Placebo

by Steven James

  How much time?

  Thirty seconds.

  Maybe.

  Maybe not.

  Cuffed to him like this, I can’t think of a way to get out. My first thought is to try to get his body out of the vehicle and swim it to the surface, but I have very little air left in my lungs, the current is strong, and I’m exhausted. I’d never make it.

  This is your punishment for not stopping Rachel. Dying like your family did.

  Drowning.

  All is dark and cold as the SUV comes to rest on the river bottom.

  My strength is fading.

  I’m sorry, Rachel. I’m sorry, Tony. Drew. I loved you.

  I do love you—

  Relax.

  Maybe I deserve to die.

  I hear Charlene’s words: Stop hating yourself . . . Rachel had problems . . . She was ill . . . Something broke inside of her and she didn’t have the chance to get it fixed.

  Death always wins in the end.

  It was her choice, Jevin, not yours.

  Death always wins.

  Yes.

  In the end.

  I did love you, Rachel. I do. I can’t help it.

  But I couldn’t save her.

  No one could.

  I think of the two women. Rachel, Charlene. One gone. The other waiting for me. Three lives wound around each other. Destinies intermingled.

  Entangled.

  I think of how much the death of those I loved affected me, wonder how much my death will affect Charlene.

  You can postpone death, but you cannot conquer it. Only one person, the one who rose, ever has.

  One day death will have its way with me.

  But that doesn’t need to be today.

  You’re an escape artist, Jevin Banks. So escape.

  Yeah, I think I will.

  Pick the lock. You have to pick the lock.

  I don’t have anything with me to—

  Well—

  Except for one thing.

  The car key.

  But not the key exactly.

  What it’s attached to.

  Convergence

  With my free hand I feel for the key, find the looped wire ring that connects it to the keyless entry fob. I try to twist it from the ignition, but the car is still in drive. I pop it into neutral, remove the key.

  My air is giving out fast. I don’t have long.

  Stay calm, Jevin.

  Lower your heart rate.

  Just like you used to. In your show.

  But a torrent of air bursts up from my mouth.

  No! Come on, focus!

  The wire resists at first, but when I jam my fingernail in and twist, it uncurls a little bit. I don’t need to unloop it all the way, just enough to get it into the handcuff’s lock.

  It takes a few seconds, a few precious seconds, but I manage, and once it’s in the lock mechanism, my fingers know what to do. Instinct.

  The cuff snaps open, I pull my hand free from the assassin’s corpse and snake my way out the open window, then push off the side of the SUV with my feet to propel myself toward the surface. I stroke as best I can with my broken ribs, and as soon as my head breaks through, I sputter and gasp for breath.

  The current has pulled me toward the middle of the river, and the bank is more than fifty feet away.

  With the water moving this fast and as weak as I am, it won’t be easy to make it that far.

  I hear my name and see Charlene, cuffs gone, sprinting along the shoreline. I’m too out of breath to reply, but pivot in the current and start to swim toward her.

  Fighting the current is tough. I wish I’d done laps with her this last year, kept in shape for swimming. I manage a few strokes but that’s it. I’m too weak, it hurts too much, strains the muscles around my fractured ribs.

  I begin to sink again, and the last thing I see before the dark water swallows me is Charlene throwing off her jacket and rushing toward the water.

  Riah stared at Darren’s body, the trocar still embedded in his side, still pumping embalming fluid into his corpse.

  She’d always wondered what it would be like to kill a human being. And now she knew.

  It felt like nothing. No more impactful or moving than tying her shoes or putting on makeup.

  Watching him while it happened had only made her wonder how long he would twitch before he stopped quivering for good, just like that snake’s body that she held when she was a girl.

  Killed but not yet dead.

  But now Darren was both.

  Finally, she turned off the pump.

  Leaving the funeral home, she saw that the SUV was gone. Tire tracks led to the river, but none of the three people—Daniel, Mr. Banks, or Ms. Antioch—were anywhere to be seen. Perhaps they all drowned. That would be unfortunate if they had other things they were hoping to accomplish today.

