The Question of the Missing Head

by E. J. Copperman

  “Not nearly as shocked as you will be, Mother,” her son said, a light chuckle in his voice.

  THIRTY

  CHARLOTTE SELBY WAS LED into the conference room, and while she was not visibly resisting the two officers who held her arms, she clearly was not cooperating with their efforts, either. They were exerting themselves.

  Lapides walked behind them, looking pleased with himself. He carried an evidence bag whose contents were concealed in one hand. “We found her in the boiler room, of all places,” he announced. Charlotte, her face mostly obscured by the hooded sweatshirt she was wearing, seemed to growl at him, and Lapides started just a bit before adding, “She hasn’t said a word yet, but I’ve read her her rights. And she was carrying a prepaid cell phone.”

  “Good work, detective,” Captain Harris told him.

  I noticed Arthur Masters was looking especially amused at Charlotte’s entrance, even as he himself was being flanked by two of North Brunswick’s uniformed officers. He sat back down in his chair, crossed his legs, and laced his fingers behind his head. Laverne continued to stare at him, no doubt trying to convince herself that what she was seeing and hearing was simply a gigantic mistake, most likely on the part of the police.

  “Charlotte,” Arthur said. “How lovely to see you. If we could see you.”

  “Ms. Selby,” Captain Harris said, “you’ve been advised of your rights. Do you understand them?” Charlotte did not respond except to drop her head a little lower, making her face that much more difficult to see.

  I did not understand the family dynamic among the Masterses, but I found myself growing impatient with their coy gamesmanship. “Very well then, Ms. Masters-Powell,” I said to Charlotte. “It is good to finally make your acquaintance.”

  Captain Harris and Lapides stared at me. Ms. Washburn gasped at my side. Laverne Masters turned her attention away from her son and looked at me, then at the woman wearing the hood over her face.

  Arthur Masters looked, if I was reading his expression correctly, disappointed.

  The woman in the hood let out a long sigh, then straightened her neck and shook the hood off her head, since the officers holding her arms and the handcuffs behind her back would not allow her to pull it off manually. She stared not at me, but at her mother.

  Laverne Masters looked as astonished as I have ever seen a person look, and it was no wonder. She barely managed to breathe out, “Rita.”

  Captain Harris’s mouth opened and closed twice, then she looked at me and said, “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s—” I stopped. I had been about to say It’s simple, but the situation was anything but that. “It is Rita Masters-Powell we’re seeing in this room,” I told her. “There never was a Charlotte Selby before Rita ‘died.’ She simply took on a new identity for the purpose of getting some of her family’s great wealth.”

  “They owed me,” Rita hissed. “All those years married to Bill, living in squalor, and they wouldn’t send a dime.”

  Laverne flailed her hands, looking a bit like I do when I find myself especially frustrated; she appeared to be stimming. “All this because we wouldn’t send you money?” she asked. “You were the daughter of a very wealthy man, and you threw your life away with a busboy. We kept expecting you would come to your senses. And then you told Arthur you were getting a divorce.”

  “That was just about the time the story became interesting,” I said. “Rita met Marshall Ackerman—was it through your high school friend Rebecca Springer?”

  Rita nodded. “I ran into her at the mall, of all places,” she said. “And she told me about this amazing place where she was working, even though she didn’t think it was as wonderful as she’d been told in the beginning. And she introduced me to Marshall.”

  “That was the turning point,” I told Captain Harris. “When Rita met Ackerman, she was in a marriage that she had long since given up on. Her mother was right—Bill Powell was a bore and possibly an alcoholic, but Rita was too proud to admit it. She found Ackerman the opposite of her husband. Why, Rita?”

  Rita Masters-Powell laughed. “Are you serious? Marshall is everything Bill could never be. He’s working to make people immortal. Can you imagine that? To actually conquer death? Bill’s working just to buy himself another bottle of bourbon.”

  “So they fell in love,” Ms. Washburn said in a tone that indicated she was speaking mostly to herself.

