The Ninth Dominion (The Jared Kimberlain Novels)

by Jon Land

  Kimberlain followed Seven’s finger to the main control panel, which looked like that of a sophisticated VCR. The MONITOR/RECORD button was engaged, not the PLAY button. “Then what we’re seeing now …”

  “Is exactly what the guards and Vogey were seeing four nights back. ’Cept it was no more real then than it is now.”

  “No,” Vogelhut gasped, as if he’d had the wind knocked out of him. “The system checked out. Nothing like what you’re describing was found.”

  “Because it was switched back after the fact, well after possibly, since your check wasn’t conducted till nearly a day following the escape.” Seven pushed POWER and the screens went dark. “I switched it back for purposes of this demon-fucking-stration. Piece of cake really. Like changing a light-bulb. This tape came from probably a week ago, long enough for your monitoring people not to remember anything that might stand out and make them think twice about what they were seeing. Perps could even have spliced a number of nights’ tapes together.”

  “Then we’re looking at an inside job,” Kimberlain concluded.

  “For more reasons than one, Ferryman.”

  “When did they get out?” Vogelhut asked, turning suddenly from the darkened screens. “How did they get out?”

  “Funny you should ask.” Captain Seven smiled. “Let’s work backward.” He propped himself up on the control board again, this time with no protest from Vogelhut.

  “With the blackout and systems failure,” Kimberlain suggested.

  “Which occurred at precisely eleven twenty-nine according to the log. Tells us much of what we need to know.”

  “How?” Vogelhut asked.

  Seven grasped his bong and drew a deep hit of smoke into his lungs. “It’s like this, Vogey. The twelve-track tape your system takes can only run three hours per cassette. So when the tape hit the end and the screens went goofy, even your simple-minded monitors might figure what was up.” He drained the bit of smoke remaining in the blue plastic bong’s main chamber. “Unless, of course, that moment happened to coincide with a total electrical and backup systems failure.”

  “Lights come back on and everybody’s got other problems on their minds,” Kimberlain concluded. “Empty cells, for example.”

  Vogelhut paced nervously. “So you’re saying they escaped between eight twenty-nine and … when?”

  “Well, Vogey, got to give your boys some credit for sealing the island as quick as they did when the power came back. So we got to figure Leeds and his boys were long gone by then. By my figuring that means they were out of their cells by ten forty-five at the latest. Could have been as early as nine.”

  “That still doesn’t explain how.”

  “Yeah. The best is yet to come.”

  They were inside the MAX-SEC cell block, Captain Seven pointing up at one of the surveillance cameras.

  “Remember now, boys, those babies weren’t broadcasting anything, and security precautions dictate no guards active on the halls. So Leeds and the others had free reign of the corridors inside MAX-SEC.”

  “Only if they could get out into them,” Vogelhut reminded.

  “Nice system. Allows you to open any individual cell, an entire floor, or all floors at once. Dinner gets distributed one floor at a time between six and six-thirty. Meals passed through slots in the door,” Seven said, fingering one of them. “Christ, like a drive-through window. I’ll take a quarter pounder and two large fries!” Seven shouted into the slot.

  “Where is this going?”

  “Slots have locks on ’em like the doors. Single switch controls each floor from MAX-SEC central station.”

  “So?”

  “So, Vogey, the reclocking mechanism on the meal slots was jimmy-wired into the unlocking mechanism on the doors. Soon as dinner was over, every door in MAX-SEC was open to the world and none of your boys would be any the wiser to who was stepping out.”

  “Which gets them into the corridor,” concluded Kimberlain. “Then what, Captain?”

  Seven pointed a thin arm back in the direction of the trio of main entry doors. “I think we can safely rule that way out. I mean, Vogey, even your boys probably would have noticed eighty-four loonies walking right by them. That leaves us with the door at the other end of the staircase on each of MAX-SEC’s four levels.”

