Death Watch (5 page)

W
hat do we know about these death notices?” Helen Gordon said, getting the afternoon meeting started.

Sydney picked up from snippets of conversation that Sol Rosenthal had managed to salvage one item on his itinerary—lunch at Ago’s, actor Robert de Niro’s elegant, open-kitchen restaurant with its specialty, fettuccine with shaved white truffles. But Hunz Vonner cut the lunch short by insisting they get started on the death watch story. It had been his idea for Helen to call the staff together.

Seated around Command Central were producer Sol Rosenthal, coanchor Grant Forsythe, interim coanchor Cori Zinn, Hunz Vonner, Sydney, and news director Brad Miller, whose job it was to oversee the news operations and maintain consistency among the various newscasts.

Brad was a gruff man who hid behind a full beard. Plainspoken and direct, he made decisions quickly and decisively. He’d missed the early morning meeting because of traffic.

“So what do we know?” Helen said.

“I’ve been in contact with my sources at EuroNet,” Hunz said. “They project the number of deaths in the thousands and it’s accelerating.”

Helen leaned forward intently. “Does EuroNet have any idea who’s behind it?”

“Not yet,” Hunz said. “They have a couple of leads. They’re working around the clock. I should have something tonight. Tomorrow morning at the latest.”

“I have something,” Grant Forsythe said. “The Department of Homeland Security is raising the awareness system to Level Three for the entire nation. Secretary Perkins is scheduled to hold a news briefing in an hour.”

“Does station programming know about this?” Helen asked.

“They do now,” Brad Miller said.

It was Miller’s job to coordinate the new Homeland Security Awareness system with the network following the revamp of the color-coded advisory system. Taking a cue from the Amber Alert, the missing person’s emergency broadcast system, Homeland Security devised a program that would keep the nation in a state of constant awareness regarding the level of national security.

A four-pointed graphic was designed, resembling the four points of a compass, to be broadcast continuously in the lower right-hand corner of all television programming. Proceeding clockwise, the shaded area between points lit up according to the level of risk. Level One indicated a low risk of attack; Level Two, a significant risk; Level Three, a high risk; and Level Four, a severe risk. The graphic flashed when an attack was in progress.

Radios broadcast beeps every hour on the hour, one beep for each current level of risk.

Improving on the previous color-coded system, now each city and region had its own level of awareness that reflected threats to specific targets. For the director of Homeland Security to set the risk at Level Three nationally was an indication the entire country was under high risk of attack.

“Grant, has the government given any indication which terrorist group might be behind this attack?” Helen asked.

“Has any group claimed credit for the deaths?” Sol asked.

Grant shook his head. “At present, the government’s reporting zilch. Scuttlebutt is that everyone’s stumped. Anyone else hear anything?”

Heads shook all around the table.

Sydney said, “An attack of this magnitude would limit the number of terrorist organizations that could be responsible, wouldn’t it? Who has the resources to do something this large?”

“Good point, Sydney,” Helen said.

“Any number of organizations, or countries, for that matter, could pull it off,” Hunz said, without naming any specifically.

“But considering the deaths are worldwide,” Sydney said, “couldn’t we just look for a nation that is reporting no death watch-related deaths? I mean, they wouldn’t kill their own people just to cover their tracks, would they?”

Sol Rosenthal flipped through the printout pages from the news wires. “Saudi Arabia. Afghanistan. Iraq. Iran. Pakistan. Palestine. All report deaths.”

“It’s flawed reasoning,” Hunz said. “Terrorists have no qualms about killing their own.”

“All right, then,” Helen said, before Sydney could respond, “bottom line is, we have nothing. We’ll keep track of the newswires here at the station. Sydney, you and Mr. Vonner see what you can dig up locally. Begin with the accident victim. See if his family knows anything. Find out how he died. See if the police have any leads on the telegram.”

“Helen,” Cori Zinn said.

“Yes?”

“In light of recent developments, wouldn’t it be better if Sydney covered the governor’s news conference? That would free me to—”

“No,” Helen said curtly. “Sydney doesn’t have your contact with the governor’s staff. We’re counting on you for an exclusive. However, make sure you get a quote from the governor on these death watch notices.”

