Psycho Killer

With their wedding coming up, Tom Jurgen and Rachel investigate a death connected to a drug that gives its users the power to kill with their minds. 

Psycho Killer, Part One

The young man was standing on balcony, barefoot. He shook his head, apparently speaking to someone inside the apartment. 

            Then he rose up, three feet, five feet. He waved his arms, as if struggling against—nothing. He kicked and squirmed in the air, and then he went over the side of the balcony and down, head first, dropping out of sight.

            The video stopped, and Steven DiTocco came back on my screen, with his wife Evelyn. “That’s from the security camera across the street,” DiTocco said, his voice hushed as Evelyn bit her lip next to him. “The police—they think Sean jumped somehow. But there’s no note, no reason for—”

            “Tell him about Brendan.” Evelyn nudged him.

            “I’m getting to that.” He took a breath. “My son’s friend Brendan was found in the apartment. Dead. Some kind of brain aneurysm, they said.”

            “It doesn’t make sense.” Evelyn shook her head. “None of it. I can’t . . .” She turned her face away.

            “This is just really strange,” DiTocco said, patting his wife’s shoulder. 

            They were in their 70s, and looked frail. Of course, losing a son will devastate you at any age.

            “We found you because you seem to handle cases like this.” DiTocco took another breath, and coughed. “We don’t expect miracles. We just want to know what happened to our son.”

            I picked up my coffee. Cases like this? Yeah, I do tend to attract cases that veer toward the supernatural, so I guess I’ve developed a reputation: Tom Jurgen, private detective of the paranormal. Who you gonna call?

            “I can certainly ask some questions,” I told them. “I can’t promise anything. I’ll need whatever you can give me about your son’s friends and work, and the name of the police detectives you’ve spoken to.”

            Evelyn went to put together everything she had while DiTocco and I discussed the financial details. After everything was done, I said I’d do my best and stay in touch. 

            They looked sad as we ended the call. I couldn’t blame them.

            Then I looked up as Rachel walked into the office we share.

            Rachel’s my girlfriend. Actually, she was my fiancée. She’s got red hair, hazelnut eyes, psychic powers—pretty much the complete package. And in two weeks we were going to be married. 

            She punched my shoulder before heading for her chair. “What are you looking at?”

            “You. My future wife.” I grinned. “Unless you’re having second thought.”

            “I can still change my mind.” She sat down. “Don’t delete your Tinder profile just yet.”

            “Heard from Georgeanne?”

“Yeah, she’s coming. How about your brother?”

I have a brother in California. I haven’t seen him in years, but we’re friendly. “Yeah. He’s checking out airlines.”

“And your mom?”

My mother is in assisted living. She drives her motorized chair like Vin Diesel in the Fast & Furiousflicks, but she’s got all her wits intact. “She wants to bring a date.” I rolled my eyes.

Rachel snorted. “Serious boyfriend? Good for her.” She’s met my mother a few times. I’d only met Rachel’s mother a few weeks ago. That dinner had been—interesting.

I glanced at my computer. “Hey, could you look at something for me?”

She sighed. “It better not be flower arrangements again.”

“No, take a look at this video. It’s for the case.”

She leaned over my shoulder as I played the video of Sean DiTocco going off the balcony. “I know you can’t usually pick up anything on a recorded video, but—”

Rachel shook her head. “Yeah, maybe if it was the original, not a file in an email. But I can’t sense anything from this. Except—wow.”

“Yeah.” I drank some coffee. “What do you think? Invisible monster? Psycho—what is it? Psychokinesis?”

She shrugged. “I’m just your standard issue psychic.” She turned toward her desk. “Did you talk to the shaman?”

“She says she’ll stick to a standard ritual after the actual ceremony. Hopefully your mom won’t be too shocked.”

“Or yours.”

An email came minutes later from Evelyn DiTocco, with a list of her son’s friends, his work address, and a copy of the police report. The first thing I did was call the detective who’d handled the investigation. I had to leave a message. I didn’t recognize his name, but I figured he’d probably know me. I have a certain reputation around the Chicago Police Department because I insist on telling the truth about the monsters and demons I run into. 

I scanned the list. Sean DiTocco had worked in marketing for a small pharmaceutical firm called Tior Pharma. There were several names of employees there, a few friends from college, but at the bottom was a female name: Casey Atkins. Evelyn had put “girlfriend” next to her name.

            I sighed. As a reporter, I hated calling survivors of tragedies, and as a P.I. it’s not much easier. But sometimes it has to be done. I punched Casey Atkins’ number into my phone.

“Ms. Atkins, my name is Tom Jurgen,” I said when she picked up. “I’m a private detective hired by Sean DiTocco’s parents. I’m sorry to intrude, but they hired me to look into the circumstances behind Sean’s—what happened to their son. Would it be possible to ask you a few questions? Or arrange to meet?”

“Yeah.” She sighed. “They told me. What—what do you want to know?”

“You’ve seen the video?”

“Yes. It doesn’t—it makes no sense. He couldn’t have jumped. He had no reason to jump. We were—not exactly engaged, but it was going there. It’s just . . .” Her voice faded off. I waited, letting her pull herself together.

“I can’t talk right now,” she said after a moment. “I’m at work, and—it’s not good. Can we meet somewhere?”

We arranged to meet at a bar near her office—she worked in real estate—at 5:30. 

 

Casey Atkins, in her late 20s, had long blond hair tied back in a ponytail, and wore a crisp blazer and blue slacks as she trudged into the bar of LaSalle Street at 5:45. “Sorry I’m late,” she muttered as she sank into the booth. “It’s hard to—focus, you know?’

            She ordered a vodka and tonic from a passing waitress. “I don’t know what to tell you.” She seemed resentful, reluctant, and impatient to get rid of me. “Sean wasn’t depressed or suicidal. Not at all. Maybe it’s all CGI? Could someone do that?”

            “It’s been examined.” The detective on the case, a man named Schwartz, had called me back in the afternoon. He was reasonably informative and only moderately hostile. The video didn’t have any evidence of tampering. No one had heard anything unusual from the apartment. Sean’s friend Brendan Robbins hadn’t been poisoned or overdosed, and neither of them had any significant amounts of drugs or alcohol in their bodies. 

