Dead Man's Switch (19 page)

What a slime, King thought.

“Better than you must be feeling,” King said. He'd told himself to stay cool and collected, but he couldn't help the quick rise of anger and the need to lash out verbally at Murdoch. “Last time I saw you, you smelled like puke. Did that duct tape hurt when they ripped it loose from your eyebrows and mustache?”

Murdoch chuckled. “What a strange thing for you to say. Duct tape? That's what you said, right? Duct tape?”

“So you're pretending I didn't pepper spray you last night? That I didn't use an EID on you? Which, by the way, in case you didn't figure it out, was payback for what you did to Dad.”

“I'm trying to follow this conversation,” Murdoch said. “But you'll surely agree it seems so random.”

“You're denying that you sent prisoners to chase us down?”

“What I'm thinking is that this really is a strange conversation,” Murdoch answered.

“I get it,” King said. “You think I'm recording this phone call, so you're not going to make any incriminating statements.”

“This call just keeps getting stranger. Or are you trying to prank me?”

“Nope,” King said. “I want you to release my dad. And I promise your secret will be safe forever.”

Murdoch chuckled again. “Yep. Prank.”

“If you really thought this was a prank,” King said, “you would have hung up by now.”

King shifted in his chair. He'd thrown a blanket over the arm that was handcuffed to the bed rail. No sense attracting attention until he needed it.

“No,” Murdoch said. “I like you. You're a bright young man. Unless suddenly you've lost your mind, there must be a good reason for this strange phone call. So I'm listening out of genuine curiosity. Go on, please.”

“Not much else to say,” King answered. “Dad goes free. Nobody touches my mom. Everything is all square. Once they are safe, you are safe.”

“I'll humor you. I would be safe from what? But please be careful. If you're going to make some kind of physical threat against me, you'll be breaking a federal law. And by the way, I am recording this conversation. It's standard policy.”

Interesting, King thought, for the warden to alert King that the conversation was being recorded. On the recording, if any judge or jury listened to it later in court, it would sound exactly like a friendly warning from Murdoch. On the other hand, it was good way to alert King that because Murdoch knew it was being recorded, Murdoch might say things in a way that King could interpret differently.

“You can be safe from that Macbook Air I took out of the old prison. Blake's Macbook Air. I'm glad he went with a lightweight computer like that. Don't know if I could have made it across Puget Sound with anything heavier. Especially after what it took to make sure water couldn't get inside.”

Yeah. It was a bluff.

King continued. “There's enough on that computer to destroy your career. Sorry, I'm wrong about that. Enough on there to destroy your career and put you in prison. That wouldn't be good. Could you imagine what other prisoners in the general population would do to you once they discovered you'd been a prison warden?”

“I'm getting concerned here,” Murdoch said.

“You should be.” King tried to tamp down his anger.

“What's concerning me is how crazy you sound. I don't know that I can believe this is a prank.”

“Three hours,” King said. “I've got the Macbook Air with me. You bring my dad to me in three hours, or I call the newspapers and hand over the computer.”

“I'm getting even more concerned here.”

King wondered if Murdoch was using double-speak. Because Murdoch had warned King that the call was being recorded, he could later claim he meant he was concerned about King. But right now, he might actually be admitting he was really concerned about King's threat.

So King played it that way.

“What I'm thinking,” King said, “is that somehow you have a way to track where the phone call is coming from. If I had been afraid of that, I would have hung up a long time ago. But I've got the Macbook Air, and I'm going to hide it between now and when you come visit. Even if you order someone right now to come get me, I'll have plenty of time to hide it. So I'm not afraid to tell you where I am. Besides you need to know in order to bring me my dad. Are you listening?”

“Only because I'm concerned about your craziness here.”

“I'm at the hospital. In my mom's room. After we hang up, I'm going to put the Macbook Air in a place you'll never find. And then I'm going to return to her room and handcuff myself to her bed. So if you or some goon arrives, it's going to cause a big fuss if you try to take me away. But you're smarter than that, right? Bring my dad. Then you're safe.”

“King, King, King,” Murdoch sighed. “I think I'm going to need to talk to your dad about this. It's his day off, so I'll give him a call at home and tell him that you've really crossed a line here.”

Brief silence.

“Hang on,” Murdoch said. “How about you call your dad first? Then call me back, and I'll let you apologize for this phone call.”

“Three hours,” King said.

King pulled the phone away from his ear and used his thumb on the touch screen to end the call.

CHAPTER 42

King's arm was sore. With his one wrist handcuffed to the bed railing, he couldn't move much as he spoke on the phone. Nor, of course, could he shift the phone from one hand to another as people often did during long phone calls.

He stretched his free arm, and then, after a few hesitant seconds, King dialed another number and put the cell phone back to his ear. He was shocked when someone answered the cell phone on the other end.

“Dad?” King said.

“Hey,” Mack said. “Sorry I missed you for breakfast. You still at MJ's working on a project?”

“I wasn't at MJ's,” King said. “You know that.”

“That's what your note said. I found it on the breakfast table this morning.”

Only one conclusion to draw here, King told himself. Mack was under guard. This call was being recorded too.

“So you're at home,” King said.

“Where else? Murdoch called before I started my day shift. Gave me the day off.”

“Sure,” King said. “And you're alone.”

“King, if I didn't have a headache, this might be a little easier to deal with. But just so you know, my brain feels swollen. Been drinking lots of water too. Crazy thirsty. So I'm not in the best of moods.”

