Deathbed (Dovetail Cove, 1971) (Dovetail Cove Series) Read online

  Rumour has it from the locals that the foundation stones of his castle were uncovered when it was time to start digging the tunnels and the multitudinous caverns and underground levels of the plant. Not sure how anyone knows this, since it was all done by off-island contractors who left once their cheques cleared. Plus, a lot of the labyrinth was built after the first war, before it was even moved over to this nuclear model. Who knows, right? That Scotch might be watered down but you get enough of it in the warm bellies of an unhappy gaggle of men and they’ll spin yarn faster than their housewives.

  Now, my tenure on King Victor’s Isle was short so far, but I had similar aspirations as Ol’ Crotchfire Vic, a name the boys on Beacon had given him. I was going to be king and once I got my crown, I wasn’t going to get sloppy. I wouldn’t fall for the efforts of some hussy.

  No, I wasn’t born and bred on the island either, had only been here about five years. I took the job because it offered something they called ‘hazard pay’. I’d been sweeping floors out at a penitentiary in Kingston, Ontario, when the posting came up. From one King’s Town to another. Ha!

  It was a huge leap in pay and I’d be the boss, but I had to do a physical hoop-jump, a pretty laboured psychological test, and a series of record checks. I’d never been in trouble with the law—not like Drumheller had in his previous life—but I was nervous just the same. I’d been bragging up and down the strip in Kingston and, boy, I’d a had to eat a toilet bowl of crow if someone else had taken the job out here instead. Hoo-boy, if I’d’a turned up to work on that Monday morning, shuffling my feet and making excuses, it would have been one sour pucker-face for me to wear, I tell you.

  But that didn’t happen. I was a bit dumbfounded. But I guess it was my seniority, my hoop-jumping, my whatever and whoever. They gave me the position and I had two weeks to pack and get over here after I basically signed my life away. My J. Hancock went onto all kinds of legal documents and waivers. Did I mention, the pay was incredible?

  But Kingston, that’s where my connections came from. That’s how I got the intel on Drumheller’s prison time. Once I knew that Drumheller hadn’t been his real name, I knew there was a reason. There would have to be. Women take a new name when they get married. Men don’t, so he’d either gotten one pregnant, dodged a draft for the war, or got himself in trouble with some law or another.

  Finding any record of the first two might have been impossible, and since I knew administrators in the prison system, I started there—and got lucky. It was my sweepstakes win, I guess you could say.

  Changing a man’s name, that was a small scandal when you’re as high up as Drumheller. But changing it in order to hide your university and, in particular, your criminal past—now, that’s a downright scandal. I knew that he knew.

  He’d pay and he’d pay handsomely. A guy like Drumheller isn’t dumb enough to let a cat like that out.

  My point here is, just like King Victor, I was going to get to use this thing with Drumheller to gain an even loftier position. I didn’t just have money in mind. This was only the start.

  It’s a good thing for a man to know what he wants. To name it and go right out and get it. What did I want? I wanted what that king wanted. And I didn’t want to lose my head over a broad and forfeit my ticket to the top. I had a want for prestige. Not just with this branch of government and in looking after the plant, but here on the island. I wanted my own little fiefdom. I was on my way up. But it was all set to crumble. And, I didn’t know it when I left Jimmy under the first few drops of cold rain, but it was going to start crumbling today.

  3.

  I felt pretty good—despite the coming rain. I’d wanted nothing more than to kick off early tomorrow afternoon and get me a couple juicy steaks, some lobster tails, and a couple cold ones for an afternoon with the Chicago All Stars game. I didn’t have a lady in those days—I wasn’t as stupid as King Victor. A buddy was coming over—Ethan, a welder who worked at the dockyards. Figured if I fattened him up (and boozed him up) he’d be more liable to do me a favour. I’d been after him to do some soldering on the frame of a ‘55 Caddy Eldorado I’d bought. It was pretty beat up after some Daddy’s boy had wrapped it around a tree on the mainland but I felt a proper king should drive a Cadillac. And it was the one I could afford.