Schwartz didn’t want to talk about the paranormal possibilities. “I’ve heard of you, Jurgen. You seem okay. That doesn’t mean I’m going to enable any of your fantasies about witches and monsters.” But he wished me luck before hanging up, which was nice of him, I thought. 

            “Then what can I tell you?” She sat back, crossing her arms. Annoyed.

            “Do you know anyone who might have wanted to hurt him?” 

            Casey stared at me. “You mean an invisible gorilla? Or someone with an antigravity gun?”

            I actually once had a case with an invisible murderer. But I didn’t mention that. “Putting that aside. Anyone?”

She frowned, sipped her drink, and shook her head. “No. I just can’t think of anybody—I mean, Sean wasn’t perfect, but he was great, and everybody got along with him. It doesn’t seem like any of his friends would—do anything like this. Even if they could.”

“What about at work? Any office politics? Rivalries? Hidden secrets?”

For a moment her expression lightened. “It’s just marketing. They develop drugs for mental health. Depression, anxiety. Not exactly the cure for cancer. Ross’s working on some kind of a secret project, but half the scientists there think they’re on the verge of winning the Nobel Prize.”

“Ross—?” I remembered the name from Evelyn’s list of friends.

“Ross Holtz. He works in the lab, out in Skokie, but he’s in the downtown office a lot. They’re friends, I met him at some office things. Kind of weird, but he’s a scientist, you know?” She finished her drink and waved the waitress for another.

“What about Brendan?”

“Brendan?” She blinked and looked away. “I shouldn’t—he was a nice guy. You know? They were best friends forever. It doesn’t make sense that he would—die like that, right then.”

“Sometimes best friends have the deepest resentments,” I said.

Her drink came. “Maybe. I kind of thought he had a crush on me once. He hit on me one time, but that was before Sean and me were serious.”

I sipped my beer. “Look, I’ll be honest. I don’t know if I can do anything for Sean’s parents, but I have to look at everything. I’ve seen some pretty strange things in my time. Levitation, or whatever this is—it’s not even the weirdest thing I’ve heard of. If you can think of anything, even if it seems impossible, it could help.”

Casey squinted, thinking, then gulped her vodka tonic. “I wish. I’ll think about it, but right now—” She shook her head. “I still can’t get used to this.” She looked away from me, staring into the darkness.

I’d spent the afternoon trying to contact as many people on Evelyn DiTocco’s list as I could. Ross Holtz wasn’t on the list, so I had at least one new possible lead. Like I’d told Casey, I wasn’t very optimistic. But I had to try. 

 

At home Rachel was warming up leftover lasagna in the microwave. She’s a therapist at a small mental health clinic three days a week. Her psychic powers help, but it’s tough work sometimes. 

            “How was work, dear?” I leaned over to give her a kiss on the cheek.

            She swatted me away. “All the partners want to talk about is the wedding, and that makes me have trouble concentrating when I’m talking to patients.” The microwave beeped. She prodded the lasagna with a finger. “I’ll be glad when this is over.”

            I agreed. We’d talked about just going down to city hall, but decided our parents would never forgive us. I got a beer for her and a bottle of water for me from the refrigerator. Then my phone buzzed.

            “Oh-oh.” I called at the caller. “Anemone.”

            Rachel rolled her eyes. 

I answered. “Hello, Anemone. How are things on your end of the vampire kingdom?”

            “Tom!” Anemone laughed. “Is it true? Until death do you part?”

            “It’s true, unless Rachel kills me before the wedding.”

            “Still a possibility,” Rachel said. 

            “Not unless I’m invited to that too. I will be there, lovers!”

            “Clifton Page is invited too. FYI.”

            “It will be delightful to see him. I’ll start shopping for a wedding gift right away.” She smacked her lips in a kissing sound, then hung up.

             Rachel set the lasagna on the table. “It was your idea.”

            “It seemed politically wise.” Anemone was a vampire. She was actually the Vampire Queen of half the city. Clifton Page was King of the other half. It was an arrangement I’d helped set up several years ago, in the aftermath of a wave of vampire attacks across Chicago sparked by a vamp from out of town. The king and queen helped keep the local vampires from marauding and creating chaos. In return, the city supplied them with a certain amount of fresh blood monthly to dull their appetite for human flesh. I was the liaison. It worked.

            “I suppose.” Rachel opened her beer. “As long as they don’t get too thirsty.”

            “I’ll have some crosses and stakes on hand. Hidden away behind the altar.” We were holding the ceremony on our building’s rooftop deck, after sunset to accommodate the vamps. Most of our friends knew the reason, but I wondered if I’d have to explain it to my side of the guest list.

            “After dinner,” Rachel said, spooning some lasagna on her plate, “I was thinking we could practice.”

            “The wedding? I think I have everything down—”

            “No, you idiot.” She reached across the table to punch my arm. “The honeymoon.”

            “Oh.” I cocked my head. “Did your mother have that talk with you?”

            “I learned it all on the streets,” she said, flipping back a strand of her red hair. “Wanna see if I got it right?”

            “Race you to finish eating,” I said.

Psycho Killer, Part Two

The next morning, after coffee, I emailed Ross Holtz. He called me back after five minutes.

            “I don’t know.” He sounded full of energy, the kind that comes from staying up all night and taking a pill to achieve a second wind. “Not a lot of time. I’m downtown today, you’re in luck. I guess a few minutes? Meet me outside, on Dearborn, at 11, okay? I’m busy.” He hung up.

            Rachel strode into the office, humming the wedding march. “Carrie texted. Last night, when we were—you know. I’m having lunch with her.”

            “Tell her hi.” Carrie, Rachel’s best friend, was her maid of honor. She doesn’t like me, but Rachel insists she’s getting better. “Oh, do you still know any of the people in that invisible club?”

            “I think I’ve still got Danny’s number.” Danny was part of a group who possessed various tools that could render them invisible—mostly for harmless pranks, like sneaking into movie theaters. He’d helped me on a case many years ago when someone invisible had committed a murder with a baseball bat. “He might have moved, though.”

            “I’ll try him.” I sent a few more emails, then switched over to work on another case involving fraud and embezzlement.

