Death Watch (8 page)

D
ykstra Hall was on the western edge of the UCLA campus. Built forty-five years ago, the ten-story structure was the oldest of four high-rise residence halls. A couple of late-night coeds entered Dykstra a few steps ahead of Sydney and Hunz.

It was quiet outside. Moonlight splashed against the side of the building. All was peaceful. The peace ended the moment they stepped into the hall. Inside it was more like twelve noon than twelve midnight.

Every light was on. Music in a half-dozen or more flavors poured from open doors. There were people everywhere. Reading. Studying. Chatting. Shouting. Eating. Watching television. Throwing things. Chasing each other. Dykstra Hall was a coed anthill.

Sydney was greeted with catcalls the moment she walked through the door. It was readily apparent that both she and Hunz were overdressed in this world of shorts, jeans, and T-shirts—a world where shoes were apparently banned.

They inquired after Jeremy Boles, the name given to them by the news desk.

“Jeremy hangs out on the third-floor lounge, dude,” a sandyhaired student told Hunz. “Hey, you’re the dudes on TV, aren’t you? Were you really with that old man when he croaked?”

After being pointed toward the elevators, Sydney and Hunz made their way to the third floor. Already, they’d gained a substantial following.

The elevator doors opened to a lounge that smelled of popcorn, cigarette smoke, and unwashed socks. Sydney was reminded of her
university dorm. Same walls and bulletin boards, same furniture, same students draped over it. From the scene before them it was obvious that the students here took the word
lounge
as a command.

They found Jeremy Boles hunkered over a table in a corner with three other guys. The table was littered with beer cans, several kinds of chips, and candy wrappers. They were playing Texas Hold-em poker. A quick survey of the stacks of bills indicated Jeremy was losing.

The red-headed boy was short, barely five feet. His grin stretched wide when he was told news reporters wanted to interview him.

“Hey, where are the cameras?” A bare-chested boy, one of the poker players, trotted along on Jeremy’s heels.

“On their way,” Hunz said, taking charge. “Do you have the death watch notice? We’d like to see it.”

Eager to show them, Jeremy pulled a folded piece of paper from his back pocket. Hunz took it.

“It’s an email,” Jeremy said.

As Hunz scanned it, Sydney read it over his shoulder. The sender was unidentified. The text was identical to all the other notices. Jeremy pointed to the time the email was transmitted.

“See, 10:59 p.m. Two days ago. I was supposed to die at 10:59 tonight and I didn’t.” He shrugged happily as though to say he couldn’t explain it, but wasn’t complaining.

“We watched you on the news tonight,” the bare-chested boy added. “Too bad about that old guy. That’s why we called the station. All the others have died, right? All except Jeremy here. Does he get some kind of prize or something?”

“Yeah, he gets to live,” someone said.

“For Boles, that’s not a prize, that’s a punishment,” someone else said.

Hunz handed the paper back to Jeremy. “Tell me exactly what happened when you got the notice.”

“When I first saw it?” Jeremy said. “I nearly filled my pants, man.”

Everyone around him laughed.

“I mean, this is some serious stuff, isn’t it? With all the people dying and everything?”

“Where were you at the time?” Hunz asked.

“Um. . the computer lab, over at De Neve Plaza.” He twisted his torso to point in the direction of the plaza.

“Then what happened?” Hunz asked.

“Well, as soon as I picked myself up off the floor

Another laugh. He was playing to the crowd now.

I ran back to my room and showed it to Tony here.”

He jerked a thumb at the bare-chested boy.

“Him and Fredo.” He looked around the room but couldn’t find Fredo. “The three of us, we share a room.”

“And after that?”

“Well, then I kinda just about fell apart, man. I mean, to be told you’re gonna die and all.”

“He was crying,” the bare-chested boy said. “Then he called his mommy, and she made him feel better.”

“Hey!” Jeremy said. “You don’t know what it’s like. This kinda thing puts a whole different spin on the world, you know what I mean? Until I got this thing, about the worst kind of note I ever got was from the IRS saying I owed them money.”

