Placebo

by Steven James

  He takes a breath. “Jev, I watched the footage you managed to get while you were taking Tanbyrn’s test and didn’t see anything unusual. As far as I can tell, you and Charlene really are entangled.”

  “Really?” Fionna raises an eyebrow. “Entangled?”

  A clarification is in order here. “I’m not sure that’s really the best word. Charlene and I have been working together for a long time. It’s natural that we would have a close interpersonal relationship.”

  “A close interpersonal relationship.” Xavier nods. “That’s a good way to put it.”

  “Yes,” Fionna agrees. “That sounds accurate.”

  Charlene is watching me expectantly.

  After a fumbling silence I say, “Um . . . let’s figure out the right terms to use later.” I indicate to Fionna. “So? Anything?”

  She holds up Tanbyrn’s iPad. “Well, I wish I had some good news, but so far I haven’t been able to find anything more specific about Project Alpha on this thing. If there was some secret data floating around out there somewhere, it must have been on another computer.”

  “The one Banner was checking just before he attacked us in the chamber?” Charlene muses.

  “Possibly. And it looks like Tanbyrn had some doubts about the future of the program. Funding. President Hoult apparently wants to nix it. Oh, and Lonnie isn’t bad at math, so I left the sheets from Tanbyrn’s folder for him to look over, see if he can decipher them.” Most seventeen-year-old guys wouldn’t exactly be excited about deciphering a Nobel laureate’s scientific quantum mechanics equations, but Lonnie was not your typical teenage guy. “What about you, Jev? Dig up anything?”

  “Tanbyrn touched on studies about both prayers and curses. It seems there’s more than just anecdotal evidence supporting the effectiveness of both of them—the one to heal, the other to harm. A . . . well . . . close interpersonal relationship seems to be vital to both.”

  We all take a minute to process what everyone has said.

  I draw things to a close: “I think the first order of business is setting up that meeting with Arlington.”

  Fionna types on the iPad, then announces that he’ll be out of the office this morning. She consults the screen. “According to his personal calendar, he’ll be back at noon. He has a meeting in DC this morning.” She sounds disappointed, and for good reason. We’d all been hoping that by announcing that she’d hacked into his personal laptop, she could get us an audience with him this morning.

  “What about the people from RixoTray’s cybersecurity department?” I suggest. “Certainly there’ll be someone there interested in speaking with you before you report your findings to the company’s CEO?”

  “That makes sense. But that doesn’t help you get to Arlington. And what exactly would you want me to find out from them?”

  “When we first watched the video of the suicide bombers yesterday, it was after office hours here in Philly. See if you can get a look at the footage of the surveillance cameras in the lobby or, ideally, the reception area in Arlington’s office suite. Find out if anyone else entered. It’d be helpful to know if Arlington watched the video alone or had company with him.”

  “Nice.” Xavier holds his fist out toward me until I bump it with my own, then he offers to go with Fionna. “It might be good to have two of us there to deal with anything that might come up.”

  “What might come up?” she asks.

  “Stuff.” He looks around awkwardly. “You know. That might need handling.”

  “Handling.”

  “Hey, you never know what you might run into.”

  “Well . . . I suppose I could use a minion.”

  “Let’s go with ‘assistant.’”

  “I can work with that.”

  I collect some of my notes. “Good, and Charlene and I can try to set up a meeting with Dr. Colette. Fionna, see if you can find out where she’ll be.”

  It takes a few minutes, but finally she finds what she’s looking for. “According to her calendar, Dr. Colette will be at RixoTray’s R&D facility up near Bridgeport this morning. I’m guessing it’s about half an hour drive from here.”

  It strikes me that somewhere along the line I forgot to get us all cars. It’s less than a mile to RixoTray’s headquarters, but I figure Fionna and Xavier should at least have a car at their disposal. I make a quick call, get two executive cars and drivers for the day, and we get back to business.

  “But how’ll we get through security?” There’s skepticism in Charlene’s voice. “Surely they won’t let us just walk into their R&D facility, not without an appointment.”

  I find myself palming my 1895 Morgan Dollar, finger-flipping it. “True. Security is sure to be hypertight.”

  “Go in as custodians?” Fionna suggests. “Or service workers?”

  Xavier shakes his head. “Not enough time to put something like that into play. Besides, those people would almost certainly be vetted. Possibly even fingerprint ID’d.”

  “New employees?” Charlene suggests. “We just got a job? We show up for the first day of work?”

  “Too easy to check.”

  “How about we’re there for a business meeting? Or what about the truth: we’re working on a documentary and have some questions we need to talk with Dr. Colette about concerning her research?”

  That’s actually a tempting thought, but I doubt it would work. “It’d be too easy for them to just deny us access; we need something they can’t say no to.”

  Fionna has been typing and now sighs. “There are three security checkpoints to go through. And Xavier’s right. They have fingerprint identification at the front gate.”

  “Okay . . .” Xavier is thinking aloud. “So we need a way of getting two people who’ve never been there before, who the guards aren’t expecting and won’t be able to verify the identity of, into an ultra-high-level security pharmaceutical R&D complex in a way that won’t arouse suspicion.”

