by Mark Leslie
Evasion
Mark Leslie
Stark Publishing
Hamilton, Ontario
Copyright © 2014 by Mark Leslie Lefebvre
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.
Stark Publishing
Hamilton, Ontario
www.markleslie.ca
Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
Book Layout © 2014 BookDesignTemplates.com
Evasion / Mark Leslie -- 1st ed.
Paperback ISBN 978-0-9735688-5-1
For Dad
It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was.
―Anne sexton
Author’s Note
This novella was inspired by a phenomenon that kept happening shortly after my father died unexpectedly on an operating room table.
I kept spotting him everywhere: In the car driving beside me on the highway, in the stands of a hockey stadium and even across the tracks at a train station. I knew it was my imagination -- but, I speculated -- what if it wasn't in my head?
What if it actually was him?
What if he was still alive, unbeknownst to all his loved ones?
The concept wouldn't leave - but it kept becoming more than a short story but not quite a full length novel, so I kept putting it aside until November 2013 when, committing to write 50,000 words for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), I let the ideas that had been swirling inside my mind come out.
And the result is a Die-Hard styled quick paced thriller that I have had a lot of fun with and that readers have told me they would like to see more of.
If you like this, please consider leaving a review wherever you read it or on your favorite online review website. Feel free to email me at [email protected] to let me know what you thought
Mark Leslie
June 2014
Prologue
Three Years Ago
Scott Desmond was looking at a dead man.
He shook his head, swiped at the sweat running down his forehead and into his eyes, tried to focus more clearly on the sight before him.
There was no mistake about it.
The man he was looking at across two sets of train tracks was none other than his father – a man who had died almost eighteen months earlier.
Scott shook his head for the second time, rubbed his eyes, tried to focus through the humidity of the August day. But there was simply no disputing the fact.
The man he was staring at across the GO train platform had to be his father.
The man had first caught his attention because of the unique way he walked. The man, in his early-sixties, moved with a distinct lurching gait. He shuffled forward, half-dragging, half-lifting his partially crippled left leg; a movement Scott was intimately familiar with.
From his earliest memories, Scott both visually and audibly recognized his father’s unique way of getting about. The man, whom, Scott had learned, had almost lost his life at the age of twenty-one in a spectacular motorcycle accident on the highway, ended up walking away from the crash with a single side-effect.
Perhaps calling the response “walking away” was a bit of an exaggeration. It was only after a series of three intense surgeries and almost two full years of intense therapy that Lionel Desmond was able to walk, and at that, in the lurching gait that Scotty came to associate specifically with his father.
For example, his father, an early riser, would get up and proceed down the hallway to the kitchen to put on the coffee, and Scotty, lying in bed, could hear the unique step and slide movement his father made. Years later, he could instantly spot his father in the hallways of the school where he worked as a custodian, and could tell, even from a few dozen yards away, that the man moving in a half-step, half dragging walk, one in which the man’s left leg dragged along, in a lurching drag-step motion that was immediately distinct and unique.
That step, that unique lurching gait, was what first caught Scott’s attention when he was standing on the GO train platform and waiting for the train that would take him back home from Exhibition Station to Hamilton.
His father had died, suddenly, one bitter cold morning in February nearly two years earlier.
He had been diagnosed with a cyst on his liver; a lump that the doctors weren’t exactly sure was benign or malevolent. But the best option, the doctors had agreed (both Lionel’s family doctor and the specialist who had been assigned to his case), was to have the preventative surgery to remove the kidney, in hope of nipping the cancer in the bud.
After a brief family discussion, which was easy enough to do, considering Scott was the only son of Lionel and Jeannette Desmond, it was decided that Lionel would undergo the surgery, have the cyst and entire kidney removed, and be able to move on to enjoying the imminent retirement that lay less than six months before him.
Only, the day of the surgery led to a strange combination of delays and angst. Scotty had driven back to his home town in Parry Sound, Ontario from his home in Hamilton to be a part of it all, be the self-appointed chauffeur for his parents during this ordeal. And, needing to be at the Sudbury hospital for 8:00 AM in order to be ready for the 9:00 AM scheduled surgery, they had had to leave Parry sound a few minutes after 6:00 AM. So they had already been up for an extended period of time and anxiously awaiting the impending surgery, when hospital staff kept returning to the pre-op room they had all been waiting in to inform them that the surgery was, again, delayed for another hour.
And so, with a surgery scheduled for 10:00 AM which continued to be pushed back until just a few minutes shy of noon, everybody had been exhausted and frustrated.
That hadn’t prevented Scott’s father from turning on his trademark charm, however. Despite the waiting and the angst and frustration, Lionel Desmond continued to make small talk and crack silly jokes with the hospital staff who continued to flit in and out of the waiting room.
