The Question of the Missing Head Read online

  It was a metal cylinder, not large enough to contain one of the totally preserved bodies, but one that was of a size to preserve a cranium. It was on its side, and appeared to have a very large crack in it.

  As I moved away from the door and toward the cylinder to examine it (but certainly not to touch it), I felt my concentration wander; it was as if I hadn’t slept in more than a day, which I certainly never allow to happen. It was the nitrogen leak; my time in this room would have to be short.

  I examined the cylinder on the floor only briefly, but long enough to see it was inscribed with the initials R. M-P and a number, as well as a bar code.

  Rita Masters-Powell.

  But by then, my head was swimming, and I knew it was important to leave the room. I turned and walked, a trifle unsteadily, toward the body of Dr. Springer and the door. The closer I got to the door, the better I felt. My weariness seemed to dissipate a little more with each step.

  I stepped out of the chamber just as two uniformed police officers were entering the anteroom. Ms. Washburn looked at me with worry in her eyes, and Marshall Ackerman’s expression was hard for me to read—it was either disapproval or disgust. I sometimes wish I could take pictures of every facial expression I see to show Mother later, so she could confirm or dismiss my initial impressions.

  “Are you okay, Mr. Hoenig?” Ms. Washburn asked.

  I sat down, nodding. “Yes. I think I suffered a very mild reaction to a release of liquid nitrogen.” I started to take off the protective suit, as Ms. Washburn and Ackerman had already done.

  Ackerman paled. “Liquid nitrogen? Are the receptacles damaged?” He knew that the bodies and crania being preserved were kept in containers of liquid nitrogen, because it could keep them very cold without causing serious tissue damage, when done under the right conditions. A breach of the containers would be a very bad thing for him, indeed.

  “Only one,” I told him. “The one that contained Ms. Masters-Powell’s head.”

  Ackerman looked even more distraught. He put his head down and started to breathe heavily.

  The two police officers, who had started for the chamber door, stopped mid-stride and swiveled to look at me. One, the taller of the two, with dark eyebrows and deep-set eyes, shook his head a little.

  “Someone’s head was in a cylinder of liquid nitrogen?” he said. “Isn’t that really cold?”

  “Yes,” Ackerman answered. “But that’s what we do here. We preserve those who have recently experienced traditional ‘death,’ for the time when they can be revived.” He did not raise his head to speak.

  The taller officer’s eyes widened, but his partner, a young African-American woman, touched his arm, and he turned his attention toward her. “It’s a cryogenics lab, Jesse,” she said. “It’s legal.”

  “Cryonics,” I corrected. “Cryogenics is simply the science of very low temperatures. Cryonics is the activity practiced here.”

  But the officer named Jesse, whose nametag read CRAWFORD, pointed at Dr. Springer’s body. “What about that?”

  “That is one of our doctors,” Ackerman said.

  “She’s dead?” Crawford asked.

  Ackerman nodded.

  “Call it in,” Crawford told his partner, and she reached for her communications link on her shoulder.

  “That might not work down here,” Ackerman told her, and pointed to the phone. The female officer started to call to her headquarters.

  “You were coming out of there when we came in,” Crawford said to me. “You shouldn’t have been in there.”

  “We weren’t sure she was dead,” Ms. Washburn explained. “Mr. Hoenig was trying …”

  “I answer people’s questions for them,” I told the officer. “I needed to be in there to answer a question for Dr. Ackerman.”

  “Did you touch anything?”

  “No,” I said. “I was extremely careful.”

  Crawford leaned into the preservation chamber, and Ackerman looked nervously after him. At least, I think he was nervous—it might have been an expression of disapproval.

  “No blood,” Crawford said. “Looks like natural causes.”

  “Oh, no,” I told him. “Dr. Springer was murdered.”

  SIX

  IT TOOK THE EMERGENCY Medical Services crew seven minutes to arrive, and when they did, they commanded most of the attention in the room. But they were not allowed to touch Dr. Springer’s body (other than to determine that she was indeed deceased) until Det. Glendon Lapides released the corpse to their care.