            I left the office at 10:30, and by 11 I was standing outside an office building down on Dearborn Street. Busses and cars streamed by, but the sidewalks weren’t too crowded in the middle of the morning. A homeless man helped a woman who dropped her shopping bag. Two women jogged by in colorful sweats. The usual pace of life in the big city.

            The revolving door behind me swished with office workers and delivery people spinning their way in and out. At 11:46 it pushed out a young man in jeans and a blazer, a loose necktie dangling over his white shirt. A shorter man followed him, wearing a brown jacket and sneakers.

            “Jurgen?” The first man looked me up and down, then fished a cigarette out of his blazer. “Ross Holtz. Sorry, I only have a few minutes. What do you want?”

            Usually we find a nearby Starbucks or a bar. Holtz wanted to do this on the street? Probably to keep the chat short—a control move. Not the first time people have played it on me. I looked at the other man. “Who’s this?”

            Holtz frowned as he lit up. “Finn works with me. What’s going on?”

            “Sean DiTocco. You were friends?”

            He nodded defensively. “Yeah. We hung out. Sorry about what happened. What did they tell you about me?”

            “Just that you’re working on some kind of a secret project.”

He snorted. “Yeah. Going to change the world. You bet. Look, I don’t know anything about what happened to Sean, all right? It’s too bad. Some people just—I don’t know, right?”

“Which people? Sean?”

“I just mean he had a lot of luck in his life, you know? Good job, hot girlfriend. Sometimes it all goes away too quick.”

“Would anyone make it want to go away for him?” I moved to let a guy lugging boxes pass me.

“Who knows? Look, if that’s it, I’ve got to go. I’ve got a meeting at noon, so—” He dropped his cigarette on the ground and rubbed it out with his shoe.

I held out a card. “If you think of anything, call me.”

A breeze caught the card, and it fluttered to the sidewalk next to the smoldering cigarette but. Holtz scowled and bent down for it—

—and it rose up into his fingers. 

It wasn’t a breeze. It didn’t blow in any direction. It just elevated itself upward until Holtz closed his hand on it. 

“Okay?” Holtz straightened and shoved the card into his pocket. “Come on, Finn.”

Finn was looking at me, his mouth tight. As if warning me to say nothing. Then he followed Holtz through the door and into the building.

I stood on the sidewalk and watched them head through the lobby toward the elevators. I looked down at the sidewalk. Not the wind, not any kind of a bounce, not a helpful bug. The card had lifted itself in the air, rising straight into Holtz’ hand.

I looked around, then sent a quick text to Rachel. Then I headed for home.

 

Rachel came back from her lunch with Carrie at 2:30. “What’s new, lover?” She leaned down to kiss me.

            “You’re in a good mood.” I suspected they’d had a few beers. 

            “Carrie says hi.” She punched my arm, which also meant she was in a good mood. “I got your text, and she said she’d send a list of people who know about moving stuff around with your mind. Psychokinesis, that’s what she calls it. And she says if you ever hurt me, she’ll track you down and rip your intestines out.”

            “Nice to see she’s come around. Oh, we got an email from Sharp saying yes.” Anita Sharp was a cop I’d worked with on vampire cases and other supernatural affairs involving the CPD. Like Carrie, she tolerated me more than she actually liked me, but she was close with Rachel.

            “Yay. So what’s up with the case?” She sat down at her desk.

            “This guy I met, Ross Holtz? I saw him do some psycho-tele-whatever it is when I met him outside his office.”

            “Huh. What are you thinking?”

            “Not sure yet. I’ve been researching him ever since I got back.” Suddenly I felt hungry. I’d forgotten to eat lunch.

            But I’d found out a lot about Ross Holtz. Thirty-two, M.S. in biochemistry from the University of Chicago, single, stints at Pfizer and Baxter before his current position in neurobiological research at his current employer, Tior. Where Sean had worked. 

            Holtz’ specialty was antidepressant drugs. He’d helped develop several, never as a lead researcher, but at Tior he apparently had his own team and his own projects. After some digging I found Finn—full name Martin Finlay, not a scientist but an IT specialist. 

            Holtz owned a house in Skokie, where Tior had its labs. Finn rented an apartment in the Uptown neighborhood. He’d gone to the University of Illinois, then worked at half a dozen companies in and around Chicago, never staying in place more than one or two years. But I didn’t find any suggestion that he wasn’t good at his job. Maybe he just got restless.

            After a quick sandwich I got Carrie’s list of experts on psychokinesis. Carrie isn’t psychic like Rachel, but she knows a lot of people in Chicago’s supernatural community. I recognized one or two names, but I decided to start with Dr. Lindsay Hoffman, a biologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, because Carrie had noted that she’d been studying psychic phenomena throughout her career.

            Rachel was in a Zoom conference with a client of hers—she’s kept up her graphic design business while transitioning into fulltime therapist work—so I moved into the living room to call, and got Dr. Hoffman between classes.

            “In my experience, PK is pretty rare,” she told me. “I’ve seen some studies and performed some of my own tests, but nothing stands up to rigorous analysis. Anecdotally? Yes, I’ve seen it, but never under properly controlled situations. I mean, you can’t always drag the equipment you need into someone’s house, and there’s also the fact that I can’t emphasize this stuff in my work. Or my colleagues will think I’m just kooky.” She laughed

            “So you can’t say what might cause a person to develop psychokinetic powers?”

            She sighed. “Some people theorize that paranormal abilities originate from the pineal gland, the, uh, ‘third eye’ in the brain. Stimulating it, in theory, can access insights and abilities beyond what we would consider natural. But there’s absolutely no scientific evidence of that. Still, you can find papers arguing for that. Just not in any reputable journals.” She grunted. “What I’ve seen has mostly been unverifiable. People moving pencils, books, small objects. But one time . . .” Her voice trailed away.

            “Yes?” I prompted.

            “I wrote this up in my notes but I’ve never told anyone. Professionally, I mean, just family and friends. I was in China, in a small village, about 10 years ago. And there was a woman, 80 years old, she could—I saw her lift a boulder the size of a car. A small car, but still. Not a pencil. A boulder. I asked her about it, through an interpreter, and they told me she drank a special kind of tea, passed down in her family for generations. But they wouldn’t tell me what was in it. Or let me drink it.”

