Meds

by Ray Garton

  Raymond couldn’t follow Limbaugh’s monologue for long. His thoughts wriggled through his head in all directions, like snakes in a pond, and he kept twitching, fidgeting, unable to hold still. His mouth was dry and sticky, so he opened the glovebox to look for some breath mints. Instead, he found a box of shells for the shotgun. He turned his head again, moving his eyes from the boxes of shells to the shotgun on the rack.

  Limbaugh talked on and on. Cars drove by now and then, looking for parking places. A young woman with a shopping bag in each hand walked to her car.

  Raymond’s thoughts seemed to zap through his head like white flashes of electricity. Sometimes the sensation was so sharp, it made him flinch. He squirmed and fidgeted at the wheel of the pickup truck, sighed a few times without realizing it. He tried to follow what Limbaugh was saying, but he couldn’t seem to keep track of the words. He heard them, but it was as if their order became jumbled once they were inside his head. He fidgeted some more, then tossed his cigarette out the window. A moment later, he took the crumpled pack of Camels from his shirt pocket again. He had trouble fishing a cigarette out of the pack. His fingers seemed to have individual minds of their own. When he got the cigarette out, he dropped it to the floor at his feet. He ignored it and struggled to pull out another and put it in his mouth. He couldn’t get the Bic to light. His thumb didn’t seem strong enough. Thoughts zapped inside his head and made him flinch as he flicked the lighter several times. When he finally got a flame, he held it to the cigarette and noticed how much it trembled in his hand.

  As he smoked, Raymond turned to the shotgun again and stared at it with intense, narrowed eyes.

  Zzzap! Zzzap!

  He flinched, then rubbed his eyes with a thumb and forefinger. He suddenly found himself feeling worried. Afraid. For Patty. He turned and looked at the mall, frowning. She was in there all alone. Anything could happen. And he wasn’t with her. There was no one to protect her.

  He looked at the shotgun again, then at the open glovebox. He took out the green and white box of Remington shells. It was full. He set the box on the seat.

  Raymond tossed the cigarette out the window, then turned and removed the shotgun from its rack. He got out of the truck, then leaned back in and reached for the shells.

  3.

  Patty loved the mall. The colors were cheerful, the music was pleasant, and there seemed to be no unhappiness there. Oh, sure, there were unhappy people there, no doubt about that, especially in such difficult economic times. But nobody seemed unhappy in the mall. People weren’t shopping as much these days because money was tight, but there were still plenty of people there. Some of the stores had gone out of business and were empty and closed up, but somehow even those signs of hardship didn’t dampen the convivial atmosphere.

  She entered through JC Penney, where a sale had started just that morning in the men’s department. She picked up a couple of shirts and some much-needed new underwear and socks for Raymond. From there, she went to the Hallmark store to get a birthday card for her sister Beth. Next Monday was Beth’s birthday, and once Patty had picked out a card for her, she went to the Candle Carnival. Beth loved scented candles, and cinnamon was her favorite. Patty found a couple of lovely scented candles in decorative holders and had them boxed up. That night, she would sign the card, pack the candles, and take them to the post office the next day. After that, she headed for the shoe store because she was in dire need of a pair of comfortable shoes to wear while she was gardening. She was about to enter Payless Shoes, bags in each hand, when she heard a horrible explosion behind her.

  Patty spun around as shrill screams rose from the other end of the mall’s main concourse. She squinted through her glasses as she watched people scattering in all directions just outside JC Penney, screaming and shouting. To the right, she spotted someone lying on the tiled floor just outside the department store.

  There was another thunderous explosion and her eyes fell on its source almost immediately—a man holding a shotgun. With the second shot, another person fell to the floor.

