by Mark Leslie
He hasn’t found the right key yet, Scott marveled.
Standing on the couch, Scott quickly surveyed the vent grate. It was screwed into the ceiling with a pair of Philips head screws. He reached up and pulled down hard on the vent grate, relaxing his legs to let his body’s full weight add to the downward force. Not designed for to withhold a man’s weight, the metal bent and one of the screws popped off. The screw clattered to the floor.
Scott paused to look down at Gary again to see that his friend was still out of it where he had been dragged. He then stepped onto the back of the couch as he heard another key slide into the lock. Still no luck, fortunately for Scott.
He pulled the backpack off of his right shoulder and threw it up inside the vent. The he was able to get his right forearm inside the vent and with his left hand grasping the ceiling. From that position, Scott was able to slowly pull himself up and partially into the vent.
His feet swung back and forth as he tried to wiggle a better sense of leverage, pull just a bit more of his upper body inside the vent.
His right shoulder and upper chest propped inside the vent, Scott’s feet kept swinging wildly as he managed to gain another inch. Then another, and another.
His mind projected images of high school gym class and the fact that he could never pull himself more than a few feet up the rope from the ever-popular sitting position. Despite the urging of the gym teacher and the fact that the entire class was watching, Scott had never been able to go up more than those first couple of feet.
Other kids in the class crawled up the rope as easily as they might ascend a set of stairs, almost like they had been bitten by radioactive spiders. But each year, when it was his turn in that gym class, Scott went up a few feet and then his body, shaking uncontrollably from the strain on his muscles, simply let go and fell back down onto the gym mat, completely defeated and winded and not caring one bit that everyone in the class was laughing at his expense.
Despite believing he had been giving it his all, that he had been putting every possible bit of effort into those gym rope climb attempts, Scott now knew better.
With the result being capture and death rather than mere teenage humiliation, additional resources of strength, power and motivation could be tapped into.
Sliding his entire body into the vent, Scott could hear the sound of yet another key sliding into the lock.
Holy shit, Scott said. Doesn’t the guard remember which key is which?
No matter, he thought. It’s a good thing for me that he’s having trouble with it.
Shoving the backpack ahead of him, Scott wormed his way further into the vent. It was dark, dusty and extremely hot. He could see that the vent moved off to the left, to the right, and straight ahead.
No time to think this through, Scott thought, and immediately started crawling down the vent to the left, which would, according to his calculations, take him over top of the 2nd floor kitchen.
Behind him, he heard Herb and the security guard utter the monotonic phrase again, the jiggling of more keys. He kept crawling, seeing if he could put as much distance between himself and the vent opening before they made it into the first aid room. Herb did, after all, have a gun.
Scrambling through the dark, Scott realized it wasn’t completely pitch dark inside the vent because of the light that shot up through various openings every few feet. Through them, he could hear the two men continuing to slam against the door, jangle the keys, and occasionally bleating out their threatening lines.
Doing his best to make as little noise as possible while scrambling through the vent, Scott finally made it to the corner at the back of the office. He turned right, knowing he was heading overtop of the same hallway he had first come running down.
As he turned, the sounds of Herb and the guard were harder to make out. He could detect the jangling of the keys, the repeated same four words of “you cannot evade us” sometimes peppered with “you won’t get away” and other times with “we will stop you.”
Sliding past the short branch that led to the area over Gary’s work area, Scott was again reminded of the manner by which Gary had managed to block the airflow in his area.
He was curious as to whether or not the vent had something to do with the behavior of Herb, the guard and Gary; particularly since Gary hadn’t seen to shift and morph until he was directly under the vent in the closed first aid room.
Could that be it? Scott wondered, continuing to crawl forward. It was, at least, one theory on why Gary, when he’d been sitting at his workstation, was entirely himself, entirely normal – and that it wasn’t until he had been away from the unique environment he had hacked that he slipped into that glassy-eyed state.
No, he told himself. It might first make sense, but that couldn’t be it. “I’ve been breathing the very same air,” he whispered. “And I haven’t been affected.”
He kept crawling forward, heard a loud thump echo from somewhere behind him, figuring that the security guard had finally located the right key, had twisted the lock open and they’d slammed against the door, only to have it hit against the couch and metal cabinet.
Scott figured he had less than a minute before they were able, using their combined force, to get the door open enough to see the entire room, realize he wasn’t hiding behind the door, and spot the open vent grate and realize where he had gone.
Moving a bit faster, as quickly as he was able, Scott continued scrambling forward in the vent.
Damn, he thought, considering the fact that, running down the corridor below took a few thirty to forty seconds at best; but crawling along that same length of space seemed to take infinitely longer.
He wasn’t sure where, exactly he was heading, wondering if he’d come to another main intersection, and perhaps one that led to another floor. He wondered if he might be able to crawl up or perhaps slide down, or whether he’d get to a branch too thin for an adult male to navigate.
When he got to what he figured was the halfway point of the long corridor, he heard the distinct sounds of footsteps coming from below.
Damn. They must have figured it out.
