The Escape Artist

by Brad Meltzer

  “Sir, just please put the gun down,” Zig said.

  The man shook his head over and over, snot running from his nose. “Please, Lord, forgive me for doing this…” He raised the gun—and pointed it at his own head. “Don’t tell my father what happened.”

  He pulled the trigger.

  Zig barreled forward, straight into the man, as the gun exploded. Stuart’s arm jerked. His gun was now pointing straight ahead. A shot was fired.

  “STUART!” his wife yelled, running toward them as the bullet zipped across the room.

  Zig’s momentum knocked the man backward and both of them tumbled to the floor. They hit the ground together, Zig facedown on top of the man. Stuart’s head banged backward and the gun went flying, falling, skipping across the carpet.

  Flat on his back, the man sobbed, snot and tears pouring toward his ears. He wouldn’t open his eyes, wouldn’t look at Zig, who was still on top of him.

  “You’re okay…we’ll get through this…we’ll be okay,” his wife insisted, though Zig knew that was the biggest lie of all.

  Climbing to his feet, Zig grabbed the gun, still looking where the bullet—

  There. On his left. Across the lobby. There was a smoking round hole in the front desk.

  Oh, God. Grunbeck.

  “Kid! You okay!? You hit!?” Zig yelled, darting across the lobby.

  As Zig reached the other side of the desk, he found Grunbeck down on the ground. There wasn’t a mark on him.

  “Y-Y’know I’m not twenty-five years old,” Grunbeck said, his eyes wide, clearly in shock.

  Zig nodded.

  “You saved my life.”

  Zig was already dialing base security, letting them know all was okay. “Yeah, well, how ’bout you give me Nola’s PADD and we call it even?” Zig asked with a grin.

  Grunbeck stumbled to his feet, pulled his chair up to the desk. Took a breath. Took another breath.

  “Do it again. Deep breath. Through your nose. You’ll be okay,” Zig said, a strong arm on Grunbeck’s shoulder.

  Ten minutes and a few keystrokes later, Nola’s forms were on-screen. Grunbeck skimmed through them first, looking confused.

  “What’s wrong? She filled it out, didn’t she?” Zig asked.

  “You have to fill it out. As you know, they won’t give you your dog tags until you pick your next of kin and who gets say over your burial.”

  “So who’d Nola pick?”

  “That’s the thing. According to this, Sergeant Brown signed into her account and changed her designee last night.”

  “Last night?”

  “That’s what I’m telling you. Nola…Sergeant Brown… she changed it after she died.”

  13

  Okay, Ziggy, on a scale of one to ten—one being a normal day, and ten being the final season of Lost—you’re officially a nineteen.”

  “Dino, this isn’t a joke,” Zig said.

  “You think I’m joking? This is that moment where they tell the babysitter the call’s coming from inside the house—and you’re the babysitter,” Dino said, keeping his voice down as he rolled a hand truck filled with boxes across the carpet of Eagle Lanes, the bowling alley located directly on base.

  His real name was Andy Kanalz, though Zig had been calling him “Dino” since they were in third grade. Big kid, little arms, like a T. rex. Today, Dino’s arms had caught up with the rest of him, and now his round face and middle-aged gut made him bigger in every way.

  “Can we just cut to the gruesome third act?” Dino added, pointing to the paperwork Zig was holding. “If that’s Nola’s file…where’s her body going next?”

  Zig looked around the empty bowling lanes, then checked the small grill known as the Kingpin Café in the corner. Lunch rush was over. The place was empty. As for Dino… Heart or no heart? It wasn’t even a question.

  “Up until yesterday, Nola’s body was supposed to go to Arlington,” Zig explained, referring to the national cemetery where so many in the military asked to be buried. “Then last night, she picked—”

  “Last night?”

  “I know. Stay with me. Then last night, she picked a brand-new designee. Someone named Archie Crowe. Name sound familiar?”

  “Never heard of him. Though I pity any man named Archie,” Dino said, hitting the brakes on the hand truck as he reached the vending machine in back. From his pocket, he pulled out a key ring, flipped to a tubular key, and slipped it into the vending machine’s lock.