            “Would you? Drink it?”

            Hesitation. “I don’t know. But right then, at that moment, I really wanted to understand how it happened. How it was possible. I don’t know.”

            A boulder. Or a body? “So there might be some way to create it in a person. With the right, uh, formula.”

            “If you ask me in front of my colleagues or my class, I’ll say no. I’m a scientist, I need facts. Proof. Confirmation. But between friends—and you’re a friend of Cassiopeia, aren’t you? I’d have to say yes.”

            I didn’t know Carrie’s full name was Cassiopeia. “She’s a friend of my fiancée. But it’s safe with me. Thank you.”

            We hung up. I called some other people on Carrie’s list, but didn’t learn anything more. Everyone told me they’d witnessed psychokinesis themselves. Some offered to send me videos. 

            At 4:00 I went back into the office. Rachel was done with her Zoom. “I’m going downtown to tail someone,” I told her. 

            “What about dinner? It’s your turn.” She tapped at her keyboard.

            “Isn’t there lasagna left over? We were in kind of a hurry last night.”

            “Oh yeah.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Don’t count on getting lucky again.”

            “Never.” I winked.

 

             

Down on Dearborn Street again I waited across the street from Holtz’s building. Finn emerged at 5:35, listening to music from his phone. He walked fast, but I managed to keep pace with him as he went down below the street to the subway.

            The platform was crowded and noisy with people on their way home, Men and women in business suits, young people in jeans, a hairy man in bike shorts, two teenagers in school uniforms—a whole panorama of urban humanity. They stared at their phones, mostly; some read books or the newspaper, others listened to music or podcasts. A few just stared ahead like robots waiting to be reactivated.

            The subway pulled in, and I got on behind a woman in a long picket coat. The train went north, under the river, as I watched Finn nod his head in rhythm with whatever song he was listening to. 

            Finn got off at the Wilson stop, where the subway was now the el, high over the street. I followed him down to the sidewalk, keeping a few people between us as he sauntered east. I expected him to go straight home. Instead he stopped in front of a bar named Bad Canyon, checked the time on his phone, and went inside. 

            I waited a moment, then followed him in.

            Finn sat at the bar, a bottle of Coors and a shot of whiskey in front of him. I plopped onto the stool next to him. “Hi there.”

            He glanced over, then blinked. “Wait, you’re—”

            “Tom Jurgen. We met this morning.” I dropped a card on the bar and ordered a Heineken from the bartender. “Mind if I ask you a few questions?”

            He was suspicious. Understandably. “About what?”

            “Ross Holtz. You’re friends.”

            His jaw tightened defensively. “I work for him.”

            “Doing what?”

            “Research.” He glared at the mirror behind the bar. “What’s this all about?”

            “What kind of research?”

            “Confidential.” He jerked up his whiskey and downed it in one gulp. “I work with the data. Making sure everything’s correct, analyzing patterns, looking for trends. What are you looking for?”

            “Does the research involve psychokinesis?” I watched his eyes. “Moving things with your mind?”

             “I know what psychokinesis means.” Finn shoved his shot glass forward for another as the bartender brought my beer. “What about it?”

            The word didn’t surprise him. “I saw Ross pick up my card when I dropped it this morning. He didn’t touch it. It just floated up into his hand.”

            Finn stared at me. The bartender brought him another shot of whiskey, and for a moment I thought he was going to throw it into my face. Instead he polished it off, licked his lips, and set the shot glass on the bar next to my beer.

            He bit his lip, concentrating. I watched a bead of sweat run down his forehead. He was breathing slowly, as if meditating, his eyes locked on the glass.

            It slowly lifted an inch above the bar.

            Finn smiled. The glass fell, rolling over, and Finn gulped some beer. “Does that answer your question?”

            “I have more.”

            “Well, I’m done.” He reached for his wallet, dropped some cash on the bar, and stood, leaving his beer half full.

            “Don’t forget my card.” I held it toward him.

            Finn grabbed it, glaring at me.

            Suddenly I felt a push. Deep inside my chest. I toppled backward, my stool tipping over, and hit the hardwood floor. Hard. Pain shot up through my arm and into my shoulder. Cursing, I rolled away from the chair and got to my knees.

            Finn stood over me, grinning, but one of his eyes was suddenly blood red, and he was rubbing the side of his head as if he’d been struck with a sudden migraine. 

            A man from a nearby stool helped me stand up. Finn veered around us, unsteady on his feet, but he made it through the door without a glance back.

            “You all right?” the bartender asked. 

            “Yeah, fine. Thanks.” I bent my arm and rotated my shoulder, but nothing felt broken. “Must have just leaned back too far.”

            The bartender poured me a fresh beer, on the house. I had no chance of following Finn now, so I pulled my stool upright and gripped the edge of the bar as I drank.

            I called Rachel. “I’ll be home in an hour. We can have the lasagna, or I can pick something up.”

            “It’s already 6:30.” She sighed, exasperated with me. “What happened?”

            I looked around. The bar was hall full, but no one was sitting close enough to hear me over the sound of the TV and the jukebox. “The guy used it on me. Pushed me off a bar stool. There’s definitely something like psychokinesis involved.”

            “Are you okay?” Impatience shifted to concern. Mild concern, but still. 

            “My shoulder hurts a little. I’m fine. The guy’s gone.”

            “So . . . what now? Did he kill your client’s son? Are you out there taking on murderers with psychokinetic powers two weeks before our wedding? It’s not too late for me to back out, but we can’t get our deposit back.”

            “Don’t do that,” I said quickly. “And don’t jump to conclusions. Holtz has the same power. I saw it today, although he didn’t hit me with it.”

            “Maybe he’s cooking up some magic potion?”

            “Yeah, I’m thinking the same thing. You really are psychic.”

            “Ha-ha. Okay, I can zap the last of the lasagna. You might have to pick up something for yourself. I’m hungry.”

            “Home soon. Love you.”

            She laughed. “Whatever.” We hung up. 

Psycho Killer, Part Three

The next morning, Rachel was out at her office, doing her therapy thing with her patients. I confirmed a few details about the wedding, and then I got a second cup of coffee and forced myself to call my clients. I wasn’t sure how they’d react to the idea that their son had been killed with psychokinesis.