“Death and taxes,” someone said.

“IRS? Give me a death notice any day,” someone else said.

That got a laugh.

“What did you do when you got the notice?” Hunz said.

Jeremy looked a little sheepish. “Called my mom first,” he said, then quickly added, “but then I called the police.”

“What did they say?”

“They wouldn’t even send a squad car over to take a look at it. The dispatcher said that a whole lot of other people were getting them. Said the police couldn’t do nothing. Said I was to call them back if I died.”

Another round of laughter.

Hunz’s eyes bored in on him. “Do you have a phone in your room?”

“Nah. We all got cells.” He pulled his cell phone out of his front jeans pocket. It was a mini model, barely the size of his palm. “So are you gonna interview me on television now?”

“No,” Hunz said.

The finality of his response silenced the room. A round of groans came from those looking on. A couple of people walked away.

“Hey, why not, man?” Tony’s face fell.

“Simple. Jeremy’s notice is a fake. He was never under any real threat of death.”

“Fake? It’s just like all the others,” Tony said.

“Interesting that you would know that,” Hunz said. “You’re right, the text is identical to all the other death watch notices. It’s what happened afterwards that’s different. Something that hasn’t been publicized. Jeremy, I’m afraid you’ve fallen victim to a rather cruel practical joke. And if I were to guess I’d say that Tony here had something to do with it.”

Jeremy turned on his roommate. “Nah, he wouldn’t . hey, man, you didn’t.”

“No, man! I wouldn’t do something like that to you!”

“Yeah, you would.”

Tony grinned. “Yeah, I would,” he said, laughing. Then took off running.

B
illy Peppers crawled under a fir tree in the front yard of a quaint two-story house on La Loma Road in Pasadena. Looking under the branches, he had a nice view of Brookside Park across the street—trees, benches, rolling grassy hills highlighted by a silver moon. From behind him the porch light filtered through the tree limbs. He liked that. Sometimes it could be too dark when there was no moon overhead and when businesses didn’t replace burned-out lightbulbs over back doors. On those nights Billy didn’t sleep much. Rarely did good things happen in the dark. It was a cover for
all manner of evil. And on those nights time slowed and the darkness seemed to stretch into forever.

Billy settled beneath the tree. He had never been to Pasadena. Now that he was here, he liked it. It was quiet. There was no banging of dumpster lids. No freeway noise. No squealing tires. No gun-shots. The thick layer of needles and soft ground beneath the tree, though damp, would make a nice bed, so much nicer than a concrete alley with its odors of rotten meat or vegetables or urine. It smelled of pine here.

Stretched out, Billy scooted the shoe box in front of him. He removed the lid. Reaching inside, he pulled out a ceramic figurine of an angel. He smiled. This one was his favorite. Illuminated by the yellow porch light, the angel’s face appeared radiant. Its white wings were spread gloriously. It was obvious this angel was proud to be a messenger of God.

“Just like in real life,” Billy muttered.

He set the figurine down and reached for the other one. There were only two in the box. This one was broken. Its base was a cloud upon which the angel was touching down, or lifting off. Who could tell for sure? Half the cloud and the angel’s left foot were missing. This angel’s expression was serious, approaching stern. Billy called this one the “bad news angel.” When this angel appeared, plagues of locusts or some such disaster most surely followed.

Also in the box were pictures torn from magazines and posters and boxes. All the pictures were of angels. Some were realistic renditions; others were cute cartoon drawings. Billy lifted one and examined it. He’d found this one in a dumpster, torn from a box that had once packaged a Precious Moments Bible. This adorable little angel looked like a happy, plump two-year-old with wings. Billy smiled when he looked at it. He always smiled when he looked at this angel.

He set the little angel on the branches of the tree. One by one, he pulled the pictures from the Nike shoe box and similarly arranged them on the limbs of the tree. Soon he was surrounded by angels
overhead. He placed the ceramic angels on two of the sturdier limbs. Then he lay back with his arms behind his head and stared up at them.

