world had been bought and paid for by the rich and powerful.

It might also explain why my father became estranged after that horrible night of the fire. I was a child of eleven when someone tried to burn us all alive in our home. Fire set in two places by the doors simultaneously was no coincidence.

I watched as his bright blue eyes, once filled with an almost supernatural light, faded into a dull glaze. The slow drip of morphine had taken the retired FBI special agent to a shadowy realm between life and death.

The secrets—the many secrets that lay within his tattered mind—whirled around like a chaotic, colorful merry-go-round, real memories blending with fantastical visions from beyond this realm.

“Jake, how is he? Has he said anything of interest?” Harold from the FBI asked, pulling me from my thoughts. I spun around in my chair to see him glaring at me from the open door.

“No sir, I think the drugs have his brain checked out. The hospice guy said he would most certainly pass within the next few hours. In short, Mr. Thompson, he is all but dead.”

I lied, I didn’t want to be their next target.

My father had a top-secret clearance, and I remember how he guarded his work life with the FBI from his family. His job caused him to be very distant, almost as if he were leading a duplicitous life.

I wanted Harold to leave, I had a plan. Those days in the 60s were horrible for our family. Dad knew something that the government wanted to keep secret.

As he snored, I sat there recanting the events that took us to this moment in history. There was a fire at our house after the event. After the dust settled, our friend, the fire chief, said it was arson. Pop later revealed his belief that the feds hired the person. Dead men tell no tales.

Their plan almost worked.

Mom was the first victim of the assault. I would have been the second but the smell of smoke woke me before it consumed the rest of the bedroom wing.

Leaping out my window, I ran around the house to see Dad yelling through the open window for his wife.

Weeks after Mom died from her burns, I heard him yelling at his boss. “I told you I wouldn’t tell anyone anything, and you bastards tried to kill me. Tell those fuckers at the CIA I will make their subterfuge very public if they don’t back off.

Dad had written a book and was working with a ghostwriter then. I didn’t know it; we thought he was working a lot, but it seemed he was creating a record to use as leverage to get the DOJ to leave us be. He didn’t smoke but often came home smelling as if he did. I surmised he had been in a bar filled with smoke. Later, finding lipstick-stained cigarette butts in his ashtray, we suspected the worst. However, I later learned it was the editor he was working with.

After the fire, we moved away from Dallas. The Feds knew where we were. After a car wreck with a driver who tried to ambush us failed, I left home to live with my aunt.

Dad took a job overseas as a condition of calling off the hit squad that was out to make sure what he knew didn’t go anywhere.

The silence between us felt heavy, like a weight pressing down on us. His words and actions were deliberate, creating a gulf between us. The realization hit me like a wave – he was protecting me by pushing me away, even though it hurt.

While reliving the past, the door opened with Harold staring at me. “Call me if there are any changes, kid. Your old man was a tough son of a bitch. I admired him.”

I nodded. Harold left the room as the shadows from other buildings crept through the hospital windows.

After he left, I moved the clip on the morphine drip to turn it off. Dad was trying to tell me something, and I needed to know what it was.

Around 3 in the morning, I hear my name. Opening my eyes from sleeping in that recliner that has witnessed the deaths of so many people, I see my dad staring at me.

“There is a key inside that teddy bear I gave you; do you still have it?”

“Pookie Bear?”

He nodded. “That key is for a lockbox at the bank. Be careful what you do with what you find. What I have left in there will allow you to leave the US if you want, but it will also allow you to get the truth out. There was no single bullet.”

His blueish-gray eyes never closed as he ceased breathing. I can only assume I was the last person he saw before transcending to another realm. Those words, that deathbed confession, were his last words to the living. I wasn’t sure what he was talking about at the time, but I would later learn he had a lot to do with the assassination of JFK.

The staff came in before I could call Harold and tell him he could go about his business. Dad was gone.

“Sorry, kid. Did he have any last words?”

I shook my head as if he could see me. “He just stopped breathing, no sudden jerks or twitching.” I lied, as I wanted to distance myself from his former employers.

The funeral was a somber affair that one might expect. The feds showed up, and I was sure they were tapping my phone and monitoring my movements.

Purchasing a throw-away phone for my private conversations, I never carried it. I used my main phone as I always did for work or what have you, but as for talking with friends, I used the ‘burner phone.’

I have not trusted the government since the Patriot Act was passed. I have learned how to become a gray person, which includes a new mask of sorts that allows you to appear as someone else for the thousands of cameras tracking your movement through facial recognition.

College taught me a lot about forensic data hacking. I made it hard for them to track me. I'd pretend to be clueless to mislead them. I am my father's son, and they shouldn't have underestimated me.

It was the anniversary of his death when I wandered into the bank with a key retrieved from Pookie Bear. He had placed the key under his music box, which played Brahms's Lullaby.

Mom gave me the bear when I was sick as a kid. It was that horrible ear infection when I was five. I remember hearing things; the pain was incredible, and I felt like I was slipping away when I could draw comfort from that bear. After I went to live with Aunt Hilda, he sent me that bear out of the blue.

“You left this behind, and I thought if you saw it again, you might remember that I am not the asshole you think I am. -Dad.” I would soon learn why he was the way he was.

Removing the key from under the music box stirred that memory back to life from so many years ago. That was the first time I had cried since he ran me off.

What I was about to learn would make that memory pale in comparison.

***

The bank loomed before me, a fortress of glass and steel, its polished exterior gleaming under the overcast sky like a predator waiting for the unwary. I stood outside, my breath frosting in the November air, the chill creeping under my skin as I stared at the heavy doors that led to the vault—an ironclad womb of secrets. I could feel the weight of my father’s legacy pressing down on me, a shroud woven with threads of pride and shame.

