Placebo

by Steven James

  “So this assassination plot was hatched at the Pentagon.”

  “Well, that or a pharmaceutical company.”

  “I see.”

  I rub my forehead.

  “And how did you come about this information?”

  It would take way too long to explain everything. “That doesn’t matter, this is—”

  “Sir, how exactly are these twins going to kill the president by their thoughts?”

  “Maybe stop his heart. I’m not sure.”

  “With the use of their psychic powers?”

  “You have to believe me—”

  “Excuse me for just one moment.” When she puts me on hold, I know it’s over. This is never going to work. I imagine she’s calling for a car to pick us up right now, or possibly checking to make sure she has a lock on our GPS.

  I hang up.

  “Well,” Charlene acknowledges, “maybe that wasn’t the best idea after all.”

  “Maybe you should have made the call.”

  “Are they going to follow up on anything you said?”

  “I doubt it. We need to find the twins ourselves. Lead the Secret Service to them.”

  “Then we can’t let them find us first.”

  We come to a bottleneck in traffic. “That’s why I chose your phone. I thought I’d give you the honors.” I hand her cell to her.

  She catches on. “Are you saying . . . ?”

  “Yup. Something we both know you’ve wanted to do for a long time.”

  With a gleam in her eye, she rolls down her window and pelts her cell phone onto the road. It shatters in a lovely little explosion of technology.

  “That felt really good.”

  “I’ll bet it did.”

  Of course, it was certainly possible that NSA or the Secret Service had already tracked our location, even traced the phone number back to Charlene. In fact, they might’ve already dispatched agents to find us, but I was counting on the fact that in the congested traffic they wouldn’t be able to figure out which car the phone had been thrown from and, as we drove on, wouldn’t be able to find us.

  Yet.

  The plan: find Dr. Colette.

  Then the twins.

  And then let the Secret Service find us.

  The First Baby

  Riah found no photos of the axe murder victims.

  Which was a bit disappointing.

  But the search for the pictures of the dead family made her think of her own family once again. Her dead mother. Her father. Her sister. And the question of what people really want: feeling loved or being loved.

  She loved you when you were a child.

  Yes. She did.

  But you never loved her.

  Riah drew out her phone, tapped in a number that she hadn’t called in six months but had committed to memory long before that.

  A woman answered. “Hello?”

  “Katie Burleson?”

  Immediate suspicion. “Who is this?”

  “This is Riah.”

  Silence.

  “Your sister.”

  “How many Riahs do you think I know?” Katie’s words scorched the air.

  “It’s been a long time since we spoke and—”

  “If I wanted to talk to you, I would have called you. It’s not like you’re hard to find. I’m hanging up now and I don’t want you to call this number again.”

  “Katie—”

  “Goodbye—”

  “He did things to me.”

  Riah waited for the line to go dead but it didn’t.

  “Our father,” she went on, “he did things to me. Things a father should never do to his children.”

  “Of course he did.”

  A pause. “You knew?”

  “Is that why you called? To try and make me feel sorry for you? What do you think happened when you went off to college? Do you think he just got interested in Mom again? Really? Are you kidding me?”

  Riah found her sister’s words informative and sensed that she should feel a deep sense of rage against their father for violating Katie too.

  In the background, Riah could hear Katie’s youngest child crying, and a thought struck her: Katie had her first pregnancy, her first abortion, shortly after moving out of the house. She’d always said her boyfriend Jose was the father.

  “It wasn’t Jose’s baby,” Riah said softly.

  “Don’t call this number again.” And then, without saying goodbye, Katie hung up.

  This bitter woman, this hurting woman, had known innocence, known love as a child, but both had died over the years because of their father.

  Or perhaps because Riah had never done anything to stop him.

  She was left wondering what to do.

  She could never help her sister feel loved, it wasn’t in her nature, but could she do something else, not out of love exactly, but in the service of justice? An act on her sister’s behalf?

  Yes.

  A very specific act.

  Yes.

  To right a tragic wrong.

  The greater good.

  Riah made a firm and certain decision to pay a visit to their father as soon as her duties with the twins were completed.

  Credentials

  9:48 a.m.

  1 hour 7 minutes left

  RixoTray’s R&D facility lies on the outskirts of Bridgeport, surrounded by a dense wooded area that I suspect also belongs to the firm to create a buffer between their facility and any corporate or residential encroachment.

  Our driver slows, gets in line behind the four cars in front of us. They all pass through the checkpoint without a hitch, and only moments later we pull to a stop beside the guard station.

  The driver and I roll down our windows. The guard looks at me with a practiced air of suspicion but ignores our driver as if he doesn’t even exist. Apparently, Charlene and I are the ones he’s most interested in.

  “Driver’s licenses, please.”

  We produce them, as does our driver. We all hand them over. Charlene and I also give him our fake FDA credentials. “J. Franklin Banks,” I tell him, avoiding drawing attention to my real name, my stage name, the one I used on TV. “Food and Drug Administration.” I briefly hold up my clipboard and its attached documents to show him that I mean business.