“Just like Bethlehem,” he said.

He imagined this was what it must have been like for the shepherds all those years ago—the sky filled with angels, their radiance so bright the entire hillside lit up like it was daytime.

At that instant, Billy’s world became as bright as day with a light so bright he could barely see his angels in the tree. He could barely see anything at all. Billy raised his hand to shield his face against the brilliant white light.

The light shuddered, then moved off him a moment. In that moment, between blinks, Billy saw a police squad car at the curb in front of the house. Then the light was on him again, and he saw nothing but glaring light.

He heard car doors open.

Billy sat up quickly, his head hitting branches. Grabbing angels as fast as he could, he threw them into the Nike shoe box. First the pictures, then the ceramic figurines. The second figurine into the box made an awful clank, and Billy was afraid he’d broken it, possibly broken both of them.

Throwing the lid on the box, he scooped it under his arm and scrambled from beneath the tree and out of the spotlight. Two lesser lights hit him in the face. Flashlights held by two policemen. The two lights drove Billy from the La Loma Road residence.

He hurried down the street, periodically looking over his shoulder. The Pasadena squad car followed him until he crossed the city limits.

C
heryl McCormick stood on swollen feet in the aisle of Flight 858 from Chicago waiting to deplane. No Santa Anita thoroughbred was ever out of the gate faster than Cheryl was out of her seat at the sound of the seat-belt tone, despite being pregnant and pulling a three-year-old behind her. She managed to get ahead five rows of seats before the aisle clogged with passengers reaching into overhead bins for their carry-on bags.

It had been a torturous four-hour flight. Cheryl’s back and legs ached horribly, confirming what she already knew to be true—that women in their third trimester should not fly on airplanes. When the boarding agents inquired at the boarding gate how far along she was, she lied. Cheryl told them she was twenty-nine weeks along, when she was really thirty-six weeks pregnant. She felt bad about lying. She punished her fourth-grade students for lying. But this was an exception. She had to get on this flight. And now she had to get to the hotel in Century City. Tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of dollars were at stake.

Cheryl craned her neck to see what was holding up the line. An elderly couple in first class helped each other out of their seats:
What do I do with this blanket? Hand it to the stewardess, dear. Did you get your sweater? My eyeglasses! Where are my eyeglasses? Around your neck, dear. Here, take my arm. I’m not helpless, you know. Did you call Roger? We’ll call him in the airport. Did you bring his phone number? I thought you had it. No, I handed it to you when we were walking out the door.

Finally, the line began to shuffle forward at a pace matching that of the elderly couple. At least they were on the move.

“Mommy?” Little Stacy rubbed her eyes with her free hand. She was asleep on her feet, still wearing her pajamas. Cheryl had yanked her out of her bed at midnight to get her to the airport. As it turned out, they had to wait for hours at O’Hare for a flight.

“What is it, sweetie?”

“Is it morning yet?”

The line started to move. Cheryl adjusted the two straps slung over her shoulder—luggage and her purse—refreshed her grip on her daughter, and maneuvered her swollen belly up the aisle. Once they were in the passageway that connected airport and airplane, she had room to move.

“Excuse me. Excuse me.” She pressed past the flow of departing passengers, pulling her daughter behind her.

Stacy began to whimper.

“Stay with Mommy, honey,” Cheryl said. “We’re almost there now.”

Cheryl burst into the waiting area at Gate 27 as though the airplane had spit her out. She’d flown infrequently and had never been to Los Angeles, but she knew what to look for. She hesitated only for a moment before spotting it.

Taking off as fast as her stomach, a three-year-old, and two heavy bags would allow, she ran in the direction of the arrows. Within moments her breathing was labored, her back was on fire, her calves were cramping, and she was sweating like an El Centro day laborer. Still, she ran.

People were staring at her. She didn’t care. Women were telling her to slow down. Not so much with words, but by the stares they gave her. They thought she was a terrible mother. Cheryl told herself it didn’t matter what they thought. But it did.