            Evelyn answered; her husband was out picking up some medicine from Walgreens. She took the theory better than I expected: “That’s certainly not—well, even after watching that, that video . . .” Her voice shook. “But that’s what we saw. And you—you saw it. You felt it. Are you okay? Are you in danger?”

            “I hope not.” I crossed my fingers. 

            “What can we do now? Anything?” She sounded hesitant, guarding against too much hope. Which was good, because I didn’t have a lot to give her.

            “I have to be honest,” I told her. “Even if I come up with any kind of evidence about this person”—I hadn’t given her Holtz’ name—“I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to take this to court. The best we can hope for is to understand what happened. And maybe try to prevent it from happening again.”

            Evelyn DiTocco was silent for a long time. Then she sighed. “Nothing will bring him back. I suppose we have to settle for whatever we can in this life. Are you going on with this?”

            “If you want. I’m curious. But you can call me off if you want to, any time.”

            “I’ll talk to my husband. But keep going, if you can. Until you can’t, I guess. Call us.”

            We hung up. My brother had sent an email about hotels that I had to take care of, and I checked off a handful of RSVPs from friends of mine, mostly people I’d known when I was a reporter.

            My phone buzzed. Unknown number, but I have to answer those, even at the risk of being telemarketed to. “Tom Jurgen speaking.” 

            “Jurgen? It’s Finn. You know, Finn?” As if he wasn’t sure I’d remember him.

            “Yeah, Finn. Hello. What can I do for you?”

            “Look, about that thing last night . . . I’m sorry. That shouldn’t have happened.”

            This was surprising. “You mean pushing me off my bar stool with your mind? Yeah, that hurt.” 

            “I got mad. It’s just—can you just forget that happened? It would be better for everyone.”

            I tried to think through the case quickly. “Specifically for Ross? Is that what’s going on?”

            He groaned softly. “Look, it’s—complicated. Can we get together? I’ll explain everything to you, and then you’ll see nothing bad is going on.”

            I hesitated, mostly to let him stew in worry for a moment. “All right. Where?”

            “Uh, how about the same place? Six?”

            “The bar? Sure. I could come downtown sooner—”

            “No, this is better. Six or so, okay?”

            “All right.”

            We hung up. I texted Rachel. She called back a few minutes later, mostly to negotiate about dinner but also to remind me not to get killed right before our wedding. Considering how long we’d both put this off, she was getting strongly invested in the whole idea of getting married. Although she was clear she’d never change her last name to mine. Some things are beyond discussion.

            So I spent the rest of the day on other cases. At 5:45 I was in the Uptown bar, Bad Canyon, with a beer in front of me, watching the door. It was a different bartender from yesterday, so I didn’t have to worry about being remembered as a falling risk. 

            I nursed my beer until 6:10. Then I ordered a second one. At 6:30 Finn still hadn’t showed. I sent him a text. No answer.

            I sent another text at 6:50, waited until seven, then paid my tab and went home.

            Rachel was on the couch with the TV on, going over some notes from work. “You can make yourself a grilled cheese if you want. What happened?”

            “I waited an hour. Texted him. Nothing.” I was irritated. And worried. But mostly hungry. So I grilled myself a sandwich and took it out to the living room to sit with Rachel.

            She was watching another reality show, Sleeping with the Alien, where men and women compete to seduce an actor dressed up like a Venusian or something. I ignored it as best as I could while eating, and then my phone buzzed while I was taking my plate back to the kitchen. Finn’s number. “Tom Jurgen speaking.”

            “Juuuurrrnnn . . .” The voice was hoarse, gasping. “Hurrrrrrnnnn mmmaaa . . .”

            What the hell? “Finn? What’s going on? Are you hurt? Are you okay?”

            “Hepppp . . . hellllll . . .”

            “Hang on.” I put him on hold to call 911. I gave them what information I could, hoping they could track down his phone. When I came back, Finn was gasping incoherently, and didn’t seem to hear or understand anything I said.

            Rachel appeared in the kitchen door. “What’s going on?”

            “I’m not sure,” I told her. “The guy I was supposed to meet—Finn! Are you still there? It sounds like he’s having a seizure, or been shot, or something. I called 911. I hope they can get to him.”

            Rachel sat down with me and we waited, listening as Finn groaned and gasped. I kept trying to talk to him, not because I expected an answer, but just hoping to keep him going until help arrived. But his grunting faded until all we could hear was shallow breathing, ragged and raw, and then even that dropped away.

            Rachel and I looked at each other. I couldn’t bring myself to hang up, but there was nothing to say. 

            After 15 minutes we heard voices from a distance. They closed in, and I someone shouted Finn’s name. A second voice said, “Start him on . . .” while voice No. 1 kept repeating the name.

            “Hello?” I called. “Hello?”

            The first voice, a woman, came in close. “Who’s this?”

            “Finn called me. I called 911. Is he all right?”

            “What’s your name? You a friend? Relative?”

            “Tom Jurgen. Just a—an acquaintance. Is he all right?”

            “I’m gonna put you on mute, Tom. Stay on the line.” I heard the phone drop, then nothing.

            I groaned. “It doesn’t sound good, does it?”

            “What do you think he was calling about?”

            I shook my head. “Whatever he was going to tell me at the bar. Maybe. I don’t know.”

            “You want a beer?”

            I nodded. 

            After 10 minutes the phone came to life again. “Tom? Give me your name and number. Someone’ll be in touch with you about Mr. Finlay.”

            “Is he—okay?”

            She hesitated. “I’m sorry to tell you that he—he did not make it. I don’t know what happened, and I can’t say any more than that, sorry.”

            “Where are you?”

            “It’s an office building downtown. On Dearborn Street.” She hung up.

            Rachel put a hand on my arm. “You okay?”

            I’ve watched people die when I couldn’t do anything about it. It never gets easy. “Fine.” 

“What now?”

            I stood up. “Right now, another beer. Tomorrow—I think I’m going to have to go talk to Holtz again.”

            “He killed Finn? And your client’s son?” 

            I sipped my beer. “I’m not saying that yet. We don’t know why Finn is dead. We don’t know a lot of things.”