  “Solid twelve-inch steel with cobalt-reinforced seals on both sides,” Vogelhut said. “Has to be opened manually from the other side of the corridor. The inner stairwell, which provides the only link to the levels of MAX-SEC, is accessible only from above, and that door is guarded by two men all the time. Leeds and the rest of them never passed by them either, which, according to you, means they never got out of MAX-SEC.”

  “According to me?” Captain Seven looked to Kimberlain. “Did I say that, Ferryman?” He resumed before Kimberlain could respond. “Boy oh boy, Vogey, I’d say you were putting words in my mouth, but I’m not sure you could find it.”

  “Just tell me how they did it!”

  Captain Seven led the way down the corridor and up the four flights of stairs, speaking as he walked. “Thing you gotta understand, Vogey, is that this whole escape was planned on the outside, not the in.”

  “By Leeds’s people?”

  “By Leeds himself.”

  “I … don’t understand.”

  But Kimberlain was starting to comprehend, and it showed in the taut expression on his face.

  They had reached the top of the stairwell, one floor above the uppermost level of MAX-SEC. Around them the walls were solid concrete. Before them was a white-steel security door that looked like it could weather a nuclear explosion. Captain Seven’s eyes gazed up at the ceiling.

  “Give me a boost, will you, Ferryman?”

  Kimberlain propped the captain on his shoulders. Seven’s hands played about the ceiling.

  “Haven’t checked this out myself yet,” he said down to them. “Figured it’d be more fun to find it together… . Yup, here we go.”

  Seven pushed up hard and a square section of the eight-inch-thick ceiling seemed to disappear. Above him, in the crawl space running between floors, only darkness was visible.

  “Voilà,” the captain said, as Kimberlain lowered him back down. “Private elevator serving MAX-SEC was closed for repairs that evening, right, Vogey?”

  “Yes.”

  “But nothing was really wrong with it. According to the plans you furnished me, I’d say Leeds and the others used this crawl space to reach that elevator shaft. Then your former inhabitants simply rode down a few at a time and left the building into the storm. Once outside they met up in a predetermined spot.”

  “The guards would have seen them, I tell you!”

  “Not if they slid around and used a few of the side entrances in the less-secure wings. And in that storm who could have seen anything once they were outside? We’re talking about eighty-four men escaping over roughly a two-hour period. Plenty of time to be patient, Vogey.”

  “They still had to get off the island,” Vogelhut reminded.

  “We’re coming to that.”

  The sun had burned through the clouds by the time the three of them reached the rocks forming the jagged shoreline of Bowman Island. They walked in the cold wind for forty minutes on the side of the island facing away from Watertown on Lake Ontario, before Captain Seven’s constantly sweeping eyes stopped.

  “Here,” was all he said.

  Kimberlain crouched low enough to feel the salt water spray on his face and reached his hand into a small pool between a pair of rocks.

  “Is it there?” Seven wanted to know.

  Kimberlain was about to say no when his hand grazed against something thick and circular. He found two others before standing up.

  “How many?” the captain asked.

  “Three,” the Ferryman replied.

  “Three what?” Vogelhut demanded.

  “You’ll find five or six others all about this area.”

  “Other what?” Vogelhut demanded
again.

  “Steel spikes,” Kimberlain replied. “Driven into these boulders so rafts could be tied down to them.”

  “Rafts?” Vogelhut asked uncomprehendingly.

  “Ten or so men in each one,” Seven elaborated as he gazed at the blank expanse of sea. “A tight squeeze, but they didn’t have far to go.”

  “Leeds and the others got off the island in rafts? I don’t believe it. It’s impossible. They would have still been at sea after eleven-thirty when we threw a dragnet over the area. We would have found them.”

  “By that time they’d already been picked up.”

  “No aircraft could have done the job in that storm, no helicopter either.”

  Seven had come close enough to the edge of the rock for the water to lap up over his sandaled feet. “Not an airplane or helicopter, Vogey, a submarine.”

  “A sub—”

  “Another tight squeeze, but again, they wouldn’t have far to go.” The captain spoke into the wind, his words blown backward from his two companions. He turned to face them. “It’s worse than I thought.”