Cori started to object.

Grant Forsythe cut her off. “So we’re officially labeling this story Death Watch?”

“That’s what the terrorists are calling it in their notices,” Helen said.

Grant shrugged. “Just asking.”

An intern placed a pile of pink telephone memo notes in front of Helen. She sifted through them quickly. There were at least a dozen. As the meeting broke up, she handed them to Sydney.

“These are the calls that have come into the station in response to the noon broadcast, people who say they’ve received a death watch notice,” Helen said. “Follow up on them.”

Sydney shuffled through the notes. “Have any of them passed the deadline?”

“What do you mean?” Helen frowned.

“Each death watch notice gives its victim forty-eight hours. Have any of them lived past their designated time to die?”

“Good question,” Helen said. “Find out.” She turned toward her office.

“What if we could find one of them,” Sydney called after her. “Someone who has received a death watch notice who is targeted to die before the eleven o’clock broadcast? We could put them in protective custody, so to speak. Have a doctor standing by. Security. The whole nine yards. Do everything we can to keep them living past their designated time to die.”

Sol joined them while Sydney was talking.

“A waste of time,” Hunz said.

“For what purpose,” Helen asked, “other than the obvious one of saving a life?”

“If we can interview someone who has survived a death watch threat,” Sydney said, “it’ll prove the threats are not always fatal. It’ll give people hope.”

“We’re not here to save the world,” Hunz said. “Our job is to report the news.”

“I like the idea,” Helen said.

“People will see KSMJ as crusaders against the axis of evil,” Sol added. “They’ll view us as saviors. The station with a heart. It’ll make an industry splash. Let’s do it! A live feed from the scene.”

“Run with it,” Helen said. “Only don’t take any unnecessary risks. We still don’t know who’s behind this. This whole thing is scary.”

Grant Forsythe walked up, overhearing Helen’s comment. “If the deaths continue at this pace, we’re going to see panic in the streets. Riots. Global anarchy.”

“Do you really think it’ll go that far?” Sol said.

Cori Zinn joined them. She handed Sydney another pink memo slip.

“My intern just handed me this,” she said. “It’s a lead on your story.”

Sydney took it reluctantly. She read it.

“He wants to meet you. Says he knows who’s behind all the mystery deaths.”

“Is he a credible source?” Hunz asked.

Cori tried her best to hold back a grin. She couldn’t.

“Remember that story I did last year on mental insanity among the homeless?” She had everyone’s attention and was milking it. “One of the guys I interviewed called himself The Rev.”

“The guy who said he talked to angels,” Grant said.

“That’s the one.” Cori looked disappointed that Grant had stolen her thunder. “Anyway, he called the station. You weren’t available so the call was passed to me. I asked him if he wanted to leave a message. He said he wanted to meet you. I asked what it was about. And when he told me, I insisted I needed more information if we were to take him seriously. So he told me who is behind all the deaths. We can stop wondering now.”

“Well, who is it?” Helen said.

Cori held out for as long as she could.

“The Devil!”

Everyone laughed.

“He’s serious!” she cried.

J
effrey Conley’s house in Covina was shut up tight. Bright yellow police tape across the front and rear doors marked it as a crime scene. There were no cops around now.

Sydney and Hunz interviewed Conley’s neighbors. They learned that Jeffrey Conley was a retired accountant. A widower. He and his wife purchased this house in 1958 when they moved to California from Pittsburgh. Conley had two boys, both grown, both living out of state. He’d been in the hospital a year ago for angina when two metal stents were inserted into his heart arteries to hold them open. Other than that, there was nothing unusual about Mr. Conley.

He had the usual credit card debt. Didn’t associate with known criminals, and as far as Sydney and Hunz could determine, no one had a motive to kill him and no one profited from his death, other than the payoff from a mediocre life insurance policy and the outrageous price his boys would get from selling his Southern California property.