            She smirked. “We, kemo sabe? I’m just getting ready for a wedding. On top of my other two jobs.”

            “You wouldn’t want to come with me tomorrow, would you? It would help to have your awesome psychic powers handy.”

            “Oh, I get to be junior-assistant-detective again?” She punched my arm. “Okay. I don’t have to go into the office. Just don’t mention the wedding when you introduce me. I don’t want to jinx it.”

            “Deal.” I rubbed my arm. “Let’s go watch TV.”

Psycho Killer, Part Four

Next morning I called one of Sean’s friends who worked at Tior. Eric Burns worked in marketing and had been reasonably friendly when I called him two days ago. “Yeah, it’s weird here this morning,” he told me when I asked about Finn.

            “What are they telling you?”

            “Well, there was an email that Finn was found in one of the conference rooms, and the paramedics tried to revive him and couldn’t do it. The conference room was a mess—chairs all over the place, and the table on its side. But there was a second email that said no foul play, no one broke into the office, but because of the family they couldn’t give out any personal information about what happened. Except . . .” He let his voice trail off, like he wanted me to ask for more.

            So I did. “Except what?”

            “There’s a couple of IT guys here all night. I was talking to one of them who saw them take Finn away, and one of the paramedics told her it looked like a stroke. Which is weird. Why would that wreck the conference room?”

            “Any idea what he was doing in the office?”

            “He wasn’t one of the guys who work night shift, but lots of them stay late. But I don’t really know.”

            Probably that was all I could expect. One last question: “Is Ross Holtz there today?”

            “Ross? Yeah, I think I saw him getting coffee. Yeah, he and Finn used to hang around together, but I don’t know him very well. He works out in Skokie most of the time.”

            Right. “Well, thanks. Have a good day there.”

            “I’ll try. You too.”

            Rachel was at her desk, working on a website design. “Well?”

            I told her what Burns had told me. “So he wasn’t crushed by a filing cabinet plunging down on him, or shoved down an elevator shaft, or anything that looks like PK,” I finished. “But a stroke—Sean’s roommate had a stroke too. An aneurysm.”

            “Interesting. I mean, tragic in its own way, but still.”

            “Yeah. Probably no one will connect the two.”

            “Except us, because we’re super-detectives.” She smirked.

            I winked back. “That’s right. You ready to go downtown?”

            “Give me 15 minutes.” Rachel turned back to her computer. “Just one or two things to polish up here.”

            Fifteen minutes became half an hour, but eventually we made our way downtown to the Dearborn Street building where Sean had worked, and where I’d met Ross Holtz two days ago. We went in, looked at the tenants list, and took an elevator to the eighth floor.

            Inside two glass doors with the blue TIOR logo, a receptionist smiled as we approached her desk. “Welcome to Tior, may I help you?”

            “We’re here to see Ross Holtz.” I dropped my card on the wide desk in front of her.

            She reached for her phone. “Do you have an appointment?”

            “No. We just need to speak with him.”

            Her smile faded. “I’ll see if he’s available, Mr.—” Her eyes dropped to look at my card. “Jurgen? And Ms. . . .?” She peered at Rachel.

            “Rachel.” Rachel smiled. “Just Rachel.”

            The receptionist nodded, pressed some buttons, and spoke into her phone too quietly for us to hear. After a moment she said, “Please take a seat. Ross will be right out.”

            The reception area had four chairs and a small couch, and a table with some Tior marketing materials. We waited, and five minutes later Holtz appeared from the inner office to glare at us. Mostly me.

            “What—why are you here?” He looked at Rachel. Then back to me. Before I could answer, he held up one hand. “Wait. Come on.”

            He led us back through a maze of cubicles, past one conference room door taped off and marked NO ADMITTANCE, which was probably where Finn had died. We went into a small conference room next door, with a round table and just four chairs, and a window that looked at the office building across the street.

            Holtz closed the door and spun around on us, hands on his hips. “What’s going on? Are you here—” He stopped and took a deep breath. “I don’t know why I let you in. I don’t have anything to say to you.” He glanced at Rachel. “Who are you?”

            “She’s my—my associate.” I spent a moment thinking through my next words. “Look, Ross, I know that you and your friend Finn have some sort of psychokinesis. The ability to move things with your mind. You picked up my card from the street without touching it the other day, and Finn knocked me off a barstool without his hands.”

            Holtz opened his mouth to call me crazy, but I kept going without taking a breath. “I was on the phone with Finn when he died last night. He had a stroke. Just like Sean DiTocco’s roommate had an aneurysm the same night Sean was thrown over his balcony by an invisible force."

            “I had nothing to do with that!” He slammed a fist on the table. “If you’re saying I had something to do with Finn, you’re—you’re wrong. That’s all. I can have you kicked out.”

            “What’s the point?” I held my hands up. “Ross, the police are never going to arrest anyone for using psychokinesis to kill Sean. Whatever happened—”

            “I didn’t kill Sean!” His face was red, and for a moment I worried he might have a stroke too. “He was my friend! I’d never—do anything like that!”

            I looked at Rachel. Sometime she can tell when people are lying. 

            She nodded. “It’s true, as far as I can tell. But when you mentioned psychokinesis—”

            The door opened behind us. Into the conference room walked a big man in a suit that cost more than the book value of my Prius, with a balding head and a short, dark beard. “What’s going on here? Who are you?”

            I stood up and fished out a card while Holtz glared. “Just asking some questions. I was talking to Martin Finlay last night when he—”

            “We have nothing to say about that.” Behind him stood a tall man, younger and more athletic than me, in a gray uniform. Security. “I am Karl Tiormina. I’m the CEO here. I want you to stop bothering my employees and leave. Both of you.” His eyes raked over Rachel.

            “That’s fine.” I looked at Holtz. “You’ve got my card. From the other day.”

            “Ross, my office.” Holtz grimaced, and made his way slowly toward the door. Tior jerked a finger at the guard behind him. “Escort them out, Jesse.”

            The guard crossed his arms, his face tight, and jerked his head toward the door. 

            I nodded, and led Rachel out. 

