The Question of the Missing Head Read online

  “Samuel!” she said. “You’re a little bit late.”

  I walked over and took the platter out of her hands, then gave her a small kiss on the cheek. I know Mother values that sort of thing, although it does not have a great deal of emotional value for me. I do sometimes like the sensation of a tight embrace, particularly when I feel tense or overwhelmed with sensory input, but a “peck on the cheek,” as Mother calls it, is simply a gesture I make to please her.

  “Were you worried?” I asked.

  “No, not really. I knew you were out of the office today, so there was no way of knowing if your usual schedule still applied. Are you hungry?”

  “Of course. It is past seven o’clock.”

  For those of us with Asperger’s Syndrome, meals can be very stressful occasions. Generally speaking, our culinary preferences are rather narrow compared to those of other people, and the idea of being presented with a new food produces anxiety. It is less the idea that we will dislike the offered item so much as the feeling that others are watching and judging our choices that produces the tension.

  That is what makes rituals such as dinner with Mother so important to someone like me. I’m confident that Mother will not introduce an unfamiliar item without advance notice, if at all. And I am fairly certain that if she does try something new, she will not think less of me if I dislike it, and will have a comforting standard on hand as a backup.

  Tonight was no exception. Mother had indeed roasted a chicken, and once we had sat down to eat, she offered me a plate with two chicken legs on it. Another small plate held steamed broccoli, and a small dish of brown rice (which I’ll admit is a concession to Mother, as I prefer white) was on the side.

  “Thank you for making dinner, Mother,” I said, as I do every evening.

  “You’re more than welcome,” was her usual, and current, response. “Now, tell me about your day.”

  It took much longer than usual to recount the events of the day, even though I had seen Mother at lunch less than seven hours previously. She listened attentively and asked questions as points came up. She seemed especially concerned about Dr. Springer’s father, whom she said Ms. Washburn was correct in “sparing any extra sorrow” on the day his daughter had died.

  When I reached the end of my account, I told Mother about Ms. Washburn’s decision not to continue with Questions Answered, and about the way she had shaken her head when I’d asked if she were sure about that choice.

  “I’m confused,” I told Mother. “Her action was unclear. Did that mean she does not want to work for the company anymore, or that she was not sure and needs more time to think the question through?”

  “I think it means she’s torn, Samuel,” she answered. “I think she’d like to keep working with you, but she doesn’t want to make the situation with her husband any worse than it already is. She doesn’t know what to do.”

  That did not help me understand. “It seems like a very easy decision to make,” I said. “Ms. Washburn’s husband is being unreasonable about her professional situation. Neither of them has a job at the moment, and that means no income for the family. Why he should object to his wife having a paying position is a question I really cannot answer. Ms. Washburn should come and work at Questions Answered, and she should realize that.”

  Mother’s eyes took on a look she calls “melancholy,” although the dictionary definition of that word is somewhat imprecise, so my understanding of the emotion is incomplete. “She’s a married woman, Samuel,” she said.

  “Ms. Washburn? I’m fully aware of that. Why do you bring it up?”

  “I saw a different manner from you when you were with her than with anyone else you’ve ever known,” Mother said. “And I understand it, but you have to remember she’s another man’s wife.”

  That baffled me. “I was not under the impression she is my wife, Mother.”

  “Don’t be obtuse; you know what I mean. You might have ideas about Ms. Washburn, but you can’t act on them. She’s not available.” And Mother gave me a significant look.

  I made sure to make eye contact with her. “I have not known Ms. Washburn long enough to say whether she can become a friend,” I told Mother. I’m aware Mother is concerned about me in social situations; it’s natural when talking about a person with Asperger’s Syndrome. Others often fail to understand us and think we are emotionless. We are not. But we are often at a loss to adapt to a situation that focuses on emotion rather than facts.

  “I’m not suggesting you were behaving inappropriately, Samuel. I’m just wondering if you recognize all the feelings you’ve been having today.”

  For a long time after that, neither of us spoke. We cleared the table and put the dishes in the dishwasher but did not run it, as it was not sufficiently full. While we performed those tasks, I thought about what Mother had said about Ms. Washburn, but no matter how much thought I put into the question, I could not come up with a verifiable answer, and that irritated me.

  The New York Yankees were playing a game against the Chicago White Sox at US Cellular Field in Chicago that night, so the telecast of the game began at eight o’clock rather than the usual seven o’clock. I sat down in time for the opening sequence, during which announcers described the night’s contest as “pivotal” and provided information about the starting pitcher for each team.

  Mother, who does not care much for baseball, came in a few minutes later and sat down to read. Once the game began, I pressed the mute button on the television remote. I never listen to a baseball telecast—the loud and unpredictable sounds of the crowd, in addition to the constant chatter of the announcers, disturbs me. I understand the game well enough to appreciate it without those distractions.