“Know what we’re having for dinner?” Lionel would quip. “Steak and kidney pie!”
The hospital staff would cast a confused look at him – most of them didn’t realize that Lionel was awaiting surgery to have his kidney removed. But Scott and his mother rolled their eyes and groaned audibly every time he tossed that chestnut out to a new staff member who arrived to deliver the bad news that the surgeon was running behind and Lionel’s surgery would again be delayed.
Despite the older gentleman’s good humor, Scott had been frustrated.
His original thought was that he would be at the hospital for the morning and then could move on to an appointment he had scheduled for lunch time; but the delays in surgery put his entire schedule in jeopardy. Though he loved his father, there was a stream of frustration and anger flowing through him as he thought about the client who would be waiting for him.
All that frustration and angst, of course, fled him less than two hours later when his mother called him on his mobile phone.
Scott had been at a diner in downtown Sudbury, just about to close a deal with the client he had been forced to delay for more than two hours when his cell phone had rang. He looked down to see who it was, and noticed it was his mother. She had stayed behind at the hospital to wait until the surgery was over. Scott had planned on returning after his meeting to take them both back home.
“Scott. It’s Mom.” Her words were short, each one punching a hole in the air.
“What is it?”
“It’s Dad,” s
he said, and then tried to say something more, but she couldn’t force the words through. She began to cry.
His father had died in the recovery room. He had just been coming to, according to hospital staff, and even beginning to mumble the jokes they had already come to expect from him; then he dropped off, dying from internal bleeding when the clips on his renal artery came off.
That had been eighteen months ago. And despite the anger, the rallying against the institution and never getting any answers, a long and painful, tiring haul, it still seemed like yesterday.
So when Scott noticed the man on across the tracks, lumbering down the platform, he called out in a loud voice: “Dad!”
That’s when the man turned and looked directly into his eyes.
There was simply no mistaking it. It was his father.
His father looked him directly in the eyes.
The man’s eyes were filled with recognition and something Scott had never seen in them before.
Terror.
Utter, outright terror.
“Dad!” he called again, this time in a louder voice.
Oh my God! It’s Dad. He’s alive. And he’s right over there! The voice ran through Scott’s head and he looked toward the entrance that led to the underground path that would take him under the tracks and over to his father’s side. Then he looked back at his father.
That’s when the train pulled in to the station, blocking his father off from his view.
Shocked at the thought of being cut off from being able to see his Dad, Scott stood there a moment, the impossibility of it all rushing through his mind.
Dad, he thought. It’s Dad. He can’t possibly be standing there. But there he is. He’s alive.
He stood there a minute longer, trying to tell himself that he had been seeing things.
“But I’m not,” Scott said. “I’m not seeing things.” That walk, that lurching gait. And he stared the man in the eyes. As sure as Scott was standing on the train platform, that had been his father standing right across from him.
As the train came to a complete stop, Scott realized his father had been planning on getting on the train. The horrified look on his face told him he wouldn’t be waiting around.
Scott knew he had to get over there. Now.
He sprinted down the platform towards the shelter that led to the stairs, moving so quickly that he ran right into the door as a man in a business suit was opening it.
“Watch it!” the man yelled as the door pushed back against him.
Scott shuffled around the door, danced around the man without saying a word and ran inside towards the stairs. He raced up the stairs two at a time, barely missing an older woman who was slowly making her way with one hand on the rail and the other clutching a walker.
“Oh my goodness!” the woman yelled, beginning to lose her balance. Scott spotted it happening and was able to pause, take a step back and place a hand on the small of her back to steady her back to her feet.
“Sorry ma’am,” Scott said,
“You young people are always in such a rush,” the woman scolded. “Look what you almost did.”
“So sorry ma’am,” Scott kept his hand on her back and helped her move up the stairs.
“If you gave yourself time and planned ahead, you wouldn’t be late and rushing around to catch your train.”
“Yes ma’am. Sorry ma’am. Goodbye, ma’am.”
Scott then turned, leaped down the stairs, turned right and raced through the tunnel. His footsteps echoed off the tiled walls along with the repeated calls of “Dad!” which he yelled as he ran.
At the base of the stairs going up Scott stepped in a slick puddle of spilled soft drink and slid into the bottom step. His left toe caught on the bottom riser and he tumbled forward, his left shin and left forearm taking most of the brunt of his fall as he came down on the stairs.
“Dammit!” he yelled as intense bursts of pain flashed through his leg and arm. The shin took the worst of the pain and throbbed painfully as he tried to pull himself into a crawling position. He could hear that the train hadn’t yet left; there was a muffled announcement being broadcast about it, but he couldn’t hear it because there was somebody standing over him and talking to him.