  And that’s when it hits me. Misdirection. The thing I do best. “Well put, Xav. And I think I know just how we can pull it off.”

  Complaint Procedures

  They all eye me curiously.

  “Government inspectors from the Food and Drug Administration following up on a complaint about the treatment of human subjects in their telomerase research.”

  Everyone mulls that over for a moment.

  Xavier gives a slow nod. “Government agencies are always reshuffling staff, renaming divisions, reworking their logos. Bureaucracy at its best. Shouldn’t be that hard to fake the paperwork, and it would make sense that they wouldn’t know you. But what if they decide to follow up? Call the FDA?”

  “We’ll put your phone number on our cards.”

  “We’d need IDs.” Charlene taps her chin thoughtfully. “Official ones.”

  “There’s a FedEx Office store down the street. I saw it when I was getting the coffee. It’s amazing what you can pull off with a color printer, some card stock, and a laminator.”

  Oh yeah. I was liking this. I could get used to being a freelancer.

  “Fionna, we’ll need official-looking documents. Can you come up with those in an hour?”

  She screws up her face. “No. Not ones that could fool the guards. But . . . maybe my kids can help me—do a little research on FDA complaint procedures. Extra credit.” After a moment of reflection, she nods. “I’d say we should be able to come up with something.”

  “I’ll give you a hand,” Charlene offers.

  “Great.” I stand. “I’ll help Xavier with the IDs and business cards. Charlene, you and Fionna tackle the paperwork; there’s a business center on the second floor. You can print what you need down there, or join us at the FedEx Office.”

  We use my phone to take Charlene’s and my pictures for the IDs, then the two women head out to convene with the kids and Xavier grabs his computer. “Come on,” he tells me. “Let’s go do something illegal.”

  Dr. Cyrus Arlington landed in DC.

  Strode
off the helicopter pad.

  There was already a car there waiting to take him to the White House.

  Mambo Atabei carried the goat’s headless carcass into the alley behind her home and tipped it into the dumpster.

  She’d been ridden by her Loa for more than six hours last night, so long that the other members of her peristyle who were involved in the ceremony had begun to worry about her.

  But she was thankful. Being possessed for long stretches of time was the most rewarding part of what she did, the reason she’d gotten into all of this in the first place.

  Some people claimed that Loa possession was a hallucination brought about by cultural expectations, wishful thinking, and a little too much rum. That was an easy way to explain away what happens. Let them think what they wanted.

  After turning from the dumpster, she brushed some of the goat’s hair off her shirt. The blood was still there. That wasn’t going to come out nearly as easily.

  Then she went to check the news to see how everything had panned out concerning the doctor in Oregon.

  Darren took a deep breath, said to his brother, “Ready?”

  “Ready. Lancerton, Maine, huh?”

  “Let’s see how well this works.”

  Then the twins closed their eyes, relaxed, and focused their thoughts on the same thing. Just as they’d been training for so long to do.

  Oil and Blood

  8:39 a.m.

  Lancerton, Maine

  Adrian Goss had slept in a little and was still a bit groggy as he walked toward the woodshed.

  Behind him, smoke curled from the cabin’s chimney, wisped into the crisp Maine day, and wandered toward the steel-blue sky like a slowly uncurling snake.

  He trudged through the mud and thought of the wood stacked by the side of the shed, of splitting it, and he thought of his wife, who would be home anytime from working the graveyard shift at the hospital.

  And he thought of his son.

  It would be his birthday next week, turning eleven, and Adrian had decided to buy him a football—real pigskin. Official NFL size and weight.

  Eleven next week.

  A fifty-year-old guy with an eleven-year-old kid to raise. Not ideal in some regards, but not that unusual. Besides, love can overcome something as trivial as the age span between a father and his boy.

  Adrian passed the 1972 Chevy Impala chassis in his yard and the thick stump he used to balance the wood on when he chopped it, pressed open the shed door, heard the harsh squeal of the hinge.

  Oil it.

  He’d been meaning to.

  Yes.

  Later.

  He stepped into the woodshed. Light filtered through the cracks between the boards that made up the walls. The shafts of light seemed like giant slivers that he should avoid but would never be able to if he was really going to cross over to the other side of the shed.

  Yes. Oil the hinge.

  His thoughts seemed to blur together. Strangely, as if they were sliding over each other. Layers of ideas. A mesh that was impossible to sort through.

  Shadow and light. Just like the shed.

  A birthday present for his son. Eleven.

  For a moment Adrian stared at the dust filtering through the slanting light and tried to remember why he’d come into the shed in the first place. He blinked and looked around.

  It was something to do with his wife. Something to do with her and the argument they’d had last night.

  His eyes landed on the shelf. A chain saw, tools, grease for the lawn mower. Spark plugs. A small metal oil can.

  Adrian felt light-headed, like he had in high school after that tackle against Woodland in the state semifinals, when he’d had to sit out the rest of the game because he was seeing two of everything. That running back—what was his name? Terry something. Or Tommy. Something like that. Number eleven.