  It wasn’t an especially interesting game, although that is almost a contradiction in terms. As a sport, baseball is the most cerebral and interesting of games; it is a series of situations, each of which arises from the one before it and leads to the one that will follow. It is an excellent mental tool to use when planning strategy or analyzing probabilities and human differences. Style is important, and statistics are a constant in baseball, but in order for a player or a team to be successful, the two must meet in a relevant fashion.

  During the top of the seventh inning—with the New York Yankees at bat, trailing by one run and creating a situation that I thought indicated they would at least tie the score—Mother said it was late and she was going upstairs to her bedroom. She kissed me on the cheek and left the den.

  I fought the urge to go into the kitchen for a snack. I had not been as physically active today as I would have preferred, and I did not wish to gain weight. The situation of the game became more compelling, as the Chicago White Sox pitcher managed to extricate himself from the inning without allowing a run, and the score remained the same. Sometimes probability does not accurately predict real events.

  In the bottom of the ninth inning, with the New York Yankees now leading by one run and trying to end the game with their new closer—a pitcher trusted to get the final outs—I was intent on the screen and was not concentrating on anything else.

  That is why I did not hear the telephone ring.

  Mother called down from her bedroom, and I heard her voice. I make sure to be aware if she calls, because Mother has had some health problems and could need me for help, especially during the night. So when she called my name, my focus left the baseball game, and I walked to the foot of the stairs.

  “Are you all right?” I called up to her.

  “I’m fine,” Mother answered. “There is a phone call for you. Dr. Ackerman from the institute.”

  That was surprising. Ackerman had fired me less than five hours earlier. Perhaps he was calling to renegotiate my fee, but I did not intend to charge him, since I had not answered his question. I thanked Mother and heard her return to her bedroom. It wasn’t until then that it occurred to me I ought to apologize for missing the call and requiring her to get out of bed to notify me. Perhaps later.

 
Now I needed to take the call from Ackerman, so I walked into the kitchen, where there is a wall phone. I picked it up to hear Ackerman, obviously speaking to someone else, saying, “There just isn’t time for that.”

  I alerted him to my presence on the line, adding, “I have no intention of charging you for my services because I did not answer your question.”

  “What? I don’t care about that,” Ackerman said. “There’s been a development, and I need you back here immediately.”

  “It’s ten forty-three at night,” I told him. “I’m glad you have reconsidered employing my company, but I don’t usually work this late unless there is an emergency.”

  “There is an emergency,” Ackerman replied. “We’ve been contacted by the people who stole the specimen from our facility. They have ransom demands.”

  “I’ll be on my way shortly,” I said and hung up the phone. It wasn’t until a moment later that I realized I had not said good-bye, but I believed that Ackerman would not be offended by that breach of social protocol.

  Clearly, however, I had not been thinking the situation through. Ackerman needed me back at the facility in North Brunswick, a nineteen-minute drive from my home. But I did not feel confident driving there at this time of night, and I felt it would be unreasonable to ask Mother for a ride after she had gone to bed twice.

  I reached into my pocket for Ms. Washburn’s business card.

  TWENTY-ONE

  “I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU talked me into this,” Ms. Washburn said as she steered her car into the parking lot of the Garden State Cryonics Institute. “My husband is going to kill me.” Before I could react, she held up her right hand and said, “It’s an expression.”

  “Was he very upset that you were leaving?” I asked. “It didn’t occur to me that this question would cause difficulty in your marriage.”

  She maneuvered the car into a parking space near the front entrance and let out a breath. “No more difficulty than there already was,” she said. “Don’t worry. I could have said no and told you to call a taxi. Ackerman would have paid for it. But the fact is, I want to see this job through, I liked working with you, and my husband is just going to have to understand that. You’re not going to cause my divorce, Samuel.”

  “I certainly hope not.”

  We got out of the car and walked to the front entrance, where Commander Johnson opened the door and checked us through the security desk. We stayed on the main floor and entered a conference room that bore a number of photographs on the walls, mostly of the facilities we had already seen downstairs, looking considerably warmer and more welcoming than clinical, which was not really the case.

  Inside were Ackerman, Detective Lapides, and a woman I had not met before, who introduced herself as Captain Harris of the county prosecutor’s Major Crimes unit. She said she was there to supervise the negotiations with, as she put it, “the perpetrators of the crime or crimes.”

  Charlotte Selby was also present, looking strangely satisfied. I could not construct a scenario that required her presence, but I assumed that would be explained. Amelia Johnson, I was told, had gone home, no doubt in a fury over her husband’s mistreatment.

  “I assume this means Ms. Washburn and I are rehired,” I said to Ackerman when the introductions had been completed.

  Commander Johnson scowled.

  “Yes,” Ackerman responded. “The same conditions and the same rate. Your non-disclosure statements are still valid.”

  “Has there been a report from the technology expert the police have commissioned to look at your security system?” I asked.

  Ackerman looked sour but shook his head. “There’s supposed to be one at any minute. Damned waste of time,” he muttered.

  “I think not, but we will see,” I told him.

  “I’d have to agree,” Captain Harris said to me. “The report could be very useful in discovering if someone who works here in the institute had a hand in this murder.”

