Dead and Not So Buried

by James L. Conway

  I read through the basics: height, 5’9”, weight 165. There was a brief summary of how I’d spotted his shadow on the wall while dropping Lisa off five years ago, his shooting at me inside the house, my chasing him through the window and my beating the shit out of him on the street.

  There was also a copy of the psychological profile one of the department shrinks wrote after interviewing him. There was the usual psycho babble about why Jason Tucker became a stalker: frustration over his career, his adoration of young beautiful starlets—women he felt he would be able to date if his career had been more successful—speculation that Tucker’s adoration had turned to obsession … If I hadn’t spotted him that night, his obsession might have turned deadly.

  Considering the murder spree Tucker had been on since his inadvertent release from jail, I’d say the deadly speculation had been right on.

  And yes, there it was on page three of the report: “One of the reasons Mr. Tucker has become so dissatisfied with his life was that an IQ test, taken when he was 12, showed he had extraordinary intelligence—143, according to Mr. Tucker. As a result, his mother spent his entire adolescent years filling his head with lofty expectations, preparing him for the rich, successful, pampered life of a genius. A life that never materialized.”

  All right, so he was a genius. A short, ponytailed, perverted, failed genius. And then it hit me. That niggling I’d had ever since I’d seen the videotape taken by the surveillance camera at CryoZy Laboratory. The clue I knew I was missing.

  ‘Til Death Do Us Part

  “Cancer? I’m so sorry, Mr. Kincaid.”

  “The doctor thinks we’ve caught it early enough, but before he doses me with the radiation, he asked if we ever wanted children. And we do, right, honey?”

  “I’d hoped for three children,” Hillary said. “I come from a big family, seven if you must know, but in this overpopulated world I think it’s irresponsible to have more than three kids, don’t you, Mr. Oyster?”

  It was ten o’clock the next morning. Ken Oyster was executive vice president of CryoZy Labs. Hillary and I were sitting in his office posing as man and wife. Why? Because I didn’t want the police to know what I was up to. At least, not yet.

  “Please, call me Ken,” Oyster said, a nice enough man, tall, skinny, about forty, with a hawk-like nose and ears a little too small for his long face. Speaking of faces, he’d reacted to mine. I explained away the cuts and bruises as the result of a car accident.

  “I happen to have two children myself,” Oyster told us. “A boy and a girl. And I’m searching the files for a third.”

  “Excuse me?” I asked.

  He lowered his voice, leaned forward, confidentially. “The fact is, I’m sterile. Not impotent, mind you,” he added quickly, “there’s nothing wrong with the rocket ship; let’s just say the payload bay is empty.”

  “Is that why you work here,” Hillary asked. “Because you’re sterile?”

  “No. I got this job because my best friend was a fertility doctor and started the company. He needed someone to run it, so he lured me out of the furniture business and we started CryoZy. A few years later I met Melissa. We got married and tried to start a family. No luck. I went to see Alex and he did the tests and gave me the bad news: Mission Control, we have a problem.

  “Ironic, isn’t it? I work here and turn out to be sterile. Anyway, we’ve got thousands of clients. Some deposits are earmarked for personal use, but the majority of our deposits are for sale to the public. Tell us the physical attributes you want, we’ll find it for you. Short, tall, blond, brunette, we got it. Black, white, brown, yellow, we got it. Want a donor who was a doctor, lawyer, actor, artist, we got it. Nobel prize winning scientist, Rhodes scholar, Cy Young award winner, look no further. We’ve even got star sperm.”

  I had to ask. “Star sperm?”

  “Sure. One ‘A’ list movie star and three TV series leads. Of course, the donations were made before their careers took off, when they’d do anything to make a few bucks, but the sperm is as good as new. Now I’m not allowed to give out names, but if I drop a few titles and you happen to guess, well, who can blame you for being smart?”

  “If it’s all the same to you, Mr. Oyster,” Hillary said, “I’ll stick with Gideon’s seed.”

  “Of course, I was just listing the options.”

  “Any chance we could have a tour of the facility?”

