1 The Question of the Missing Head by E. J. Copperman

postings.”
    “I have one, of course,” she said, pulling a Dell laptop from the bag she had stored under the table. “But I can’t access the Internet. This building’s Wi-Fi network requires a password, and I don’t have one.”
    “Perhaps we can get a look at your posts on one of the institute’s computers later,” I said. “Now tell me, once you arrived here this morning to cover the story, what did you discover, and to whom did you talk?”
    Charlotte made a face that indicated she was thinking, and out of the corner of my eye I noticed Ms. Washburn raise an eyebrow.
    “Well, like I said,” Charlotte began, “Marshall—Dr. Ackerman—was out when I got here. So I talked to Commander Johnson and his wife for a few minutes, after I got past Lorraine, the receptionist.”
    “And what did the commander and his wife tell you?”
    “Amelia didn’t know anything,” Charlotte answered, with a tone that I believe indicated she had no high regard for Commander Johnson’s wife. “But the commander was very upset because he said he was being bypassed on the most important security problem that had arisen since he has worked here.” She consulted a page on the reporter’s notebook. “Yes. Here. ‘He didn’t even ask for my advice. He won’t even let me down there.’ You see he was quite upset.”
    “Marshall Ackerman wouldn’t allow his head of security into the area where valuable human remains had vanished?” I asked. Commander Johnson had not mentioned that when I’d questioned him. Why wouldn’t the head of the facility let his handpicked security officer investigate? Why come to me first?
    “That’s what Johnson said,” Charlotte answered. “I asked him why that was, and he sort of grunted at me and left the room.”
    “Do you know how Ackerman met the commander?” I asked. “I understand he’s been working here only five months.”
    Charlotte nodded. “After he fired Miles Monroe, Marshall wanted a military man to head the facility’s security team. But most of the good ones are either still in the military or priced too high for the institute, so he ran an ad in one of the enthusiast magazines, and he found the commander.”
    Marshall Ackerman had said his previous security chief had “left to pursue other interests.” “Ackerman dismissed Mr. Monroe?” I asked.
    Charlotte looked at me with an expression I recognized—she clearly thought I was not as competent as I should be. “Yeah. There were allegations employees were mistreating some of the ‘guests,’ and Marshall wanted that stopped. So he got rid of Monroe and brought in Johnson.”
    “What do you mean, ‘mistreating the guests’?” Ms. Washburn asked. It was an excellent question, one I had been planning to ask.
    “Some employees—two of them, both fired now—were accused of … using one of the heads in a game of office basketball,” Charlotte said. She did not look me in the eye when she said it; she seemed instead to be profoundly interested in the American flag on a pole in the corner of the room.
    Ms. Washburn, however, looked directly at Charlotte, and she whitened. She began to say something, stopped, and shook her head. It was obvious to me that Ms. Washburn was appalled by what she’d heard, but it was not an isolated tale. There had been allegations of similar atrocities at the facility where the Red Sox slugger Ted Williams’s cranium was being stored, although they were never substantiated. Someone at GSCI might have gotten the idea for a grotesque prank from those stories.
    “Do you know the names of the dismissed employees?” I asked. “Could one or both of them be responsible for the theft of Ms. Masters-Powell’s remains?”
    Charlotte began rummaging around in her purse. “I don’t think so,” she answered, “because one of them moved to Nevada and the other was dumber than a post. Ernie Deshales wouldn’t have been able to mastermind shoplifting a Snickers bar from a 7-Eleven.” She