  She had killed one person and could kill again. She could kill her father. Yes, she could do it and feel no remorse whatsoever.

  Now you know. Do it for Katie.

  At her apartment she already had the items she would need to restrain him while she did her work—the things she’d acquired for her sleepover with Cyrus.

  He raped Katie, the incestuous pedophile sexually abused and raped both of his daughters.

  Both of them. So many times. He impregnated his youngest daughter and caused her to stop believing in love.

  Perhaps killing him was the closest Riah would come, could ever come, to loving her sister and even her dead mother.

  It wasn’t much, but it was something. Yes, human beings do want to love and be loved. To experience the real thing. Riah had wanted that for herself but had been unable to ever attain it or express it. But even if she couldn’t, she could at least act on behalf of justice, on behalf of those she wished she could have cared about.

  Planning how she would take care of her father, Riah Colette, the psychopath, left the funeral home to get the items she would be needing from her apartment.

  The president’s speech was postponed. The police disbanded the crowd and thoroughly searched the rooftop as well as the pavement below, but they found no sign of the man who’d leaned off the edge of the Franklin Grand Hotel, exploded, and apparently disintegrated in midair.

  The dark-haired man who’d introduced himself as Cyrus’s friend had left a few minutes before, and when her boss didn’t answer his phone, Caitlyn Vaughn decided to check on him.

  She found him tied to his office chair, slowly regaining consciousness.

  His lips were stitched shut with thick black thread. His shirt was off; the skin of his stomach had been sliced open and then sewn back up. Beneath the skin something squirmed, then something else, until the whole surface of his belly began to quiver and bulge unevenly, and when she glanced at the aquariums in the corner, she saw that the one containing the roaches was empty.

  There were only a few wasps remaining in the other.

  Looking back at Cyrus, she saw a wasp squeeze out from between his lips, tug itself free, crawl across his cheek, and then lift into the air.

  Caitlyn had never seen anything so disturbing and she felt repulsed. Turned away.

  But then hesitated.

  This was the man who’d slept with her and promised to leave his wife to be with her, but had not. This was the man who’d flaunted his affair with Riah Colette right in front of her, and then had sex with her right here in his office while she was just outside the door, forced to listen to everything.

  This was the man.

  He’d lied to her. Used her. Only. For. Sex. Betrayed her.

  And so, as Caitlyn Vaughn went to the desk phone to call 911, just perhaps she did not dial the number as quickly as she might have if Cyrus had treated her more like a woman deserves.

  I hear sounds wrestling for my attention. The river. A roar in my head. Sirens. A voice: “Jevin.” It’s Rachel, coming from somewhere beyond space and time, calling to me. “I love you, Jevin.”

  Rachel—

 
No.

  She’s gone, Jevin.

  She’s dead.

  She’s—

  “Jevin—”

  My head begins to clear.

  No, it’s Charlene. Not Rachel.

  Rachel drowned when she killed your boys.

  It’s hard to open my eyes, and when I manage to at last, it makes me dizzy, but I see Charlene leaning over me. “Jevin! Thank God you’re okay!”

  I cough harshly and my side roars with pain. I turn my head, spit out a mouthful of water.

  Charlene eases her hand beneath my neck to support me.

  Yes, those are sirens in the background. Around me light is swimming with sound. I close my eyes and cough, draw in as deep a breath as I can, try to lean up on my elbow, but my side screams at me again and I end up dropping to my back. Gazing at Charlene, I see that she’s soaking wet. “You pulled me out.”

  “Yes.”

  “Mouth to mouth?”

  “Yes.”

  Okay.

  “That’s the seventh time I’ve drowned and you’ve saved me.”

  “Who’s counting.”

  “I’m glad you got out of those cuffs.”

  “I’m glad I was wearing those earrings.”

