Death Watch

by Jack Cavanaugh

  Death Watch

  Jack Cavanaugh

  Jerry Kuiper

  YOU HAVE BEEN SELECTED FOR DEATH STOP PRECISELY FORTY-EIGHT HOURS FROM THE TIME OF THIS TRANSMISSION YOU WILL DIE STOP THIS IS AN OFFICIAL DEATH WATCH NOTICE STOP

  Rookie news reporter Sydney St. James found the first Death Watch notice in a vehicle at the scene of a fatal accident. That was just hours ago. Now other notices are turning up worldwide—and Sydney finds herself paired with renowned international newscaster Hunz Vonner in a desperate attempt to unmask the terrorists. The wording of the notices is always the same—as are the results. There is no pattern to the victims' deaths. Every attempt to save the recipients fails. Government agencies and news organizations are stumped. Then it gets personal. People close to Sydney begin receiving Death Watch notices. The clock is ticking… and suddenly, Sydney finds herself in possession of an astonishing secret. It could break the power of Death Watch, save the lives of those she loves… and ruin her forever.

  Jack Cavanaugh and Jerry Kuiper

  DEATH WATCH

  To our fathers,

  William H. Kuiper

  and

  William J. Cavanaugh

  PROLOGUE

  Delta Flight 1565, the red-eye from Atlanta to Los Angeles, was uncharacteristically on time as it descended from thirty thousand feet over a scrub-brush-dotted California desert.

  The man in seat 4A opened his ultrathin laptop and connected his cell phone to the modem port. A mouse click initiated the sequence of dial tone, keypad tones, and connection static common to accessing the Internet.

  “I swear those things are gonna be the death of us,” the man seated next to him said. “Between laptops and cell phones, a guy can’t get a moment’s peace anymore. Time was a business trip meant a nap and drinks on the plane and a girlie revue at night. Now it’s spreadsheets and reports in the hotel room and email in flight.” He grinned. “Not this time, pal. My hard drive crashed just before takeoff.” The grin widened. “Took three ‘Oops!’ to crash it, too.”

  “What business?” 4A asked.

  “Auditor. IRS.”He laughed. “Yeah, that’s the expression I usually get.”

  “Sorry. I’ve never met an IRS auditor.”

  “Lucky you.”

  It was the first exchange between the two men since takeoff four and a half hours earlier.

  The IRS auditor sat in the aisle seat. His rumpled gray suit coat was unbuttoned, his tie loosened. He leaned back and gazed at 4A’s computer screen, interested in how another man did his email.

  A high-resolution image of a rotating earth filled the screen. A tiny envelope seemed to rise out of Europe. It got larger as it circled the globe. After a single orbit it filled the screen with the software company’s familiar triangular logo. A female voice said, “You have thirteen new messages.”

  The auditor leaned closer.

  “Do you mind?” 4A said.

  “Oh, sorry…” Straightening himself in his seat, the auditor signaled to the flight attendant. “Another scotch and soda.”

  4A clicked on the envelope graphic. A column of file folders appeared. A digit in brackets beside each folder indicated the number of messages that had been routed into each one.

  That left one message the program was unable to route. The email’s routing data was displayed.

  From:

  To: Seat 4A

  Sent: Wednesday, 11:47 a.m. EST

  Subject: Death Watch

  Beneath it were three options:

  Read

  Save to folder

  Delete

  The man in seat 4A stared at the subject line. For a full minute he didn’t breathe, neither did his heart beat. Then, pointer icon shaking, he clicked on the Read option.

  A new window opened with the text of the message.

  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.

  Seat 4A glanced nervously at the man next to him, who was busy eyeballing the flight attendant as she handed him his drink.

  As casually as he could, 4A clicked the program closed and eased shut his laptop with the same slow, deliberate motion a mortician would use to lower the lid of a coffin. 4A’s breathing came in short, shallow gulps.

