Lee CHILD - Faking a Murderer

And cute.

He waited.

By ten of eight he figured the building was as quiet as it was going to get. Massee and Warwick still inside. He went in and found the right corridor. Saw the right door up ahead. But it opened before he got there and Ian Massee stepped out.

He stopped and said, “You.”

Reacher said, “Yeah, me.”

“What do you want?”

“Warwick.”

“Why?”

“None of your business.”

“This whole thing is my business.”

“This whole thing is bullshit.”

“My brother was not a spy.”

“Your brother was a piece of shit.”

“In the end they said someone else was the spy. It’s in the record.”

“Were you out sick the day they taught thinking? There were two spies. Your brother and the other guy. Working together.”

“That’s not true.”

“Yes, it is. I know for sure.”

“How?”

“I watched him do two dead drops and meet with an East German government official. I was young, and I was army, not air force. He wasn’t watching out for a guy like me. Which is why they sent me, I guess.”

Massee was quiet a beat.

Then he said, “So he was executed.”

Reacher said, “No, he wasn’t. He put the gun in his mouth all by himself.”

“We have the order.”

“Do you have the response?”

“What?”

“They will have been paper-clipped together in the file. The order, and the response. The order said kill him, and the response said he was already dead when I got there.”

“You?”

“Except that wasn’t quite true. He was alive when I got there. We sat in his car and talked. I laid out the situation. He begged me to let him shoot himself. He wanted to spare his family the disgrace. I was okay with that. But then you went and dug it all up again. You should have let sleeping dogs lie.”

“You were there?”

“Afterward I was deaf in my left ear for a week.”

Massee went quiet again.

Went red in the face.

Wound himself up like a clock and swung a clumsy right hook at Reacher’s jaw, powered by nothing but rot and bloat and furious anger. Reacher caught the fist in his left hand like a softball and crashed a low right into Massee’s ample gut, which folded him up like a pocketknife, gasping and staggering on uncertain feet. Reacher waited until he stabilized and brought his knee up into Massee’s lowered face. After which Massee collapsed, half backward and half sideways, onto the floor, and lay still.

Reacher stepped over him and stepped through the door.

Warwick was in the room. Evidently he had heard the commotion. He said, “What the hell is going on out there?”

Reacher closed the door and said, “Take your gloves off.”

“What?”

“You heard.”

“My gloves?”

“Take them off, or I’ll take them off for you.”

“Why?”

“I want to see your hands.”

Warwick was too puzzled to protest. He simply peeled his gloves off, inside out, first one, then the other.

He held his hands up.

No scratches.

The door opened again and Samuel Rye stepped into the room.

• • •

ALL MORGUES WEAR THE SAME perfume, a blend of disinfectant, refrigeration, and putrefying flesh. Eau de death.

All morgues are outfitted along the same lines. Gleaming tiles, cabinets, and counters. Stainless steel tables, sinks, lights, scales, carts, and instruments.

All morgues have the same coolers, some larger, some smaller, some more numerous. To Brennan’s surprise, the one at the CFL had Braille lettering beside the sign saying 5205: BODY STORAGE. She wondered. Visually impaired pathologists or autopsy techs? Sketchy backup generators?

She didn’t think about it long. The after-hours quiet was goosing her already jangled nerves. There were no Stryker saws whining. No phones ringing. No faucets pounding water into stainless steel sinks. No voices dictating, directing, or cracking jokes. She’d done her share of late-night autopsy room stints. It was never good times.

After badging her through security and escorting her upstairs, Matias had rolled a gurney from the blind-friendly cooler. They’d discussed her findings and reviewed her report. Then Matias had pulled surgical aprons, masks, and gloves from drawers and they’d both suited up.

“Ready?” Dark brows raised above the rectangle of fabric covering her nose and mouth. Which were also dark.

Brennan nodded.

Matias double-checked the tag, then unzipped the body bag. Whrrrp. The sound was like a snarl in the stillness. The stench of death wafted out. The odor bothered neither Matias nor Brennan.

Yeow lay naked and supine, the Y stitching his chest dark against the waxy, gray skin. One eye was half open, the pupil milky black. The base of his throat was mottled radish red.

From Matias’s comments and autopsy notes and diagram, Brennan knew that the “troubling” marks were posterior, at the back of Yeow’s neck.

“Roll him?”

Brennan nodded again.

Matias separated the flaps of the pouch. Together they tucked Yeow’s arms and rotated his body, Matias at the shoulders, Brennan at the ankles. His forehead hit the table with a soft thunk.

Brennan leaned in. Saw nothing.

Matias pulled a surgical lamp close and thumbed the switch. Light flooded Yeow’s head and upper torso.

The marks were subtle but definitely there, centered above the seventh cervical vertebrae, at the base of Yeow’s neck. Two lines converging at a very slight angle.

“Perimortem?” Brennan asked.

“Definitely. The hemorrhaging means the injury occurred at the time of death.”

“Looks like he was hit by something with a pair of long, thin edges. Or a pair of bars.”

“Or he hit something.”

“You think he fell?”

Matias shook her head. “I found no blunt trauma anywhere else on the body. No lacerations, no hematomas, no fractures. Nothing but this linear bruising and the abrasions on his throat.”

“No defensive wounds on his hands or arms?”

“A few broken nails. But I have no way to tell when or how that happened.”

“And there was no skin or tissue under his nails.” Brennan knew that from Matias’s notes. “No trace at all.”

“It makes no sense. If conscious, victims of strangulation claw at their attackers’ hands. Or at the ligature cutting off their air.”

“Yes.”

Brennan straightened and closed her eyes. Again played a mental holograph of the assault.

Yeow.

Warwick facing him with the plastic bag.

Or behind him.

Tall, skinny Warwick.

She pictured the two linear marks. Their position, spacing, and orientation.

The figure morphed. Grew shorter. More solid.

Sudden synapse.

Brennan’s eyes flew open.

Not Paul Warwick.

Samuel Rye!

“These bruises were made by a prosthetic hand.” Tone emphatically calm. “That’s why you found no skin under Yeow’s nails.”

“A device with two hooks?” Matias spoke while eyeballing the patterned injury on Yeow’s neck.

“Yes.”

“That tracks.” Nodding slowly.

Brennan stripped off and bunched her apron, mask, and gloves. “I know who did this.”

“Seriously?” Matias, unconvinced.

“I have to go.” Toe-slamming the pedal and tossing her gear into the biohazard bin.

“That’s it?”

“My paralegal is in grave danger.”

Brennan grabbed her shoulder bag and fired out the door. She thumbed her phone for an Uber as she hustled. The app seemed agonizingly slow. But eventually Fong promised to be there in a black Camry hybrid within eleven minutes. She pushed out to the street and ran, hoping her phone would bring Fong to her. She could be a mile away in eleven minutes. Maybe more. Then her phone buzzed in her hand. Caller ID displayed the same unfamiliar number she had seen before. Albert Thorsten. Yeow’s editor at the Washington Post . The Kalahari voice.