As I entered, the bank’s interior enveloped me in a sterile quiet, the kind that made my skin prickle. The air smelled faintly of stale money and disinfectant, a scent that clung to my nostrils like an unwanted memory. I approached the teller, who eyed me with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion. “I’m here to access the vault,” I said, my voice steady, though inside, my heart raced like a caged animal.

With a nod, the teller led me to the back of the bank, past rows of sterile counters and bored customers, into a hallway lined with cold, unyielding walls. We arrived at the door to the vault, a massive slab of steel that could withstand a nuclear blast. The teller swiped a card, and with a low, mechanical groan, the door swung open, revealing a darkened chamber that felt like the belly of a beast.

I stepped inside, the door clanging shut behind me with a finality that echoed into the cavernous space. The vault was dimly lit, the fluorescent lights casting long shadows that danced upon the walls. Rows of safety deposit boxes loomed before me, each a silent guardian of untold stories and buried truths. I could almost hear them whispering, secrets rustling like leaves in the wind.

At the far end of the room, I spotted the box with the correct number etched into the metal—a simple, unassuming label that belied the weight of what lay within. I approached it, and with trembling hands, I inserted the key my father had given me, a tarnished piece of brass that felt warm in my palm.

With a satisfying click, the box sprang open, revealing a collection of envelopes and a single, battered book resting atop them like a crown on a king’s head. The cover was worn, the spines cracked, and the title—“The Truth Beneath the Blood”—sent a shiver racing down my spine. This was it. The tell-all my father had promised, a confessional that would unravel the threads of the FBI’s dark tapestry.

I reached for the book, my fingers brushing against the pages, and in that instant, I felt the weight of history settle on my shoulders. The envelopes were filled with money—enough to drown a man in guilt or save him from the depths of despair. But the book… the book was something else entirely. It was a key, a map, a guide into the twisted labyrinth of my father’s past, and I knew, without a doubt, that whatever lay within its pages would change me forever.

As I held it, I could almost hear the echoes of my father’s voice, a ghostly whisper urging me to uncover the truth. The vault was a tomb, a sanctuary for the secrets that could break a family apart or bind it together in ways I could never imagine. As I stood there, heart racing, the shadows closed in around me, and I knew I was not just retrieving a legacy; I was stepping into a nightmare from which there might be no waking.

Dear Jake,

If you’re reading this, it means I’m finally gone, and that thought fills me with a strange mix of peace and regret. I’ve spent years trying to find the right words to explain why I had to push you away and keep you at arm's length, even when every fiber of my being wanted to pull you close. I hope you can forgive me for the distance, for the silence that stretched between us like an unbridgeable chasm.

You see, my boy, I’ve carried secrets heavier than a mountain on my back, secrets that could crush a man’s spirit and shatter a family. I thought by keeping you away from the darkness in my life, I could shield you from the storms that raged inside me. It was never about not loving you; it was about loving you enough to let you go.

I watched you grow from a boy into a man, and my heart swelled with pride with every milestone. But with that pride came an awareness of the dangers lurking in the shadows, dangers that could reach out and snatch you into a world where innocence is a fleeting dream. I had to protect you, Jake, even if it meant being the villain in our story. I thought distance would be a barrier against the ghosts of my past, a way to keep you safe from the chaos that could spill over.

I never intended to abandon you. I wanted to be your rock, guiding you through uncertainty. My fears held me back, I was scared you'd be affected by my past.

So, I pushed you away, thinking it was the best way to keep you safe. I know now that it might have hurt you more than I realized, and I am genuinely sorry for that. You deserved a father who stood by you, not one who faded into the background, leaving you to wonder why.

Please remember me not as a ghost haunting your past but as a man who loved you fiercely, even from a distance. Life is a complicated tapestry woven with both light and shadow and while I can’t change my choices, I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.

In the end, know this: you are stronger than you think, and the love we shared is a light that can never be extinguished. Carry it with you, always.

With all my love,

Dad

After I read the letter for the hundredth time, I read the tell-all book.

Within the story was the line: I put a bullet on Connally’s gurney using a fake altercation with the Secret Service as a distraction. The media needed to see it to tell the lie.

Oswald had been a patsy. Oswald hated John Connally because he saw him as part of the oppressive government that Oswald's Marxist ideology condemned.

The Feds worked with a low-life mobster who ran a burlesque bar in Downtown Dallas. In a twisted scheme hatched by covert CIA agents working alongside Ruby, a horrific plot unfolded, targeting a populist president who dared to govern by the Constitution's principles.

The result was a staged assassination that manipulated the nation's trust.

No one could buy JFK, and he wouldn’t cooperate with the mob that controlled the government. Since he wouldn’t act like a puppet, they would find someone who would.

The military complex wanted a war with Russia. Kennedy thwarted their efforts, and for that, he had to be shot.

The autopsy revealed the numerous bullet wounds and their paths, but the FBI needed to frame Oswald as the assassin and silence him.

In his book, he explained the single bullet theory by placing the 6.5x52mm bullet on Connally’s gurney after a scuffle with the Secret Service. He said that the FBI had to order the bullet because they didn't have any in that size, as the rifle was an old Italian Carcano military surplus.

Jake took the money his father left him, changed his name and identity, and moved to the Bahamas. He drives tourists to stunning beaches, recounting the island's rich history and captivating secrets, all while keeping his lineage and the watchful eyes of the Feds a silent truth.

Before vanishing into complete anonymity, Jake entrusted a ghostwriter with a book. The goal was to awaken people from their blind obedience.

He insisted that the writer submit these stories to writing contests, subtly planting the seeds of doubt and urging readers to question the status quo and follow the money trail.

“Tell them, “He said, “Tell them it’s the golden rule. Those with the gold make the rules.”