  The auditor didn’t seem to notice his distress. Taking a sip of his drink, the man reached for the phone that was embedded in the headrest of the seat in front of him. Balancing his drink, a phone card, and the handset, the auditor’s freckled finger punched in a number. He stopped after three digits.

  “What in blue blazes…?” Pulling the phone away from his ear, he looked at it, then listened again. To 4A, he said, “There’s an incoming call! That’s not possible, is it?”

  Heads in the first-class section turned his direction.

  The man across the aisle frowned. “Those phones can’t take incoming calls.”

  “That’s what I thought,” said the auditor. “But I got an operator telling me to hold for an incoming call.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “I swear, that’s what she said!”

  The auditor put the phone to his ear, slowly, almost as though he expected something to jump out at him. “He . Hello?”

  He listened for a moment.

  His eyes grew wide.

  He held the phone out to 4A. “It’s for you.”

  “Me? You don’t know who I am.”

  The IRS auditor spoke with a queer tone of voice. “She told me to hand the phone to the man in seat 4A. That’s you, isn’t it?”

  The handset was shaking. The auditor seemed desperate to get rid of the phone. He handed it over. “It’s bad news, I tell you. Believe me, I know. I’ve delivered it often enough.”

  “What did they say?”

  “This woman just said to hand the phone to 4A. But she had a really weird voice. Eerie, you know? It echoed like it was coming from the bottom of a well.”

  “Probably just a bad connection.”

  A perky blonde flight attendant appeared. She spoke to 4A with a smile. “I’m sorry, sir, you’ll have to hang up. We’re beginning final approach.”

  Seat 4A held up a finger. “One moment, please.” He placed the phone to his ear.

  The voice offered no greeting.

  You have forty-eight hours. Your Death Watch begins now. This is your second and final notification.

  Then the line went dead.

  Outside the double-paned window, an endless patchwork of LA streets, frame houses, strip malls, and palm trees slid beneath Delta Flight 1565 in a dizzying blur.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Not today! Oh, please, not today!” Sydney St. James punctuated each syllable with the heel of her hand against the steering wheel of her stationary Volvo.

  A black Cadillac SUV rose up in front of her like a cliff. Behind her, an ancient white van with rust spots that looked like some form of car cancer appeared to be wedged up against her. With parked cars to the right and a stalled lane of cars to the left, she was boxed in. No one had moved in the last ten minutes.

  “I can’t be late. Not today!”

  Her destination, KSMJ-TV, Channel 2, was within sight, so tantalizingly close it was maddening.

  The worst part was, she allowed for this. She’d given herself an extra thirty minutes to make the commute from Glendale just in case traffic was bad. But predicting LA traffic was like predicting the weather. Patterns and forecasts were useless.

  The Hollywood Freeway gobbled up the extra time and more. In a word, it was clogged. The morning radio newscasters referred to it as congestion. For Sydney, the word was not descriptive enough. She’d seen film foot
age of faster-moving lava flows. She preferred clogged. Like a drain. Ugly, smelly, and always inconvenient.

  When she finally reached her off-ramp, she checked the time. It would be close, but she had a chance. At first, traffic on Sunset Boulevard was like any other morning. Sydney managed the go-and-slow with a practiced two-step on the brake and accelerator. Then she saw red, the color of every commuter’s nightmare. Brake lights as far as the eye could see. Sydney’s stomach twisted into a double knot.

  “Why today?” she moaned. She banged the steering wheel a couple more times.

  Her father had warned her it would be like this. “There’s nothing out in Los Angeles but gridlock and wackos shooting at each other. Take the job in Tulsa. It’s better suited to a Midwestern girl.”

  But her father didn’t understand news broadcasting. LA’s television market share dwarfed Tulsa’s. If she could make it as a newscaster in LA, she could have her pick of stations anywhere in the nation. Assuming, of course, she could actually get to work.

