Freefall

by Jessica Barry

  I think of my mother lying in her bed halfway across the country. I haven’t been in that room for two years but I can still picture it clearly in my mind. The big oak bed bought from Jordan Marsh, the blue quilt with white flowers, the thick curtains pulled back to let in the morning light. Barney would be lying by her feet, curled in on himself and twitching in his sleep. I keep this image of her in my head as I let the exhaustion finally take me. Peaceful. Safe.

  Waiting for me.

  Maggie

  There was only one Anthony Tracanelli who fit Tony’s description, but he wasn’t a mature student at Bowdoin. He didn’t live in Maine, either—at least not permanently. Most of the search listings that came up had him as a resident of California. San Diego, to be exact.

  I’d tried to brace myself for him not being who he said he was, but it was still a shock to see it in black and white. I took a deep breath and started scrolling through the search results. And there were a lot of results.

  Most people his age didn’t have much of an online footprint. Maybe a Facebook page our kids had set up for us, or a profile page on a company website if we were a big shot, but for the most part the internet is populated by the young. Unless, of course, someone has a reason to write about you. Unless you had somehow become newsworthy.

  There was plenty to pick from when it came to Tony. The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe—all of them had published articles that mentioned his name. I clicked on the first one that came up.

  WASHINGTON TRIBUNE

  FORMER FDA EMPLOYEE ARRESTED

  SAN DIEGO, CA—A former Federal Drug Administration whistle-blower has been arrested. Anthony Tracanelli, 60, was placed under police custody following a raid on his home in Clairemont in the early hours of yesterday morning. Police say that they recovered indecent material from a laptop in his home following an anonymous tip. He was later released on bail.

  Tracanelli worked for the FDA in research and development until May of last year, when he launched a campaign to expose what he claimed were harmful practices at the FDA. According to internal documents leaked to the press, Tracanelli accused his supervisors of what he described as “blatant delinquency in their duty of care to the American people,” and went on to allege that senior regulatory officials had accepted bribes from pharmaceutical companies in order to speed up the approvals process—and in some cases, turned a blind eye to “harmful and at times fatal side effects” of drugs being brought to market.

  When still in his role at the agency, Tracanelli raised eyebrows among his colleagues by demanding that pharmaceutical manufacturers provide more clinical data about the safety of their products, including longer clinical trials and double-blind data analysis. FDA managers deemed Tracanelli’s requests excessive, and they were quashed. He was dismissed from his post shortly thereafter, but Tracanelli continued to pursue the matter, posting what he alleged was evidence that the FDA colluded with the drug manufacturer Prexilane on the website Whistleblowers.org. Prexilane sued the website for defamation and the post was subsequently removed.

  An internal investigation was conducted following Tracanelli’s departure and showed no wrongdoing on the part of the agency. While Tracanelli’s allegations were deemed groundless, insiders say that a cloud remains over the agency.

  Reached for comment at his home, Tracanelli denied harboring indecent material and claimed that he was the subject of a witch hunt. “This is nothing less than a setup,” Tracanelli said of the charges against him. “I’m confident the truth will win out in the end.”

  I had to read it twice, just to make sure my eyes weren’t playing a trick on me. But no, there it was on the screen, clear as the nose on my face. Tony had been investigating Prexilane. He had known Ally. He had known about the chip she was carrying around her neck. He had known about all of it.

  What had he said about her again? That she was a hero. My heart swelled through the grief. She had been trying to uncover an injustice. For the first time in a long time, I felt like I could reach out and touch her. This was the Ally I knew. This was my daughter, and I was so damn proud of her.

  Allison

  I don’t hear a thing, not even the rasping sound of his breath as he hovers above me. It’s only when his hands close around my throat that I wake up.

  It’s pitch black in the room and my eyes open to blackness. His weight is on top of me, pushing me down into the springs of the mattress, and I hear them groan from the strain. I can feel his hot breath on my cheek and the pressure of his fingers tightening around my windpipe. White dots appear in my field of vision.