From Covina, Sydney and Hunz drove to the Hollywood substation on Wilcox Avenue to see if they could get any more information from the officers on the scene of the accident. Everyone was tight-lipped. The area commanding officer referred them to Special Investigations downtown on Spring Street. Sydney hated driving downtown. Nevertheless, she waded into the mire of traffic and managed to find a parking lot two blocks away on Broadway.

The only thing they were able to get out of Special Investigations was that from all the evidence on the scene and the testimony
of eyewitnesses, it appeared Jeffrey Conley had a heart attack. He ran a red light at the intersection of Sunset and Vine, smashing into the back of a large black truck, make unknown. The driver of the truck fled the scene. No one got a license plate, but the accident was clearly Jeffrey Conley’s fault. The driver of the truck had not been located.

The detective confirmed that Conley had a death watch notice in the car when he died. He refused to give them a list of the other six victims. No amount of prodding and posturing could get him to budge. While Hunz took a call on his cell phone, Sydney remembered Wilt Chamberlain. By the time Hunz was finished with his call, Sydney had the list.

“How did you get it?” Hunz was clearly impressed.

“Just used one of my reporter tools,” she said as they looked over the list on the way back to the car. “Look here, it’s just like Officer Pollard said. Every death at the exact moment stated in the notice.”

“I don’t buy it,” Hunz said. “Conley had a heart attack. How can somebody know the exact moment when that’s going to happen?”

“Maybe the time triggered the heart attack,” Sydney said. “Think about it. Your heart’s bad. You’re given the equivalent of a death sentence. As the time approaches, your anxiety increases to the point you set off a heart that’s already primed and ready to explode.”

Huntz looked at her. “So you’re saying the death watch notices are sent to people with preexisting conditions and that the notice is designed to push them over the edge?”

In the parked car now, Sydney and Hunz flipped through the police printouts. “Your theory doesn’t hold,” Hunz said. “Here’s a twenty-nine-year-old dentist. True, he died from a previous heart defect, but no one knew he had it.”

“Someone knew,” Sydney said stubbornly.

But the report she was looking at didn’t bear out her theory either—an out-of-work actor was hit and killed while crossing the street in a controlled intersection. The car was driven by a schoolteacher
with a spotless record. Her transmission jammed in second gear. There were twenty other people in the intersection. Only the actor was hit.

They read the various reports to each other: A city worker was crushed when the tunnel he was digging collapsed on him. An experienced hang glider got caught in a downdraft and plummeted to the beach. A high school student was hit and killed on the freeway while he was fixing a flat tire.

“The only thing they have in common is that they all received a death watch notice,” Sydney said, “and they all died precisely when the notice said they would.”

It was half past four. The parking lot was already engulfed by the shadow of the bank tower on the far side of the street. Sydney handed the police report to Hunz and turned the ignition switch. Hunz readjusted himself, grabbing for the seat belt and clearing a space for his feet by kicking aside empty coffee cups and PowerBar wrappers with his expensive black European dress shoes.

“Want to get a bite?” Sydney said. “We may not get another chance.”

“A bite? Is that dinner?”

“Yeah. We could duck into a restaurant if you’d like. There shouldn’t be any lines this early. Anything you were hoping to try while you were in the States?”

“I was told to try your fish tacos. Are they good here?”

Sydney laughed. “Who told you that?”

“A close friend. Was she having fun at my expense?”

Sydney looked at him a moment before answering. This was the first personal comment she’d heard Hunz Vonner make. Until now it was as though he had no life other than news broadcasting. Now it seemed he had a close personal friend, a female.

“No. She wasn’t making fun of you. Did she say where to get these fabulous fish tacos?”

Hunz mentioned a fast-food chain.

Starting the car, Sydney said, “Well, the ambiance leaves something to be desired, but you’ll like the tacos.”

Ten minutes later they were seated at a bright red table next to a window overlooking a busy intersection. Fast-food wrappers served as plates as the German newscaster, still dressed in a black suit, took his first bite of fish taco. Three small plastic containers of hot sauce were lined up in front of him.

Sydney grimaced. “I can’t believe Sol took you to Ago’s and I take you to Taco Hut.”

