Death Watch

by Jack Cavanaugh

  It was 9:55 p.m.

  Ten minutes left.

  Hunz Vonner strode into the room. There was no sign of a cell phone.

  “Has your German station developed any leads?” Sydney asked.

  “I’ll fill you in later. Mr. Vandeveer, how are you feeling?”

  “Like a movie star,” he said. “I haven’t had this much attention since. . come to think of it, I’ve never had this much attention. Can I put my shirt on when the cameras start rolling?”

  “Certainly,” Sydney said. “We’ll be live on the eleven o’clock news.”

  “Can you show my train layout? Like I said, it’s nothing special, but it’ll drive Howard Kressler up the wall to see it on TV. He thinks he has the best layout on the West Coast.”

  9:59 p.m.

  The paramedics checked Lyle Vandeveer’s heart pressure. They ran another EKG and gave a thumbs-up sign.

  “I feel great,” Vandeveer said.

  His voice was shaky.

  10:00 p.m.

  Billy Peppers leaned against a palm tree on the other side of Fair Oaks Avenue opposite Lyle Vandeveer’s house. He held a Nike shoe box under his arm. With his free hand he scratched his bearded cheek.

  He hadn’t had a good bath in nearly a month, just a little splashy-splash washup in a fountain now and then. Whenever he went that long without a bath his head and beard got itchy to the point of distraction.

  Pockets of people stood around and, like him, watched what was going on. They paid little attention to each other, and no attention to Billy. They were all waiting for something to happen. Apparently this unexpected episode of reality TV on their own block was better than the West Wing rerun that was on tonight.

  Just then, camera lights switched on and the house across the street lit up like it was some kind of Hollywood premiere. Billy half expected to see Tom Cruise or Nicole Kidman walk in front of the cameras and wave. But all he saw was an old woman carrying a coffee cup, standing cross-armed and looking angry at what was going on.

  Then the lights went off.

  Just a test, apparently.

  Billy had to blink a couple of times to get his night vision back. He looked at his watch, a cheap digital that had a pink strap and Tinkerbell on the face.

  10:03 p.m.

  There was no descending ball to mark the last minute. No one gathered in Times Square. No one had any idea where Dick Clark was at the moment, nor did they care. All eyes were on Lyle Vandeveer, retired machinist and model railroad hobbyist.

  10:04 p.m. and thirty seconds.

  Vandeveer was smiling. “Never felt better,” he said.

  The paramedics nodded. All indicators were good.

  Hunz Vonner had pulled a chair from the kitchen. One of the paramedics had set a piece of equipment on the workbench stool he’d sat on earlier. Hunz was leaning forward, arms on his legs, staring intently at Lyle Vandeveer.

  Sydney held Lyle’s hand.

  10:04 p.m. and forty-five seconds.

  “You’re going to give a lot of people hope tonight, Lyle,” Sydney said.

  Lyle gave her a sheepish grin. “Seems silly, doesn’t it? I haven’t done nothing but sit in my chair.”

  Ten seconds.

  A paramedic started counting down. “Ten, nine, eight. ”

  Sydney caught his eye and shook her head.

  He stopped.

  Everyone watched the clock on the wall, the one that hung over Lyle Vandeveer’s peaceful valley like a huge sun—everyone except for the paramedic who had his hand on Lyle’s wrist pulse. His eyes were on his watch.

  Three seconds.

  Two seconds.

  One.

  10:05 p.m.

  For a moment, everyone held their breath.

  Lyle grinned. “Made it,” he said.

  Hunz Vonner clapped a single clap. “Excellent!” he said, jumping out of his seat. “I’ll notify the station.” He pulled out his cell phone and strode into the kitchen.

  Sydney fought tears. All she could think of was the pain Lyle had endured all his life. The guy deserved a break and tonight he got one. She gave him a hug.

  Lyle Vandeveer blushed.

  “After a hug like that from such a pretty woman,” he said, “I could die a happy man.”

  A machine alarm sounded.

  A queer expression came over Lyle Vandeveer’s face. He jerked stiff. His back arched.

  “I don’t believe this!” one of the paramedics cried.

  Sydney took a step back. “What’s happening?”

  Hunz ran in from the kitchen. He caught sight of Lyle Vandeveer—limp now, for a moment his eyes wide with surprise, then expressionless, staring emptily at the ceiling.

  “No!” Hunz shouted.

  With a sinking feeling, Sydney watched as the paramedics shocked, pounded, and injected Lyle Vandeveer with medicines to keep him alive. Their efforts were useless.

  Lyle Vandeveer was dead.

  “Ten-oh-five exactly,” said the paramedic.

  “No,” Sydney cried. “We all watched. It was .