  I went back inside, brushed the few drops from my shoulders and my hair, checked in at the desk, and headed down in the service elevator to Seven where I’d left Ketwood and his boy at the new panel. Tomorrow was the game and the lobster tails. I supposed I could put in one regular-sized day. Wouldn’t matter. If the weather stayed shit by then, no steak on the back deck. No All Stars game in the evening air with my set hauled out and an extension cord back through the kitchen window. And no welding work on the Caddy.

  I sighed and the elevator doors slid open to show me the corridor of Seven’s main trunk. I followed it to the utility room. Empty.

  Jesus H., the Ketwood idiot and his boy could be anywhere. My heart started thumping and I felt sweat hit my forehead. I shouldn’t have left them. Or, at the very least, I should have checked on them before coffee with Jimmy out at the security gate.

  The new panel was hung on the back wall. It’s powder coating was buffed clean of any oily fingerprints. And their tools were all packed up and gone. Only a small pile of trimmed plastic wire sheathing (in a bunch of colours) lay in a tidy, swept-up pile in the middle of the concrete floor. Dust and little bits of copper trimmings were there too. I guess there was no dustbin in this utility room.

  “Goddammit,” I said under my breath and to the empty room. They could be anywhere above Seven but below B. Their clearance didn’t let them ride the elevators and I hadn’t left them with one of the little punch cards the rest of us carried along with our identity cards. But, once you were down, the elevators would take you back up. It was a safety measure, should there be any power issues, a fire or another problem.

  Ketwood wasn’t just a smart alec, he was a smart pants. Which meant, he would be a bright enough bulb to try the elevator on Six or Five or Four, or any of them on the way up. The elevators were smart enough to keep folks from riding down without a punch card, but not smart enough to keep them from riding only back up to the top.

  I immediately reached for the walkie-talkie on my belt. I scanned channels and went right for the one I’d told Ketwood to leave his on. It was my channel so I knew that no one—not even Drumheller or his staff would listen. “Mr. Ketwood,” I said into it, doing my best to keep an even keel to my voice and not shout at him, I TOLD YOU TO STAY PUT. I said his name again and again. “Mr. Ketwood, come in, this is Munn. Mr. Ketwood. Mr. Ketwood.”

  I re-latched the walkie to my belt. “Goddammit,” I said again and left.

  I didn’t run, though. If Drumheller was about, there’s no way on God’s green earth, I’d let him see I had let something crawl out of my tightly controlled sphere.

  I didn’t run. But, boy, did I move at a brisk pace.

  4.

  I found Ketwood up on One. He had stumbled across one of the coffee rooms. I spotted his location by the rolling wagon and tidy pile of toolboxes up next to the doorway in the corridor.

  I remember the cold sweat of relief at seeing that stack.

  Inside, Ketwood was stirring a cup of coffee for himself. His boy was supping from a paper cone filled from the water cooler. They sat across from each other at one of the big cafeteria-style tables the government likely has in every facility from here to the east coast. The walkie I’d given Ketwood was on the table next to a couple empty packets of sugar.

  Intentionally slow, I sauntered over to the table as Ketwood deliberately took no notice of me. I did this to catch my breath. I did this to keep my temper checked. I tapped the walkie’s ribbed speaker with my index fingernail. “Channel Eleven,” I said. “But you have it turned off.”

  Ketwood tilted up at me, as if he was just coming awake with a hangover and couldn’t care less that anyone was still in bed with him by
morning.

  “Remember when I said ‘Don’t wander off’?”

  Ketwood leaned back. He reached out and snagged a lit cigarette from the ashtray near his borrowed coffee cup. He took a drag as he pushed himself back from the table, a man who looked like he’d just finished Thanksgiving dinner and was getting ready to pop the button on his trousers.

  He said nothing. Just stared at me.

  “Fine,” I said. “All good. Now then—” I looked around at the boy who stared at me wide-eyed over his paper cone but also saying nothing. “Did you finish up?”

  “We did,” Sam Ketwood said, again looking out the window towards the road and the security gate where his van sat. “All done and ready to go.”