  When Detective Lapides, a remarkably tall man with sandy hair and a space between his front teeth, was satisfied that the police videographer had recorded the scene, he stood in front of Ms. Washburn, Ackerman, and myself. And we watched as the body of Dr. Springer was moved, on a collapsible gurney, out of the area and toward the elevator by the EMS workers.

  “So, what’s this about it being a murder?” he asked. I believe he was directing his question at me, but he was looking at Ms. Washburn. It was possible Detective Lapides had Asperger’s Syndrome, or that he found Ms. Washburn attractive; it was hard to know.

  “Is this going to take long?” I asked him in return, and the detective turned toward me with an expression I could easily identify as irritation.

  “Mr. Hoenig has lunch with his mother every day at twelve thirty,” Ms. Washburn explained to him. “He’s concerned about being late.”

  “It’ll take as long as it takes,” he said to me, which didn’t answer my question at all. “But it will go much faster if everyone just cooperates and answers the questions. Now, why do you think that woman was murdered?”

  “I don’t think so; I’m certain of it,” I told him. “The evidence points to no other conclusion. For one thing, Dr. Springer is wearing her normal business attire. She’s dressed in a sensible suit and low heels, perfect for a nondescript meeting on budget or procedure.”

  Lapides’s eyes narrowed. “So how does that make it murder?” he asked.

  “Rebecca wouldn’t have gone into the chamber without a protective suit,” Ackerman stepped in. “She’d know that it could be dangerous to her, and she’d know that it could potentially corrupt the guests we have preserved in the chamber.” Ackerman had repeatedly asked the officers to allow him into the chamber to check for further damage but had been denied, and now he was glancing nervously in the direction of the chamber door every few seconds.

  “Okay, that makes it strange, but it doesn’t mean someone deliberately killed her. We’re not even sure how she died—it looks like a heart attack to me,” Lapides said.

  “I believe you’ll find that she died of suffocation,” I told him. “When the liquid nitrogen was exposed to the air in the chamber, its temperature was raised far beyond its boiling point, and it transformed into a gas. That meant the percentage of oxygen in the air in the room decreased dramatically as the percentage of nitrogen increased, and Dr. Springer could no longer breathe. She was probably unconscious in seconds.”

  Lapides had not made eye contact with me while I spoke, studying the floor with what appeared to be great interest. It might have been his way of concentrating. It also might have been a sign that he didn’t understand what I was saying, or that he was very tired.

  I, meanwhile, was noting that, with the time now eleven twenty-seven, my chances of arriving in time for lunch with Mother were dwindling. “Is that all you need from me?” I asked Lapides.

  Apparently my tone was less cordial than I had intended—voice modulation is sometimes a problem—because Lapides took his gaze off the floor, looked me in the eye, and said, “No, that’s not all I need from you. Settle in. I have a lot of questions.”

  “Mr. Hoenig isn’t trying to be rude,” Ms. Washburn said. “He’s just …”

  “You don’t need to keep defending him,” the detective told her. “He’s a big boy and doesn’t need to hide behind a woman.”

  That comment didn’t make any sense—I was not hiding behind Ms. Washburn. I
was sitting two seats to her left. But Lapides’s tone, after a moment of reflection, indicated he was being derisive.

  “May I stand up, detective?” I asked, and Lapides gestured that I should. But when I did, his expression changed. I think he might have believed I was going to attack him; that’s what would happen in an action motion picture starring Bruce Willis. It was not at all my intention.

  “Let me demonstrate,” I said. “Suppose that I am Dr. Springer.”

  “I don’t think you have the legs for it,” Lapides said. I stopped for a moment and looked at my legs but was unable to discern what about them might inhibit my explanation.

  “It’s a joke, Mr. Hoenig,” Ms. Washburn told me, so I moved on.

  “If I were in the chamber, dressed without any protection, my first impulse, especially given the knowledge that Dr. Springer had of the process, would be to exit as quickly as possible,” I said.

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” Lapides said.

