Fugitive

Chapter 31

"From who". She shrugged. "No name. The police have read over the letter and decided to let you have it. They couldn't find anything so"... she held it out. I took it and waited for her to leave before opening it. I tore the envelope that had been messily resealed. There was a single sheet of paper. I flipped it over. Nothing on the back. The message was handwritten. Tony. His handwriting sucks. I struggled to read it myself but managed to pick everything out. At the top of the page were two letters in capital letters. TC. Followed by a date 8/24. The message itself made me think Tony was extremely high when he wrote it.

Jacob Rogers my mate.I hope you're doing fine.Stay calm.Stay in rhythm.I don't believe you did the crime.You're innocent.A lot of us don't think you did it.Just know that.So much for free America.You should be free.This is crap.Do you remember when we caught that fish?It was last year.When we were at the park.Do you remember Anna?We were great you and I.From the moment we first met we connected.And along came Jim.The one who hated broccoli.We spent so much time laughing!Until he left for Spain.I never understood that.Spain, of all the places on earth! There were a few inches that were blank before more writing. The paragraph at the end was different from the rest. I went a bit off then but I hope you got my point. I hope you understand Jacob. You're not going to go to prison. We'll get you out of this. I'll see you soon.

He didn't sign his name. What did it mean? The entire letter made next to no sense. But it can't have been random. There must be some kind of clue or hidden code in the letter. But there are millions of codes out there. It would have to be one he knows I could figure out cuffed to a hospital bed. I thought through all the codes I knew. The list wasn't long. Being in the marines, I picked up a few different codes. Morse code, for one. This definitely wasn't that. I knew some cyphers. I read the letter again, slowly this time. Then I read it again. I couldn't see anything. I sounded out the words and looked at their syllables to see if they could connect to numbers part of another code. I rearranged some letters to see if it was the Caesar shift. Then my eyes drifted to the letters at the top of the page again. TC. Tony something? The cypher? Cypher. Transposition Cypher. Yes! That was it. The date was part of the code. Because the date was so random. August has been and gone and it's not a significant date. 824. That means its 312. The transposition cypher is a method of encryption by which the positions held by units of plaintext (unencrypted information) are shifted according to a regular system. Because I had no regular system Tony had given me the numbers to use. The coded text constitutes a permutation of the plaintext. That is, the order of the units is changed meaning the plaintext is reordered. It sounds a lot more complicated that it really is. I pressed a button to call Karen. I hadn't used the button yet so I figure she wouldn't be too annoyed with my request. A few minutes later she came in. "Could I have a pen please"? I asked. She nodded and pulled a pen from her pocket and handed it to me. After she left I started working on the cypher. It still didn't make much sense using the words I had. Tony had used weight spacing. He went on to the next line at the end of every sentence which made me think maybe there was something there. So I took the last letter of each line and put them together. It ended up being E-E-M-M-E-T-T-T-A-E-P-H-R-K-A-I-D-M-I-G-N-T-H. I used the number combination 312 and got a message. Meet me at the park midnight. I had to get out of here. It must be important if he went to all that trouble to code a message like that. Tony wasn't the most patient or persevering person. Unless he really cared about it. I started pulling on my cuffs. My hands ached and my wrists went a bright red. I yanked my wrist against the cuffs for what must have been almost an hour. No give. I turned slightly ignoring the small pain in my side. There was a table to my left with a few tools, none of them useful enough to pick handcuffs. I looked around a bit more. There was another table with smaller tools, but I couldn't reach it. After a moment's hesitation, I ripped the IV from my arm. I swung around and placed my feet on the floor. I was stiff and the floor was cold. I took a few steps and reached as far as I could, the handcuffs straining. My arms felt like they were being pulled from their sockets. I inched my toes even further, and reached the tips of my fingers. It was so close. So incredibly close. Yet so incredibly far. I wiggled my fingers as if it would make them magically longer. This wasn't working. So, I loosened my arm and put all my weight on one foot while stretching out my other leg. I stretched my toes. I could touch it. I tried to hook my foot under the handle. Instead I ended up pushing it an inch further away. It was difficult to see without decreasing how far I could reach. Karen was due to come in in a few minutes. She always checks in about 4:00pm. I stretched even further and moved my other foot so it was further away from the bed. Balancing has never been something I've been good at. After a few tries I was able to clip my toes underneath the handle and pull it within reach. I brought it forward only enough to grab some tools off it. I grabbed about four and pushed the