  “Good,” I said. “That’s my boss’s coffee mug.” He looked unperturbed, only sipped from the mug that said, “I love a man with a PhD” on the side. Only the ‘love’ was a red heart, now faded from repeated washings. Ketwood’s kid piped up. “Oh, Dad,” he said.

  Ketwood put Drumheller’s mug down and looked at the boy.

  “I’m pretty sure I left the wire-stripper in the bottom of the panel. Sorry—” the kid said.

  “The good one?” Ketwood said.

  The boy looked at me then back at his dad. “I-I think so.”

  Again, I expected that veneer of his to crack and fall away. I expected him to yell at the boy, maybe something about how irresponsible and stupid it was to leave one of their valuable tools behind on a restricted level of a government power facility.

  Instead, Ketwood got up slowly. He set the doctor’s coffee mug down and then stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray. “Munn?” he asked. “Can you take my son back down to get what he forgot? I don’t imagine it would take more than a few minutes. I’m sure he’s sorry for the inconvenience.” He didn’t glare at the boy like this was something they would ‘talk’ about later. He just looked at me silently, unblinkingly, waiting for me to give an a-okay or a not-on-your-life.

  I gave a nod. “Certainly,” I said. Again, I was using the formalities that I reserved for talking to people above me. Why I was compelled to use it with this electrician and his kid, I didn’t know.

  “Come on,” I said to the boy. He looked at his old man and scurried in behind me as I left the coffee room and fished in my breast pocket for my punch card.

  “Don’t dilly-dally,” I told him, as if I was piping up for his stupidity where his father should have.

  We got into the elevator and no sooner had I inserted my card and selected “7.” when Ketwood senior reached his hand in to catch the big steel door of the elevator. I wasn’t sure it would hold for him. But it did. He squeezed in with us looking embarrassed.

  His son looked at him quizzically.

  “You got me thinking—,” Ketwood said, folding his hands over his belt buckle as if he was a layman suddenly in the company of a group attending the opera and immediately self-conscious of his coveralls. The door drew shut and the elevator started chugging us down. “—I might have left my good flathead over on the counter. My number 2..”

  His son smiled. Ketwood mirrored it. I have to admit, I envied this simple, unnecessary concession between them.

  We rode in silence the next few minutes. A normal office building’s elevator would take only a couple of minutes to descend Seven floors. These were unusually deep though. Lots of ductwork and cabling between each one. Plus, each floor had fifteen and sixteen foot ceilings. There was a crawl space between Six and Seven. Add to that, this was an industrial elevator and one built to withstand a military attack. The plant was a nuclear facility, after all. Things were slower, bigger, heavier.

  As the lights for the floors changed from the number Five to the number Six, I said, “You asked for more time, told me the wiring was a dog’s breakfast.”

  “Mmm,” he said. I wasn’t sure if he was acknowledging that I’d spoken or if he was acquiescing that I was right: he had used less time than the job needed.

  “How come you didn’t just nurse your coffee and take an extra three hours’ pay?”

  The light behind Six went out and Seven went on.

  “First,” he said. “I called it a rat’s nest. Not a dog’s breakfast.” He squinted his eyes in what looked like a half-smile—but only from his nose up. “Second,” he said, “and more importantly…It wouldn’t be honest.” The rest of his face broke to form the rest of his smile, then he looked over at his boy who returned it with one of his own. But I didn’t get the impression he was saying this just because of his ten-year old’s ears. Sam Ketwood meant it.

  5.

  I wish I could say more about how I interpreted that. I wish I could say I felt like I was the kind of man who’d be able to say such a stupid thing with a straight face.

  But I didn’t have time.

  Before the light behind Seven came up, we were halted by a terrible jolt. The elevator, screeched and I could only imagine the sheen of sparks as the brake locked down like a clamping jaw on the cables above us. The Ketwood boy fell to the floor and cried out. His Dad let out a guttural noise (as did I, I’m sure) and fell against the wall.

  The overhead lights flickered and went out.

  6.