  “In a moment,” I answered him. “Dr. Springer was a trained physician. Did she have a background in advanced chemistry?” I asked Ackerman.

  “She did, but she wouldn’t need one to know that a breach of one of the cylinders would fill the room with nitrogen gas and deplete the amount of oxygen,” Ackerman answered. “Any physician—any chemistry student—would know that. She was obviously trying to get to the door before she lost consciousness. But I don’t understand why you say that makes it murder. Isn’t it just an accident, Mr. Hoenig?”

  I shook my head. “No. The question remains: How was the nitrogen released? What happened to the cylinder that released it into the air, and who did that to Dr. Springer?”

  Detective Lapides looked at me strangely, I thought. “What makes you think she didn’t do it herself ?”

  I turned toward Ackerman. “How cold would that cylinder have been in order to keep the liquid nitrogen from boiling?” I asked.

  “The boiling point of nitrogen is three hundred twenty-one degrees below zero, Fahrenheit,” he answered.

  Ms. Washburn’s eyes widened. “Then Dr. Springer couldn’t possibly have been carrying it, or handling it at all,” she said.

  “Not without protective clothing and equipment,” I agreed. “But that’s not all that indicates there was another person in the room.” I stopped and looked at the three of them. A long moment passed before they realized why I wasn’t continuing.

  Someone had to ask the question, and it was Ms. Washburn who understood first. “What other evidence is there, Mr. Hoenig?” she asked.

  I looked at her with a grateful expression, or at least that’s what I intended; I’m not always sure whether I accomplish the proper outwardly appearance. “The cylinder that held the nitrogen, and Ms. Masters-Powell’s head, was behind the body,” I explained. “Even if it had been possible for Dr. Springer to carry the cylinder before it suffered a breach, and even if she had begun to fall forward, the notion that she could have tossed it over her shoulder to land behind her is virtually an impossible one.”

  Detective Lapides’s mouth was open, but it wasn’t moving. He shook his head back and forth a few times but did not speak.

  “You weren’t in there very long,” Ackerman said to me. “How did you see that all in such a short time?”

  I suppose I blinked once or twice, but I don’t remember. “It doesn’t take long to see something,” I told him.

  Lapides then seemed to regain the power of speech, but his voice was higher than before, and his face reddened. “You’re taking him seriously?” he shouted. “That’s all guesswork and tricks! I’m telling you, that woman had a heart attack—I’ve seen them before and I know what they look like!”

  “Will there be an autopsy, detective?” Ms. Washburn stepped in between the two men and seemed to want to defuse the situation. I admired her ability to read the emotions of the people in the room and take action so quickly; it was something I would not have been able to do.

  It appeared to work—Lapides’s face became less angry as he pondered the question. “Any time a death occurs when no one else is present, there’s an autopsy,” he said, puffing out his chest just a bit. “But the results won’t be public for a while. Dr. Ackerman, did she have any family we can contact?”

  “I don’t know,” Ackerman answered. “I’ll have to check …”

  He didn’t get the chance to finish his sentence because Commander Johnson, breathing heavily and sweating profusely, made his way past the two uniformed officers at the door and confronted Ackerman.

  “What happened?” he demanded. “I told you we should have called the police before!”

  Ackerman’s face paled; Lapides’s head swiveled toward Ackerman as soon as Commander Johnson’s words were out of his mouth.

  “Called the police before about what?” he demanded. “Did you know about this earlier?”

  Even Ms. Washburn couldn’t step in and make this situation any easier.

  “No, detective. There was … an incident here at the lab, but I thought Commander Johnson and his staff could handle it internally,” Ackerman said.

  “What kind of incident?”

  “Before he begins,” I began, “there is something I need to address.”

  Lapides regarded me with a cocked eyebrow. “What’s that?”

  “May I go to lunch with my mother now?”

  SEVEN

  MS. WASHBURN BARELY SPOKE as she drove, which was perfectly fine with me. A person who is comfortable with silence won’t require conversation, and those of us with Asperger’s Syndrome are more at ease when we don’t have to worry about saying something inappropriate or overemphasizing a topic we find fascinating that others, we eventually discover, do not.

