1 The Question of the Missing Head

by E. J. Copperman

  That information was interesting but not relevant to my question. “The hard drive,” I reminded Epstein.

  “Yes. In the three days before she died, Rebecca Springer was exchanging e-mails pretty frequently with two people we’ve met—Arthur Masters and Charlotte Selby.”

  Now, that was interesting—I’d only been expecting one of those names. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Mother straightening up my bookshelf and taking a roll of paper towel out of a cabinet. “Charlotte Selby?” I asked. “Have you read the e-mails?”

  “I’ve seen them, and they’re pretty innocuous, about meeting one day or another, until the name ‘Rita’ comes up. Dr. Springer makes a statement about how things can’t go on as they have been, and then suddenly Charlotte says not to discuss that in any traceable forum and stops the exchange.”

  I tried to process that information. Why would Dr. Springer be e-mailing to Charlotte Selby about Rita Masters-Powell? Why would Dr. Springer be communicating with Charlotte Selby at all? “What about the e-mails to Arthur Masters?” I asked.

  “They were much less chatty,” Epstein answered. “Arthur appeared to be helping the doc invest some money. They were discussing safe mutual funds and retirement accounts.”

  I sat down at my desk and looked at the computer screen. Left where I’d been looking when Marshall Ackerman had come in the day before was the project involving Yankee Stadium and the video clips Ms. Washburn had taken of me in front of the floor-to-ceiling window of Questions Answered, her camera facing toward the parking lot, me holding a baseball bat to demonstrate an uppercut swing.

  Then I saw something in the background of that video that made me catch my breath. And all the contradictions that had presented themselves in answering these questions seemed to fall into place, and to no longer be contradictions.

  Behind me in the video, as I swung the bat once, twice, three times, nothing moved. But on the fourth swing, there was movement outside the storefront that I had not noticed before, having focused on the quality of my swings to use in the presentation to my client, Mr. Teradino.

  “Did you hear me?” Epstein asked. “Samuel?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Hold on for one moment, please.” I slowed the speed of the video during the last two swings I took with the baseball bat, and this time watched the background instead of the image of myself. Mother had found a spray bottle of ammonia-based cleaner and was making herself busy on the windows.

  Behind me (in the video), a car drove up in the parking lot and parked next to Ms. Washburn’s car. I recognized the car now as Marshall Ackerman’s. Since he had walked into the office only moments later, that was not surprising.

  But Ms. Washburn and I had spent time loading the video onto my Mac Pro and were about to compare them when Ackerman walked through the door. Examination of the video indicated that he had clearly been in his car for some time before entering the office. What had he been doing?

  “Samuel,” Mother said, “why aren’t you talking to whoever that is on the phone?”

  “I am answering the questions,” I told her. “I believe I will have an answer in a few minutes.”

  “Really?” Epstein asked through the phone. “What’s going on?”

  “Just a moment, please,” I told both of them.

  The gap in Ackerman’s time could be explained when the video was examined closely, with an eye toward the background. After pulling into the parking space, Ackerman sat back, composed himself, and straightened his tie. Then he looked over into the passenger’s seat and spoke.

  There was a woman sitting next to him, and it was not his wife. I had to watch the video of the last two swings four more times before I could make a positive identification.

  The woman seated next to him, blond and constantly talking, was Charlotte Selby. And if I could verify one last suspicion I had, I believed I could unravel the entire mystery and answer both questions for which I had been given responsibility.

  Then, just before exiting the car, Ackerman leaned over and kissed Charlotte.

  My excitement was palpable; I had never answered a question quite this momentous before. I took a deep breath and put the telephone receiver closer to my mouth. “Mr. Epstein,” I said, “how much clearance have you been given in the police investigation of Dr. Springer’s murder?”

  “I have pretty much full clearance,” he answered. “Why?”

  “Have you seen a photograph of Rita Masters-Powell?” I asked him, having realized just moments before that I had no visual image of Ms. Masters-Powell to recall.

  Epstein thought a moment. “You know, now that you bring it up, I don’t think I have.”

  “Can you find one?” In the interim, I had searched Google Images, and had found nothing at all useful under “Rita Masters-Powell,” “Rita Masters” (aside from some images of a woman at least twenty years older than the one in question), or “Rita Powell.”

  “I’ll call you back,” Epstein said.

  “Quickly, please,” I responded and placed the receiver back on the telephone base.

  Mother had stopped cleaning, seeing my excitement, and walked over to the desk. “What’s going on, Samuel?” she asked.

  “Things are beginning to move fast,” I told her. “What time is it?” I pulled Ms. Washburn’s cellular phone out of my pocket to check the time.

  At that moment, it rang.

  Since no one would expect me to have Ms. Washburn’s cellular phone, it was sensible to assume that the caller was hoping to speak to her. But the screen showed the call was coming from Home. It was possible Ms. Washburn was calling me from her home to get an updated report on the questions and our progress.

  I moved to answer the call. “Should you?” Mother asked. I shrugged.

  “Hello?” I said into the phone.

  A man’s voice, startled, responded, “Hello? Who is this?”