  “Exactly,” I agreed. “And that gave Rita the impetus to divorce her husband. She came to her brother for financial help, didn’t she, Arthur? And for some reason I do not understand, you turned her down.”

  “There was no upside for him,” Rita sneered.

  “Oh, it’s not that simple,” Arthur Masters told me. “Rita wanted money not just for her, but for this institute Ackerman was trying to run. Money for all the people-sicles downstairs in those freezer units. She tried to get me to invest the company’s money in it, but I knew there was no benefit. Who believes that you can cut off their head and then wait until they develop the ability to put it on a robot body or something and live forever? It’s ridiculous.”

  “It’s not ridiculous!” Rita shouted, but no one answered her.

  “But you offered Rita a second proposition, one that would make money for both of you and for Ackerman,” I said, trying to continue the narrative.

  I saw both Captain Harris and Lapides moving their heads from speaker to speaker as the drama played out, as if they were watching a tennis match. Commander Johnson, however, was absorbed in his BlackBerry.

  That was unusual.

  I was left with several options, but I was not sure whether it was better to call the commander out publicly or to surreptitiously discern what communication was being done while the rest of us attended to the Masters family and its strange situation. I saw Ms. Washburn was looking in my direction, so I initiated eye contact. She noticed immediately, and I signaled with my eyes toward the commander.

  Ms. Washburn nodded, understanding my concern, and began to move very slowly toward his spot at the end of the table.

  “I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to answer that,” Arthur said.

  “No, you’re right, that’s what he said,” Rita piped up from across the room. “He said there was no sense just giving me money when he could make some of his own at the same time. He said it wasn’t sound business practice.”

  “How was it supposed to work?” I asked Rita. I already knew the answer to that question, but it was important to have her say so aloud in the presence of the police officers.

  “See, I was divorcing Bill. That was so he’d have no claim on any money coming my way, and so that once I changed my name, I could marry Marshall.” There were no legal records that Rita had ever changed her name; I’d checked that possibility while at Questions Answered earlier that morning. “Then I told my mother that I was dying, and my old ‘friend’ Rebecca Springer signed a death certificate in exchange for thirty thousand dollars, or roughly what my mother paid to have me ‘preserved,’ before the monthly maintenance charges began,” Rita explained.

  “For the first few months, it was simple—Arthur agreed to pay the institute the monthly rent on my head, and we split it fifty/fifty.”

  Ms. Washburn was moving slowly so as not to attract the attention of Commander Johnson, but she was almost within sight range of his BlackBerry screen now, and would be able to read it in a few seconds.

  “What happened that changed the plan?” I asked.

  Arthur looked away, suddenly finding the wall to his left extremely interesting.

  “My brother changed,” Rita said with a definite angry edge to her voice. “He got greedy. Decided the monthly rent wasn’t enough.”

  “That wasn’t all of it,” Arthur said without looking at his sister.

  Now it was Rita who severed eye contact with everyone else in the room. “There was one other thing,” she said, more quietly than before. “Marshall needed some money because his wife wasn�
�t going to be reasonable about a divorce.”

  “In other words, she wanted her fair share of his assets,” Arthur replied. The grin came back to his face as he said it. “And that was going to be a pretty substantial sum, so he required a large infusion of cash.”

  Ms. Washburn was now looking over Commander Johnson’s shoulder, but not leaning too far over, so the commander didn’t notice.

  “So that initiated the ransom plan. Whose idea was that?” I asked.

  There was no time to answer, because Ms. Washburn gasped at what she saw on Commander Johnson’s BlackBerry, and I turned to face them. The commander, alerted to the eyes over his shoulder, started noticeably and then put down the device, but it appeared to be too late for him to conceal what he’d been doing.

  “What is it?” I asked Ms. Washburn.

  “He’s in touch with Marshall Ackerman,” she replied, indicating the commander. “Ackerman’s somewhere in the building, and the commander is trying to convince him to surrender.”

  “What?” Captain Harris was already rushing toward Commander Johnson. “Hand that over,” she said, pointing to his BlackBerry.

  The commander stood up, again at attention, and handed her the device. “I make no apologies,” he said. “I am a loyal employee of Garden State Cryonics Institute.”

