Дэвид Балдаччи - The Escape

Puller slumped back on his bed, his belly grumbling as it still digested his fast-food dinner. He had to sleep because he had to be well rested and on top of his game from here on. But his thoughts dwelled on the man.

He had been someone. And knowing who that someone was would lead to someone or something else. The man had come to the prison for a specific purpose.

Fortunately for Robert Puller, that specific purpose had not been carried out.

Because , he thought, I’m still alive.

THE LIGHTS POPPED on, bright and harsh and direct. Puller and Knox blinked to adjust to this and then waited as the door was opened and the body rolled out on a metal freezer bed.

The military medical examiner was a man in his fifties with graying hair, a trim build, and large muscular hands. He looked a little put out because Puller’s call had caused him to climb out of his bunk, get dressed, and show up here.

He held a clipboard in one of those hands as he slid down the sheet with the other, revealing the body of a tall man in his thirties with close-cropped hair, a chiseled physique, and no facial hair. Puller noted the Y-incision already carved in the man’s chest and the suture tracks that had sewn this massive postmortem cut back together, with the organs placed neatly in the chest cavity.

“Cause of death?” asked Puller.

The ME pointed to the base of the neck. “In laymen’s terms, a broken neck.”

“Manner of death?” asked Puller.

“Someone broke it.”

“So he didn’t fall, hit his head?”

“No. It wasn’t a compression injury with vertebrae collapsing on each other that you would associate with a fall like that. Nor was it an injury you would see in a hanging where the vertebrae are separated vertically. Here it seems that the neck was snapped horizontally.”

Puller looked instantly intrigued by this observation. “Horizontal? Side to side?” He held up his hands like he was gripping a head and then pulled one hand to the right and one to the left. “Like that?”

The ME considered this. “Yeah, pretty close. How’d you figure that?”

“Any other wounds?”

“None that I could find, and I looked for a long time.”

Puller looked down at the body, going over it inch by inch, starting at the head and moving to the feet. He bent closer and examined the forearms a second time.

“What do you think those are?” he asked.

The ME looked where Puller was pointing. There were three slight indentations in the skin. They were uniform and evenly spaced.

“I noted those. It might have been an article of clothing or something else he was wearing that made those impressions. Or he might have even been bound somehow, although I’m not sure how that could have been the case. He certainly wasn’t found tied up in the cell.”

“What clothes did he have on?”

“Jeans, long-sleeved shirt, and canvas boat shoes.”

“So he walked into a max-security military prison dressed like that?” said Knox. “Are you kidding?”

“My job is to check the body and make my report on the cause, time, and manner of death,” replied the ME, stifling a yawn. “You guys get to play Sherlock Holmes.”

“And what was the TOD?” asked Puller.

“They called me in right when they found the body. He’d been dead at most two hours.”

“You got an ID on him yet?” asked Puller.

“Nothing popped on the fingerprints or facial recognition databases, and they usually do for those in the ranks. I took a dental impression and also DNA samples. They’ll be sent up to AFDIL in Dover,” he said, referring to the Armed Forces DNA Identification Lab.

Puller said, “Can you ask for stat service? Otherwise, it could take weeks. Even with an expedited reply we’re looking at one to four days.”

“I can. But there’s a backlog these days.”

“Not as bad as when Afghanistan and Iraq were going full-bore,” pointed out Knox.

“No, and thank God for that,” said the ME.

“Can I see the flip side?” asked Puller, indicating the dead man.

He helped the ME turn the body over. Puller again started at the top and worked his way to the bottom. And once more he leaned in closer, this time when he reached the calves. The traces were barely visible, but they were also three in number and uniformly spaced.

“Did you see these?” he asked.

The ME leaned in and then used a handheld light with attached magnifier. He pointed to one faint line. “I thought that one might be from his sock line. But I didn’t see the other two,” he added in a distressed tone. “Although his legs are particularly hairy. You must have great eyesight.” Puller straightened. “I saw them because I was looking for them. Based on what I saw on the forearms.” He helped the ME roll the body back to its original position.

“What do you mean?” Knox asked.

Puller didn’t answer her. He glanced at the ME. “Will you let us know as soon as you have an ID on this guy? He looks military, but he might not be. Particularly if he doesn’t show up in the databases.”

The ME nodded.

Puller leaned down and more closely studied the dead man’s features. “He actually looks Eastern European. Jawline, nose, cheeks, forehead.” He lifted up one of the hands. “Calluses, heavy one on the right index finger’s top pad.”

Knox bent closer and looked at the finger. “From friction with a trigger?”

Puller nodded. “Maybe. Can I see the teeth?”

The ME used a tool to open the mouth and lever back the lips. Puller peered inside the mouth. “Guy’s never been to a dentist. Bad teeth but no metal.”

He nodded to the ME, who let the mouth close.

“Can you run an isotope toxicology on the hair? With that you can tell where he’s from, or at least where he’s been recently, right?”

The ME said, “That’s right. Hydrogen and oxygen isotopes transferred to hair from food and water taken in by the person as well as from the air they breathe. His hair is pretty short so it won’t give me a broad spectrum to work with. Head hair grows at a rate of about one to one point five centimeters a month. With hair as short as his any answer will be locked in to where he was recently.”

“I think that might be good enough.”

“Understand that while the U.S. has a pretty good isotope map on water and air differentials, other countries may not. If he’s from some obscure third world nation we might not get a hit.”

“We’ll never know until we try. As soon as you can get it done would be appreciated.”

“Roger that, Chief Puller.”

“And, Doc?” said Puller. The ME looked at him. “Keep what we just discussed on the QT for now, okay?”

The ME’s brow wrinkled. “But I have reports to make and–”

“Just for now, QT, okay? For a lot of reasons. One of the major ones being I don’t see how any of this happened without some help on the inside. So that means we might have someone playing against us who we think is on our side.”

The ME gaped at him and then closed his mouth. He nodded curtly. “Right.”

Puller walked down the corridor so fast Knox had to hustle to keep up.

“Where are you going?”

“To look at surveillance camera footage.”

“At this hour?”

“Why, you got a date or something?”

“But we’ve already looked at the feed from inside the prison.”

“But we haven’t looked at the feed from outside the prison.”

“Hold it right there,” said Puller, and Knox clicked the key to freeze the frame.

They were sitting in a cubicle at the DB reviewing the surveillance camera footage from the entrance to the prison.

Puller ran his gaze over the trucks that had just rammed the front gates of the prison.