cart gently to get it back where it was. I leapt back into bed and tried to slow my breathing a bit. I concealed the tools under my sheets. The IV was still out of my arm. There was no way I was about to attempt to jab it back in, so I quickly came up with a simple lie in my head. Of course, we had military training, in terms of medical stuff. But honestly, I don't like the idea of jabbing a needle into my skin. When Karen came in only minutes later she immediately noticed the IV dangling towards the floor. "What happened"? "I looked down at it. "Oh, it got pulled out a while ago". "Who pulled it out"? She asked walking toward it and preparing to put it back in my arm. "Me. Accidently of course", I faked a small chuckle. "I have absolutely no idea how I managed it". Karen didn't see the humour. "This is important Jacob". "I know. I'm sorry. I just didn't want to put it back in myself in case I did it wrong". She nodded, but still looked sceptical. "Okay". She put it back into my arm and made sure it was working before checking everything else. "You're being released the day after tomorrow. You seem perfectly fine to me, besides a bit of tenderness on the chest area, which is to be expected. You'll need some physical therapy to get back into shape though. You might find it difficult running around for a while". Not running is a little bit of a problem. I'll have to leave at night. Tonight. If one of these tools worked. I nodded. Karen left, busy with other people to attend to. I lifted the sheets slightly, fingering the tools and pulling them out carefully. I didn't know what most of them did. There was a scalpel. That was about the only thing there easily recognisable. They were surgical tools. That part was obvious. I listened for footsteps outside my room briefly but no one was due to come in under I was brought dinner. It was useless trying to hear anything anyway, there were heaps of footsteps outside my room, chattering nurses, other machines working their magic. I shoved the end of the scalpel into the little keyhole on the cuffs. It wouldn't fit properly so I couldn't even turn it. I turned it around to try the narrow part at the end and tried to force it to fit so much I ended up making a cut on my hand. It wasn't a big cut but it wouldn't stop bleeding. I didn't have anything to stop the bleeding except the sheets. The crisp, white sheets. A nurse noticing later would be inevitable. It didn't matter. I tried another tool, this one also failed to work. The next one I tried fit into the keyhole. I jiggled it a little bit. I felt something click and then the handcuffs opened. My eyes darted to the door. No one had heard. I unhooked the handcuffs and placed them on the table carefully as not to create a loud noise. I put the tool down as well and crawled out of the bed. I yanked the IV from my arm wincing at the slight sting. The door was out of the question. My bare feet padded on the floor. My chest throbbed and my knees wobbled at the movement. The window was only a couple of steps away. It was locked. I jiggled it repeatedly as if it would magically unlock. Unsurprisingly, it didn't. The room wasn't very big, there was another door but it ended up being a storage cupboard. Useless. No skylight, no unlocked windows, no other exit besides the door being guarded. Vents seemed like another logical option. While there were vents in the room they were too small for me to crawl through, if I could find something to pry them open. After a few more minutes of quietly searching the room I gave up, getting back into my bed. I didn't put the handcuffs back on but I did slide the IV back into my arm. I didn't like to watch so I lined it up best I could and slid it into my skin. I couldn't pull the 'it fell out' excuse again. I pulled the sheets up higher so Karen wouldn't notice that the cuffs are off. I hid the tools under my sheets again. I knew she would be back in about an hour or so with dinner. I had until then to figure out a way to get out of this room. I almost dozed off in the hour or so of boredom before Karen came back. I took special note when she entered counting how long it took for the door to shut behind her. Listening for the click of the electronic lock. Trying to get a glimpse of the guard outside. Karen brought me the tray as usual. I sat up keeping the arm that was supposed to be cuffed under the sheets. I used the other hand to grab the tray and place it on my lap. I smiled as usual. "Thanks Karen". She nodded, but seemed confused at my lack of conversation. Normally I'm quite happy about her visits. Gives me someone to talk to. If only for a few minutes. She left without saying anything. Again, I kept my eyes on the door. I ate dinner quickly not wanting to waste time. It was useless, I still had no idea how to get out. The door shut too quickly, and I couldn't see where the guard was so I couldn't figure out a game plan. I positioned the tray on the table beside me. After another scan around the room I realised there was indeed no way out. I couldn't figure out a way to distract the guards. I turned the TV on. Hoping it would cure my boredom and regret that I couldn't find a way out, or maybe even provide some inspiration for a plan so crazy it might just work. It didn't help much. A while later, as the sun was going down, Karen came back and collected my tray. I leaned back looking up at the ceiling. Suddenly I had a moment of realisation.