  He gazes at the driver’s licenses, then studies the creds carefully. Fionna had told us they would check our fingerprints, but that didn’t concern me much, since, unless you’ve been printed by law enforcement or as part of a corporate security program, your prints won’t show up on any kind of watch list.

  As expected, the guard holds out a small electronic pad about the size of a smartphone. “Fingerprints, please.”

  All three of us, in turn, place our forefingers on the pad and no red flags come up. He goes on, “What is the purpose of your visit?”

  “We’re here because of complaints involving a research project,” I tell him. “We need to speak directly to Dr. Riah Colette.”

  He hands the creds to his partner to study as well. Then looks over a clipboard of his own.

  “I don’t see your name on our appointment list.”

  “No, of course not.”

  He looks at me questioningly.

  Charlene scootches toward me, leans toward the window, addresses him. “The FDA no longer announces spot inspections or visits of this nature before they occur. In the past, people have shredded documents and destroyed evidence when they’ve received prior knowledge of our visits. Arriving unannounced is the only way to assure that none of that happens.”

  Before he can reply, she goes on, “This complaint involves ethical violations involving the use of human test subjects in experimental drug trials. It is a highly sensitive matter and these are serious allegations. I’m afraid that’s all we’re authorized to tell you.”

  Oh, she was good.

  I’ve saved the clipboards and their paperwork as the pièce de résistance. Now I hand them to him.

  The line of cars behind
us is growing longer.

  The guard flips through the official-looking documents that Fionna and Charlene drew up based on the information Fionna’s children had gathered on actual FDA complaint report forms.

  I can tell he isn’t reading any of the fine print.

  They never read the fine print.

  Except Xavier on iTunes updates.

  At last the guard looks at his partner, who shrugs and passes the IDs back to him. He returns the clipboard, driver’s licenses, and FDA credentials to us and waves us through.

  Charlene whispers to me, “One down, two to go.”

  Air Force One touched down at the Philadelphia International Airport.

  Originally, before delivering his eleven o’clock speech, the president had been scheduled to visit a charter high school to encourage the students to be good citizens and strive toward academic excellence, but he’d changed his plans earlier in the morning to give himself more time to review what he was going to say.

  The Secret Service, of course, mentioned nothing about the reported psychic assassination plot as they escorted him from the plane.

  Not only was this latest threat ludicrous, but the Secret Service has a policy: never notify the president of any threats against his life unless there is immediate and imminent danger. Considering the fact that he receives more than twelve thousand death threats a year, keeping him up to speed would mean updating him hourly about all the people who wanted to kill him.

  And the Secret Service never cancels presidential events just because of uncorroborated death threats.

  The speech at the Liberty Bell would go on.

  Still, as absurd as this threat was, they had to follow up on it, just as they have to follow up on every threat to his life—all twelve thousand. Two agents had been sent to bring in the person who’d called it in, and whose GPS location had been pinpointed and verified by NSA.

  In the lobby of the research facility, Charlene and I again produce our credentials and paperwork.

  We place our things on the conveyor belt, step through the full-body scanner, and the security guard working the X-ray machine tells us we’ll need to leave our cell phones with him. “I’m sorry. There are no pictures allowed, no recording devices of any kind inside the building.” He sounds tired. Looks tired. I wonder how long he’s been working already today. Or last night.

  I hadn’t thought through this part of the plan. I’m not sure if government inspectors would need to keep their phones with them. While I’m debating what to say, Charlene speaks up. “Only one of us carries a phone and it’s illegal for us to leave it behind. Look at page fourteen of the complaint form.”

  “I’m sorry, it’s our policy to—”

  “I’ll give you a phone number. Call it and explain your policy to the federal agents who will—”

  He cuts her off by holding up a hand in surrender.

  Yeah, she really was good.

  He exhaustedly motions for us to move along. At the final checkpoint we’re handed visitors’ passes, and one of the sentries, a mountain of a man who must weigh at least three hundred pounds, tells us he will escort us to Dr. Colette’s office.

  I jot something on the clipboard. A shopping list, actually, but taking notes is a way to mess with him, to show that Charlene and I will be the ones calling the shots and not him. “Yes. Please”—I gesture toward the hallway, indicating for him to lead us—“take us to Dr. Colette.”

  Brandy

  9:57 a.m.

  58 minutes left

  “Thank you for seeing me, Mr. Vice President.”

  “Of course.”

  Cyrus had been at the White House to meet with other high-level administration employees a dozen times, the vice president half a dozen. He wasn’t a lobbyist, but he’d been consulted about the ongoing health care legislation debate and the issue of counterfeit pharmaceuticals—a growing problem, especially the ones being smuggled in from southeast Asia.

  And of course, anyone who’d donated as much to a presidential campaign as Cyrus had personally done, and as RixoTray had corporately done, was welcome at the White House. It was the way the system was set up, the way institutes of power have always operated. Money speaks. And the more of it there is, the more loudly it’s heard.