  “This is Samuel Hoenig,” I answered, since there was no denying it now. “Who is calling? Why aren’t you Ms. Washburn?”

  “Where’s Janet?” the man asked in response.

  “I will not answer until you identify yourself,” I told him. “I am Ms. Washburn’s employer. Who are you?”

  “Her husband,” the caller said with a definite edge of resentment in his voice. “Where is Janet?”

  “She went home a few hours ago to rest,” I said. “She had worked late into the night.”

  “No, she didn’t,” her husband said. “I just woke up, and she’s not here.”

  At that moment, the e-mail program on my Mac Pro made the sound that indicated I had received an e-mail. I clicked on the program and saw the communication was from Jerome Epstein, who must have gotten my address from one of the business cards I had given the police.

  “Perhaps she went out for something,” I told Ms. Washburn’s husband. “I’m sure there’s no need for concern, Mr. Washburn.”

  “The name is Taylor,” he corrected me, and I recalled that Ms. Washburn had told me that when we’d met. “And she hasn’t been here at all. She left to go drive you someplace or another, and she never came back.”

  I opened Epstein’s e-mail. He had typed in the message, The picture you requested. Beneath his words was a photograph of Rita Masters-Powell.

  “Now, where is she?” Ms. Washburn’s husband demanded.

  But I was mesmerized by the image before me. The woman in the photograph, smiling gamely but without joy, if I was reading her expression correctly, was blond and brown-eyed. Her face was almost diamond-shaped, and her lips were thin and withdrawn. She was attractive, but not beautiful, because she looked like she could not be pleased by anything under any circumstances.

  “I’m sorry?” I asked Mr. Taylor.

  “Where. Is. My. Wife?” he reiterated.

  And that was when it came together for me. But with the realization that I had so
lved the mystery and answered the questions came a very cold, hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach. “I will have to call you back when I’m sure,” I said and heard Ms. Washburn’s husband start to yell an obscenity at me before I disconnected the call.

  Immediately, I found the number Epstein was calling from and called it. “Get back into the institute immediately,” I told him. “Don’t take no for an answer, and get some officers to help you. We have very little time to lose.”

  Mother leaned over my desk looking very concerned. “Samuel—” she began.

  “I need the car, Mother,” I told her. “I must go and save Ms. Washburn’s life.”

  twenty-eight

  In the end, of course, Mother refused to be left behind. The same arguments as before—my lack of sleep, her insistence on being helpful—were compounded by the lack of time and her deep concern, which I shared, for Ms. Washburn.

  Luckily, Ms. Washburn’s phone had also received a call from Lapides earlier in the post-midnight hours, and I used that call to redial the detective’s cellular phone. I immediately explained the situation to him.

  “I’ll send some uniforms to the institute right away,” Lapides assured me. “But I’m supposed to be leaving for the exchange in less than an hour.”

  “If we can save Ms. Washburn,” I told him, “there isn’t going to be an exchange. It’s her head they’re going to try to trade for the money.”

  Mother’s attention, which had been riveted to the road in front of us, was caught by that remark, and she turned her head sharply toward me. I pointed to the windshield, and Mother turned back, but she looked positively mortified.

  “What the hell do you mean, her head?” Lapides demanded. I have never understood the expression what the hell, since it refers to a mythological place with an article and does not actually seem to have an independent meaning, but I had no time to question it now. “Why wouldn’t they just bring Rita Masters-Powell’s head?”

  “Because they never had it,” I told him. “Don’t you see? The reason that Dr. Springer was killed was that she was going to inform the authorities about the scam that Ackerman and Charlotte Selby were perpetrating on Laverne Masters.”

  “Scam? What scam?” Lapides sounded absolutely baffled.

  “There is no time,” I said. “Get to the institute as quickly as possible, and bring as many officers as you can arrange. Now!” I disconnected the phone and placed it gently back in my pocket. I fully intended to deliver it to its rightful owner as soon as possible.

  “What’s going on?” Mother asked as she stared ahead. “We’re only a few minutes away. Tell me what you know.”

  “I am not able to explain everything yet,” I said. “But suffice it to say that Marshall Ackerman and Charlotte Selby are behind the ransom demands, and I think at least one of them had a hand in the murder of Dr. Springer.”

  “But that doesn’t seem to make sense.” Mother shook her head slightly, trying to make sense of the situation. “Dr. Ackerman hired you to answer the question about what happened to the missing remains. Why would he do that if he were behind the theft himself ?”

  “He underestimated me,” I told her. “He said he’d been recommended to me by Ellen Crenshaw. You remember Ms. Crenshaw, Mother. She was the one who had the missing Boa constrictor.”

  Mother nodded her head vigorously. “Oh, I remember.”

  “You’ll also recall that Ms. Crenshaw was somewhat disappointed because I actually located the snake and did not tell her insurance company that it was irretrievably lost. She wanted to collect on her policy, not regain the animal. But she was pleased enough to recommend me, and probably told Ackerman the entire story, perhaps at a social occasion where alcohol was served. Ms. Crenshaw likes to talk.”