  “Ten-oh-five exactly,” the paramedic repeated. He held up a fist and tapped his wristwatch. “Atomic. Linked to the Naval Observatory in Colorado. Mr. Vandeveer’s clock is thirty seconds fast.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Hunz Vonner thrust his cell phone at Sydney. “Rosenthal,” he said.

  “Sydney? This is Sol. We’re going to lead with your story tonight. Grant will introduce it, then we’ll cut live to your location. Look, Sydney, we’re going to have Vonner do the report.”

  Before she had time to object, Sol continued, “I know this is your story, but Vonner is good exposure for the station. What better way to introduce him to our audience than to show him on the front lines fighting this thing? It’ll make a splash.”

  “Sol, it’s 10:53! He hasn’t prepared. I did the background. I interviewed Mr. Vandeveer. Most of the time Hunz wasn’t even in the room. “She sounded whiny, even to herself, like a five-year-old begging to stay up past her bedtime.

  “Sydney, we don’t have time to argue. Give Hunz your notes. He’s a professional. And give him any assistance he needs.”

  The line went dead.

  Sydney handed the phone back to Hunz Vonner. “You’re doing the live feed.”

  “I know,” Hunz said.

  She held out her notepad. “We have a couple of quotes from Lyle,” she said. “I thought we could lead with .

  Hunz waved off the offer of her notes. “I won’t need those,” he said, walking away.

  The media spotlight made the exterior of Lyle Vandeveer’s house glow, set off by solid black shadows. Something newsworthy had occurred here. In this case a mysterious death, which was always good for ratings.

  Hunz stood with perfect posture, self-assured, listening to instructions in his earpiece, making a last-minute adjustment to his tie. A microphone with the station’s call letters was handed to him. As the station cued him, his eyes crystallized with concentration. He peered calmly into the camera.

  “A few minutes ago, in this quiet suburban neighborhood, a man died, another victim of a mysterious and frightening plague of deaths that has been sweeping the globe. What makes these deaths so frightening is their sudden, random nature, and that each of them is preceded by a written notice of death. Who is behind these tragic deaths? That remains unknown. But the scope and alarming accuracy of these notices points to a terrorist organization of immense size and resources.”

  Sydney stood beside a sound technician as Hunz related the growing number of death watch victims locally, nationally, and internationally. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Opal Whitcomb, Vandeveer’s neighbor, the one he’d said he’d call in the morning. She was standing on the edge of the television lights watching the broadcast, arms folded, coffee cup dangling from a finger. She wiped away tears.

  Moments after Lyle Vandeveer’s death Sydney insulated herself from everything but the task at hand. It was something she’d tau
ght herself to do whenever life’s load threatened to bury her. She imagined herself donning a coat made of Teflon. Nothing except the needs of the moment stuck to it. Emotions couldn’t penetrate it.

  The first time she used the Teflon coat was out of necessity. She’d been dispatched to cover an automobile accident. Three dead. A mother and her two daughters, ages three and eighteen months. They’d been broadsided by a drunk driver running a red light. The drunk walked away with a bump on his head. The car with the family had blood everywhere. Ceiling. Steering wheel. Dashboard. CD player. Then, the unthinkable happened. The volunteer police chaplain arrived to console the family of the victims, only to discover it was his wife, his children, who had been killed in the car.

  The only way Sydney could hold it together and report the family tragedy was to don her Teflon coat.

  Tonight, the moment she felt the shock of Lyle Vandeveer’s death wearing off, she put it on again. She had to shut out all personal thoughts and feelings for Lyle Vandeveer and his family. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t be able to do her job.

  Later, when she was alone, she’d cry for Lyle Vandeveer. She’d cry for Bea and Cindy, who were taken from him so suddenly. She’d think about Lyle’s peaceful, happy valley and cry, knowing that it was a far better world than the one in which he lived. She’d cry in frustration over having medical help within arm’s reach and still being unable to save him. She’d cry with anger over the sick, twisted mind that was behind this torturing of innocent people. And she’d cry tears of guilt for making promises to Lyle Vandeveer she was powerless to keep. She’d cry because he’d believed in her, trusted her.

  “Lyle Vandeveer is the latest death watch victim,” Hunz reported to the viewing audience. “Everything humanly possible was done to keep him out of harm’s way, yet somehow whoever is behind this cowardly crusade of terror managed to get to him, at the precise moment announced, which makes one wonder: Is there no hope for those who find themselves under the death watch executioner’s blade? Is any among us safe?

  “This is Hunz Vonner of EuroNet News on special assignment to KSMJ, Los Angeles.”

  Hunz didn’t relax. He listened to his earpiece. “Yes, Cori, it was KSMJ’s own Sydney St. James who spearheaded this failed effort, but I don’t think transporting Mr. Vandeveer to a hospital facility earlier would have made any difference.”

  Hunz nodded at the camera, then it was over.