A few more bites and Hunz fanned his mouth. “This one’s too hot,” he said. “The green’s good, but I like the red better.”

“Most people prefer the mild sauce starting out,” Sydney said.

On the table beside her taco wrapper were two sheets of paper stapled together. Her cell phone sat on top of them. The papers were a compilation of the people who had called the station during the noon newscast to report that they had received a death watch notice. The list was arranged by time; those who were scheduled to die first were at the top of the list.

Time had already passed on the first two names.

Maxine Hoffa 2:36 p.m.

Charles Bishop 3:55 p.m.

Were they dead?

Sydney took another bite of taco and gazed out the window. A silver Mercedes turning right stopped for a woman pushing a baby stroller in the crosswalk. His turn signal blinked impatiently. The Mercedes inched forward needlessly, dangerously. Californians were always in a hurry.

She felt her anger rising at the needless endangerment of life. Yesterday, she would have watched the same scene and thought little of it, other than the fact the guy behind the wheel of the Mercedes was a jerk. This morning’s death watch notice changed all that. Now everyday life seemed more fragile.

She remembered having a similar feeling on September 11, 2001, after watching the two World Trade Center buildings collapse,
after watching the burning of the Pentagon and the tragic plane crash in Pennsylvania. The world felt different. It lost its innocence. It was as though the world was told it had cancer, and the prognosis wasn’t good. Nothing was the same. Everything was tainted by the news—work, home life, purchases, vacation plans, relationships, even simple things like getting the mail—because even during those everyday moments, in the back of your mind, you knew you had cancer. And the name of the cancer was terrorism.

Death Watch was just another symptom that she was living in a sick world. What kind of person or organization went around killing people indiscriminately? What kind of monsters taunted their victims for forty-eight hours before killing them?

And how could anyone sit at a fast-food restaurant and enjoy a fish taco knowing that people were being handed numbers and told to stand in line for their turn to die?

“These are really good,” Hunz said, his mouth full. “I’m going to get another one. Want anything?”

“I’m fine,” Sydney said.

Hunz slid out of the booth. “You going to call them?” He pointed to the list.

“Yeah.”

While Hunz stood in line for another fish taco, Sydney called the first two names on the list. The news was bad. Both Maxine Hoffa and Charles Bishop were dead.

Sydney couldn’t bring herself to ask how they died, or at what time, mainly because she couldn’t think of a way to ask, “Did your loved one die according to schedule?” Fact was, they were alive for the noon broadcast, and now they were dead.

She looked at her watch. The third name on the list was Jennifer Magill, thirty-one, a grocery store checker. According to the sheet she had less than three hours to live.

Sydney wrapped up her half-eaten taco with resolve. Somehow, she was going to keep Jennifer Magill alive.

Hunz slid back into the booth. The taco was unwrapped and a bite taken before he sat down. “They dead?”

“Yes.”

“Both of them?” He took another bite and chewed thoughtfully. “You know, this idea of trying to keep someone on that list from dying is a waste of time. We need to find out who’s behind it and stop them.”

“That’s a heartless thing to say,” she snapped.

Though Sydney had never met Jennifer Magill, the image of a young, vibrant woman came to mind. She found it hard to think of the woman’s life as a waste of time.

Hunz appeared taken aback by her anger. “Look, even if you succeed in saving one person’s life, what good does it do?”

“It gives everyone hope,” Sydney said. “If we can prove that death is not inevitable for those who receive these notices, it will provide immeasurable relief to a lot of people.”

“Granted. But my point is, you can’t protect them all. From everything we know so far, more people are going to die. Hundreds. Possibly thousands. Wouldn’t it be better to use our time tracking down the people behind this assault and stop them? Cut off the head of the snake, and he can no longer bite you.”

“So you suggest we just turn our back on Jennifer Magill?”

“Who’s Jennifer Magill?”

“The next person on the list.”

Hunz chewed. “What’s the time on her notice?”

Sydney consulted the sheet. “7:22 p.m.”

Hunz checked his watch. He sighed. “All right,” he said, “but just this one. Then we do it my way.”