  “Submarines, rafts, electronic bypasses, elaborate plans to this whole complex.” Vogelhut shook his head in frustration. “Even Leeds couldn’t have planned all this after he was put away.”

  “No,” Kimberlain told him, “he planned it before he ever got here.”

  He looked to Captain Seven, who nodded in affirmation while Vogelhut continued to speak, obviously confused.

  “That’s, that’s just not possible.”

  “I caught him because he let me, Doctor, because he wanted me to, because he knew he’d be sent …” Kimberlain turned back to the fortresslike structure of The Locks. “… here.”

  “So he could escape?”

  “With the others. From the inside. It was the only way.”

  “Toward what end? What purpose?”

  Kimberlain looked at Vogelhut. “I don’t know, Doctor.”

  But he did, sure now of what he had only suspected before.

  The ninth dominion …

  For Andrew Harrison Leeds it wasn’t just a mad vision; at least, it wasn’t anymore.

  Kimberlain had the captain transfer all the available videotapes of Leeds in his cell onto one master for viewing. This tape ran forty-five minutes, and the Ferryman was watching it for the fourth time. There was no sound to accompany the picture, but his mind added it by the third showing. A scratching sound when Leeds rubbed his head. A slight squeaking as he shifted on his bed frame. A deep hiss every time he glared into the camera, his teeth bared in a wolfish snarl.

  Leeds was not a big man in any respect, but Kimberlain had to remind himself of that as the tape unwound before him. It was as though the madman were reaching outside the camera to make the viewer see what he wanted him to see. Or, perhaps, the viewer was influenced by the scope of Leeds’s intentions, the breadth of his evil. If size were measured in deeds and ambitions, no cell at The Locks would have been large enough to hold him.

  The black-and-white tape suited Leeds’s pale and colorless features. His hair was jet black and slicked straight back over his head. His eyebrows were thick and speckled with white. His face was gaunt, almost skeletal, with eyes that were sunken, a corpse’s eyes. They looked black, too, but Kimberlain knew they were actually dark brown. Leeds was wearing the standard-issue white Locks outfit. He had rolled up the sleeves of the shirt to reveal a pair of sinewy forearms and long, gentle hands that looked baby soft.

  In not a single frame did Andrew Harrison Leeds reveal himself to the camera. He was a showman, on stage constantly because he knew that at any time someone might be watching. The Ferryman watched, searching for an instant when Leeds’s guard dropped and a glimpse of the true self could be caught. Kimberlain wanted and needed to understand him. But there was no moment when he gave up any truth to the camera. Leeds did not just employ a persona, he vanished into it. His various identities must have been, must be, like hotel rooms to a traveling salesman: he kept checking into the one that was most convenient.

  “The phone, Mr. Kimberlain.”

  The voice of Vogelhut’s receptionist made him shift in the chair abruptly. Startled, the woman clutched for her mouth.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to … It’s just that you have a call. I tried buzzing but—”

  “Thank you,” the Ferryman said, and picked up the phone as she took her leave.

  “Kimberlain.”

  “Talley.”

  “And how are things in Daisy?”

  “You were right,” she told him. “Tiny Tim used a suction cup on the window. We’ve already typed his blood, and we’re hoping the remaining secretions yield even more. I’ve also obtained a court order to exhume the burned remains of the victims from Dixon Springs to check for mutilation, just like you said.”

  “But that’s not why you called.”

  “No.”

  “News from Providence, I trust.”

  “Washington IDed the corpse from the shoot-out as one Donald Dwares. Killed five school teachers in Miami and was sentenced to death.”

  “I’m losing you, Lauren.”

  “Then try this out: Donald Dwares, the man you killed last night, died in the Florida electric chair five years ago.”

