Dead Man's Switch (10 page)
Authors: Sigmund Brouwer
“So I'm thinking,” King said. “Blake got his ideas from a
Sky Mall
magazine.”
This snapped Johnson into full attention. He glanced at the iPhone and then back to King.
“So when I was googling invisible ink and a special flashlight, it took me to the
Sky Mall
website. Guess what. That's where I had seen Measles before.
Sky Mall
sells stuffed dogs with a voice recorder and remote. You can record anything you want.”
“Like âWhere's the nearest fire hydrant?' and âDon't eat yellow snow'?”
Blake had recorded those lines for Measles.
“So maybe when Blake was flying here from Nebraska,” Johnson said, “or any other time, he sees this stuff in a
Sky Mall
magazine and thinks it's a great way to send messages from the dead? Like he was planning to be dead even before he got here?”
“I bet if we could find out when he was on an airplane last, that might mean something. I mean, he didn't stay on the island the whole time. He was gone with his parents once in a while. So maybe he discovered something that
might
be happening on the island before the flight, and while he was thinking about how to send us messages, he read the magazine.”
“I've seen the magazines,” Johnson said, “And don't freak out that I've been on an airplane and you haven't.”
King resisted the temptation to make a smart remark about ballerinas.
“You can browse the magazine as you fly,” Johnson continued. “You can place an order, but the stuff needs to be shipped to you.”
King shrugged. “He gets stuff sent to him here. No big deal.”
“Yet he gives us $2000 to smuggle an iPhone to him?”
“But once he had the iPhone, he could buy stuff through eBay or
Sky Mall
.”
King gave another glance at the iPhone. Did he really want it to ping with a message? Because then he'd have to go one step further in betraying his father.
“Send blank email to my name backward at dmsgames.com,” Blake's voice had spoken through the stuffed dog's collar. “Where's the nearest fire hydrant? Don't eat yellow snow. Where's the nearest fire hydrant? Don't eat yellow snow. Send blank email to my name backward at dmsgames.com. Throw a ball and I'll chase it. Wait for a reply. Name backward and get it right the first time. Where's the nearest fire hydrant?”
King and Johnson had argued. Had Blake meant [email protected]? Or had he meant [email protected]? Or [email protected]?
Johnson had suggested sending all three emails. But King had reminded him that Blake's voice from Measles had also told them to get it right the first time. In the end, they'd agreed that Blake must have meant for them to use Measles' name as one last piece of protection. Sam had promised not to tell anyone but King the name. Only he would know what name to put in backward.
So they had sent the blank email, and now they were following the next instructionâ“Wait for a reply.”
That had led to wondering why Blake was putting them through all these steps before giving them any more information about his accusations about King's dad, which had led to another exhausting half hour with Johnson because all conversations with him eventually got exhausting. Johnson was unique, there was no doubt. After all, King was still trying to tell whether Johnson had been serious about a ballerina dream.
Johnson had said that if Blake really was trying to give them information, he could have just put it in the iPhone right away so they would find it right after finding the password with the flashlight and invisible ink. Johnson thought this was just Blake's way of messing with them.
King wanted to believe Johnson. Really wanted to believe him. King had already lost his mother to a coma. If Mack was doing something criminal, it was like he'd lost Mack tooâto something that arguably was worse than a coma. At least with Ella, King would always have great memories and never stop adoring her. If Mack truly wasn't the person he appeared to be, King would always have tainted memories about him.
King had argued that Blake was just setting up a few provisions to make sure that only he and Johnson got the real thing that Blake was waiting to give them. That he'd made sure that nobody but King or Johnson would know they had to use Blake's iPhone to send a blank message to [email protected].
And apparently, they would learn more only
if
they'd used the correct name backward and
if
the email triggered a return email. And apparently, there was no guarantee of when a return email would show up.
King couldn't get something else out of his mind. “Were you dreaming about a pink outfit too?”
“Huh?” Johnson said.
“Ballerina.”
“Oh. Yeah. Ballerina. It wasn't that I wanted to dance like a ballerina. I wanted to look like one. That was before I learned that boys were supposed to like cowboy outfits. Society can be so cruel to those of us who dream different dreams, you know.”
King had to admire Johnson. King still couldn't tell if the guy was serious or trying to mess with him.
Then the iPhone pinged.
King nearly dropped it as he fumbled to open up the new email.
The email didn't have a message. Instead, just one line, underlined, blue.
http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=w8IfHXAClUo&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dw8IfHXAClUo
There was only one thing to do. Touch the link.
No surprise. It opened to a YouTube video.
The iPhone didn't have a wi-fi connection, so it loaded on the 4G network. Not LTE. As the video loaded, the spinning circle at the top of the screen seemed to hang forever.
“Just to be clear,” King said to Johnson, “you're not expecting your parents home for a while, right?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Johnson said, eyes on the screen. “Not for a while.”
Then, finally, the YouTube video had loaded.
King had been expecting it, but it was still a shock of sorts to see Blake Watt appear on the iPhone screen. Blake was wearing a white T-shirt. His light blond hair was tousled like always. He was wearing his round thin-framed glasses. Hard to believe Blake was gone.