  Back in ninth grade, when Zig bagged groceries at Brian Quinn’s supermarket and there was an opening for a new bag boy, Zig got Dino the job. During community college, when Zig worked as a valet, he did the same, and the two of them raced Porsches in the parking lot of the best hotel in town. So back when Zig had just started at Dover, and Dino was failing in his latest career as manager of a health club, Zig got him hired to stock all the vending machines on base. He was still doing it, along with running the bowling alley and the café.

  “Can I just be honest? Until the day I die, I will never ever tire of this,” Dino said, pulling open the glass front of the vending machine and flashing a wide smile that revealed the gap between his two front teeth. “Snickers or Twix?” he asked, though he didn’t have to.

  Down on one knee, he handed Zig a Twix, then pulled a plain M&M’s for himself. “One day, I’m gonna free those poor breath mints from their coiled solitude in the bottom corner. Maybe the Life Savers too.”

  “Just don’t ever eat the apple pie toaster pastry. I don’t think I could respect anyone who put their teeth on that.” The joke came easy for Zig. Far too easy, Dino realized.

  “C’mon, Ziggy. You came here for a reason. The guy Nola picked—Archie Crowe—is he someone you recognize?”

  “Never heard of him. But according to the paperwork, he works at Longwood Funeral Home.”

  Dino turned at the name. “Longwood? As in Longwood Longwood?”

  “I know. Little odd, right?”

  “Little? Ziggy, this is— Longwood’s where you first trained as a mortician—and now you’re telling me Nola’s sending her supposed body to the exact same place? You know what they call coincidences like that? Nothing. Because things like that aren’t coincidence. Especially in Ekron,” Dino added, referring to their small hometown in Pennsylvania.

  “I’m not disagreeing, but let’s not forget, Nola grew up there too.”

  “For barely a year. Then she moved away.”

  “I know. But what Nola did for my Maggie—”

  “That was a nice thing. A beautiful thing. But that doesn’t mean you put your life at risk for her.”

  “Why not? She put her life at risk for my daughter. She did right by us! How can I not do right by her?”

  Dino didn’t answer.

  “You know you agree. This isn’t some stranger. Nola’s earned this. She’s tied to our town, tied to me—and then there’s this: In a two-hundred-mile radius, you know how many funeral homes there are for her to choose from? Three. And one of them only serves the Amish in New Holland. That doesn’t give her too many options.”

  “Still, why change it from Arlington at all?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it? Maybe it was Nola, maybe it was whoever’s looking for Nola, but either way, someone changed Nola’s dying wishes…hours after she was supposedly dead.”

  Dino thought about that and threw back a few M&M’s. “Listen, I know you love playing Humpty Dumpty and putting all the pieces back together again. But have you stopped and thought about the fact that maybe you were meant to find this body?”

  Zig shook his head. “There’s no way anyone could’ve known I’d personally step in to work on Nola’s case.”

  “Agreed. I’m just saying, well, maybe this is exactly what Maureen Zigarowski’s favorite son really needs.”

  “So what…now this is all fate? The universe is sending me a message?”

  “You tell me. How many days until the anniversary?”

  Zig didn’t
answer. He stared down at the still-unopened Twix he was gripping, which he could feel softening in its wrapper.

  “I can look it up,” Dino added, pulling out his phone. “I know it’s always close for you. How many days?”

  “Two hundred forty-six.”

  “There you go. Two hundred and forty-six days from now. And do you remember what you did this past year on the anniversary? Lemme remind you. You asked your ex-wife, Charmaine, who you still pine for—”

  “I don’t pine for her.”

  “Ziggy, to mark the day that your beautiful daughter, Maggie, left this planet, you invited Charmaine to Nellie Bly, the crappiest old amusement park in all of western Pennsylvania. Then you both spent the day walking around eating cotton candy and telling old stories about Maggie.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with remembering her.”

  “You’re right. But what happened when the day was done? Charmaine went back to her new fiancé and future stepson, while you came back to Dover and the dead.”

  “Her Facebook profile still says Single.”

