David Baldacci: The Sixth Man

“Sir? Are you all right?”

He tried the door. It was unlocked. He opened it. The man slumped sideways, held in the car only by his seat harness. Sean grabbed the man’s shoulder and righted him as Michelle rushed forward.

“Heart attack?” she said.

Sean looked at the man’s face. “No,” he said firmly.

“How do you know?”

He used the light from his cell phone to illuminate the single gunshot wound between the man’s pupils. There was blood and grayish brain matter all over the car’s interior.

Michelle drew closer and said, “Contact wound. You can see the gun’s muzzle and sight mark burned onto his skin. Don’t think a moose did that.”

Sean said nothing.

“Check his wallet for some ID.”

“Don’t have to.”

“Why not?” she asked.

“Because I know him,” replied Sean.

“What? Who is he?”

“Ted Bergin. My old professor and Edgar Roy’s lawyer.”

CHAPTER

3

THE LOCAL POLICE SHOWED up first. A single Washington County deputy in a dented and dusty but serviceable American-made V8 with an array of communication antennas drilled into the trunk. He came out of the cruiser with one hand on his service weapon and his gaze fastened on Sean and Michelle. He warily approached. They explained what had happened and he checked the body, muttered the word “Damn,” and then hastily called in backup.

Fifteen minutes later two Maine State Police cruisers from Field Troop J slid to stops behind them. The troopers, young, tall, and lean, came out of their aquamarine cars; their crisp blue uniforms seemed to glow like colored ice even in the weak, hazy light. The crime scene was secured and a perimeter guard established. Sean and Michelle were interviewed by the troopers. One of the officers pecked the responses into the portable laptop he’d yanked from his cruiser.

When Sean told them who they were and why they were here, and, more important, who Ted Bergin was and that he represented Edgar Roy, one of the troopers walked away and used his handheld mic to presumably call in more assets. As they waited for reinforcements, Sean said, “You guys know about Edgar Roy?”

One of them replied, “Everybody around here knows about Edgar Roy.”

Michelle said, “Why’s that?”

The other trooper said, “FBI will be here quick as they can.”

“FBI?” exclaimed Sean.

The trooper nodded. “Roy’s a federal prisoner. We got clear instructions from Washington. Anything happens with him, they get called in. That’s what I just did. Well, I told the lieutenant and he’s calling it in.”

“Where’s the closest FBI Field Office?” asked Michelle.

“Boston.”

“Boston? But we’re in Maine.”

“FBI doesn’t maintain an official office in Maine. It all goes through Boston, Mass.”

Sean said, “It’s a long way to Boston. Do we have to stay until they get here? We’re both pretty beat.”

“Our lieutenant is on the way. You can talk to him about it.”

Twenty minutes later the lieutenant arrived and he was not sympathetic. “Just sit tight” was all he said before turning away from them to confer with his men and look over the crime scene.

The Evidence Response Team arrived a couple of minutes later, all ready to bag and tag. Sean and Michelle sat on the hood of their Ford and watched the process. Bergin was officially pronounced dead by what Sean assumed was a coroner or medical examiner—he couldn’t recall what system Maine used. They gleaned from snatched bits of conversation among the techs and troopers that the bullet was still in the dead man’s head.

“No exit wound, contact round, small-caliber gun probably,” noted Michelle.

“But still deadly,” replied Sean.

“Any contact wound to the head usually is. Crack the skull, soft brain tissue pulverized by the kinetic energy wave, massive hemorrhaging followed by organ shutdown. All happens in a few seconds. Dead.”

“I know the process, thanks,” he replied dryly.

As they sat there they could see the members of the Maine constabulary look over at them from time to time.

“Are we suspects?” asked Michelle.

“Everybody’s a suspect until they’re not.”

Some time later the lieutenant came back over to them. “The colonel is on his way.”

“And who is the colonel?” asked Michelle politely.

“Chief of the Maine State Police, ma’am.”

“Okay. But we’ve given our statements,” she said.

“So you two knew the deceased?”

“I did,” answered Sean.

“And you were following him up here?”

“We weren’t following him. I explained it to your troopers. We were meeting him up here.”

“I’d appreciate if you could explain it to me, sir.”

Okay, we are suspects, thought Sean.

He went through their travel steps.

“So you’re saying you didn’t know he was here? But you just happened to be the first ones on the scene?”

Sean said, “That’s right.”

The man tilted his wide-brimmed hat back. “I personally don’t like coincidences.”

“I don’t either,” said Sean. “But they sometimes happen. And there aren’t a lot of homes or people around here. He was going to the same place we were, using the same road. And it’s late. If anyone was going to happen on him, it would probably be us.”

“So not such a big coincidence after all,” added Michelle.

The man didn’t appear to be listening. He was looking at the bulge under her jacket. His hand went to his sidearm and he gave a low whistle, which brought five of his men instantly to his side.

He said, “Ma’am, are you carrying a weapon?”

The other officers tensed. Sean could tell in the fearful looks of the first two troopers on the scene that there would be hell to pay later for them missing such an obvious fact.

“I am,” she said.

“Why didn’t my men know this?”

He gave a prolonged look at the two troopers who had turned about as pale as the moon.

“They didn’t ask,” she replied.

The lieutenant drew his pistol. A moment later a total of six guns were pointed at Sean and Michelle. All kill shots.

“Hold on,” said Sean. “She has a permit. And the gun hasn’t been fired.”

“Both of you put your hands on your heads, fingers interlocked. Now.”

They did so.

Michelle’s gun was taken and examined, and they were both searched for other weapons.

“Full load, sir,” said one of the troopers to the lieutenant. “Hasn’t been recently fired.”

“Yeah, well, we don’t know how long the man’s been dead, either. And it’s only one bullet. Just replace it to make a full clip. Easy enough.”

“I didn’t shoot him,” Michelle said firmly.

“And if we did, do you think we would have hung around and called the police?” added Sean.

“Not for me to decide,” said the lieutenant, who handed Michelle’s gun to one of his men. “Bag and tag.”

“I do have a permit to carry it,” said Michelle.

“Let me see it.”

She handed it to him and his gaze ran swiftly over it before he handed it back. “Permit or not, doesn’t matter if you used the weapon to shoot that man.”

“The deceased has a small-caliber entry wound with no exit,” said Michelle. “An intermediate range shot would have left powder grains tattooing the skin. Here the powder was obviously blown into the wound track. The muzzle end was burned into his skin. Looks to be a .22 or maybe a .32-caliber. The latter’s an eight-millimeter footprint. My weapon would have left a hole nearly fifty percent bigger than that. In fact, if I’d shot him at contact range, the round would have blown through his brain and the headrest and probably shattered the back window and kept going for about a mile.”