Chapter 42 - The Hospital Confession
The blood left my face. "My father is in the Duluth intensive care unit."
Klausner pulled a slim satellite communicator from his pocket and pressed a button. A live feed popped up on the tiny screen.
It showed the darkened corner of Room 412 at St. Luke's Hospital. Arthur Vance lay in the bed, hooked to an oxygen line, his gaunt face pale and sunken. Standing beside his bed was a burly man in an orderly’s scrubs, his thumb resting on the primary valve of the oxygen regulator.
"He has ten minutes of air left at that setting," Klausner said calmly. "Your father was a coward, Benjamin. He knew we would come when Elias’s original ninety-nine-year bond expired this month. That was why he gave Grace the property and handed you that broken spatula. It wasn't an insult. It was a dying man’s pathetic attempt to pass the burden."
"What do you mean?" I stepped forward, rage boiling behind my eyes.
"Ask him yourself," Klausner said, flipping the communicator to audio.
The line clicked. The sound of Arthur's shallow, rattling breath filled the cold stone vault.
"Benny...?" Arthur’s voice was a ragged gasp through the speaker. "Benny, is that you?"
"I'm here, Dad," I said, my teeth clenched so hard my jaw ached. "What did you do?"
"I... I had to give Grace the diner," Arthur wept, the broken pride of a miserable patriarch falling away into naked terror. "The spatula... Benny, the wooden handle... Elias carved it from the timber of the original sea-gate barrier. It’s not just broken steel. The brass pin inside the handle... it’s the firing key for the emergency scuttling charges. If Klausner ever came... Elias told me to blow the tunnel into the deep lake trough."
"You made me carry the detonator for nine years?" I roared into the communicator. "You humiliated me in front of the whole town, made me look like an outcast, while you handed me the trigger to a tomb?"
"Because you were the only one strong enough not to sell it!" Arthur cried out, his voice breaking into a dry cough. "Grace would have sold it to the first buyer. You... you were like Elias. You forged your own iron. You survived on scraps. Benny... don't let them have the gold... let the lake take it..."
The orderly’s hand moved on the screen, twisting the regulator. Arthur gasped, thrashing weakly against the sheets.
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"Enough theatrics," Klausner said, cutting the feed. "The spatula handle, Benjamin. Give me the brass key, or your father dies right now."
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