  I gesture toward the water. “Did he come up?”

  She shakes her head.

  A moment passes. I don’t know how to say this. “Charlene, did you, a moment ago . . . I thought I heard someone say ‘I love you.’ I thought it was Rachel.”

  “Yes.”

  “Was it . . . ?”

  “Yes.”

  I can’t tell if she means that it was my imagination or if she means that it was her. For some reason it doesn’t feel right to ask her to clarify.

  There are so many things I want to say to her. So many things I need to say. Her hand is still under my neck. “In the hotel,” I tell her, “you said that without hope you wouldn’t be able to make it through the day.”

  Our thoughts can heal us or destroy us. Placebos. Curses.

  “I remember.”

  Blessings. A love that conquers death . . .

  The idea that death could be conquered, that life would win in the end . . . an idea too good to be true, but also the most necessary truth of all.

  “Prana.” The word barely comes out. I’m feeling weaker than I thought.

  She leans close. “What?”

  “The life-sustaining force. I finally know what it is. It’s hope.”

  The placebo for grief, for hating yourself. The only way to move on.

  “Yes.” Her eyes smile at me. And I can’t remember ever seeing her look so beautiful before. The longer we look into each other’s eyes, the more right it feels, and finally she says softly, “We’re entangled, aren’t we?”

  I draw her close, and by the way I kiss her, I doubt she’ll need to read my mind to know the answer.

  Another Goat

  52 hours later

  Friday, October 30

  3:04 p.m.

  “That’s really nice,” I tell Xavier. We’re watching CNN. They’re re-airing the footage that a woman at Independence Park took on her cell phone of the guy stepping off the Franklin Grand Hotel on Wednesday. “You can’t even see the cables retract, not even on film.”

  “And the explosion covers everything.”

  “Misdirection.”

  “Yup.” He dips a cracker into his cheese spread, swipes out a sizable dollop. “People see what they expect to see. Not what’s really there.”

  I shake my head. “And you just rode down the elevator afterward?”

  He shrugs. “I had a couple minutes to myself before anyone got up there.” He glances at the bag in the corner. “I always wanted to do that stunt. Something I came up with for your next stage show.”

  “I don’t have a next stage show, Xavier.”

  “Not yet, dude. But I know you, and you won’t be able to stay away from it forever.”

  “Well, you made that look better than I ever could.”

  He looks pleased.

  The women and kids should be here any minute. He goes for another cracker full of cheese spread.

  “I gotta ask you, Xav. What’s the deal with you and cheese anyway?”

  “You want some?”

  “No, actually, I have a policy: I never eat anything that smells like my feet.”

  “I wouldn’t eat anything that smells like your feet either.”

  “What I’m saying is, why are you eating cheese all the time?”

  “You’ve heard of quirks, of course.”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, I felt like I needed one to be a more well-rounded individual.”

  “You needed a quirk? What, are you serious?”

  “Sure. It took me awhile to come up with something a little different. Subtle, a little idiosyncratic, but understated. I like cheese; it was a good fit. I’m much more interesting now. Don’t you think?”

  “Um. Yeah.” The news program switches to early polling numbers for next year’s election. I flick it off. “Are you still planning to go to that tectonic weapons conference this weekend? You never told me.”

  “I fly out early tomorrow. Donnie’s coming with me. He seems to have an interest in alternative news. Fionna gave him permission. She’s really keen on field trips.”

  “I’ve noticed.”

  As if on cue, there’s a knock at the door. “Are you guys ready?” It’s Charlene.

  We join the women and four kids in the hallway and head for the elevators.

  We’d decided to stay in Philadelphia for a few more days.

  Some of our time had been spent, of course, in interviews with the police, the Secret Service, and the media, but surprisingly, the law enforcement officers hadn’t hassled us as much as I’d thought they would. Perhaps because of what we’d been through, or what we’d stopped from happening—the events the government was denying ever occurred.