  Sydney cranked.down the driver-side window of her ten-year-old beige station wagon and stuck her head out to see what was causing the delay. The SUV in front of her was too wide. All she got for her effort was a lungful of exhaust and a handful of stares, first at her, then at her Volvo.

  It was a Southern California thing.

  The Volvo seemed like a good idea when she bought it used two years ago in Iowa. She’d remembered hearing someone say Volvos were good, reliable cars. Solid. Safe. What really attracted her to it was the number of heaters—front, back, under the seats. Now, with Canadian cold fronts several state lines away, it didn’t seem like such a big deal. She’d only used the heater twice since moving to California. Out here, people equated style with status, and a beige Volvo station wagon was better suited to a retired Swedish farmer than an ambitious young female reporter for a major television station.

  She checked her watch.

  The meeting would start in five minutes. Even if traffic started moving right now, by the time she parked the car and walked back to the station she’d still be late.

  Helen would save the assignment for her, wouldn’t she? How could she fault her for gridlock?

  A voice played in Sydney’s head.

  “There are no excuses in journalism.”

  Professor Puckett. Journalism 101.

  “When you’re handed an assignment, you get it done. Period. No excuses. If it’s getting a statement, you dog the source until you get the quote. If it’s on location, you get there even if you have to grow wings and fly.”

  Puckett was old school, tough as leather, with an impressive broadcasting pedigree.

  He told his class of journalist wannabes, “The word deadline was coined at Andersonville, a notorious Confederate prisoner-of-war camp. A peripheral wire stretched around the entire facility. Any prisoner crossing that wire was shot on sight. In journalism, time is the wire. Cross it and you’re dead.”

  Sydney glanced anxiously around. In the movies this was where the hero jumps out of the car and makes a run for it. But then, the films where that happened were usually shot in New York. This was LA, where everyone owned a car. Jumping out and making a run for it wasn’t an option.

  So what were her options?

  She threw the transmission into park. With the engine still running, she climbed out of the car in search of options. A number of other drivers were doing the same thing. They didn’t venture far, ready to jump back behind the wheel if traffic started moving. Some drivers stood in the open door, using the floorboard as a stepping stool to get a better look.

  With a mountainous black Cadillac SUV blocking her view, Sydney had no choice but to venture away from her vehicle. What she saw wasn’t encouraging.

  The cause of the traffic tangle was a hazy blue Ford Taurus. Its hood mangled, facing oncoming traffic, it blocked the intersection of Sunset and Vine. Steam rose from under its hood as the car gave up the ghost. The back half of a policeman protruded from the driver-side window as he assisted the victim or victims. In the distance an approaching siren wailed.

  Three black-and-white cruisers surrounded the wreck at odd angles, their driver-side doors standing open. Police milled about the scene, thumbs hooked in their belts, showing no concern for the long line of stranded commuters. It was obvious Sydney wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Nobody was.

  A smile surprised Sydney, prompted by the first happy thought she’d had all morning. Nobody was going anywhere! Nobody. If she was stuck in traffic, so was everyone else at the station. Nobody was going to make it to the meeting on time.

  Then, as quickly as the smile appeared, it faded.

  Standing on the far side of the intersection, preparing to cross the street, was Helen Gordon. An attractive middle-aged African American woman, impeccably dressed in a stylish gray business suit, Helen surveyed the accident scene with a seasoned eye, then checked her watch.

  Sydney didn’t have to be clairvoyant to know what Helen was thinking. Five minutes to make it to the meeting. Plenty of time.

  Sydney slapped the top of a white Acura in frustration.

  The driver-side window of the Acura rolled down. A balding man stuck his head out. “Hey, lady! It’s a car, not a drum.”

  “Sorry.”

  The man looked Sydney up and down. His anger gave way to a wolfish grin. “No problem, sweetheart. How ‘bout if you join me? We can discuss payment for damages.”

  Without comment, Sydney retreated to her car, more desperate than ever. How was she going to convince Helen she had what it took to be a professional political correspondent if she couldn’t even make it to a morning meeting?