  Mother nodded. “I remember. So what makes you think that Ackerman is trying to do the same thing, but on a larger scale? Why would he try to extort money from the family of a client?”

  “Because I believe that Ackerman is having an affair outside his marriage. I observed the way his wife greeted him after the traumatic evening she had experienced, and they were barely civil to each other,” I told her. “Also, I have video of Ackerman kissing a woman who is clearly not his wife.”

  “Charlotte Selby,” Mother guessed. Mother has a very perceptive and logical mind.

  “Yes,” I told her. “And that was what threw me off for a while. But once I started to piece things together, I realized that in all likelihood, Ackerman and the institute had never been in possession of Ms. Masters-Powell’s remains. He and Charlotte were trying to extort Laverne Masters out of seventeen million dollars by selling her back nothing.”

  We drove in silence for twenty-one seconds, until the now-familiar Garden State Cryonics Institute facility came into view on our right. As Mother steered the car into the driveway and then the parking lot, she asked, “How does that add up to Janet’s life being in danger?”

  “The thieves had been adamant about receiving the money before they produced the missing remains, which they claimed they had preserved properly somewhere close enough to the institute that it could be transported without difficulty,” I explained. Mother turned off the engine and looked at me. “Then once the initial plan did not produce the payday they had anticipated, they suddenly agreed to show the cranium in question to the police and Arthur Masters.”

  “But if you’re right, they never had the remains at all,” Mother said.

  “Precisely,” I answered, getting out of the car. We had to get inside quickly, and Mother does not walk as fast as I do. I started for the entrance. “That’s why they need a replacement head to show off in less than an hour,” I called behind me as I started to run.

  I looked back and saw Mother’s hand go to her mouth.

  There were five North Brunswick police vehicles in the parking lot, I noted as I rushed to the front entrance, and Lapides’s car was also parked in back. The usual coterie of security personnel was missing from the reception area, leaving only a dazed-looking receptionist at the desk in front. As I ran past her, she called after me, “Welcome to Garden State Cryonics Institute,” and I believe that as I made it to the elevator, she continued, “How may I help you?” Perhaps Mother would explain when she reached the area.

  A quick look at the schematic of the building mounted near the elevator reminded me that the fourth level down contained what the literature issued by GSCI euphemistically called the “guest preparation area,” where the bodies of those who had chosen to be preserved would be drained of blood and readied for the freezing process. Family members and other loved ones would not be allowed in the guest preparation area.

  It was also the section where those who had opted for cranial preservation only would have their heads removed from their bodies.

  Once Ackerman had seen to it that I was removed from the facility, he had somehow banished the police officers who had been left behind and insisted that Epstein be ejected from the building as well. Clearly, there was something about to happen that Ackerman didn’t want anyone else to see.

  I was hoping desperately that it had still not happened.

  Two uniformed police officers were in the elevator when the doors opened, but I was already rushing toward the stairway, which was considerably faster. I heard one of the officers call out asking for my name, and I yelled back behind me, “Allow me to introduce myself; I am Samuel Hoenig.” The officers did not follow me, so I assumed that was sufficient.

  I raced down the stairs, not encountering another officer on the way, and reached for the door to the fourth level. But the knob would not turn; the door was locked. I had failed to consider that not every level would be unlocked with this kind of search going on throughout the building.

  Now I was trapped. In all likelihood, the other access points from this stairway would be locked, as well. Ms. Washburn’s cellular phone, still in my tro
user pocket, was useless in the facility. But then I recalled that Ackerman had received a text message from inside the building. I was not sure if it would be successful, but I sent texts to Epstein and Lapides reading Locked in fourth level stairway. Open the door.

  Then I waited, but not without trying to determine if I could remove the hinges from the locked door with the Swiss Army knife in my other trouser pocket. And I cursed myself for not thinking the plan through thoroughly enough before embarking upon it. My hands went to the sides of my head. I felt my teeth clench, and I began to bend slightly at the waist then straighten up. Those who study autism spectrum disorders call this sort of behavior self-stimulating or stimming. Neither word is attractive, nor accurate. In this case, I was reacting to my frustration with the locked door and with myself, acting out physically and emotionally rather than rationally. I was very displeased with my actions, and I was glad no one was there to see me behaving that way.

  But then there was. Epstein appeared in the door’s narrow window and for the moment before I could contain myself, seemed reluctant to open the door. But he did so anyway. “It’s okay, Samuel,” he said. “The cops have found the preparation area, and there’s no one there.”

  I was still catching my breath. “Show it to me,” I said, and Epstein waited until I was through the door and in the corridor before hurrying down the hall. “What is your favorite Beatles song?” I asked him as we ran.

  He must have been prepared by Lapides, because he had an answer ready. “ ‘Rain’, ” he said.

  Contemplative. Introverted. Questioning.

  “You’re a good man,” I told Epstein. He smiled.

  We reached the door marked Guest Preparation, and Epstein pushed it open. Inside were a uniformed officer, a GSCI employee in coveralls, and Detective Lapides. “You got here very quickly,” I said to the detective.