            In the hallway we looked at the glass door while waiting for the elevator. The guard, Jesse, looked back at us.  Mostly Rachel. “That could have gone better. But it wasn’t a total waste.”

            Rachel nodded, looking at Jesse. “When you mentioned psychokinesis, I felt a strong reaction.” She sighed. “God, I miss this. I mean, I love my new job, but questioning suspects and getting kicked out of offices? Those were the days. Plus, the guard? He thought I was hot.”

            The elevator doors opened. “That makes me feel good 10 days before our wedding.” 

            Rachel punched my arm. “Don’t worry. You’re not getting out of it that easy.”

            I smiled. “Let’s hope not.”

 

Back home I started digging into the background of Tior Pharma and its founder, Karl Tiormina. He’d been born in Greece, his parents emigrating to the U.S. when he was two. Raised in Texas, he went to college in California, founded a few startups, and ultimately took a top job at Eli Lilly in Indiana before leaving to form Tior Pharma in Skokie. 

            The company had scored big with a drug for bipolar disorder that also had some weight loss benefits. It also produced some antidepressant meds, some ADHD drugs, and one antipsychotic. Tior had fended off numerous lawsuits over the years, but that’s typical for any large company.

            Tiormina himself was 56 and on his second wife, who’d apparently given up a promising career as a blond supermodel to become a trophy wife. I made sure Rachel didn’t see me checking out her pictures. He had a reputation in the industry for being brilliant but tough. Ex-employees praised him for his focus on products—“like a cyclops with a laser for his eye”—and lashed out at his management style—“You got a day off for a family funeral if it was your own.”

            Rachel was on the far side of the office, working on her client’s website. “Did you pick up anything from that CEO?” I asked.

            Her fingers paused over her keyboard. “Well, he was an asshole, but you didn’t have to be psychic to see that. He was worried, and angry at Holtz.”

            “What about Holtz? Scared?”

            “Pissed off. I don’t know if he was ready to talk to us, but he definitely doesn’t like that guy.”

            Hmm. I wrote up some notes while I tried to think of my next move. Being a detective is mostly about asking questions—sometimes on the internet, but most of the time it comes down to people. The right people. 

            At the moment, the right person seemed to be Ross Holtz. If he’d talk to me.

            I put off calling him. Not because I was nervous—you don’t get very far as a reporter or a P.I. by being shy about calling people—but to give him a chance to cool down and think things over.

            So I switched over to some employment backgrounds checks I’d been putting off. Not exciting, but they’d help pay for the wedding reception.

            In mid-afternoon, after lunch, while I was dealing with questions about the hors d'oeuvres, my phone buzzed. I let it go to voice mail, finished up the appetizer issue, and then checked my messages. 

            “Jurgen? It’s Ross Holtz. Call me, okay? There’s some stuff you need to know.”

            I swiveled my chair around. “Holtz just called. You want to listen?”

            “Oh yeah.” She scooted her chair over to my desk as I returned the call.

            “Tom? Yeah.” Holtz had his voice low, a little raspy as if he was frazzled. “Look, I can’t talk now. Can you come out to my place tonight? I can explain—well, some of it. I just can’t do it here.”

            I frowned. “You live in Skokie, right?” I saw Rachel roll her eyes.

            “Yeah. There’s things I can show you, but not here.”

            “Okay. What time?”

            We agreed on 7:30 and hung up. Rachel grimaced. “We’re going out to Skokie? This is what I don’t miss about being your junior-assistant-detective.”

            “Sorry. You don’t have to come.”

            “Are you kidding? At this point I’m not letting you out of my sight before the ceremony.” She punched my arm. 

            “What about the honeymoon?”

            “Only to get drinks.” She kissed me. “Let’s figure out dinner.”

Psycho Killer, Part Five

At 7:20 we pulled up in front of Ross Holtz’s Skokie home. For Skokie, a well-to-do Chicago suburb, the house was modest: two stories, a one-car garage, and tall fences around a small front yard. 

            “Am I the good cop or the bad cop?” Rachel asked as we walked up. 

            “The sexy sidekick.” I pressed the doorbell.

            “Darn. I wore the wrong underwear for that.”

            Holtz opened the door, in jeans and a U of Chicago sweatshirt. “You’re here. Come in.”

            He led us past a living room with a big TV mounted on one wall and a dining room that held a long table with just two chairs, one at either end. In the kitchen he had a machine for making coffee, espresso, cappuccino, and everything else coffee related. He pressed a button on it, then turned to us. “Espresso? Coffee?”

            “Nothing, thanks.” I leaned on the kitchen island, Rachel next to me.

            Holtz blew across his cup and took a shallow sip. “All right. I’ve been working on this thing for years. One of my profs started it, and I took over after he retired. Mostly on my own, but I use Tior’s facilities for some of it. A couple of months ago I thought I had it. I only told a few people—”

            I held up a hand. “Just to be clear, we’re talking about some kind of psychokinesis drug?”

            He frowned. “Yeah. I call it Parakin. It started as a way to stimulate more synaptic activity in the brain, and some of the research found that it could actually produce effects outside the body. Just a few inches at first, but then more and more, depending on the dose. Rats could pull food closer to them, if they were trained. I was trying to figure out more tests, and Finn was helping me with computer analysis. He must have told Tior—Karl Tiormina, my boss.”

            “Yeah, we met him today,” Rachel said. “Before he kicked us out.”

            Holtz grimaced. “Well, he thought I was full of shit, accused me of misappropriating funds, until I showed him. I, uh, dosed myself and managed to lift one of his expensive pens off his desk. Then he was all on my ass to get it ready to market. Which I can’t, not for at least six months—”

            Rachel nudged me. I held up a hand to slow him down. “What does this have to do with Sean DiTocco?”

            He blinked. “Right. Look, at some point I had to try it on myself. Just a little, to see how it worked. One night I was drunk with Sean, and I knocked over a beer without touching it. I ended up telling him about it, and he wanted to try it. So I gave him some, in a pen needle. He took one small shot, and he could pick up his beer without touching it and drink it.” He smiled for a moment. Then it faded. “But I don’t know what happened to him! I don’t know why—” His voice broke off. He looked away from us, biting his lip.

            “Okay.” I had a lot of questions, and I needed to focus. “How does this Parakin work?”