  For the last year and a half Sydney had been paying her dues, which meant taking assignments that ran the gamut from cute to sensational. Her first west coast on-the-air report was about a mother cat that suckled an orphan puppy along with her litter of seven kittens. Sydney’s second story covered the birth of a baby hippopotamus at the Los Angeles Zoo.

  The station liked her coverage of the stories well enough. Sol Rosenthal, the station producer, complimented her, saying she had a knack for cute—hardly the kind of comment a serious reporter wants to hear from a producer.

  Part businessman, part carnival barker, Rosenthal was a corporate suit in his late twenties. Industry execs considered him to be a real comer. This was his third television station and from all appearances, he wouldn’t be with KSMJ for long. Sol Rosenthal was network bound. Thin, energetic, a fast talker, there was no newsman in him. For Sol Rosenthal, exposure was king, and the way to court success was through increased ratings.

  “This’ll make a splash!” he cried at one assignment meeting. Sol was always looking for ways to make a splash. “How about a story on all those impotence ads? You know, the ones with that coach and the other one with that Red Cross woman’s husband.”

  “Mike Ditka. Former Chicago Bears coach,” Grant Forsythe said. “Ditka advertises Levitra. Former Senator Bob Dole does the Viagra commercials.”

  Forsythe was the prime-time evening news coanchor, the face of KSMJ for fifteen years. He loved nothing better than to show off his fifteen years of accumulated news trivia.

  Rosenthal leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Isn’t there one more?”

  “Cialis,” Grant said, his tone smug.

  “Yeah, that’s it. And they don’t call it impotence anymore, do they? What’s it called now?”

  “Erectile dysfunction.” Grant beamed like a sixth-grade schoolboy.

  “Here’s my idea. We have Sydney do the story.”

  Helen Gordon frowned. “Why Sydney?”

  “Because it’s sweeps week, Helen. A hot blonde doing a story on erectile dysfunction? It’ll make a splash.”

  During sweeps week broadcasters used the viewership numbers to set local advertising rates for the rest of the year. Competition between stations was fierce.

  Sweeps or no sweeps, Sydney didn’t want to do the story. She thought Rosenth
al’s idea was in bad taste. Privately she told Helen as much and tried to back out of the assignment.

  Helen didn’t buy it.

  “We all get assignments we don’t like,” the veteran newswoman snapped. “So stop whining and just do your job.”

  Helen liked Sydney.

  Helen Gordon had risen through the ranks from intern to reporter to newscaster to assignment editor and knew firsthand broadcasting was a tough business, especially for a woman. It was obvious she liked Sydney too much to coddle her.

  Sydney took the assignment. Once she started researching it and realized erectile dysfunction was a serious health issue, she saw its potential.

  On camera, she said, “Between fifteen and thirty million men suffer from erectile dysfunction. That’s nearly 10 percent of the American male population. Yet, tragically, only one man in twenty will seek treatment.”

  Her report explored the causes of the problem: fatigue, high blood pressure, diabetes, prostate cancer surgery, and wounds that were often the result of combat. She described how the problem affected both men and their wives. She interviewed couples, keeping their identity hidden with backlighting. She encouraged viewers suffering from erectile dysfunction to seek treatment, giving them contact information for local hospitals and counselors.

  Her report didn’t come off as hot as Sol Rosenthal envisioned it, but the station switchboard received a surge of phone calls from community leaders, health organizations, and others who said they appreciated the professional and tactful way the station handled the sensitive topic.

  Sydney’s report was a sweeps success.

  Rosenthal took credit for his idea paying off. The next time sweeps week rolled around, he had another idea.

  “How hot would it be for Sydney to do a story on Hollywood hookers? A hot blonde interviewing hookers. It’ll make a splash!”

  This time Sydney didn’t complain, though she did grit her teeth when Helen readily agreed Sydney was the best reporter for the job.