  Commander Johnson almost choked on the gum he was chewing. “A hand in the murder!” he said. “I absolutely reject that notion. I have personally checked the background of every employee in this facility, and …”

  “And, in the past twenty-four hours, there has been the theft of a person’s remains and the murder of a member of the medical staff,” the captain broke in. “That’s some great background check you did.”

  The commander raised his index finger in protest but was unable to come up with a proper rejoinder.

  “How was the ransom demand communicated?” I asked.

  Ackerman opened his mouth, but Charlotte got there first. “I got it in an e-mail,” she said. “It said that I should get in touch with the institute and tell them it would take seventeen million dollars to get back Rita Masters-Powell’s head.”

  I looked at Lapides. “Have you had anyone try to trace the sending e-mail address?” I asked.

  The detective nodded. “It was a public site from which it was sent,” he said. “A Barnes and Noble here in North Brunswick that has Wi-Fi. The address is obviously one that was commandeered by the sender, taken over, and hijacked.”

  “It’s called phishing,” I informed him. “How do you know the e-mail address was phished?”

  Lapides looked uncomfortable. “It was mine,” he said.

  There was a long silence during which Lapides seemed embarrassed, Ackerman seemed angry, and Commander Johnson looked amused. “That’s very interesting,” I said. “It tells us something valuable about the people who are behind this theft.”

  Ackerman made a confused face as Charlotte took a notepad from her purse. “What does it tell you?” Ackerman asked.

  “The fact that these people know Detective Lapides is assigned to this case is useful,” I explained. “It means one of two things: either the thieves are people who have been here sometime today and met the detective …” I paused to contemplate what I was about to say.

  “Or what?” Captain Harris asked. The fact that it was the captain making the inquiry made the answer that much more difficult. It was not my intention to denigrate Lapides in front of someone who could be identified as his superior officer.

  “Or the thieves have a source of information somewhere in the police department,” I said. “I’m afraid we have to at least explore that possibility.”

  Captain Harris raised an eyebrow in surprise. Lapides looked like his stomach did not feel well.

  “I’ll talk to someone at Internal Affairs,” Captain Harris said. “I don’t like to think it could be happening, but I can’t ignore it, either.”

  “I agree,” I said. “Although I think the former scenario more likely than the latter. We have been questioning employees of the institute all day, and it is not at all unlikely that one or more of them could be involved in the theft of the cranium.”

  “And Dr. Springer’s murder,” Ms. Washburn added.

  “It would be an enormous coincidence if those two crimes were unrelated,” I agreed. “Ms. Selby, what else did the e-mail say?”

  “We have printed out a copy,” Commander Johnson noted, and handed me a sheet of paper.

  It read: We have taken possession of Rita Masters-Powell. If you want what we have back again, you will pay us $17 million. It is in good condition, and we can keep it that way indefinitely. We know you have already called the police, but you must not tell them about this communication. Gather the money in cash, bills no larger than $100, non-consecutive serial numbers, and await further instructions. They will not come through this e-mail address, so don’t bother to monitor outgoing messages. You will be contacted.

  “This does not tell us much,” I said after reading the note. “I am not able to garner a great deal from reading it.”

  “If it were up to me, you wouldn’t be reading it at all,” Commander Johnson replied. “I was against calling you back here.”

  Ms. Washburn looked shocked at the commander’s words, but they were not surprising to me. He had appeared to consider me a threat from th
e moment we first met, and there was no reason to think the situation had changed.

  “Indeed,” I said. “What can you learn from this communication, commander?”

  He widened his eyes for a short moment, then he snatched the paper from my hand. “They want seventeen million dollars, and they can keep the head frozen as long as they want. They’ll get in touch again, but they don’t say when, and they won’t use the same e-mail address.”

  “Something that isn’t stated directly in the e-mail, commander,” I suggested.

  “What can you see other than what’s stated on the paper?” Charlotte asked me.

  “Not very much,” I admitted. “There is no way of knowing whether the person writing the e-mail is telling the truth. We must operate on the assumption that Ms. Masters-Powell’s remains are indeed being kept in the proper condition, because any other circumstance would leave us with no positive options. So even if we have no evidence to that effect, we will begin from that premise.

  “The ransom demand for seventeen million dollars is interesting,” I continued. “I wonder how they arrived at the figure. How much money would you say was available to the Masters family in cash, Dr. Ackerman?”

  Ackerman looked startled, as if he had been expecting me to address someone else in the room about the Masterses’ finances. “How would I know that?” he asked.

  “You would know because you would run a financial check on anyone paying a perpetual fee on a monthly basis. You would check it before the contracts were signed, and you would be certain that there would be no difficulty in obtaining the money. I would assume you’d have the family members sign a contract guaranteeing the payment of the fee in perpetuity. The only way any finance company would agree to such terms would be if a thorough analysis of the family’s assets was made and verified, again, before you agreed to store Ms. Masters-Powell’s remains. So I’ll ask again, Ackerman, how much money does the Masters family have available to it that it could convert to cash on an emergency basis?”