But in a way, he was still alive in assembled data bits. This was, King thought, the new immortality for humans. Scattered across cyberspace, waiting for instant resurrection by those who were still flesh and blood.
“King. Johnson.” Blake was holding the phone at arm's length as he spoke into it. “Hope you're doing better than I am. Weird to be talking to you knowing that you're only going to be seeing this if I'mâ¦not around.”
With no warning, the screen went black. It took King a second to realize that Blake had pulled the phone in to his body and hidden it.
Then Blake was back.
“Sorry, guys, I thought I heard something.”
Blake took an obvious breath. The video was shaking a little as if his hand wasn't steady.
“You know, I rehearsed this so I wouldn't ramble,” Blake said. “But still, it seems like there's so much to say and I hardly know where to begin.”
King didn't realize he was leaning in to watch the iPhone until Johnson tapped his shoulder and moved him back so they could both see the screen.
“First, I guess, apologies for what it took to get you guys to this video. It's a private video on a secret YouTube account I set up so nobody will find it by accident. I had to run you through all those hoops to make sure that only you two see this. If someone found the phone taped to a tree by accident, or maybe if you guys had given the phone to the warden when you found it, there's no way anyone else but you would get here.
“Second, I guess, is why. You'll find out soon. But even then, you might not believe it. So let me tell you how I got to the island. Then maybe things will make better sense. I stole a bunch of money.”
Blake paused. Grinned. “That got your attention, didn't it. Actually, I didn't steal it for me. I'm a white hatâsomeone who hacks into systems to test them and help out the people who own them. Black hats are malicious. They put in bad software, steal passwords, stuff like that. Anyway, my mom was the president of her bank. I found a way into the bank's system. I moved some money to prove it could be done, and then I moved it back again. I sent the bank an email to let their IT guys know about it so they could fix it.”
On the screen, Blake shook his head. “Some moron there leaked it to the press. All they needed to do was fix the problem, but no, suddenly everybody's screaming about it, and now my mom is under heat even though I was doing it to make sure it got fixed before the bank got in trouble. It was stressing her out so bad because nobody could find out who broke into the system or how.
“She was so freaked out, I told her I'd done it, expecting that she would at least keep that secret. But no, she went all ethical about it, and just like that, I'm on probation with a court order not to be around any kind of computers. Mom resigned and Dad quit his university job
so they could move me onto an island and work here and make sure I didn't have Internet access.”
Blake grinned into the camera. “So thanks, guys, for helping me get back on the Internet with my first iPhone. I had a bunch of PayPal money stashed away, and once I got back online with the iPhone, I was able to order a bunch of other stuff. And I could use the 4G to get online in secret. Slow, but it's better than nothing.
“The thing is, I live to be a hacker. It's like asking a bird not to fly, telling me to keep away from coding software and jumping into systems and hanging out in forums with other white hats.”
Blake lost his smile. “I just didn't expect that breaking into the prison software would show me what I learned there. And now you need to keep helping me with this. But there's no way you're going to believe what I found if I just tell you. I've got my computer set up so that once you get to it, you can go through the steps I did, and then you'll believe.”
The smile returned. But it was grim.
“Thing is,” Blake said, “you're going to have to go into the abandoned prison. Nighttime will be best. Next video link will show you how to get to my stash.”
The video went black again. Because it had ended. And a new video began to load. With instructions on what to do next.
It was like the shock of falling into the deadly cold water of Puget Sound that had kept prisoners from escaping for over a century. The water that had drowned Blake. With a shock like that, for a split second, you can't react. And then, all you can do is sputter and gasp.
Johnson broke the silence first. “No way, man. Not. Going. Into. Abandoned. Prison. Ever.”
King squared his shoulders. He was thinking about whatever crime Mack had committed that was the reason for all that Blake had done to set this up. No way did he want Johnson to learn what it was.
“Good,” King answered. “Because I want to go alone.”
McNeil Island Corrections Center opened in 1875 as a territorial facility. Washington had not yet become a state. Later, the Federal Bureau of Prisons had taken over, and finally, the state of Washington began to lease it from the federal government more than a century later. In 1984, the island was deeded to the state. That was the beginning of the end of the largest parts of the facility. Budget cuts led to the closing of the main buildings, a cluster of concrete structures on the southeast corner of the island, near the ferry dock.
This was King's destination.
It hadn't been difficult to leave the house unnoticed by Mack, who, as usual, had hidden himself in the wood shop almost immediately after returning home at the end of his day shift.
King's biggest problem had been containing his impatience. He'd needed to wait until dark, so he hadn't slipped away until 9:30.
He was okay with solitude in the night air, even passing the cemetery. It was empty. Before the island had become a prison, pioneers had lived and farmed here. When the residents were forced to leave in 1936, all the remains in the cemetery had been exhumed and reburied on the mainland.
Not that King believed in ghosts in the first place. At this point, he figured he had enough trouble with everything else in his life that was haunting him. His mother hovered between death and life, and he wasn't even allowed to see her. His father was keeping secrets and living what looked like a Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde kind of lifeâposing
as a wonderful father who believed in honor and courage and yet was somehow involved in the drowning of one of King's friends.
Nope. The nighttime and the ghosts were not what worried King. Not even the abandoned prison.
It was the threat of what might be hidden inside and what it might tell him about his father.