  “Where is Ackerman?” Lapides asked him.

  “I’m not sure,” Commander Johnson insisted. It was my opinion that no one in the room believed what he was saying.

  “Let’s get Ackerman to tell us where he is,” I said. “Would you hand the BlackBerry to Ms. Washburn, captain?”

  She did so, and Ms. Washburn activated the device. A text message appeared immediately from Ackerman: IS SOMETHING WRONG? WHY DON’T YOU ANSWER?

  I decided to play the role of Commander Johnson in a reply. I requested Ms. Washburn to text, HAD TO PUT DOWN BLACKBERRY SO THEY WOULDN’T SEE. I CAN COME TO HELP YOU OUT OF THE BUILDING. WHERE ARE YOU?

  Ms. Washburn sent the message as the commander protested, “That’s a secure message! It’s privileged information!”

  “At ease, commander,” Lapides said, putting a hand on the commander’s shoulder. The commander sat down, looking angry.

  It took only a moment for a reply to come from Ackerman: TOO DANGEROUS. THEY COULD FOLLOW YOU. JUST GET THE SECURITY SYSTEM OFFLINE, AS INSTRUCTED.

  “You were going to turn off the security system so he could escape?” I asked.

  “No,” Ms. Washburn said before the commander could reply. “I read the texts. He was trying to get Ackerman to surrender to him, so he could get the credit for it. But Ackerman keeps trying to get him to help with an escape attempt.”

  She showed the message to Captain Harris, and then, as I suggested, typed in the reply, THEY ARE NOT WATCHING ME. MR. EPSTEIN BLOCKING SYSTEM TAMPERING. TELL ME WHERE YOU ARE. As I sent it, I heard a chirp from Ms. Washburn’s cellular phone and saw her reach for it in her pocket.

  A reply came almost instantaneously from Ackerman, and it did not speak well of my deception skills. WHO IS THIS? it asked.

  “He knows it’s not the commander,” I told Captain Harris. “I’m afraid I lost our chance to find him.”

  “Not necessarily,” Ms. Washburn said. “I just got a text on my phone from Jerry.”

  “Jerry?” Captain Harris asked. “Who’s Jerry?”

  “Mr. Epstein,” I informed her. She continued to look puzzled. “The technical expert Detective Lapides requested.”

  Captain Harris nodded in recognition.

  “He says he can see Ackerman from where he is,” Ms. Washburn said. “He’s on the lowest level of the building, right near the storage chamber where Dr. Springer died.” Her cellular phone chirped again, and she read the text as Captain Harris spoke into her communications link, no doubt sending officers toward Ackerman’s position. Ms. Washburn paled.

  “There’s a complication,” she said. “Ackerman has taken a hostage.”

  I noticed Rita Masters-Powell smiling at the thought of her lover being so clever.

  “A hostage!” I shouted, unintentionally. I had not anticipated that move on Ackerman’s part. “One of the uniformed officers?” Ackerman taking a man with a gun would present a very serious difficulty indeed.

  Ms. Washburn looked at me with very wide eyes. “No, Samuel. Dr. Ackerman has taken your mother.”

  I was running out of the conference room one second later.

  THIRTY-ONE

  MS. WASHBURN WAS NOT far behind me, and Epstein, on his cellular phone, was giving us very specific instructions to the area in which Ackerman was holding my mother. I cannot recall whether I was breathing as we ran toward the stairwell.

  “Tell Epstein to be ready to open the door to the stairs,” I told Ms. Washburn as I ran. “The elevator is just too slow.”

  “He’s already heading that way,” she answered a moment later. Ms. Washburn was breathing heavily. I realized I was running very fast, but I could not wait for anyone. I wasn’t even sure if Captain Harris or Lapides had followed us. I assumed they had, and that they had alerted any uniformed officers left in the building to converge on the area in question, just outside the storage chamber’s outer door.

  Epstein let us through the stairwell door only eighteen seconds later, Ms. Washburn puffing behind me. I heard another sound that I could not immediately identify, which turned out to be my own breathing. I hadn’t realized I was taking in so much air so rapidly.