  Chapter 14

  IT WAS NOT UNTIL early Monday morning that Hedda at last reached the address Deerslayer had scrawled for her in his bloody bathroom. The explosion in the underground tunnels had knocked her unconscious for a time, and she woke up with one ear useless and the other ringing. But the alcove had provided enough cover to save her life, and after feeling her way through the darkness for a time, she found a route out into the basement of another building. She stole replacement clothes from a clothesline and bathed herself as best she could in a public fountain.

  The apartment building at 17 Rue Plummet overlooked the Bois de Vincennes and proved a stark contrast to the one Deerslayer had died in the night before. It was a magnificent six-story brick building. She would need a subtle means of entry here; slip in only when the doorman was distracted.

  Twenty minutes into her vigil a building resident arrived by cab with a half-dozen shopping bundles. The doorman hurried out to help, and Hedda simply walked through the door past his vacated post.

  Not wanting to wait for the elevator, she moved for the stairs and took them quickly. Apartment 6A was located well down the hall, and she passed the other doors along it warily. None of them had peepholes. She reached 6A and rapped twice.

  “Who’s there?” a voice called out from within.

  Hedda recited the woman’s name from next door in the hushed, whispery tone of an older woman. The label on the door had been handwritten in an old-fashioned, spidery hand.

  “One moment.”

  She heard something like wheels churning and then the locks were being undone. The door creaked open.

  “Good morning, Mrs.—”

  The wheelchaired speaker looked at her and his eyes bulged. Hedda gazed back transfixed.

  “No,” the old man in the wheelchair rasped. “It’s impossible! …”

  It was her grandfather!

  “You’re dead!” the raspy voice blared at her. “You’re dead!”

  A bony hand flailed out in an attempt to slam the door closed. Hedda easily pushed by it and entered the room; the wheelchair rolled backward across the rug. Hedda closed the door and relocked it.

  “What are you doing here?” he gasped fearfully. “What do you want?”

  Hedda’s hand trembled as she moved it from the latch. Her mind swam in confusion. So often in the past, in stressful moments, she had sought solace in the peaceful memories of the past. The farm, her grandfather—the contemplation of them set everything right again, rebalanced her thinking. But this man staring in red-faced fear at her now could not possibly be her grandfather. Just a coincidence, she tried to tell herself, but she felt it was not that simple.

  “Get out of here,” he wheezed, “before they come.”r />
  “Before who comes?”

  “Don’t be a fool. They got Deerslayer, but somehow you escaped them and now you’re pressing your luck.”

  “You knew Deerslayer… .”

  “I knew all of you.”

  “All of who?”

  “The Caretakers. I created you, Hedda,” he said, using her name for the first time. “I created all of you.”

  Hedda felt unsteady on her feet. She leaned back against the door.

  “Who are you?” she asked suddenly, feebly.

  “We could leave me as your grandfather. Easier that way, more pleasant and acceptable.”

  “A lie.”

  “But, you see, there is no truth. There never was, not for you or any of the others.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  The old man gazed about him. The living room was beautifully furnished with antiques; the magnificent Oriental rug was marked with the lines of the wheelchair’s most recent routes. The sun streamed in through a large picture window. Hedda shuddered inwardly at the thought that someone, anyone, could be watching them through it now.

  “It would be much easier if you left now, Hedda,” the old man said with his eyes on the door. “Not for my sake, but for yours. You must believe that. Listen to what I have to say and you walk out of here a different person, one you never knew existed.”

  A chill ran through her. “I want the truth.”

  “Forget truth. I told you, it doesn’t exist. Truth is an illusion we create, a myth we perpetuate to fool ourselves even in the normal world. Religion, spiritualism, need, want—look at them all. Truth is not what we see; it is what is provided for us to ease the pain of existing in a vacuum.”

  “Like what I’ve been existing in, you mean.”

  “No!” he insisted. “Never! Truth for you was what you needed it to be.”

  “But you were in it. Your image, your picture.”

  “Walking upright. Strong and vibrant.”

  “Yes! Yes!”

  “My truth as it can never be. If I can never walk again myself, then at least I can walk in the minds of you and the others.”