  He’s here. He’s found me.

  I scrabble to free my arms from the tangle of sheets. Every muscle in my body is tense as I claw up and out, swiping at the air, grasping at the hands that are fixed around my throat. I feel his skin tear under my fingernails but his grip doesn’t let up and the white dots are expanding, multiplying. I can feel myself going under. There are stars now stretched out across the ceiling and I am falling falling falling back and up toward them, into them, weightless.

  I hear a strangled wail, a cat whose tail has been trapped in the door, and realize it’s coming from me. The adrenaline surges through me and my hands claw at his fingers and my legs kick out against his weight and then, with the last bit of strength I can summon before the whiteness takes me, I open my mouth wide and strain upward, searching, and when I find a piece of his flesh—I can’t be sure what part—with my mouth I bite down, as hard as I can. I feel flesh tear beneath my teeth and I hear him grunt and for a second, his grip loosens. I suck in air and then I scream.

  The noise startles both of us, and I feel his body tense and shift. I scramble out and away and then I’m on the floor, the carpet rough under my knees. I feel the wind on my ankles as he swipes for them and I turn and kick up at him. My foot hits something, hard, and I hear a snap and feel a sizzle of pain run down my big toe. Another grunt, angrier this time, and then he’s down on the ground with me and his hands are grasping at my waist and my hips and my thighs and my hands are reaching searching scrambling under the bed and then my fingers nudge the cold edge of the barrel and I grasp it with one hand and then two but his arms are around me now and he is lifting me up so I turn and twist and swing the butt of the gun down. There’s a crack and a shudder as the reverberation ricochets through my arms and then he lets go and we both land with a thud on the ground and he’s lying there now and he’s not moving but I don’t stop. I can’t. I swing and I swing and I swing and cracks turn thicker, duller, mulchier, and then I realize that my hands and arms and face are wet and when I nudge my tongue out of my mouth I can taste blood and tears and something else, something thick and dark and of this world and not.

  I sit on the edge of the bed in the blackness for I don’t know how long. A minute. An hour. When the lilac light of dawn edges around the curtains, I pad into the bathroom and turn on the shower and clean myself off. I don’t switch the lights on to dress.

  I can see the outline of the body on the floor. I approach it tentatively, careful to avoid the puddle of black around the head. I feel around in his trouser pockets until I find it. I hit a button on the phone and it lights up in my hand, casting a yellowish halo around the room.

  I can see his face now. What’s left of it. It’s the man I saw back in Colorado, the one who was leaning on the lamppost. I knew it would be him but something inside me is still disappointed. It means the game isn’t finished. He’s still out there. Waiting.

  The phone is just a cheap thing, an old Nokia. A burner phone, I’d guess. There’s only one number in his contacts. I bring up a fresh message field and type, “It’s done.” I hit Send and listen to the whoosh of the envelope as it flies off into the ether.

  It should buy me some time. I don’t know how much, but hopefully enough.

  I slide the phone into my pocket and shove the rifle into the bag along with the towel I used to clean it. I wash my hands one last time in the sink, and then
I edge open the door, slip through, and close it behind me. I don’t look back.

  The brittle hollow of my throat aches as I hurry down the stairs and out the back door. I can still feel his hands pressing the breath out of me. I circle back to the parking lot, careful to duck under the windows, but I don’t need to worry—the motel is still asleep. I toss my bag into the back seat and spark up the engine and I’m miles down the highway by the time the sun crawls all the way up the horizon.

  It’s only then that I let myself cry, and even then it’s only for a few seconds. I can’t afford to waste any more time on it, and besides, crying hurts too much.

  It’s happening. It’s really happening. He’s come for me. And if he’s come for me, he’ll be coming for her, too.

  I punch the gas and drive.

  Maggie

  Sifting through Anthony Tracanelli’s life was like finding different fragments of the same broken vase. It had shattered the minute he blew the whistle at the FDA.