  “Oh, dear Jesus,” she said in a breathy voice. As if her feet were cemented to the floor, she suddenly could not move. She stood anchored to that spot and her eyes remained on the gun as the man turned to his left and fired, then turned to his right and fired. With each shot, someone in the scattering crowd dropped to the floor in a faint spray of red. He moved with the leisurely ease of a man in no hurry and under no pressure. He appeared to have just come out of JC Penney, and he walked forward slowly, toward her. Patty’s eyes remained on the gun as it was turned this way and that, on the deadly black barrel as it ejected death with each explosion. It wasn’t until the man stopped firing that she noticed something that struck her like a fist.

  He was wearing a long sleeve shirt of red plaid. And a blue cap.

  Everything became magnified and distorted, as if she were looking at it through a fishbowl. A dull ringing sounded in her ears as her heart began to pound twice as hard and fast in her chest, and something moved inside her abdomen, as if all her internal organs had suddenly rolled over. She tried to walk forward, but her feet seemed to be encased in solid concrete. With great effort, she lifted her right foot, took a step, then pried her left foot from its invisible trap, and slowly repeated the process, moving forward as if walking through water at the bottom of a lake. She felt as if she were breathing water. It was so hard to inhale, and she could not seem to get enough air into her lungs.

  “Raymond!” she said as the bags slipped from her hands and slapped to the floor. Vaguely, she realized she’d only whispered the name. She said it again, a little louder, then again, louder still.

  As chaos broke out around him, Raymond dropped to one knee, and reloaded the shotgun. No hurry, no concern, just doing what he had to do as if he were unaware of all the screaming and running.

  Amidst all the frantic movement, bodies lay on the floor in spreading pools of blood.

  As Patty moved forward, she felt pain. It took a moment for the source of the pain to register in her spinning mind—her chest.

  Raymond was on his feet again, looking around. He turned to his left as he raised the shotgun and fired again. Another fleeing body went down. More screams. Someone shouted, “Oh, god, oh god!”

  “Raymond!” Patty tried to shout, but her voice was hoarse and weak.

  The pain in her chest suddenly worsened, like a knife twisting between her ribs, and it radiated to her left shoulder and down her arm. The beige tiles of the floor swung upward and slammed into her as the crushing pain shot down her left arm. She struggled to get up, but the pain became so severe that she could not move. Then she could not breathe.

  The shotgun continued to explode among the screams.

  Chapter 9

  Chain Reaction

  1.

  “Toby, you haven’t aged a day,” Falczek said as he and Toby Im sat down at a table in the cafeteria with their trays. They were in the Pentagon’s Navy Mess because the Secretary’s Mess was closed for renovation. “What is it with you Asians? You don’t show your age nearly as much as we white folk.”

  Toby grinned. “It’s nature’s way of making up for giving us small penises. You look good, Falczek.”

  “That’s very kind of you, but I’ve got luggage from the seventies that looks better than me, and I know it. How’s Cherie?”

  “She’s looking forward to seeing you. You couldn’t have timed your visit any better. Her mom’s death hit her hard and she could use something to smile about.” Toby was a short, fleshy man of Korean heritage, fifty-one years old with buzz cut black hair thinning out on the crown. He wore the same horn-rimmed glasses he’d worn in all the years Falczek had known him.

  “So, you have an office now,” Falczek said as they began to eat. When he arrived at the Pentagon, he’d been directed to Toby’s small ten by fourteen office with its high ceiling and cluttered shelves. “Last time I was here, they had you in a cubicle.”

  “It’s possible t
hat the cubicle was roomier. And I’d still be in it if we hadn’t been moved over to Wedge Five. That’s the only part of the Pentagon that hasn’t been renovated. That windowless closet was unoccupied, so they called it an office, put me in it and pretended it was an upgrade.”

  Toby was an upper GS-level analyst in the Pentagon’s Resource Analysis deputy-directorate, one of the many careerists who stayed put while presidential administrations came and went over the years. Falczek had met him about fifteen years ago while researching a story. During their conversation, they’d discovered their wives volunteered at the same homeless shelter. Upon learning that Sally knew Toby’s wife Cherie, the two couples had begun to see each other socially, and their friendship had grown from there.

