The Question of the Missing Head

by E. J. Copperman

  “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 solved 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 trouser 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.

  “It sounded urgent. But we didn’t find anyone here.”

  I tried to picture the schematic of the facility in my mind. “There is another preparation area,” I recalled aloud. “But this is the one where someone—probably Ackerman—brought Ms. Washburn.”

  “You’re sure?” Lapides asked. I nodded.

  Epstein looked horrified. “Then we’re too late?”

  I put my hand on Epstein’s shoulder, a gesture that does not come naturally to me, but one which I know is intended as a signal of comfort. “No, Mr. Epstein. We are not too late. At least, I don’t believe we are. Nothing of a surgical nature happened here. But we must widen the search for Ms. Washburn throughout the facility. She escaped her intended killer but is probably still being pursued, if for no other reason than that she knows who tried to decapitate her. Has anyone located Charlotte Selby or Commander Johnson?”

  “Commander Johnson is being held under guard on the second floor,” the uniformed officer, whose nametag read LONBORG, told me.

  “For goodness’ sake why?” I asked. “The commander was not involved in the conspiracy.”

  “We don’t know who was and who wasn’t,” Lapides insisted. “What’s going on? How do you know Washburn was even here, let alone that she escaped from someone trying to cut off her head?”

  “We are wasting time,” I said. “I’ll tell you as we go. Let’s make sure the other preparation area is not being used.”

  I led Epstein and Lapides through the door, leaving the uniformed officer and the institute employee, who had been sleeping at his console the whole time we were in the room. “It’s relatively simple, after all the confusion,” I said. “Charlotte Selby and Marshall Ackerman were trying to blackmail Laverne Masters into giving them millions of dollars for her daughter’s remains, but they never had anything to trade for the money. They thought they could get by with threats and disappear before anyone realized what had happened. But Laverne forced the issue by refusing to pay until she saw evidence that Rita’s cranium was in fact in the possession of the thieves, and time was short. They decided to substitute a similar-looking specimen, and Ms. Washburn is of the same general physical appearance as Ms. Masters-Powell, based on the photograph you provided, Mr. Epstein. So removing her head and freezing it in time to bring to the exchange was essential.”

  “How can you possibly tell all that?” Lapides asked as we squeezed into the small elevator. Epstein pushed the button marked 2, and the doors closed very slowly.

  “I saw Ackerman and Charlotte in Ackerman’s car right before he came to Questions Answered to hire me,” I told him. “They were kissing. Ackerman and Charlotte were having an affair and wanted money to get away from Eleanor Ackerman and, probably, the institute.”

  “You get all that from them kissing in a car?” Lapides asked.

  “That, plus the fact that Ackerman was getting his ‘instructions,’ as you did, detective, from someone inside the institute facility. And while Commander Johnson, Mrs. Johnson, Laverne and Arthur Mas
ters, and all of us were present at one time or another when a communication from the thieves was supposedly received, Charlotte Selby was never in the room.”

  “She was, though,” Lapides pointed out. “After I confiscated the cell phones, Charlotte came into the conference room to complain about it. She was there when the thieves sent their message agreeing to the exchange.”

  “That is something that I believe will be explained when Mr. Epstein’s data on the wireless communications in the building is revealed in a few hours,” I said. “But I know how it was done. Charlotte had the unregistered phone, the prepaid one, with her in addition to her usual cellular phone. Just before she walked into the conference room to complain about not having her cellular phone, she composed a text message to Ackerman. I saw her put her hand in her jeans pocket, and immediately after, Ackerman’s cellular phone chirped.”

  The elevator doors finally opened. Epstein pointed to the left and said, “That’s where the other preparation area is located. There are two officers inside already.”

  I started in that direction, and the other two men followed. “I’ll look,” I said, “but I’m willing to bet that the room is untouched. They were planning on using the one we’ve already seen.”

  Epstein looked puzzled. “Because there was a tray of instruments set up next to the operating table?” he asked.

  “Very good, yes,” I told him. “Clearly, Ackerman or one of his staff doctors—but I think it was Ackerman himself, to avoid having to tell anyone else of his plans—was interrupted by Ms. Washburn’s escape before he could do what he’d planned.”

  We reached the door and walked inside, Lapides first, then myself, then Epstein. There were two officers inside, seemingly without a single task to perform. One sat behind a console, and the other stood, arms folded, leaning against the far wall.

  Their nametags read JENKINS and PANG.

  The room itself was identical to the last, the only missing elements being the evidence of Ms. Washburn’s courageous escape. There were two operating areas: two tables set up parallel to each other under very strong lighting that could be adjusted to allow the surgeon views of specific body areas. There were also two wheeled carts that held many of the instruments that would be used in such a situation, as well as various computer monitoring equipment.