“Are you okay, man?” a young man in a rainbow-colored poncho asked, placing a hand on Scott’s shoulder.
“Fine,” Scott said. “I’m fine!” And he groaned as he got to his feet, the shin sending out protesting throbs of pain.
He hobbled up the stairs and slowly managed to push past the pain, to keep walking.
At the top of the stairs, he found it slightly quicker going on flat ground and limped out the entrance, turning right to head back toward the platform, his leg continued to scream in protest as he moved.
He was less than forty feet from the train when he saw the doors closing.
“No!” he screamed.
He raced to the spot on the platform where he had seen his father standing.
His father was not there. Obviously, he was on the train. As Scott got to the spot where his father had been standing just minutes earlier, the train started to pass and he caught his father’s eyes, yet again, through the window of the train, looking right at him.
That same look of recognition mingled with an aura of terror was on the man’s face.
“Dad!” Scott screamed, over and over as the train pulled his father out of his life yet again. “Dad! Dad! Daaaaaaad!”
Chapter One
Today
The last thing Scotty Desmond expected, when standing in the doorway to Herb Canter’s office, was the pistol his boss held pointed at his face.
Scott had been called into Herb’s office just a few minutes earlier; Herb Canter, Digi-Life’s Director of Infrastructure Technology, was, essentially Scott’s boss – or at least as close to a boss as Scott had had in the past half dozen years. Scott Desmond was an independent contractor, an IT consultant who specialized in helping companies find and fix potential security holes in their systems.
Digi-Life was an online insurance company, a start-up self-service provider of various insurance options available, from life insurance to car and home insurance, linking up both small and multinational insurance firms with clients world-wide.
Scotty’s past as a freelance hacker lent him the knowledge, skill, and expertise to be able to find even the most innocuous gaps, holes, and gateways that hackers could use to gain access to a company’s system and critical data. He charged a significant fee for his services and time, and found that, despite his initial reservations about the change in lifestyle – moving from a life of well-paying crime to a life of helping others and being employed through legal means – the consultant work did bring him a significant income.
He had been working with Digi-Life for the past six months and quite enjoyed the consistency of returning to a regular office. It was satisfying to return to a workplace on such a regular basis that he knew at least a couple of dozen people by name; enough to even enjoy going out for beers with a few of his co-workers.
And, until the morning that he pointed a pistol at Scotty’s head, Herb Canter had been a decent enough boss, someone Scott actually felt comfortable working with and even respected.
Scott had been taking a break from the hack routine he was using to QA test a new security gateway that Digi-Life was hoping to implement, and, taking a short morning coffee-break, was fiddling on the mini laptop he kept in a small backpack near him at all times. Though he had abandoned his previous life of corrupt hacking for nefarious purposes, there was one side-project he kept pecking away at. He was exploring the files and reports associated with his father’s death almost five years earlier.
Requesting official documents from the hospital, the provincial Coroner’s office and even via CSIS had resulted in road-blocks, denied access and subterfuge. The only way Scott had been able to gain any insights was through hacking into the private and locked records that had been kept from his eyes.
It was a painstaking process, but something he was committed to not give up on. He had, after all, seen his father, who had supposedly died on an operating room table, walking around, alive and well at a train station just down the street from where Scott was now working. There seemed to be deeper layers of conflicting information associated with his father’s supposed death. And the further he dug, the more confused and intrigued he’d become.
Virtually every free moment he was not working was dedicated to this side project, this special investigation that continued to slowly reveal intriguing details. He always conducted that work from his personal mini laptop, the one he had a direct masked Wi-Fi hotspot through, rather than the laptop his employer had assigned him. He kept the mini laptop, the backpack he hauled it and a series of special hacker tools and equipment around in, at all times.
Lately, despite having followed many dead-end paths, Scott seemed to be getting somewhere. Just a couple of weeks earlier he had uncovered a previously unearthed revelation about one of the doctors who had been in his father’s hospital room, and was potentially on his way to figuring out how it might be possible for his father, supposedly dead, to be walking around. Scott felt very close to being able to locate this particular doctor, and knew, that it was just a matter of time before he’d get to him and get an answer.
So when Herb sent Scott a text message on his mobile phone requesting that Scott pop in to see him, Scott immediately snapped shut the laptop and slid it into the backpack before walking down the hall to the man’s office, just as naturally and effortlessly as he would have picked a coffee mug from a kitchen cupboard and poured himself a drink.
Herb was a decent boss and the perfect one in Scott’s opinion. He was smart enough to understand the intricacies of what he was asking Scott to do, and also knowledgeable enough about what he didn’t understand, and could leave in Scott’s capable hands.