  “How’s northern California?” Toby said. “I hope none of those fires have gotten too close to you.”

  “They’re all around me. The Sacramento Valley is a tub of smoke. In the unlikely event that the fires do reach my doorstep, I’ll probably already be dead of smoke inhalation.”

  “So, did you come back here for the fresh air, or something else?”

  “The fresh air is a treat, but I’m here for something else.”

  A few minutes later, Toby was frowning when Falczek finished telling him that he’d come to find out why Paaxone had disappeared in California and what he’d learned about it so far. Toby said nothing for awhile, just ate his lunch. Then he asked, “Where did you get this information?”

  “A doctor friend of mine, Everett Reasoner, called me because—”

  ”No, you already told me that. I mean the information that Braxton-Carville had intentionally diverted shipments of this drug that were meant to go to California.”

  “Come on, now, Toby, you know better than that. I can’t give up my sources.”

  “But you’re not a journalist anymore.”

  “Sure I am. I’m just not an employed journalist right now.”

  “Why would a pharmaceutical company do something like that?”

  “Divert the shipments of the drug?” Falczek shrugged. “I don’t know that yet. And I don’t know where those shipments ended up going.”

  “And you’ve been told that the company is aware that this could cause severe side effects in the people who can no longer get the drug?”

  “That’s right. I don’t know what those side effects are yet, but apparently Braxton-Carville does. And they don’t seem to be too concerned.”

  Toby ignored his food for a moment as he frowned, thinking. “I just can’t imagine that a drug company would do that if they knew it might trigger dangerous withdrawal effects in the patients who aren’t able to get the drug anymore.”

  “So you think the pharmaceutical industry is totally benevolent and concerned solely with the health and well-being of the people taking its drugs and that it couldn’t possibly have other interests or any ulterior motives?” Falczek leaned forward and cocked a bushy eyebrow with mock solemnity. “Toby. The 1950s called. They think it’s time for you to leave.”

  Toby smirked. “You’re not just doing this for your friend anymore, are you?”

  “Not just for him, no. There’s a story here, and I want to find it. A major drug company does something like this? That’s news. At least, it used to be news. Of course, these days, without an addicted celebrity or an NBA star raping a roomful of teenage girls, it might be hard to find anybody who cares.”

  “What’s your next step?”

  “I’m going to drive up north and pay a visit to Braxton-Carville.”

  “You don’t think they’re going to tell you anything, do you?”

  “Of course not. But I’m going to start a chain reaction and see what pops up.”

  “A chain reaction?”

  “Yeah. Kind of like fishing with explosives. Go out on a lake, drop a little bomb into the water, it goes off, and you see what floats to the surface.”

  “You’re in the Pentagon, Falczek. Careful about how you use the word ‘bomb.’”

  Falczek chuckled. “I’ll go the corporate headquarters upstate, talk to some PR flunky and get the same old story about a manufacturing problem. But then I’ll drip some of my story on him. I’ll tell him I know otherwise, that I know Paaxone has been diverted from California to some other destination with the full knowledge that severe side effects could result in the users of the drug, and then I’ll leave my card when I go. Chances are good he’ll mention it to someone, and that someone will mention it to someone else, and so on. A chain reaction. Sooner or later, it’ll get to someone who does know something, and once that person finds out I know something, he or she will very likely give me a call.”

  “Or strap explosives to your car.”

  Falczek smiled. “Old school journalism has its risks.”

  Toby continued eating his lunch. “Hey, are you available for dinner tonight?”

  “Sure, I’d like that. You still live in the same place?”

  “Same place. I get home at about six, I’ll have dinner ready around eight. Come early for drinks and we’ll catch up.”

  “You’ll have dinner ready?”

  “Yes. I cook now.”

  Falczek sighed and shook his head as he ate. “Well, it hasn’t killed Cherie yet, so I guess I’ll give it a try.”