  “I’ll drop you off at your mother’s, and then I’ll head for home,” she said. “I wasn’t planning on being involved in a murder investigation.”

  That stunned me a little. I didn’t think I’d missed any signals from Ms. Washburn indicating she was upset or frightened by the events at the Garden State Cryonics Institute. But I answered her as I would have even if such signals had been obvious. “This is not a murder investigation,” I said. “The police are investigating the murder of Dr. Springer. I am simply attempting to answer Dr. Ackerman’s question about the missing head.”

  Ms. Washburn did not take her eyes off the road, which was reassuring to me. Many people act emotionally behind the wheel, not realizing the enormous risk they take each time they travel in a motor vehicle of any kind. Throughout the life of an average seventy-

  eight-year-old, the odds of dying in an automobile crash are approximately one in eighty-three; the odds of dying in an airplane accident are approximately one in fifty-two million.

  But she did open her mouth a little. I wasn’t sure what that was supposed to mean, so I stayed silent.

  “So you’re not going to look into the murder of Dr. Springer, even though you know that the cops will treat it as natural causes?” she asked.

  “I assume that the medical examiner will corroborate my findings,” I answered. “And then either the North Brunswick Police or the Middlesex County prosecutor’s Major Crimes unit will handle the investigation. No one has asked me who killed Dr. Springer.”

  “Isn’t that a little callous? Don’t you think Dr. Springer deserves the ultimate justice of having her murderer found, exposed, and punished?”

  This was puzzling; it seemed Ms. Washburn was trying to encourage me to investigate the murder, when just a moment ago, she was threatening to end our association because she assumed I would be taking up that cause. “I don’t understand,” I told her. “Do you want me to find out who killed Dr. Springer?”

  The question seemed to baffle Ms. Washburn; she thought for a moment and said, “Yes. I do. But I don’t want to be involved with it.”

  “Because you’re afraid.”

  Her lips tightened. I’ve found this is often a sign of irritation or embarrassment. “Yes. Because I’m afraid,” she
said briskly without separating her teeth.

  “It makes sense to be afraid,” I told her. “The person or people who did that to Dr. Springer are clearly violent and unpredictable. They killed someone, probably deliberately, and that means they are dangerous. I would not want to be involved with people like that.”

  This time, she did steal a glance—a very brief one—toward me. “So, you’re afraid, too?” she asked.

  “No, but I would be if I were going to investigate the murder.”

  Ms. Washburn nodded and did not speak again until we reached the house.

  _____

  “Of course you’re coming in,” Mother said when Ms. Washburn tried to beg off. “When Samuel said he was bringing a guest, I made enough for three. You can’t leave me with all that extra food.” And she smiled her best smile, which she once told me was designed to get her out of trouble with police officers when she inadvertently exceeded the speed limit.

  It seemed to work on Ms. Washburn, as well, since she acquiesced and walked into the house. Mother can be very persuasive.

  The house, of course, was immaculate—Mother never allows anything other than that in her home. Mother is a short woman, somewhat stout but not dangerously heavy. I silently chided myself for not drinking enough water today, due to the distraction of Ackerman’s question. Luckily, I had been on my feet for much of the morning, so my exercise was quite within my daily quota.

  “It’s a lovely home, Mrs. Hoenig,” Ms. Washburn said to her as she surveyed the living room.

  “I do what I can.” Mother very rarely accepts a compliment to herself, but I have noticed that she can be downright vain about any accomplishment of my own. “Come in and eat. You must be famished. And you call me Vivian.” I don’t know why she believed that our activity of the morning would translate into hunger, but I have found it best not to question Mother when she says such things. She will explain, but her explanation rarely helps me to understand more fully.

  While we ate (Mother had prepared turkey sandwiches, one plain, the way I prefer, and others with choices of condiments), I explained the questions I was researching today—the one about the chances of hitting a ball out of Yankee Stadium, and the one about the missing head. Mother appeared to find the one about Ms. Masters-Powell’s head more interesting.