  “That’s because she’s worried you’ll slit your wrists if you see the word Engaged.”

  Zig didn’t say anything, his eyes back on the faded roll of breath mints in the bottom corner of the vending machine.

  “Holy Prozac, Batman—you look even sadder than when Charmaine had you go as California Raisins for Halloween.”

  Zig gave a faint nod. “I’ll never forgive her for that costume.”

  “I forgive the costume. What I couldn’t forgive was the gold chain and Rerun from What’s Happening!! hat that she made you wear with it. Like a pimped Hefty bag.”

  Zig fought back a smile. He knew Dino’s tricks. After a child dies, life is loud at first—everyone calls; everyone packs into the crowded funeral. But in time, most friends fade away, even your best friends. It’s too sad for them. Luckily, there’s usually one good soul who stays in your life no matter how bad it gets. Back then, it was Dino. And for so many of the hardest days since.

  “Ziggy, most of your coworkers would’ve already finished this case and moved on to the next. Shadowy classified missions come through here all the time—your job isn’t to dig around in them. But the fact this girl knew your daughter…that she saved her…that’s what’s got your blood pumping, isn’t it? I saw it the moment you walked in here, even the way you first talked about her. Nola’s not the only one alive again.”

  “I’m just trying to pay back a debt—and help someone in trouble.”

  “Or maybe she’s the cause of the trouble. You have no idea, do you? But it’s not slowing you down. All I’m saying is, even if nothing fishy’s going on, maybe this case is something you need.”

  Zig’s phone started vibrating and he pulled it out. He knew that number.

  “Please tell me you found something?” he asked, picking up.

  “That’s your greeting? What’re you, a millennial? Learn how to say hello,” FBI fingerprint expert Amy Waggs scolded.

  Zig took a breath, sliding into a seat at one of the bowling-alley scorer’s tables. “Nice to hear your voice, Waggs. How are you?”

  “That’s better,” she said. “Did that kill you?”

  “Wait, that’s Waggs?” Dino asked, still down on one knee at the vending machine. “Say hi for me!”

  Zig waved him off. Two years ago, he’d set up Dino and Waggs on a disastrous blind date. They hadn’t let him live it down since. “Waggs, I’m sorry—it’s just— It’s been a bit of a morning here.”

  “I saw,” she said. “We have Fox News here too, y’know. So imagine my surprise when on my TV, the President of the United States is standing there at Dover, carrying a casket for what appears to be the very same case my pal Zig has asked me to look into. Makes me start thinking, Hey, maybe there’s more going on there than good ole Ziggy was saying.”

  “I swear, I didn’t know Wallace was coming until late last night.”

  “I don’t care when it was. If you want my help, I need to know this stuff. So the fact you didn’t mention it means you’re being careless or reckless, both of which you never are.”

  Zig grabbed one of the half pencils from the top of the scorer’s table, tapping the point of it against his now-mushy Twix. “I was just trying to be careful.”

  “You sure about that? Because when this plane crashed in Alaska, whatever the hell this girl Nola was up to there, well…y’know that part where Goldilocks is eating the porridge and you quickly realize it’s all a bear trap? Based on what I’m finding, Ziggy, you’re poking at something far bigger than a bear.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “That body that’s sitting in your morgue right now—the one who everyone insists is Nola—guess what I found when I put her fingerprints in the system?”

  “Clearance issues.”

  “Of course clearance issues,” Waggs replied.

  Zig expected as much. When you enlist in the military, your fingerprints go straight into the government’s database. But as Zig had learned when he started working on the bodies of agents from the CIA, NSA, and every other acronym, when it came to spies, high-level informants, or anyone else whose identity the government wanted to keep secret, their fingerprints got “X-ed out,” meaning that only someone with the appropriate clearance could see who they actually were.

  “This is where you tell me you’ve got clearance,” Zig said.

  “I’m working on it. It’ll take a few days. Fortunately for you, I’m an impatient person. And a nosy one.”

  Zig knew that tone. He stopped tapping his pencil. “Waggs, what’d you find?”