  No, wait. His son was Terry. Yes. His son.

  Adrian walked toward the shelf, braving the slivers of light, but they passed across him like they didn’t care, like they weren’t interested in eviscerating him, in slicing through his flesh and meat and bone.

  At the shelf with the chain saw. Paused—

  No, the game wasn’t in the semifinals. They didn’t make it that year.

  Reached for the oil can.

  No.

  He came in here to get something for his son.

  No, it was somehow about that argument with his wife.

  Yes. About the house. The wood, the stove, and outside there wasn’t enough wood around, so why couldn’t he have split more of it, because when she got home from work in the morning, what was she supposed to do, chop their wood too?

  No, he’d told her, of course not. He would do that. He would take care of it.

  He passed the oil, the chain saw, went to the southwest corner of the shed, toward the axe.

  Southwest corner? Why would he even think of it like that? He’d never called it the southwest corner before.

  The shed’s angled sunlight brushed against his face in between the flutters of velvety black shadows. It didn’t hurt at all. Not one little bit.

  He blinked and tried to collect his thoughts again. Something wasn’t right. Something wasn’t clicking. There was the high school football game and his son’s birthday and the wood to be chopped and the number eleven, the number of the player.

  No, that’s what Terry was turning on his birthday, and Adrian still didn’t have a gift for him.

  Light and shadow and light.

  Toward the axe.

  His son’s birthday, yes.

  He lifted the axe, swung it gently. He was a man used to hard work, and the axe felt comfortable in his hand. At ease, as if it were an extension of himself. Another limb with a sturdy-bladed end.

  Something for his son.

  Adrian was aware of the sunlight becoming alive, crawling against his skin. Every particle of dust, friction, friction, flowing sandpaper coursing through the air! Rubbing. Troubling!

  Split the wood.

  Split.

  Adrian left the shed, shut the door behind him. Heard it creak.

  Fix that. Oil it.

  After Terry’s birthday.

  The azure sky above him seemed to stretch forever. Beyond forever.

  He went to the woodpile, axe in hand, sunlight falling all around him.

  Azure? Where did that word come from?

  After he turned eleven.

  Trish had argued with him last night and accused him of being lazy.

  Lazy.

  He wasn’t lazy.

  He positioned the wood upright on the stump. He would show her. Prove it.

  She was always doing this. Always nagging him, getting on his—

  He would show her.

  He raised the axe; yes, yes, he would prove it to her.

  Adrian felt the muscles in his shoulders and back flex, his forearms tighten as he gripped the axe handle with a stranglehold, raised the blade above his head, and then, slicing through the sunlight, shredding it and leaving it hanging in tatters around him, he swung the blade down. It struck the log but did not cleave it in two.

  Swing through the log. Don’t aim at the top of it, aim at the stump. Swing through it.

  Through it.

  Focus not on connecting with the top of the log, but rather the stump on which—

  On which.

  The log rests.

  He tugged the blade free, repositioned the wood, heaved the axe backward over his head, then brought it forward again, harder than before.

  Vaguely, he heard the axe connect with the stump. The two split logs dropped to the sides, but for some reason they did not bleed. For some strange reason he thought of this, of how nice it would be to see them bleed.

  In the sunlight.

  But they did not.

  Blood could be used to oil that hinge on the shed.

  He tossed the split logs aside and grabbed another log off the pile.

  His wife accused him of being la
zy.

  He would need blood to fix the woodshed.

  Behind him, from the end of the long driveway that wound along the edge of the woods, he heard the sound of a car’s engine and the crunch of gravel. Trish. Coming home from work.

  The graveyard shift.

  She mocked you last night. Accused you of being lazy. But you’re not lazy. You’re a hard worker. You’re—

  Anger fueled the force of his next swing.

  The two split logs flew to each side of the axe head as it hewed the log and sank into the stump beneath it.

  But once again the split logs did not bleed.

  The car stopped beside the house.

  He wrenched the blade free.

  Your son doesn’t turn eleven until next week. You can pick him up at school today when you’re done here. Pick him up early. Bring him back home.

  He would need that blood to fix the woodshed door.

  A car door slammed.

  Eleven years old. Next week.

  “Hey,” Trish called. “How’s it coming?”

  Adrian turned toward her and realized that she was mocking him even now. It was her tone of voice. It was all there in her tone of voice.

  You need to oil that hinge.

  “It’s coming,” he heard himself say, but it wasn’t really like he was saying it, instead it was more like he was somewhere else nearby hearing another person talk to his wife.

  The axe felt comfortable in his hand.

  An extension of himself. Another limb. With a bladed end.

  Blood in the sunlight.

  He walked toward her.

  Oil and blood.

  And then the door to that troubling woodshed would never bother him again.

  “Hello, honey,” he said. “Welcome home.”

  Preemptive Justice

  8:51 a.m.

  2 hours 4 minutes left

  “Well?” Daniel asked his brother. “Do you think it worked?”