  “Have a seat, Cyrus,” the vice president invited. “Would you like a drink?”

  Of course, it was too early to begin drinking socially, but the vice president was not a coffee kind of guy. Not many people knew how early he typically got started on his brandy each day, but he had not kept it from Cyrus.

  “Cognac. Thank you.”

  “Good choice.”

  Over the last couple years, they’d occasionally discussed the fact that the vice president hadn’t gotten his party’s nomination last time around, but it wasn’t a topic he liked to address, so Cyrus typically refrained from bringing it up. But with the election next year, and considering the nature of his visit here today, he decided to address it, at least tangentially.

  As the vice president produced an elegant bottle of cognac from his desk and poured each of them a drink, Cyrus said, “So, Hoult is already in election mode?”

  Vice President Pinder brought Cyrus his drink. “You know how these things go,” he said evasively. “Now, before we get down to business, how is Helen?”

  “She’s good. Luci Ann?”

  “As beautiful, supportive, and as much of a shopaholic as ever.”

  Cyrus raised his glass. “To our wives.”

  “To our wives.”

  They clinked glasses. Drank.

  The cognac was extraordinary, and Cyrus complimented the vice president on it.

  “Camus Cognac Cuvee 3.128, rated by many connoisseurs as the best cognac in the world. We have only so many heartbeats, my friend. It’d be a shame to waste any of them on cheap brandy.”

  They both drank for a moment. Cyrus knew they didn’t have a lot of time to talk, especially since this meeting had gotten started late, but he also knew that etiquette required that he not jump immediately into discussing business.

  “So”—Pinder was the one to break the silence—“how is the telomerase research going? Have you come up with a cure for aging yet? A way to offer me a few more of those heartbeats?”

  “Working on it. We’ve started clinical trials. Another year or so and we’re hoping to have FDA approval.”

  “Well, I’d ask to be one of your human guinea pigs, but I think I’ll wait until you get the kinks out.”

  “Probably a good idea.”

  A small smile. “Hopefully, I’ll still be around to benefit from it.”

  “Hopefully, we both will.”

  They sipped their drinks, then the vice president moved things forward: “I’m guessing you’re here about the speech.”

  Cyrus set down his glass. “You know the president’s new initiatives will not serve the American people: the proposals regarding the expedited release of generic pharmaceuticals.”

  The vice president scratched at the back of his neck, then stood. “Let me play devil’s advocate here for a moment, Cyrus. Pharmaceutical companies are some of the most profitable companies in the world. Every year they post billions of dollars of profits while millions of working-class Americans struggle under the exorbitant price of prescription drugs. Making generics more readily available could save thousands of lives each year.”

  Prolong, not save.

  Rule #1: Everyone dies.

  Rule #2: There’s nothing you can do to change Rule #1.

  Cyrus had heard all this before. “Actually, pharmaceutical firms aren’t as profitable as most people think. Oil companies, tech firms, insurance companies, banks all have higher profit margins. Big business has always been an easy target for liberals to take potshots at. You know that.”

  The vice president rolled his shot glass back and forth in his fingers reflectively.

  Cyrus continued, “Also, the Food and Drug Administration has made it harder than ever to get new, l
ife-saving drugs onto the market. Out of a thousand compounds studied in prediscovery and then put through a decade of preclinical and clinical trials, only one will ever become an FDA-approved drug. The R&D costs are—”

  “Yes, yes, I know. Astronomical.”

  “The FDA allows generics to be up to twenty times less effective in crossing the blood-brain barrier than trade-name pharmaceuticals. So when you’re talking about anticonvulsants, mood stabilizers, and antidepressants, the public ends up suffering the consequences. Not to mention that 10 percent of generics are inert.”

  Vice President Pinder sighed. “Cyrus, I am on your side on all this, always have been. But the president isn’t going to change his mind. At this point there’s really nothing I can do.”

  “But if you could?”

  “If I could?”

  “If you could make it easier for us to get our pharmaceutical products to the public without the added restrictions the president wants to put on the industry, would you? If you could keep producers of generic pharmaceuticals from taking advantage of our research and then undercutting us on the price, would you do it?”

  “I’ve always done all I can to support scientific innovation and the advancement of pharmaceuticals for the betterment of the American people.”

  “Yes.”

  “So are you asking that I speak with the president about this? Because I assure you that he’s not going to back down. He is quite firm on what he intends to do.”

  Cyrus knew the president wouldn’t back down. That wasn’t what he’d come here to talk about. “We could really use someone at the top who sees things more clearly than Hoult does. Who realizes that without our R&D, the life-saving drugs would never exist in the first place, that we need time to recoup our investment before we’re undercut by generics.”

  “Once again we are on the same page.”

  The vice president laid his hand on the desk and gently massaged the elegant wood as if it were the skin of his lover, who Cyrus knew was not Luci Ann, his beautiful, supportive, shopaholic wife.

  Varied love interests.

  Something else the two of them had in common.