  “Just listen. Remember all those years ago—back when Bill Clinton was President, and his secretary of commerce went down in a plane crash?”

  “Ron Brown.”

  “There you go,” Waggs said. “Thirty-five people died that night, but all the newspapers cared about was one person: VIP and presidential best friend Ron Brown. So. Go back to today’s bodies and the Alaska crash that took them down. Who’s everyone currently focused on?”

  “The VIP and presidential best friend.”

  “Bingo. Librarian of Congress Nelson Rookstool. But…”

  “There were half a dozen other people on that flight,” Zig said.

  “Correct again. Including your friend Nola, who, well… Did you happen to see where she was stationed?”

  “Sergeant First Class at Fort Belvoir. In Virginia.”

  “Okay, but what’d she do at Belvoir? What was her title there?”

  “Nola was the Artist-in-Residence,” Zig said.

  Waggs paused. She shouldn’t have been surprised. Based on what Zig said last night, he knew the girl. “You looked her up,” Waggs said.

  “I’d never heard of it before. Apparently, since World War I, the Army has assigned one person—an actual artist—who they send out in the field to, well…paint what couldn’t otherwise be seen.”

  “So instead of guns, they get brushes,” Waggs agreed, making Zig again think of the canvas, the portrait that was taken from Nola’s belongings. “What else you find?”

  “It’s apparently one of the greatest traditions in our military—they call them war artists,” Zig said. “They go, they see, they paint, cataloguing every victory and mistake, from the dead on D-day, to the injured at Mogadishu, to the sandbag pilers who were at Hurricane Katrina. In fact, when 9/11 hit, Nola’s predecessor was the only artist let inside the security perimeter. And y’know why that matters?” Zig asked. “It means Nola is someone with access.”

  “She’s not the only one. You take a peek at the names of the other victims who were on her flight?”

  “There was a young soldier. Anthony Trudeau,” Zig said, still seeing Anthony’s mom with the dead look in her eyes, his dad lying on the Fisher House carpet. “There were others too—at least one Air Force. I’m guessing that was the pilot.”

  “Pilot for sure. That’s three soldiers total when you include Nola.
And who else?”

  Zig didn’t even hear the question. He was still thinking of Anthony’s parents. He needed to go by later, make sure they were okay.

  “C’mon, Zig,” Waggs added. “There were three other people on that plane—the last three bodies carried off this morning.”

  “The civilians,” Dino whispered, still kneeling at the vending machine.

  Zig turned to his friend. He didn’t realize Dino had been listening, and could hear everything, the entire time.

  “Civilians,” Zig repeated, focusing back on the phone. “There were three other civilians on board.”

  “Exactly,” Waggs said. “Rookstool was the head of the Library of Congress. Of course he had staff with him. Three aides. You catch their names?”

  That smelled to Zig too. Their names still hadn’t been released. “They said they hadn’t been able to reach the families yet, if you believe it.”

  “Now you’re seeing how the magic trick works. Everyone’s so busy mourning presidential pal Rookstool, no one bothers to see who was sitting in the two rows behind him. Lucky for me, I work for the FBI, which gave me access to the plane’s full manifest.”

  “Waggs, this is my solemn vow to you. Next time I see you, I have a hug with your name on it.”

  “Save your hugs. You’re assuming this is good news,” she said. “According to the manifest, one of Rookstool’s staffers was a woman named Rose Mackenberg. Then there were two men. Clifford Eddy Jr. and Amedeo Vacca.”

  “Interesting names.”

  “I thought the same.”

  “And when you looked them up?” Zig asked.

  “Amedeo Vacca, Clifford Eddy Jr., and Rose Mackenberg were all born in the late 1800s. From what I can tell, they’ve been dead for nearly half a century.”

  Zig went silent. Dino glanced over his shoulder. Behind them, the door to the bowling alley opened, and two men walked in. Both in uniform. Young Army cadets.

  “Weird, right?” Waggs asked through the phone. “But not as weird as this. Back when Mackenberg, Eddy, and Vacca were alive, they all worked in the same field of study. You’d almost call them…experts.”

  “Experts in what?”