Fact1: waiter armed with revolver falls to death, Fact2: killing was work of dead waiter, Fact3: Frady goes to small town of Salmontail to probe into recent death of Judge Arthur Bridges, Fact4: apparently bar fight with Salmontail sheriff 's deputy draws attention of sheriff himself, Fact5: sheriff himself offers to take Frady to spot
Output: TV newswoman Lee Carter witnesses the assassination of presidential candidate Charles Carroll atop Seattles Space Needle. A waiter armed with a revolver is pursued and falls to his death while a second waiter, also armed, leaves the scene unnoticed. A congressional committee defines that the killing was the work of the dead waiter but conspiracy theories subsequently arise. Three years later, Carter visits her former boyfriend and colleague, newspaper reporter Joe Frady, claiming that others must have been behind the assassination as six of the witnesses to the killing have since died and she fears she will be next. Frady does not take her seriously. Carter is soon found dead in what is officially ruled as a simple drug overdose. Investigating Carters leads, Frady goes to the small town of Salmontail to probe into the recent death of Judge Arthur Bridges, also a witness. An apparently spontaneous bar fight with the Salmontail sheriffs deputy draws the attention of the sheriff himself, L.D. Wicker, who offers to take Frady to the spot where Bridges drowned. When they arrive at the dam, however, Wicker pulls his gun on Frady while the floodgates are opening, expecting him to drown just like Bridges did. Frady narrowly escapes while Wicker drowns. Frady finds information in the sheriffs house about the Parallax Corporation, learning that it recruits political assassins. As Frady is interviewing Carrolls former aide, Austin Tucker, a bomb explodes aboard Tuckers boat while they are aboard, killing Tucker and his assistant. Frady survives but is believed also dead. He lets his generally skeptical editor Bill Rintels know that he is still alive, and decides to apply to Parallax under an assumed identity. He dons an aggressive persona when Jack Younger, a Parallax official, pays him a visit once the application goes through. Younger assures Frady that he is the kind of man they are interested in. Frady is accepted for training in Los Angeles, where he watches a slide show that conflates positive images with negative actions. Frady recognizes one of the Parallax operatives from a photo Tucker showed him, as the second waiter from Carrolls assassination, at the Parallax offices. He watches the assassin retrieve a case from a car, drive to an airport, and check it as stowed baggage on a passenger jet. Frady boards the plane, notices a senator aboard, but cannot find the assassin – who is actually watching the jets takeoff from the airports roof. Frady writes a warning, that there is a bomb on board, on a napkin and slips it onto the drink service cart. The warning is found and the jet returns to Los Angeles. Passengers are evacuated moments before the bomb explodes. Returning to his apartment, Frady is confronted by Younger about not being the man whose identity he has been using. Frady confesses that he is actually yet another man who had gotten in trouble with the police, and Younger agrees to validate this new identity. Later, at the newspaper office, Rintels listens to a secretly recorded tape of the conversation between Frady and Younger, then places it in an envelope with other such tapes. Rintels is poisoned by the senators killer and bomb planter, now disguised as a sandwich delivery man; and the tapes disappear. Frady goes to the Parallax offices to see Younger, is told he is not there but then sees him leaving the building. He follows the operative to the dress rehearsal for a political rally for Senator George Hammond and hides in the auditoriums catwalks to observe Parallax agents, who are posing as security personnel. Frady attempts to follow one of the men back to the auditorium, but finds he had been locked in the catwalk area. As Hammond drives a golf cart across the auditorium floor, an unseen sniper shoots him in the back, killing him. Frady realizes too late that he has been set up as a scapegoat and attempts to flee across the catwalks, but is spotted by the police who are now in the auditorium below. As Frady runs to the reopened exit door from the catwalks, a shadowy agent steps through, killing Frady with a shotgun. Six months later, the same committee that investigated Carrolls death reports that Frady, acting alone, killed Hammond out of paranoia and misguided patriotism and express the hope that the verdict will end conspiracy theories about political assassinations.