  He stood up. “Of course. If you’ll follow me, please.”

  Finally we’d got to the good part. The part I came there for in the first place—a tour of the storage facility. He walked us down the rows of liquid nitrogen tanks, explaining about the cryovials, the 193 degree temperature, all the stuff I’d already heard from the Beverly Hills detective.

  “Fascinating,” I said, starting to walk on my own, stopping in the exact same spot the Gravesnatcher had stopped on the tape—next to tank six. There was a knob on the top of the tank, right in front of me. It came up to my chest. Since I’m six feet tall, that would make the tank, as the detective had told me, five feet high.

  I caught Hillary’s eye and almost imperceptibly nodded. She pulled out her cell phone, activated the camera app. “Gideon, let me take a picture of you. For the family album. We can show the kids where they were kept on ice.”

  “Ken, stand here next to me,” I said. He drifted over and I draped an arm around his shoulder.

  “Say cheese ...”

  “Cheese.”

  FLASH.

  “What do you think?”

  “He looks taller. Though not by much.”

  “Maybe an inch, two at the most, right?”

  “Right.”

  We were in Hillary’s car, still parked in CryoZy Laboratory’s parking lot. We were comparing my height from the picture on Hillary’s cell phone not to Ken’s height, but to someone’s in a second picture. A picture of the Gravesnatcher I’d made on the computer last night from the CryoZy Laboratory surveillance tape.

  The detail that had been subconsciously nibbling at my temporal lobe was the Gravesnatcher’s height. Detective Burke had mentioned the tanks were five feet high. Jason Tucker was five foot nine, so he should only reach ten inches above the tank. ‘Obama’ seemed to taller by more than a foot.

  The two photos confirmed it. I was six feet tall, but ‘Obama’ was even taller. At least six two.

  “Wait a minute,” Hillary said. “This doesn’t make sense. If you’re six feet tall and Jason Tucker is five nine, Obama should be shorter, not taller.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So ... oh, shit. Does this mean what I think it means?”

  “Afraid so. Jason Tucker isn’t the Gravesnatcher.”

  Rule number one: Never assume. And I had, the cops had. We all had. We’d assumed because Jason Tucker was out of jail he had to be the Gravesnatcher. And since he was the Gravesnatcher, nobody had continued the search to find the connection between Winslow, Hunter, Lisa and me. But there was one, there had to be one, and now I was determined to find it.

  “What do we do?” Hillary asked.

  I stared at the picture of Obama. “Start at the beginning. Try to find the common denominator. The ‘number one on the call sheet’ remark still makes me think he’s an actor and ...” I trailed off as something on the picture caught my attention. Obama was picking up the cryovial with his left hand. Could he be left-handed?

  I’d only seen him once. Disguised as Merlin at Magic Land. Think ...

  A memory: Merlin at Magic Land. Sweeping the backpack off the bench with his left arm.

  A memory: Merlin shooting with his left hand.

  Yes, he could be left-handed. Who did I know who was left-handed? Left-handed and connected to Winslow, Hunter and Lisa?

  A memory—a hunky actor lunging for Lisa at the Universal audition. Me punching the shit out of him. Him fighting as a southpaw.

  The realization rocked me. “I know who the Gravesnatcher is.”

  “You do?”

&nbs
p; “Look,” I said, pointing to the picture. “He’s using his left hand. At Magic Land, he used his left hand to pick up the backpack and fire his gun. And when I was protecting Lisa from the stalker there was this guy, this actor. They were auditioning guys to be Lisa’s co-star. He was one of them. He came out of a crowd to say hello to her, and I mistook him for the stalker, lumped him up pretty good.”

  “So he’d hate you.”

  “Wait, there’s more. Afterwards he auditioned and did great. He was the best, actually. They wanted to cast him but Lisa said if they did, she’d walk off the picture.”

  “Why?”

  “There were in college together. He’d pulled a Casanova number on her when she was a freshman then dumped her as soon as he’d slept with her. Broke her cherry and her heart.”

  “Keeping him off the movie was her revenge.”