  During the broadcast the street was still. No one moved. Everyone focused on the man standing in the spotlight. When the lights were switched off, they blinked, milled about for a few minutes, then walked home in the dark.

  Sydney flipped open her cell phone. She punched in the numbers that would connect her with Lawrence, Lyle’s brother in Canada. It was late and he was probably asleep, but with the chance the networks might pick up Lyle’s story, she didn’t want him hearing about his brother’s death on a morning news report.

  Phone held to her ear, she waited for someone to answer. She caught sight of a black man standing beside a palm tree across the street. With a shoe box tucked securely under one arm, he stared at her intently. Given the setting, a staring man was not unusual. Most people are fascinated by the way television personalities look in real life.

  She smiled and waved. The man with the box didn’t wave back, neither did he smile. He just stared.

  Sydney made a quarter turn away from the staring man to better concentrate on the phone call.

  “Hello?” The voice on the other end of the transmission was male and groggy.

  “Hello. Is this Lawrence Vandeveer?”

  “Yes. Who is this?”

  Sydney took a deep breath.

  There was a time for everything. That’s what the Bible said. After a day like today it was time to crawl under the bedcovers and pull them over her head.

  Sydney steered her Volvo onto the Hollywood Freeway heading north with thoughts of bed. She was tired. The lights of monster trucks and SUVs in her rearview mirror hurt her eyes. They were giving her a headache.

  “That was a waste of time,” Hunz Vonner said. “A total waste of time. We lost an entire evening.”

  Sydney glanced over at him. His jaw was set. He was angry. Unbelievable. “A man died tonight,” she said.

  “And a lot more are going to die until we find out who’s behind these death watch notices, and we’re no closer to finding them than we were six hours ago.”

  “You’re forgetting Lawrence Vandeveer. He was notified of his brother’s death watch notice. That’s the first we’ve heard of someone other than the victim receiving a notification.”

  Hunz shook his head. “An anomaly, if it’s true. Nobody else has reported a third-party confirmation.”

  “What if it’s not an anomaly? What if it means something? Why would Lyle Vandeveer’s brother in Canada be sent a notification? And if he didn’t, why would he and Lyle make up something like that?”

  “It could have been a misunderstanding: one brother says something; the other jumps to a conclusion. It happens all the time. Never take something someone says as fact until you check it out yourself.”

  “I did check it out,” Sydney said.

  “You talked to Lyle’s brother? When?”

  “When you were wrapping up the shoot.”

  Hunz looked at her as though he didn’t believe her. “What did he say?”

  “I called to inform him of his brother’s death. When I told him the details, he told me about the phone call. It was just as Lyle described.”

  “I still say it’s an anomaly. Meanwhile, we have a definite pattern that has proved true in every case: a person receives some form of printed notification which is followed up by a verbal confirmation.”

  Sydney stared through a dirty windshield at the traffic. The freeway was deserted at this time of night, which meant there were only a couple hundred cars on it rather than a couple thousand.

  She said, “Do you have a rental car at the station, or should I drop you at your hotel?”

  “What are you talking about? We have work to do.”

  “It’s nearly midnight and I’m exhausted. Besides, shouldn’t you be experiencing jet lag or something?”

  “I don’t require much sleep,” Hunz said. “Two, three hours, and I’m good. I want to talk to someone in the FBI. Someone with authority. Do you have any contacts, any home phone numbers?”

  “No,” Sydney said incredulously.

  Hunz muttered something about rookie reporters. “Who’s next on the list then?”

  “I’m not knocking on people’s doors in the middle of the night.”

  “It’s not as though they’re going to be asleep,” Hunz said. “Put yourself in their place. If you were scheduled to die in a couple of hours, would you be asleep?”

  “You do whatever you want to do,” Sydney said, “but I’m going home. You may not require sleep, but if I don’t get seven hours, all I do the next day is stare at walls. Where should I drop you?”

  “Seven hours? Who knows how many people are going to die in the next seven hours if we don’t stop whoever’s behind this!”

  The fact that people were dying had never left Sydney’s mind. She didn’t need a reminder. Problem was, people died every day. They were assaulted, robbed, raped, shot, stabbed, and murdered. There was always someone who needed help, or who had a story of injustice to tell. At some point, for the sake of her own sanity, Sydney had to shut the world out. It wasn’t easy to do, but after a couple of years in the industry, it was getting easier. Was that a good thing? Besides, she still had a couple of hours of crying to do before she could get to sleep.

  “Hotel or the station?” Sydney said.

  Hunz’s cell phone beeped. He answered it.

  “Vonner.”

  Still having received no destination information, Sydney continued heading north on the freeway.

  Hunz flipped his phone closed.

  “How far away is UCLA?”

  “About twenty miles.
Why?”

  “That was the news desk. There’s a boy at Dykstra Hall who claims he just survived Death Watch.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Dykstra 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.