  2.

  At the next table, Monica Gunther, Deputy Director of Policy for the Middle East, ate lunch alone. 38, single, and overweight, she picked at a green salad and half a grapefruit in her ongoing effort to drop pounds, or at the very least to avoid adding anymore pounds to her already lumpy, rounded frame. She was an avid reader and always had a paperback novel in her purse. She’d just started reading a new thriller by a bestselling writer she’d never read before, but it held her interest about as much as the drab green salad and weak grapefruit did. After only a few pages, she put it back in her purse. As she ate, she began to eavesdrop on the conversation between the two men at the next table. She recognized the man doing most of the talking—Toby Im from Resource Analysis. Monica had an extraordinary memory and she never forgot a face or a name. She’d never seen the other man before, but she heard Toby Im call him Falczek and she picked up the fact that he was a journalist. In the absence of anything else to do while she ate her boring, lonely lunch, she listened to them.

  When she heard mention of Paaxone, she perked up. Only yesterday, Dina McCormick, Monica’s administrative assistant in Policy, had mentioned that her husband was taking Paaxone. As she munched on lettuce and tomatoes and shredded carrots, Monica listened to the man’s story about how the manufacturer had, for some reason, diverted shipments of the drug away from California, leaving high and dry patients with prescriptions to fill.

  Later that afternoon, as Monica passed the story on to Dina, she was overheard by their director as he passed through the office. He was a short, slightly built man in his fifties with a completely bald head, and something Monica said captured his ear. Intrigued, he stopped walking, turned and listened, frowning slightly as Monica continued.

  “Where did you hear this, Monica?” he asked, genuinely curious. He was usually preoccupied, his mind on other things, but he was very present now.

  “I had lunch in the Navy Mess and overheard someone talking about it at the next table,” she said. “Toby Im. From Resource Analysis? Do you know him?”

  The Director, Richard Stephens, shook his head. “So, this Im fellow—he said this about Paaxone?”

  “Well, not him, exactly. He was talking with a man named Falczek. Some kind of journalist.”

  Stephens frowned as his eyes narrowed. “Falczek? There used to be a reporter at the Post named Falczek. John Falczek. Is that the guy?”

  Monica shrugged. “I couldn’t say.”

  The director’s gaze wandered off as he became lost in thought for a moment. Then he turned, went back into his office, and closed the door. With Paaxone on his mind, he sat down at his desk and made a phone call.

  3.

  While Falczek and Toby Im
ate their lunch, Eli made his deliveries Wednesday morning. He did not feel well.

  The smoke in the air was thicker than usual because a new fire had cropped up in nearby Marsh Creek. It had started in a wooded area beside a remote road, leading authorities to suspect a cigarette thrown from a car. The blaze had destroyed a feed store, then spread through the woods, and with the help of a breeze that had come up briefly yesterday evening, it had jumped the road and now threatened a small rural neighborhood that had been evacuated in the early hours of the morning. It had added to the smoke already darkening the sky over Santa Vermelha, and it was close enough to the city to cause concern.

  Eli hardly noticed the increased smoke, and the updates on the radio barely registered as he drove. He felt... tense. That was the best word he could think of to describe it. Traffic was no worse than usual, but it got on his nerves and he found himself shouting at cars and cursing drivers from his seat inside the truck.

  The truck’s air conditioner was running full blast, but Eli’s entire body prickled with sweat. He vaguely wondered for a moment if he were sweating more than usual or if it was just bothering him more. He came to the intersection of Hawthorne and Crest just as the light turned red.

  As he sat waiting, the voices on KNWS continued to chatter. Chloe’s news broadcast was punctuated with stories from other reporters and occasionally interrupted by loud, obnoxious commercials.

  “The condition of gunshot victim Molly Clemens has improved,” Chloe said. “She is the widow of James Clemens, who shot and killed their two sons and himself early Tuesday morning. She has regained consciousness and is undergoing surgery this morning.”