  Of course, I couldn’t find anything more about what he’d discovered about Prexilane. All those records had been either sealed or destroyed, presumably thanks to the same army of lawyers who’d helped to erase the forum thread about the possible side effects of Somnublaze. They were whitewashing the internet, bleaching it of anything that could make Prexilane look bad.

  I couldn’t sit still. It had been a while since Jim had left—surely there was news now. I dialed his number at the police station. “Any news on the chip?” I asked, before he’d had the chance to say hello.

  “Not yet. Shannon’s taking a look at it.”

  “Shannon?” I couldn’t hide my surprise. “I didn’t know she knew anything about computers.”

  He laughed. “I know what you’re thinking, but she was an expert down in Florida, apparently. Worked in a department called Digital Forensics. Bright future ahead of her down there, too. None of us could figure out why she ended up here.”

  “The weather,” I said, recalling the look of wonder on her face when she’d talked about snow. “She didn’t like the heat down there. Said she wanted a real winter.”

  “Well, she’ll get plenty of that. Anyway, she said it shouldn’t take her more than a day or so to know what’s on that chip, so we’ll have answers for you soon.”

  My heart sank. “A day? Isn’t there any way to move it along a little faster?”

  Jim sighed, and I could hear the impatience in his voice. “We’re going as fast as we can, Maggie. You just have to be a little more patient. There is some news about your friend, though. Tony.”

  My stomach still lurched at the sound of his name. “Do they know what happened to him?”

  “Still inconclusive, though the guy down at Branville told me they’re leaning toward suicide.”

  I went cold. I remembered the fear in his voice on the phone. “He didn’t kill himself,” I hissed.

  “Look, I’m just telling you what I’ve been told.”

  “Jim—”

  He cut me off. “He was a criminal, Maggie.” I was silent. “He was some kind of pervert—did you know that?”

  He must have found out about the indecent-material charges they mentioned in the newspaper. “Yes.” And then, hurriedly, “No. I mean, he didn’t tell me, I just read about it online. But, look, it’s not important—”

  “Not important?” His disbelief was like a brick wall between us. “I looked up his case file. Do you know the kind of stuff they found on this guy’s computer? It makes me sick thinking he was anywhere near you.”

  Images crowded into my head, things I never wanted to imagine. I pushed them out. It wasn’t him, I reminded myself. He’d said himself in that article that he’d been set up. I owed it to him to believe him. Ally must have trusted him. That meant I should, too. “It’s not what you think,” I said quietly.

  “I’ve seen the photographs.” Jim’s voice was shaking with anger. “The man was sick.” He took a breath. “He didn’t touch you, did he? He didn’t—”

  The question hung between us like a bad smell. I thought of him reaching out toward me, the electric current when his fingers brushed my neck. “No,” I said finally. “He never laid a finger on me.”

  He let out a deep breath down the line. “Thank God.”

  “Jim.”

  “It’s my fault—I should have been paying closer attention to you.”

  “Jim.”

  “You were vulnerable, and this creep took advantage—”

  “Jim!” I was sick to death of people acting like I was a child. Tony had been wrong to lie to me, but in some twisted way I knew he was trying to protect me, too. He wasn’t a bad man. He didn’t do those things they said about him in the papers, I was sure of it. They were behind it—all of it. I just had to figure out how. “I need you to listen to me. Tony didn’t take advantage of me and he didn’t commit suicide. He was killed, and it’s all because of Ben Gardner.”

  Jim sighed down the line. I could picture him sitting in his office, his shiny black shoes propped up on the edge of his desk, one hand tucked behind his head, a mug of coffee cooling next to the phone. “We talked about all this.”

  “No, we haven’t, because you refuse to listen to me. Tony was working for the FDA. He was investigating Prexilane—that’s Ben’s company, Jim. He’d lodged a complaint against them and he was fired from his job and then that—that stuff turned up on his computer.”

  “Filth. It was filth.”