“What about last night?” King asked.

“Last night?”

This was seriously starting to make King mad. He wasn't going to let Murdoch win this round.

“Mack,” he said. “You know where Mom's iPhone is, right?”

“Yeah, unless you moved it.”

With Ella in the hospital, they'd left everything at home as it was in her pottery workshop. To change things would be to admit defeat, to say that they had given up hope of her ever coming out of the coma.

“I know you're not a big fan of technology,” King said, “but I need you to do me a huge favor. Can you get the phone and turn it on? There's a button on the top right. Press and hold down until a white apple appears on the screen.”

“This headache is irritating me,” Mack said.

“It's important to me,” King answered. He was not going to let Mack wiggle out of this. He could picture Mack in a room somewhere in the SCC with guards watching him. Or Murdoch staring down at him, making sure Mack didn't say anything to let King know where Mack was.

“Okay.” Mack sighed.

“Don't hang up with your phone,” King said. Mack's cell phone was about ten years old. A stray thought hit King. Weird, in this moment, wondering about the phrase he had just used.
Don't hang up the phone
. Nobody hung up cell phones anymore. That was from before, when the receiver was on a hook and you lifted up the receiver and took it off the hook to make a call. Well, maybe that's why the thought hit King. Because of how old his dad's cell phone was. And how his dad's technological world was back in the “hang up the phone” days.

“No way am I hanging up,” Mack said with some humor back in his voice. “If you want me on your mom's iPhone, I'm going to have to stay on this one for instructions.”

“Exactly,” King said.

Silence. King imagined Mack looking at the warden with a “Now what?” expression. How could Mack go to the pottery workshop and get Ella's iPhone when Mack was stuck in some cell pretending to be in the house?

While King was waiting, the door to the hospital room opened. An
orderly walked in with a gadget. A big guy, dark hair, bearded. With shoulders stretching the green uniform tight and a chest that seemed ready to bust open the fabric.

King was glad he had a blanket hiding the handcuffs. He wasn't ready yet for the questions that would happen when someone noticed. “I'm her son,” King explained.

The orderly answered. “Need to check her temperature.”

King shrugged and held out the phone briefly, so that the orderly could see King wasn't interested in a conversation. King wanted the guy out of here as soon as possible.

The orderly went to the other side of the bed and touched the gadget against Ella's skull. There was an almost inaudible beep.

The orderly checked a screen on the gadget and gave King a thumbs up.

Then the guy tapped some of the drip tubes and gave a nod.

After that, he walked out, just as Mack spoke again into King's ear. “Okay. Believe it or not, I actually figured out how to turn it on. The little white apple is there.”

“Sure,” King said. Sarcastic.

“You don't need to speak to me like I'm a child.” Mack snorted. “Well, actually, when it comes to this, you probably do.”

“Okay,” King said, knowing Murdoch wasn't going to be able to keep this charade going much longer. “Tell me when the home screen appears.”

“Home screen?”

“When the apple goes away and the photo shows up. Of the two of us sitting on a dock.”

“Oh.” Ten seconds passed. “Now. But that's not the photo. It's one of you when you were about five years old. In a cowboy outfit.”

“She must have changed it,” King said. He was impressed that his dad could remember which photo had been on the home screen. King had deliberately mentioned a different photo as a test. If Mack had agreed the dock photo was on the screen, the game would have been over. But King wasn't through with this. He'd prove Murdoch wrong and then call Murdoch again and shorten the deadline to two hours.

“So,” King said. “I'm about to end this call on my end. Then I'm going to call you on Mom's iPhone using FaceTime.”

“You mean that thing where you can talk to each other on video, right? That's so Dick Tracey to me.”

“Huh?” King said.

“Dick Tracey.” Short pause. “Sorry. See, this shows how much things have changed since I was a kid. Dick Tracy was a comic book detective set in the future. He had a wristwatch that he used to make phone calls. Video calls too. It was cool to us as kids, but nobody really believed or expected it would ever happen.”

“Yeah,” King said. “Like your MacGyver guy?”

“MacGyver. I'm impressed you know about MacGyver. My favorite show when I was a kid.”

Mack's acting was good, pretending last night's conversation hadn't happened.

King went along with it. “Dick Tracy. Okay, I'm about to Dick Tracy you. Just watch the screen and hit Accept, and then we'll be connected.”

“Why are we doing all this?” Mack said. “You could just walk over here from MJ's house.”

“Part of my project,” King said. “How's that?”

“Go for it,” Mack said. “But if I mess up, call me back on my cell.”

Oh, King thought. That's how they are going to play it. Pretend that Mack doesn't know how to accept an incoming FaceTime request.

Still, King just realized he'd lost this game. He'd hit FaceTime, Mack wouldn't answer because he couldn't answer where he was in a prison cell, King would have to call back to Mack's cell, and Mack would apologize for getting the technology wrong, and King would be no closer to proving to Murdoch that he knew Murdoch was holding Mack as a hostage. It's probably why Murdoch had allowed Mack to have his cell phone. So Mack could answer anyone who called and pretend everything was okay.

King wasn't too upset about this. He was just glad Mack was still alive. Murdoch was in a tight place and would have to do something before the three-hour deadline was over.

Then King tried to remember. What kind of signal shows that you're trying to FaceTime someone when his iPhone is shut off? Does it show unavailable, or does it try to ring through until you give up and end the attempt?