  “Exactly.” “I know the expression ‘genius’ is like, overused, but in this case I think it applies. Brilliant, Gideon.”

  “Thank you.”

  “So, what’s his name?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Excuse me.”

  “I only met him once. Five years ago. How am I supposed to remember his name?”

  “Guess I was a little too hasty with that genius thing.”

  “Give me a minute to think about it ... oh, I almost had it.”

  “Long name? Short name?”

  “Short, I think.”

  “Foreign or domestic?”

  “What?”

  “Igor or Ike? Tony or Tom?”

  “Oh, domestic. I think.”

  “Okay, go through the alphabet; A, B, C, until the name comes to you.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “No, it works. I took a mnemonic class in college. I can still name all the state capitals: Albany, Annapolis, Atlanta—”

  “Okay, okay. Abe, Allan, Bert, Bob, Carl ...” And so it went as I made my way through the alphabet, certain I was wasting my time, until I got to the R’s. “Ralph, Rick, Ray ... Ray. That’s it, Ray!”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure. Ray!” I grabbed her, hugged her. Then... “No wait, it was Roy. Not Ray, Roy.”

  “You’re positive?”

  “Absolutely. Roy!”

  “Roy what?”

  That stopped me. “I have no idea. And I’ll never remember. I only heard his full name once or twice.”

  “You’re the professional here, so correct me if I’m, like totally off base, but don’t we need a first and a last name to have any chance of finding this guy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “Ask Lisa what his last name was.”

  “We don’t know where Lisa is.”

  Maybe not. But I know somebody who does.”

  Joan Hagler was in Cedar Sinai’s special wing, reserved for L.A.’s rich and famous. The hospital rooms look more like four star hotel suites, with original artwork and pricy antiques tastefully arranged around the standard medical paraphernalia. Guests are usually registered under aliases, to keep fans and the press away.

  I knew the floor well, thanks to a three-day job guarding the door of a movie star who, because of a confidentiality agreement I signed, must remain anonymous (but if you used Hillary’s alphabet system and you concentrated on N for the first name and P for the second you could probably figure it out).

  While there I noticed that Isabella, the pretty but frazzled head nurse, seemed to be fighting back tears. I befriended her, and she told me she’d been the victim of identity theft. Her bank account had been emptied and her credit cards maxed out. She was so overwhelmed with her work at the hospital she didn’t know what to do. So I told her I’d take care of it. I called the bank, the credit card companies, all three credit report bureaus and I filed a police report. By the time N.P. left the hospital with her six-pound seven-ounce baby boy, Isabella’s credit cards had been replaced and her bank account restored.

  I didn’t charge Isabella. I told her that since she spent her life taking care of strangers, it was my pleasure to take care of her.

  Deep down, of course, I knew that a friend on the VIP floor of Cedar Sinai could come in handy one day.

  And I was right. A phone call to Isabella got me Hagler’s room number, 812, and a visitor’s pass to the eighth floor.

  Hillary and I quietly stepped into Joan Hagler’s room. Her shattered leg was in traction, entombed in a thick cast. We couldn’t see her face because it was turned away from the door, glued to a TV where what looked like movie dailies were playing. There was a shot of Jack Stone on screen, sitting on a tank, talking to a handful of soldiers.

  JACK STONE

  Don’t you understand? If we don’t stop them in Beverly Hills, the next thing you know, the aliens will be having bagels in the White House.

  She was watching dailies of that UFO movie! I asked, “You come to the part where the Taurus almost runs him over, yet?”

  The sound of my voice startled her. The sight of me standing in the doorway terrified her. “You!” She reached for the call button, but I was faster, ripping it out of her hand.

  “Now, now, Joan, I think we better have this conversation in private.”

  Her face looked horrible. A bloodstained bandage covered her nose, her left eye was blue green and swollen shut, and when she spoke I could see the caps had been knocked off her two front teeth.

  “She actually looks worse than you do, Gideon,” Hillary said, closing the door. “Remember me, Joan? The one you were going to shoot down in cold blood?”

  “What do you want?”