  “He’s down there,” Epstein said, pointing toward the corridor’s bend. “There are already a couple of cops holding guns on him, but he’s calling for you, Samuel.”

  On cue, I heard Ackerman shout, “Is that you, Hoenig? I’ve got your mother. Come out and see us.”

  I started in the direction of the voice, but Epstein grabbed my left arm to stop me. “Before you do, Samuel, you should know: He’s got a scalpel to her throat.”

  Ms. Washburn caught her breath.

  There was no advantage to running now. I had to banish from my head the idea that Mother could be killed, and that I would have had at least a small role in the events that would lead to her death. I had to focus more closely and specifically than I ever had before. I would walk around the corner and see the image that Epstein had prepared for me to see.

  That was the plan.

  But I felt my hands start to flap at my sides and my head begin to quiver. I made sounds that were involuntary and must have seemed more animal than human. My eyes rolled upward, and I saw only marginally what was in front of me. I dropped to my knees. My teeth clenched. My hands went to the sides of my head and pressed. I started to bend rhythmically at the waist, head tilted forward. I was completely incapacitated.

  And then I saw Ms. Washburn lean over me and hold my face in her hands, the way teachers and doctors would do when I was learning about social skills and proper classroom behavior. She gently forced my gaze toward hers and she said, “Your mother needs you now. No one else. Just you. And you can do this. Show Ackerman that you are the better man.”

  There was something about her voice, just the sound of it, that reached the rational part of my brain. I stopped shaking and listened.

  “Breathe,” Ms. Washburn said.

  I took in a breath. I let it out.

  “That’s good,” Ms. Washburn said. “Keep doing that.”

  “You have to come to where I can see you,” Ackerman called from around the corner. “You can stop me from killing your mother, but you have to be in my line of sight.”

  Anger started to overcome fear in my mind. But anger would not be any more useful. Anger also leads to quivering and incapacitation, what the teachers in my middle school used to call a meltdown.

  “Use your brain,” Ms. Washburn said. “That’s your best weapon.”

  I stood up, remembering to breathe. I took Ms. Washburn’s hands, and she looked surprised. “I’m sorry,” I said. Her hands were remarkably soft.

  “It’s okay,” she told me. “Any rat
ional person would be upset under these circumstances. Now, let’s go.”

  I held her hands for one more second. “Thank you,” I said.

  “Not yet.”

  I stood straight and walked, a bit stiffly, toward the corner. I tried to picture the worst thing I could see, so that what I did see would not be as bad. But I couldn’t imagine something worse than this.

  Ackerman was backed up, literally, against the door to the storage chamber. There were two police officers in uniform holding their weapons up, trained on Ackerman. But they could not get a clear shot because Ackerman was using something as a shield.

  Mother.

  And her first words when she saw me were, “I’m sorry, Samuel.”

  “You have nothing to be sorry for,” I told her, trying to eliminate any quiver from my voice. “You’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “I was trying to help. I couldn’t just wait in the car. I was looking for exits they could have used. And when I came inside, he found me. It’s my fault.”

  Ackerman, looking quite frightened himself, stopped our conversation. “You can help her,” he told me. “You can get your mother back completely unharmed.”

  “What is it I have to do to accomplish that?” I asked. “Your plan is uncovered. Your accomplices are in custody. We know that you killed Dr. Springer.”

  “Oh, no,” Ackerman said. “That wasn’t me. I had no beef against Rebecca. It was Rita who wanted her out of the way. ‘No witnesses,’ she said. She injected Rebecca with succinylcholine. We keep it there in case a patient is still alive and needs to be on a breathing apparatus. It temporarily paralyzes the muscles and makes it impossible to breathe, so the machine can do it for you. But without the machine, it looked like Rebecca had suffocated. Then Rita fired a gun into the storage chamber that was supposed to have held her head.”

  “That made it clear to everyone who looked that the receptacle was empty,” I said. “Was it also Rita who tried to kill your wife, Dr. Ackerman?”