Little Stacy was crying now.

They reached the baggage claim area. A long line of carousels with computerized letters identified airlines and flight numbers.
Cheryl ran past them, even though she’d checked two bags in Chicago. She’d worry about them later. Right now, she was looking for another sign.

She saw it.

In a moment, she was out the door, stumbling, waving for a taxi cab. The first in the long line of cabbies saw her and pulled up to the curb.

“Into the back, honey.” Cheryl lifted Stacy off her feet and almost tossed her into the cab. Then, grabbing the top of the cab, the door, the seat, she maneuvered her bulk into the cab. The driver had gotten out to assist her. She was in the backseat and had the door closed before he could get around the car.

“I would have helped you, lady,” the driver said, climbing back in. He was a short man with a dark complexion and white teeth. His English was broken. Cheryl guessed him to be Filipino.

“Century City,” she said. “Excelsior Hotel. And please hurry. In fact, there’s a twenty-dollar tip if you get us there fast.”

The driver looked over his shoulder. “It’s just a short way up the 405. I can have you there in twenty minutes.”

“Make it fifteen, and there’s forty dollars in it for you.”

The cab driver hit the accelerator.

“Mommy?”

“We’ll be there in a few minutes, honey.”

Cheryl brushed fiery red strands of hair out of her eyes and pulled Stacy next to her. She tried to catch her breath.

Traffic was thick. The cab slowed. Cheryl peered through the windshield pointing out openings when she saw them. Each time, the cab driver was on it even as she was pointing, so she decided to let him drive on his own.

She looked at her watch. The last ten hours had been crazy. Had anyone told her ten hours ago she’d be in Los Angeles the next day, she would have laughed. She had no desire to see Los Angeles.
Which reminded her:
Call Vivian. If she shows up for lunch and you’re not there, she’ll race to the hospital only to find you’re not there either. Then she’ll worry.

Cheryl looked down at Stacy, who had fallen asleep against her. Her firstborn had black hair and alabaster skin like her father, which was a blessing. While people always commented that Cheryl’s fair and freckled skin was beautiful, they didn’t have to live with it.

Larry had loved it. He couldn’t keep his hands off of it. Which is what got her in this condition in the first place. Twice. Cheryl wondered if she’d be doing this if Larry were still alive. Possibly. He’d always been the crazy one. The spontaneous one. The one who would jump up from the couch and say, “Let’s go get an ice cream,” or “Let’s go dancing,” or he’d want to canoodle at inappropriate times and places, like in her parents’ living room, and in the back of the church, and in her fourth-grade school classroom closet.

Cheryl laid her head back against the seat. Her heart was pounding so hard her chest hurt. Less than twelve hours ago, she’d been looking through
TV Guide
for something to watch. Flipping to channel seven had set in motion a series of events she never would have imagined possible.

The cab driver steered off the freeway.

“Are we almost there?”

“No one gets you there faster than me,” the driver said.

The cab swung onto the Avenue of the Stars. When she saw the street sign, Cheryl chuckled to herself. Nobody was as infatuated with Hollywood as Hollywood.

In the distance the twin towers of the Excelsior Hotel rose up against a flat gray overcast sky.

Cheryl pulled herself to the edge of her seat.

Stacy stirred. “Mommy?”

“We need to run again, honey. Last time. Mommy promises.” Even as she spoke, she was digging in her purse for the fare, reading the meter, adding forty dollars to the total. She threw the money on
the front seat just as the cab was pulling up to the doors of the Excelsior Hotel.

While the cab was still moving the back door flew open. Cheryl was out, Stacy tucked under one arm. The little girl was crying again.

Cheryl could see the front desk through the glass doors of the lobby: her goal line.

A man and woman, middle-aged, nicely dressed, reached the lobby door before her.

Cheryl panicked.

Could that be them?

Taking no chances, she ran for the door, her swollen belly bouncing side to side, her daughter taking giant steps behind her.