  “Information,” I said. “A name, that’s all. But I don’t think you can give it to me.”

  “Then what’re you doing here?”

  “Lisa knows the name. Where is she?”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  “That’s so rude,” Hillary said, crossing to the bed.

  “If I’d let Lisa go through with his cockamamie plan, she’d be dead now. That would’ve been pretty fucking rude, too, don’t you think?”

  Hillary sat on the side of the bed and rested her hand on the cast. “We only want to talk to Lisa. Ask her one question.”

  She ignored Hillary, turned to me. “I hope you have liability insurance, because I’m suing you for millions!”

  Hillary pulled down on the cast. Joan screamed. “I was talking to you, Joan.”

  “I’ll sue you, too.”

  “That doesn’t frighten me as much as looking down the barrel of that .45 did.” Hillary pulled on the cast again. Another scream. “Gideon told me that they thought of everything when they designed these fancy schmancy hospital rooms,” Hillary said. “State of the art beds and top notch electronic monitoring equipment. Why they even installed extra sound proofing so the patients wouldn’t have to listen to anyone else’s suffering. Which is good. Because unless you tell us what we want to know, you are going to suffer.”

  I’d never seen this sadistic side of Hillary before. I never even suspected she had one. Amazing what almost getting executed can do for you.

  “Do you have any idea what happens to your psyche when you think you’re facing imminent death?” Hillary continued. “I always imagined I’d see my life flashing before my eyes; bassinet to bicycle to first prom—I went with Carl Fisher, by the way, a geek by some standards but his mom taught him to swing dance and he was, like, totally awesome. Anyway, none of that happened. No reruns of my generally happy middle-class life, no great insights into the ultimate truths of the universe, no memorable last words for humanity. All I could think about was how unfair it was that I’d be killed by a skinny, self-centered bitch. Well, Joan, payback’s a bitch.”

  Hillary pulled on the cast. Joan screamed. Then, nice as can be, Hillary asked, “Where’s Lisa?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Hillary looked at me. “You believe her?”

  “No.”

  “Me, either.” Another pull on the c
ast.

  Joan screamed, and then whimpered, “Stop, please, no more.”

  I picked up the phone. “You don’t even have to tell me where she is. Just give me the number. I’ll call her from right here.”

  Joan’s eyes went from me, to Hillary, to Hillary’s hand on her cast. Hillary said, “I almost hope you say no.”

  A resigned sigh, then: “All right.”

  “Cooper. Roy Cooper. You think he’s the Gravesnatcher?” Lisa asked from her suite in the Santa Barbara Biltmore.

  “I think there’s a good chance. You have any idea where he lives?”

  “No. I haven’t heard about him in a long time. His name would pop up every once in a while in the trades. There was a TV pilot a few years ago. And a movie, but I don’t think it was ever released.”

  “Well, don’t worry. I’ll find him.”

  “That would have been me. In the car, I mean. If I hadn’t run away I’d be dead, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Jesus. I don’t feel like such a low life coward now.”

  “The Gravesnatcher knows you’re alive, Lisa. You’re still in danger.”

  “You won’t tell him where I am, will you?”

  “No. But if I thought of going through Joan, so could he. Move again and don’t tell anybody where you are.”

  “You’re scaring me.”

  “I’m trying to.”

  “Okay. If the Gravesnatcher is Roy, will you do something for me?”

  “Sure.”

  “Kill him.”

  Nice Work If

  You Can Get It

  Hillary was thrilled. “This is so cool! Would you believe I’ve lived in Southern California my whole life and this is, like, my first time on a movie studio back lot?”

  Paramount, to be exact. We were on our way to Barry Winslow’s office. I wanted to know if Roy Cooper had ever worked for him, and if he had, whether they had his address.

  “Oh, look,” Hillary said, pointing at the New York Street. The Payback crew was shooting another scene. “There’s Tornado Marshall.” The ex-boxer stood in the middle of the street; last week’s five black ninjas had been replaced by six hulking bikers toting bats and chains. One guy even had a fire axe. “Must be the final action scene,” Hillary said. “His shirt’s ripped.”