Then he takes the final step down, pushing the door open with his knee. The shot comes instantly, sound and smoke. He shouts something as he shoots. He muddles the line; the audience disagrees as to what he said, but Major Rathbone, the president’s guest in the box that night, says it was sic semper tyrannis.

Rathbone’s turn with the story: The assassin is preparing to leap from the box to the stage, when Rathbone seizes the back of his coat. Suddenly there is a bowie knife in the assassin’s hand. “Let me go or I’ll kill you,” he says. He stabs Rathbone in the arm, a deep cut; Rathbone’s own blood sprays into his own eyes. The assassin jerks free.

The single actor on the stage—Harry Hawk—has fallen silent mid-speech and, like everyone else, is looking for the president. The audience belongs to the assassin now. Most of them think this is part of the play, though they hadn’t known Booth would be performing that night.

He vaults from the rail, but Rathbone makes one final grab that throws him off balance. The spur on his boot catches in the festooning that decorates the box and he crashes onto the stage. He’s up in an instant, staring into the face of the bewildered Harry Hawk.

Hawk hears him speak. “I have done it,” he says. “The South is avenged.” He’s moving towards Hawk with a bloody knife above his head and an odd, stagey gait.

“I ran,” Hawk says simply. For this, for quite some time after, he will have to live under an assumed name.

One more person is injured, the orchestra conductor, shoved out of the way with the blade of the knife.

The assassin has hired a fast Thoroughbred, a spirited mare, now circling the reins. He makes it to the alley, but she can’t be mounted; she’s too excited. It takes another full minute to bring her under control. Mrs. Lincoln is screaming, and all is pandemonium until soldiers arrive and clear the theater with their bayonets. No one knows where the killer has gone.

The president is carried to a boardinghouse, where he’s pronounced dead at 7:22 a.m. Ten thousand federal agents begin the largest manhunt in the history of the country. Reading this, reading one account after another, makes Rosalie frantic with grief, no escape, stuck in this horror like a fly in molasses. How happy, how rich her life once was! John has murdered them all.

—

For more than a year, before she sleeps, Rosalie will replay this scene, stopping right at the moment when John takes off his hat and leans against the wall. People say that he was waiting for a particular line and the laugh he knew would follow it; he was waiting for noise to cover his shot.