His hand on the door, the man saw her coming. His mouth dropped open. Seeing his expression, his wife turned. “Oh my!” she said, jumping out of the way.

The man held the door open and Cheryl bolted through it, Stacy in hand.

Please, not them, not them, please.
She’d feel so guilty if it was them.

Two employees in hotel uniform stood behind the front desk. Both young. A male and a female. The woman had been watching Cheryl from the moment she bolted from the cab. The male glanced up from a stack of printouts, started to look down again, then did a comic double take.

What’s the matter, haven’t you ever seen a pregnant woman sprinting before?
Cheryl wanted to ask him. Instead, she said, “I’m Cheryl McCormick. I’m—”

“Ah! Mrs. McCormick.” The female receptionist smiled. “We’ve been expecting you!”

Cheryl glanced back at the couple who held the door for her. They seemed in no hurry. She turned to the receptionist again. “Am I the first one?”

The woman beamed. “You’re the first.”

Cheryl started to cry.

The receptionist’s smile widened as she handed her a tissue. “We get that reaction all the time,” she said. She began punching keys on a keyboard.

Cheryl turned to the couple behind her, almost afraid to ask. Little Stacy clung to her leg. “You’re not here for. Wonder
Wheel,
are you?” The expressions on their faces told her they didn’t know what she was talking about. Cheryl felt better. When she turned back to the receptionist, there was a room key on the counter and a map of the lavish Excelsior facilities.

“I’ll need to see picture identification and a credit card.”

Cheryl dug in her purse.

“We’ll have someone help you with your bags,” the receptionist said.

“Oh, that’s all right. They’re still at the airport. I came straight here.”

“If you’ll give me your baggage claim tickets, we’ll have someone pick them up and deliver them to your room.”

Cheryl fought back a second wave of tears. This was really happening! “Thank you,” she said softly.

“And good luck on
Wonder Wheel,
Mrs. McCormick.”

Cheryl gathered the key and map, pried Stacy from her leg, and began to move in the direction of the elevators.

“Oh! One thing more,” the receptionist called to her. She disappeared behind a side door, then returned a moment later. “This came for you.” She handed Cheryl an envelope.

Cheryl thanked her and stood to one side so the nice couple behind her could register.

The envelope was buff color with a linen texture. It had an expensive feel to it. The only marking on the envelope was her name in Courier font as if it had been typed on an old typewriter. There was no return address and no corporate logo, which was odd since the only people who knew she was in LA were the folks at the television station.

It wasn’t sealed. Cheryl looked inside, thinking it might be coupons or vouchers for restaurants, or possibly free passes to Six Flags, Knotts Berry Farm, or Disneyland. But there was nothing colorful inside, only a single sheet of stationery that matched the envelope. Probably a welcome letter and directions to the television station. Cheryl tucked the envelope in her purse. She’d read it later.

The elevator ride was a long one. All the way to the top floor Stacy was hugging her leg again, nodding off on her feet.

“Almost there, honey,” Cheryl said.

When the doors opened she located their room and slid the electronic key in the slot. Her plan was to get Stacy down and order room service.

She gasped as the door swung open. This wasn’t a hotel room; it was a palace with more floor space than her house in Evanston. A gigantic fruit basket greeted her with a bright red bow. There was coffee in a shiny silver carafe and an assortment of pastries, enough to feed her entire fourth-grade class.

Cheryl began to cry again.

After tucking Stacy between ocean-blue sheets, she slumped into an overstuffed striped chair in front of floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Los Angeles basin. It was a hazy day, but still the view was breathtaking. Her thoughts turned to the pastries, but she was too tired to get up. Her feet felt like she’d walked from Chicago to California. She propped them up on an ottoman.

Beside her on an ornate cherrywood end table, which probably cost more than she’d paid for her entire dinette set, was her purse. The envelope with her name was sticking out of it.

Cheryl reached for it.

Her breath caught in her throat as she read:

Cheryl McCormick,

You have been selected for death. Precisely forty-eight hours from the time of this transmission you will die.

This is an official death watch notice.