  Which didn’t surprise Xavier one bit.

  We’d tried to find Dr. Colette to corroborate our story, but she hasn’t been seen since the funeral home incident. At first I wondered if she had perhaps been planning on helping the twins after all, but then I remembered that she’d killed Darren and I decided that was unlikely. I figured she would show up soon enough.

  And so.

  The president was fine. Undersecretary of Defense Williamson was facing a congressional hearing, and Dr. Arlington was in the hospital with some sort of serious infection, although details concerning what’d happened to him hadn’t been released to the public. Still no idea on who Akinsanya was.

  Earlier today I’d tried calling my dad as I’d promised Charlene I would do, but as I suspected, he hadn’t answered or returned my call. For now, the things we all put off saying would have to wait.

  As a result of the news coverage, Michelle Boyd begged me to come back to Entertainment Film Network. In addition, I received offers from four other networks to launch a new series, but I declined all the invitations.

  Freelancing seemed like a good idea for the time being.

  Fionna has offered to act as our tour guide, and as we emerge from the elevator she announces that we’re going to visit the Pennsylvania Hospital this afternoon. “It was cofounded by Benjamin Franklin in 1751 and was the first hospital in the western hemisphere. At first they had a difficult time paying for costs, so they charged spectators an admission fee to watch operations.”

  Five-year-old Mandie wrinkles up her nose. “That’s gross.”

  “Cool.” Donnie smiles. “That’d be awesome.”

  Maddie gives him a sigh and a head shake. “You are such a boy.”

  “And you’re such a girl.”

  “Thank you.”

  We leave the hotel. No limos or executive cars today. My side still aches, but walking doesn’t hurt too badly. It feels good to get some fresh air, and the Pennsylvania autumn trees are stunning.

  Fionna goes on with her explanation. “There was no anesthesia, of course,
so people got to choose between opium, whiskey, or getting smacked on the head with a mallet wrapped in leather to be knocked unconscious for the operation.”

  “What’s opium, Mommy?” Mandie asks.

  “Something that’s very bad for you, dear.” Fionna pauses, looks reflectively at the horizon. “Here’s one: when the man thought about getting smacked on the head with a mallet wrapped in leather to be knocked unconscious for his operation, he looked about as excited as the second-place kid in the Scripps National Spelling Bee after misspelling the word idiot.”

  “Hmm,” Xavier acknowledges. “That one I actually like.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Wray. I think I’m finally getting the hang of this.”

  Yesterday Fionna took us to the Eastern State Penitentiary, which is now a tourist site. When I saw the thirty-foot-high walls that were also ten feet thick, I started thinking of ways I could walk through them.

  Occupational hazard.

  I’d come up with two ideas at the time. Now, on the way to the Pennsylvania Hospital, I think of one more, a good one that’ll work even with live audiences watching from both sides of the wall. And the top of it.

  Might be a good publicity stunt to launch a new live stage show.

  Charlene is by my side and says quietly, “Penny for your thoughts.”

  “I think I’m going to walk through a wall.”

  “Sounds fun. Will you be needing a lovely assistant?”

  “I could probably come up with a way to work someone in.”

  “Glad to hear that.” She takes my arm in hers. “As long as it’s me.”

  “There’s no one else even in the running, Petunia.”

  “I’m glad to hear that, Wolverine.”

  The man who had shot the vest of the suicide bomber, the man who went by the name Akinsanya, had, of course, lied to Darren and Daniel about Adrian Goss. Adrian was not their father; he had known their mother, yes, but he was just a person Akinsanya had come up with to serve as another test.

  He boarded the plane for Dubai, a place to hide out until he could regroup. Figure out his next step.

  In the last two days, RixoTray stock had plummeted and he’d lost over four million dollars. Yes, his investment portfolio had taken a major hit, but in Akinsanya’s business, money was easy to make. More significantly, because of Arlington’s reckless and illegal actions, the whole telomerase research project was being brought into question.