  “Whatever it was, it doesn’t matter. What matters is what he knew about Prexilane.”

  “What exactly was it you think he found out?”

  I looked up at the framed photo of Ally above the mantel. Her smile beamed out at me, her dark hair tucked behind one ear, her eyes shining. She looked so young. Still just a little girl. “I don’t know,” I said finally. “But I think Ally knew, too, and I think that’s why they both ended up dead.”

  Allison

  I stop the car on a bridge about fifty miles from the motel. I roll down the window, check that there aren’t any oncoming cars, and throw the burner phone as far as I can. I hear a quiet splash as it hits the water below, and then I roll up the window, turn on the radio, and peel back onto the road.

  There was a pharmaceuticals conference in Chicago, and I’d convinced Ben to take me along. He had balked at the idea at first—he didn’t like mixing business with pleasure, he said, and he was worried I’d be bored—but I convinced him in the end, and we’d flown there in his Mooney, the country spread out below us like a patchwork quilt.

  It was Saturday afternoon. I was in our suite at the Peninsula, towel drying my hair and admiring the hand-painted wallpaper, when the phone clicked on.

  “Ricci’s vulnerable.” It was Sam speaking. I knew his voice by heart then, heard its low, gravelly tone in my sleep.

  “What do you mean?” This was Ben. He was meant to be presenting a seminar on DNA-targeted cancer treatments in the Gleacher Center, but I could hear the thrum and rumble of street noise in the background. “He’s our best researcher.”

  It hit me like a thunderbolt. They were talking about Paul, Liz’s husband. The woman who’d taken me under her wing at that party another lifetime ago. The only person out of all of them who’d shown me any kindness.

  “It doesn’t matter how good a researcher he is if he’s going to go to the Feds.”

  I held my breath, my heart thudding in my chest. Ben swore down the line. “I don’t believe this. We wouldn’t be in this fucking mess if he was better at his job. He’s been telling me that he’s close to a fix.” He sounded frantic.

  “It’s under control. Zeman’s ready to step up.”

  There was a long, tense pause, and it was only when Ben exhaled that I realized he’d been holding his breath, and I’d been holding mine. “Fine. Get rid of Ricci, and tell Zeman he’s been promoted, effective immediately.”

  The call cut out. I sat on the edge of the bed, holding the phone with shaking hands. I thought of the photo Liz
had showed me of their kids, three curly-haired teenagers with identical dimples. What had Ben meant when he said “get rid of Ricci”? I thought back to the fear on Anthony’s face when I mentioned Sam’s name. You don’t know what he’s capable of. I did now, or at least I was starting to suspect it. I couldn’t stand by and do nothing. I had to warn her.

  I found her number on my phone and hit Dial. Come on, I chanted as the phone rang. Pick up pick up pick up.

  “Hey, Allison!” Liz’s warm voice came flooding from the phone, and I felt a rush of relief. I wasn’t too late. “We’re not having lunch today, are we? I had it down in the calendar for next week but God knows I can’t seem to remember anything these days.”

  “No, it’s not that,” I said hurriedly. “I— I think Paul might be in trouble.”

  “Has something happened at work? It’s not his heart, is it?” I heard the panic in her voice and felt a twinge of pity.

  “No, it’s . . .” I trailed off. I was gripping the phone tight against my face, and my cheek was already clammy with sweat. Now that I had her on the phone, I wasn’t sure what to say. How could I warn her without telling her things that could put her in more danger? “Look, I can’t explain. All I can say is that you and Paul should get out of town.”

  “I don’t understand . . .”

  I could hear a muffled rattling at the front door of the suite and then the neat snick of the lock. Someone was there. I ran to the bathroom and pulled the door shut behind me. She was the only friend I had left. I had to try to save her. “Listen to me,” I whispered, “he’s in danger. You are, too.” My voice echoed off the tiled walls. “You have to leave. Please. Just pack a bag and go. It doesn’t matter where.” I willed her to believe me.