  The crackle of my walkie broke the silence but not the darkness. I grabbed it from my belt and pulled it close to my eyes, straining to see the small red indicator light. It illuminated the dial enough to see its chalky numbers against the blackness. I whirled away from channel eleven and went to channel three—our emergency channel.

  I did what I usually do when I’m confused. I waited and I listened instead of charging ahead. I’ve not always done that in my life, but when I have it’s usually been more successful than going off all hot-headed. I thought, since Ketwood could do it, why couldn’t I?

  So, instead of blaring into the thing for help—to tell my people I was stuck in elevator four with a contractor and his kid—that I’d wait to see if there was anyone else broadcasting.

  There was a screech, and then a cloud of static and then a voice. “Attention plant staff.” It was a male voice, one that I’d heard before but couldn’t place. I clicked on the trigger and tried talking, but the voice went ahead with no acknowledgement of me. The walkies could be both broadcast bases and receivers so that one walkie could send out to all the others. It was only used in emergencies or in the case where some mucky-muck from the government on the mainland came for a visit.

  “Early this morning,” the voice went on, “the south rail entry experienced a spillage. We learned a few moments ago that some of this spillage has reached the lower levels. As a precaution, we have shut down access to the south wings as well as all shafts to and from the lower levels. Personnel should stay put. The fresh air is still functioning and we’ll have this lockdown lifted within the hour.”

  My biggest question was still, Who on God’s green earth might be broadcasting this and where was Drumheller? Finally, my answer came, as though the voice suddenly realized any of us on the receiving end would be begging for an answer to this simple question. And if we didn’t get it, maybe we wouldn’t bother heeding any of its advice.

  “This is Franklin W. Moort with Union Rail,” he finally revealed. “I’m broadcasting on behalf of Doctor Drumheller and his staff. I repeat. The south and lower levels are in lockdown until we get a minor spill contained. I will broadcast on this channel with any updates.”

  Broadcasting on behalf of Drumheller? That was odd. Moort was the rail manager. I’d only met him once. But I knew he was pretty high up—and a pencil-pusher as far as I could remember. My second thought was that it must be much more than minor if Drumheller wasn’t sending this message himself. He was either scared out of his gourd after our little conversation this morning...or he was down below level Ten and suffering from the lockdown just like the rest of us...or he was somewhere injured. If the train cars were involved—and they likely were, based on having Moort’s nose in this—then it’s possible this was a really big deal.
r />   I fumbled to clip my walkie back to my belt in the dark, thinking it would be a pain in the ass if I dropped it or left it behind. When it rubbed up against the small torchlight I also had clipped to my belt, I had a small moment of self-chastisement. I pulled it free and clicked it on. It revealed small details inside the elevator. The boy, Sean, I think, he was propped against the back wall and squinted against the light I shone on him. Beside him, with arms propped on his knees, the bigger and older Ketwood shielded his face from me.

  “Looks like we’ll be in here a while,” I said.

  Ketwood showed me that he had his own flashlight. “Might as well save your batteries,” he said. I followed their lead and slid down my side of the elevator wall to the cold floor.

  We sat in silent darkness listening to only the mild hiss of the walkie. I clicked it off and became aware of a new sound. It was the ventilation for the elevator, I decided. I felt a small push of air on my forehead and was relieved that must be it. It was getting hot in here, but not unbearable.

  An hour. Jesus H. Whatever Moort’s rail crew had done up there, it had been more than a ‘minor’ spill. That I was sure of. We’d had those before. A few ounces of something gets cast off. Or they discover a stain somewhere and everyone suits up in their haz-mats to cleanse things thoroughly. Those were only twenty or thirty minute jobs.

  Thing was, Moort’s broadcast said that this happened early this morning. I remembered how empty the building felt. No one in the corridors, no one in the coffee room. If anyone had known about this and my unit hadn’t been informed, I’d be madder than a wet hen.

  So. Early this morning. I know that the rail lines brought raw materials in at night, more specifically, three and four a.m. Loads of spent materials went out either before or after that. They did it with a skeleton crew to save money but also to minimize contact with the greater population of daytime staff.