Less than a foot in front of him, the vent shaft shot off to the left and the right in a two-way intersection.
A gunshot, muffled like before, the sound less of the small explosive of gunfire, and more like that metallic thwacking of a ruler on a desktop rang out. A small bead of light from the gunshot hole appeared in the metal.
He stared at it for a second, realizing what was happening.
“Shit!” he muttered, and scrambled forward quickly, passing over the gunshot area when a second shot rang out. Something burned on the side of his left leg and he realized he must have been shot, that Herb was likely walking under the vent and taking shots at it, hoping to score a direct hit.
Scott shuffled to the intersection and headed right toward the center of the building, the burning sensation on his left leg less concerning than the thought of taking a bullet in the belly.
Another shot fired.
Scott scrambled forward, terrified that Herb would start firing further in the direction Scott was moving, and didn’t even notice the floor of the vent disappearing from below him.
Before he realized what was happening, he was tumbling head first in the dark straight down the vertical section of the vent shaft.
Chapter Fourteen
Four-and-a-Half Years Ago
“Natural causes?” Scott yelled out in such a loud voice that he even startled himself. “This is bullshit!”
The coroner, Dr. Mikhail Charuk, sat propped on a little round stool across from Scott and didn’t even blink at the harshly delivered words. They were in a small room, the same room that a patient would consult with a doctor in. And Charuk, a Sudbury coroner, ran this service out of the same office he ran his medical practice.
After years of seeing Coroners portrayed on television cop shows, Scott was a bit perturbed to find the Coroner assigned to his father’s death was not some ecc
entric weirdo clutching a ham sandwich in one hand while poking at the edge of a nasty raised edge of flesh on the end of a bloody wound, cracking off-color jokes and spewing out observations that both confused and turned the stomach at the same time, but rather a doctor who looked pretty much like every other doctor Scott had ever encountered.
The Coroner’s office was called in because in all cases where a patient dies in either a surgery or a recovery room, an autopsy and investigation has to be completed as part of the due diligence required by the hospital insurance board.
Charuk had just relayed his findings on the investigation into Lionel Desmond’s death. He was obviously used to delivering bad news and dealing with upset clients, because the next words he spoke were as calmly and meticulously delivered as all of his previous statements had been.
“Because treating cancer was the underlying reason for your father’s surgery,” Charuk said, “the findings have to reflect that. Under the circumstances, that is the closest, most logical of the reasons.”
“If we didn’t treat my father, if he hadn’t had the surgery, and if the cancer was allowed to grow and eventually killed him, that would be natural causes. I get that.
“But we didn’t do that. We sought treatment. He met with medical professionals. They operated on him, removed a kidney, and sewed him back up. Then, less than an hour later, while he was in the recovery room the clips on his renal artery came off. Whether it was from a defect in the clips or the doctor’s incompetence, the clips came off. There’s nothing natural about that.”
“Under the circumstances…” Charuk began in that calm voice.
“I’m talking about the fucking circumstances!” Scott yelled, standing up and slamming the folder on the examining table beside him. “The fucking clips came off! He bled to death! Tell me what’s fucking natural about that!”
Charuk paused for a few beats and took a deep breath before he continued. “I understand that you’re upset, Mr. Desmond. But in a situation like this, the investigation had to lead back to the root cause, the reason why your father was in surgery in the first place.”
“This is utter fucking bullshit!” Scott yelled. “If you’re not willing to admit this is either an accident or homicide, then you could at least have offered undetermined as the category for his death.” Scott had, of course, looked into the situation enough to understand the coroner’s role and the five questions they were expected to answer, including the final, most important one, the means by which they died. The categories for that result were: natural causes, accident, homicide, suicide, or undetermined.
“I can see how you might feel this way.” Charuk said, his calm poker face unwavering – while that demeanor was likely meant to keep an angry or upset patient or family member stabilized, providing a consistent and comforting platform that they could come back to once their anger, tears or whatever high emotion they were running on had played itself out, all it did was further piss off Scott. “But the reason follows the chain back to the underlying reason why the patient was in the surgery.”
“The patient is my fucking father. And he is fucking dead. Thanks either to a quack who should be fucking sued and have his license taken away, or because of a defect in the clips that were used in his surgery.
“THAT is what you were supposed to be determining! THAT is what I was expecting to hear. Not this goddamn fucking bullshit you’re spewing!”
“I am sorry you feel this way, Mr. Desmond. And, as I stated, I am truly sorry for your father’s loss. But the methodology for determining a death in these circumstances…”
“You can stick your methodology up your ass!” Michael screamed, picking the folder up off of the examining table and opening the door. “Thanks for wasting my time and doing sweet fuck all to look into this!”
“Mr. Desmond…” Charuk said, this time in a partially pleading voice, as if he were talking to an insane person. Scott had to admit that the anger flowing through him, the complete incredulous feeling about what was happening did make him feel insane – insane with rage, insane with disbelief, insane with anger over this situation.
