C.O.T.V.H. (Book 1): Creation by Dustin J. Palmer Page B

stories about what a great man he was.  I guess it just always bothered me that they never caught the guy that did it.  So, I suppose that was my main influence in wanting to become a cop.  The other was Dick Tracy." Henry said, with a laugh. “Did you ever listen to or watch Dick Tracy?”
    “ A time or two,” John answered. “I saw the movie with Madonna a couple of years back. Never was that big in to it to tell you the truth.”
    "Well we didn't have televisions like kids today have, but we did have a radio.  And every weeknight my brothers and I would gather round it and listen to the adventures of Dick Tracy.  My older brothers favored the villains of course.  They were much more interested in Big Boy and Flat Top than they were Tracy.  I on the other hand was a Tracy fan through and through.  I wanted to catch bad guys and solve crimes more than anything else.  I figured that if Dick Tracy had been in town the day my daddy was killed he wouldn't have been killed at all.  Ah the innocence of youth.
    “ Well when the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor my brothers all joined up. I was far too young, barely six when the war started, so it was just Ma and me for a while.  One by one men in uniform delivered letters saying my brothers had been killed in action. Jimmy was killed at Normandy, Sam at Iwo Jima, and Troy, well Troy was killed in some freak accident on the way home of all things!  He made it through the whole damn war and was killed by some yahoo dropping a jeep on him on a transport ship. Terrible luck I guess.
    "In '52 Ma got sick and died, leaving me to fend for myself.  I was only seventeen at the time, but I decided right then and there I was going to do whatever it took to become a Detective.  To stop crimes before they were committed. And that's just what I did.”
    “ Just like that?”
    "Well of course it wasn’t easy. But I took the test and in ‘57 got my first job working for Dallas PD as a Patrolman.  Man I tell you, things were sure different in those days.  People were respectful; neighbors actually spoke to one another.  Just all around better times. That all seemed to change one November day in 1963.  For me especially."
    "The day Kennedy was shot?" John said, leaning forward.
    Henry took a few seconds to answer, trying to put it into just the right words, “Well . . . yes and no.  While the President being murdered was horrific and tragic, it wasn't the thing that changed me. You see another murder happened that day, one that's often overlooked in the whole Kennedy conspiracy plot.  J.D. Tippit.  You see John, Tippit, like me, was a Patrolman. He was brutally murdered by Lee Harvey Oswald not long after Kennedy was shot."
    “ Yeah I remember seeing that in that JFK movie by Oliver Stone,” John nodded. “Some people said it wasn’t Oswald at all. It was some impostor dressed to look like him.”
    Henry held up his hands, “Now I'm not going to get into if Oswald killed Kennedy or not, but I know for a fact he killed Tippit. You see I was first on the scene that day.  I didn't know Tippit; I had never even met the man before.  But when I pulled up on that scene and saw his bullet riddled body lying there on that street.  Well, John, I'll think about that scene every day until the day, I die.  It just rattled me like I'd never been rattled before.  I can tell you personally that I interviewed those witnesses and all of them gave us Oswald's description.  I have no doubt he murdered that man in cold blood."
    Henry grew quiet for a few seconds before continuing. "Well, a couple of hours later we caught him in the Texas Theater. He put up a little bit of a fight and got roughed up a bit by a couple of the boys, but with a little effort, we got him under control. Two days later Jack Ruby put a snub nosed .38 in his stomach and pulled the trigger, ending his life and leaving unanswered questions that people would debate for decades to come."
    John snorted. “Man that’s