Jack Cavanaugh - Death Watch

“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.

Billy Peppers. McArthur Park. 4 p.m.

“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.

Jeffrey 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?”