“Go fuck yourself!” Scott said, slamming the door behind him and storming down the hall and out the waiting room past the stares and the fearful looks on the faces of the other patients who had obviously heard most of the exchange – or, at least, Scott’s side of the exchange, since he had been the only one yelling.
Leaving through the front door of the office, Scott felt the rage begin to subside, replaced by the tears of rage. He managed to get to his car, unlock the front door, slip inside and close the door behind him before the tears came out full blast.
“Dammit!” he said, pounding his hands on the dashboard and the steering wheel. “This is complete bullshit. They’re hiding something, dammit. They’re covering something up, and I want to know what it is! Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn!”
Chapter Fifteen
Today
Scott tumbled head-first into the darkness of the vertical section of the shaft, his arms and hands, already in front of him, instinctively embracing for the impact. A quarter of a second into the fall, he worried that this vertical part of the air vent went all the way from the top floor to the bottom and would that a fall from such a height would certainly kill him.
Great, Scott thought. My fear of heights combined with my fear of the dark merging so beautifully into this perfect end to my life.
But as his elbows, knees, and heels scraped against the metal walls, he realized this section of the shaft was much more narrow than the horizontal sections he had been navigating through, so he folded his arms together, thrusting his elbows hard against the sides and also spread his legs so that his knees pushed against the sides of the shaft as well.
The initial unbalanced manner by which he pressed against the sides initially bounced him and jostled him within the confines of the metal shaft, and his knees and elbows burned from the friction of the shaft, the ridges of where the pieces of vent joined together tearing into his shirt and cutting him. But he kept the pressure up, pushing out with his arms and legs as much as possible, despite the burning, the pain.
The fear of snapping his neck at the sudden stop at the bottom was a pretty good motivator to help him focus less on the pain and more on just stopping his fall.
He skidded along the shaft for another second or two, the speed of his descent slowing even further.
He pushed out as hard as he could, but the vertical momentum was too much to stop altogether. It did, however, slow him down significantly.
After a few more feet of the reduced speed descent, pressing up against the walls of the shaft, his elbows popped free of the walls on both sides.
The first floor, Scott thought, and thrust both of his arms straight out on each side, feeling the impact of the ledges on both sides digging in to his biceps.
But it was enough of a jolt to his fall that he was able to further spread his legs out and brace them firmly against both sides of the shaft and stop his descent completely.
He hung there, inverted, unmoving, and took a deep breath, trying to figure out how he could twist around and shimmy in to the horizontal section of the shaft without losing his grip and continuing his plummet into the darkness.
Sweat dripped into his eyes as he hung there, catching his breath, trying to work out a quick plan. He could feel a thin line of blood, warm and sticky, running up the back of his leg. It wasn’t enough blood to start dripping, but he was certainly aware of it, and of the burning sensation. Although his legs didn’t just burn from the spot he figured he’d been shot – they burned in the several spots that had been pressing against the wall in his attempt to slow down the vertical descent.
There was a bit of light coming from off to his right. There was a steady stream of heat blowing up through the shaft, more intense now that his plummet had stopped, and likely further aggravated by the fact that most of the mass of his body was blocking the heat from continuing to rise.
<
br /> Scott twisted his hips, slowly moving his knees towards his front while pushing the back of his head against the side of the metal shaft. The edges of the horizontal section of the air vent dug deeper into his biceps as he slowly twisted and shifted.
He knew that he couldn’t remain suspended there much longer. His arms would eventually give out and he would plummet all the way to the bottom.
So he had to do something a bit risky – he had to tuck in, do a quick twist, lift his left arm out of the shaft to his left, and thrust it into the one to his right; at the same time he had to continue to twist and thrust his legs completely into the opposite horizontal section, so that his body was planking the gap.
He knew that, while perfectly suspended he might stand a chance of holding himself by gripping onto the ledge of metal, even falling the half foot would be too much for him – the slick metal, particularly with him sweating the way he was in the over-heated enclosed heating vent, wouldn’t allow him any sort of proper grip. There wouldn’t be enough friction to hold himself upright.
Scott flashed back to the scene in Die Hard where Bruce Willis’s character, John McClane falls down a section of a significantly larger air vent, more akin to the size of an elevator shaft. In the movie he fell a couple of stories before the last two portions of the fingers of both hands end up catching the edge of one of the horizontal sections and completely stop his fall.
It wasn’t a matter of physical strength, Scott knew – certainly, McClane was tough enough to hold himself up with just the tips of his fingers for a few seconds – but the issue was simple physics. There’s no way that a man in the weight class of almost two hundred pounds would be able to stop such a rapid descent with such a minimal point of contact, the tips of eight fingers. Never mind the speed of his fall and the slickness of the metal itself, but McClane had already been sweating and he was covered with blood.
While McClane had fallen a few stories and still managed the miraculous save, Scott knew that, if he twisted incorrectly, despite having one full arm extended into the horizontal section, the downward pull of his weight would be enough to dislodge him and send him tumbling down the vertical section of shaft again. There was, simply, nothing for him to grasp onto. His fingers couldn’t dig into or catch on anything.
