“Yeah,” Larsen said, snicking a fingernail against the viewscreen. “Right there… ballast tanks, emergency blow switches.”
“That’s where he was. I took fingerprints from the switches. The only usable ones are from the big handle. And I know they belong to this man.”
“You can do that without a lab?” Larsen looked up from the camera display.
“Not accurately, no. But the body had a cut on its right middle fingertip that hadn’t healed. Here are the fingerprints from the handle,” I said, holding the pouch up between us, “and you can clearly see the mark duplicated in this print, which was positioned where the middle finger would be. You’re right that the others can’t be positively identified without a fingerprint technician, but based on this, I think I can confidently say that this man left those prints on the emergency blow handle.
“So here’s the first thing you can help me with: would a mechanic, in the normal operation of the sub, be working those controls?”
“That was easy,” Larsen said, laughing. “Nope. Not ever. This guy’s a grease monkey. When he’s awake, he spends his time running or maintaining the diesels. I’d be surprised if he often passed through the control room, let alone worked in it.”
I had popped a blank tape in my recorder and turned it on. I wanted to make sure all our thoughts and conclusions didn’t escape the moment.
I put it on the table between us. “OK. Finding his fingerprints on the handle was unusual-”
“But not impossible,” Larsen interrupted. “How do you know those prints are recent and not from, say, a month ago when he took someone else’s shift for them?”
“We know it because the prints were preserved in blood. What’s more, I think lab tests will show the blood is his.”
“Got it. So he pulled the emergency blow handle. And then someone killed him.”
“You’d think that,” I said, taking the camera from him and cuing up a different picture. “But you’re wrong about two things: He was shot before he pulled the handle. And the gunshots didn’t kill him.”
“What are you talking about? You said he was shot twice in the back… how is he going to pull the handle after he’s dead?”
“That’s just it. As I said, the gunshots didn’t kill him. Look at this.” I gave the camera back to Larsen. “See the wound position? Right there near the top of the shoulder. And the exit wounds are slightly higher. Those bullets didn’t hit anything vital.”
“He could have bled to death.”
“Not much chance of hitting a major vein or artery in that area. And even more telling is the lack of blood on the floor beneath the body. He bled, all right, but not nearly enough to kill him.”
“Shot twice, but not mortally wounded. I guess I can buy that. But it doesn’t mean he wasn’t shot after he pulled the lever.”
“Evidence in the control room suggests otherwise. Remember the wide shot of the compartment? Blood stains near the middle of the room. Smeared in a direction parallel to Ahn’s body. Combine that with the way his body was oriented, and I see this: He was shot before he got to the panel and fell there in the middle of the room. It took him a few moments, but he dragged himself back to his feet and moved over to the emergency blow switches. Then he collapsed for good. Died a bit later.”
“Use small words,” Larsen said. “What killed him, then?”
“Chlorine. He was in bad shape before he was shot. We’ll have to wait for an autopsy to tell for sure, but I think my theory is pretty much on target. You can see it on the close-up of his face.”
Larsen examined the image after I brought it up on the camera. “Damn. He was in some pain.”
“It’s more than that. Look at his lips.”
“They’re… blue.”
“Exactly. His fingernails are in the same condition. It’s called cyanosis, and it’s caused when the blood isn’t carrying the oxygen it should. Now, in the absence of any other evidence, we wouldn’t have much idea what caused him to be so oxygen-deficient. But there was a massive release of chlorine on the sub. That’s what the initial boarding party found, right?”
Larsen nodded.
“So,” I continued, “we look into the symptoms of chlorine. And we see that, in high concentrations, it causes pulmonary edema. Fluid in the lungs. It’s a nasty gas, chlorine-besides that effect, it also reacts with your tissue, and one of the byproducts is hydrochloric acid. Which, of course, breaks down the tissue further. Basically, your lungs drown in blood even as they’re being destroyed. You cough and cough, but all that comes up is blood, and eventually, your lungs can’t introduce enough oxygen into your bloodstream, no matter how deeply you breathe.
“Vazquez inadvertently helped us out on this one. When he fell on the corpse, a mist of blood sprayed out. This corpse, remember, showed no obvious mortal wounds. So we can surmise that there was internal bleeding in its pulmonary system. I think that we would see the same thing if we cut open Ahn.”
“He was gassed.”
“Right. He already had inhaled quite a bit of chlorine by the time he got to the control room. He wouldn’t have survived even if he hadn’t been shot.”
Larsen rubbed his face, igniting a more noticeable glow in his already ruddy cheeks. “So who shot him?” he said, gnawing on his thumbnail.
“Someone aiming into the compartment, probably from aft to forward.”
“Oh, come on. How the hell would you know that?”
“Well, I can guess at what direction he was facing when he was shot based on the bloodstains. His back was facing aft and, uh, starboard. And based on the angle the shots hit him-traveling upward-we can surmise that he was shot from a position lower than shoulder height.”
“The aft hatch.”
“The aft hatch. So I looked around that doorway and found two shell casings. Both 9mm.” I rattled the baggies in front of him, then set them back on the table.
“You find the gun those came from, and you find the gun that shot Ahn. And that was luck on my part. It happened to be in the first compartment I checked. The forward torpedo room. Here, can I see that again?” I shuffled through the digital images. “This guy was lying right there, with the pistol in his hand.”
“Uh-huh. Who is he?”
“Lee Tae-Uk. The dossier says he’s the sub’s executive.”
“Executive? Lemme see that.” Larsen scrutinized the folder. “Executive officer, is what it means.”
“So how does he fit into the officer hierarchy?”
“He’s essentially the second-in-command. Executive, as in, he executes the commands the captain gives.”
“So here he is, lying in the torpedo room, holding a gun that matches the shell casings I found.”
“Nine millimeter?”
“Yup. It’s a Chinese-made gun, a copy of the old Soviet-bloc military sidearm.”
“Oh, right. The Tokarev.”
“Exactly. Chambered for 9mm. Two rounds were missing from the magazine, and the headstamps on the bullets in the mag matched the ones on the shell casings from the control room.”
“Looks like he’s the shooter, then.”
I sighed. “I know you’re getting tired of hearing this, but only a lab test will tell us for sure. They’ll check his hand for residue that matches the gun. But based on everything else I’ve found, yeah, he pulled the trigger.”
“Let me guess, he’s got the cyanosis, too?”
“In spades. He asphyxiated right there on the floor. Which leads me to another question you can help me answer, Lieutenant. I have no idea what this outfit he’s wearing is. He’s got the normal officer attire on his upper body, but what’s the suit he’s got on his legs?”