            Holtz stood up abruptly and left the room. Rachel and I looked at each other, confused. Was he running away? But he returned a moment later carrying a pen injector and set it on the table between us.

            “You inject it. A vein is quickest, but you can just shoot it into your arm or your stomach. Two milliliters, maybe four, is safest. You can do small stuff with that—lift a pencil, a piece of paper, your card, right? More than that—”

            He looked around the kitchen. Then he took a deep breath, staring at the refrigerator.

            After a moment, the door opened. Inside, three bottles of beer stood on the top tray. As we watched, one bottle slowly slid to the edge, almost tipping over. Then it rose up and slowly floated across the room until it was wobbling in the air over the table. We watched as it dropped, and Holtz caught it in his hand with a grunt. He looked over his shoulder, and the refrigerator door closed.

            “That’s handy.” I imagined the beer commercials it could inspire.

            Holtz was breathing hard as he twisted the bottlecap. “You can take the stuff in small doses and do small stuff—like with your card, right? I didn’t mean to do it that day. It just happens without thinking sometimes. I took 10 milligrams before you got here, so I could show you. The stuff is generally safe—unless you use it too hard.”

            “Then what happens?” Rachel asked.

            Holtz nodded, swallowing some beer. “It makes rats more aggressive, more likely to fight each other or just pound their heads against their cages. It’s not so much how much they get, but what they try to do. If they go too big—like, this one rat tried to lift a 10-pound weight we put in with it, and it was too much. It fried his brain.” He set the beer down on the table. “If Finn was trying to lift something heavy, like a table or a chair—”

            “He’d have a stroke,” I said. Holtz nodded.

            “Why would he do that?” Rachel asked. “Didn’t he know about the rat?”

            “I don’t know.” Holtz shook his head. “Karl’s been pushing us. Pushing me. Finn told me he was leaning on him to push me harder.”

            “Finn called me last night.” I remembered his slurred words on the phone. “He wanted to talk.”

            “I was up here all day. The office is just a few miles away. I didn’t talk to him.” Holtz rubbed his eyes. “I don’t know.”

            “So why are we here?” Rachel asked. “Why’d you call Tom now?”

            He ran a hand through his hair. “I’m worried. Especially after what happened to Finn. I’ve been—losing doses of it. I keep it mostly in my lab out here, and some downtown. For the last few weeks they’ve been disappearing. Not a lot, but it can be dangerous, like I said.”

            “Finn?” I asked.

            He nodded. “Probably. I let him take a few doses, small doses. And it’s secured by keycodes on the freezer, but he could hack that in his sleep. I didn’t worry about it that much until—" He picked up his beer for a swallow. “Until this morning. I don’t know what happened to Finn. I’m scared of Karl, though. He’s obsessed with making Parakin work and making millions of dollars from it. And he can be—well, a real asshole when he wants something. Especially with us, the staff.”

            I looked at Rachel. She shrugged. It didn’t seem like Holtz knew anything Sean’s death, but I couldn’t just leave this alone. “So what do you want from me?”

            “Just—to know what’s going on. Let me—” Holtz stood up and left the room. He returned carrying a sealed plastic bag with a syringe inside.

            “This is Parakin,” he said. “Just keep it. Don’t use it. I mean, if you do, don’t take more than two milligrams, four at the outside. You won’t be able to do much, but it’s safer. But don’t use it. Just keep it, and if anything happens to me—”

            “You’re seriously worried that Tiormina might kill you?” I looked at the bag on the table.

            “I don’t know. After whatever happened to Finn, I just—”

            A phone buzzed. Holtz reached into his jeans, and his face went slack. “Oh no. It’s Karl.” Biting his lip, he answered.

            “Karl? Yeah, what’s up?” He frowned. “Right now? What for?” He looked at us, then looked away. “Okay, I guess. Twenty minutes.”

            He hung up. “Karl wants to see me at work. He didn’t—I don’t know why.”

            I looked down at the syringe the plastic bag. Then at Rachel. She sighed, then nodded.

            “We could come with you,” I said. I didn’t really want to, but I was curious.            

             Holtz finished his beer. “Maybe—could you wait outside? I’ll call you if it’s all right. Just in case.”

            I didn’t want to ask just in case of what. So I looked at Rachel. She shrugged.

            “Fine.” I scooped up the plastic bag and put it in my pocket.

Half an hour later we were sitting in the visitors parking lot, looking at the headquarters of Tior Pharma.

            “The exciting life of a P.I.” Rachel sighed and changed the radio station for the 14^th time.

            Reminding her that she’d insisted on coming would have gotten me a shot to the shoulder, so I just said, “Sorry.”

            She peered through the windshield. “Maybe we should talk about the flowers again.”

            “I’d say, ‘Kill me now,” but with my luck it would happen.” I looked at my phone. Nothing from Holtz. 

            We waited. Rachel kept changing stations. I wondered if we could see Holtz’s office window from this angle. Most windows were dark. The lobby was lit. No one came in or out. Holtz was parked in the employee lot behind the building. 

            “How long do we have to wait?” Rachel asked, yawning. “Not that I’m complaining. I’m spending quality time with my husband. Husband. Husband? That’s going to take some getting used to.”

            “He said I could text him after an hour. Unless he texts me first.”

            “Okay. Want to make out?”

            I grinned. “Well, yes, but I do have some professional responsibilities here.”

            “You’re no fun.” She stuck her tongue out, then went back to playing with the radio. 

            After 10 more minutes my phone buzzed with a text from Holtz. Come on up. Office R-34. Everything fine. H.

            “Oh-oh.” I showed it to Rachel.

            We’d worked out a quick code with Holtz. A random R for Ross in a text meant everything was really okay. An H for Holtz would mean he was in trouble.

            “And we left Donald at home.” Rachel scowled. Donald was the name of our handgun, a Glock I’d bought several years ago that we’d dubbed Donald Duck, currently locked up in a box in our closet.

            “Yeah.” I reached into my jacket.

            “Oh no.” Rachel’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not going to stick that stuff inside you. Are you?”

            “Maybe.” I looked at the pen injector. I had to make up my mind fast, which doesn’t always result in my best decisions. But if I really was walking into trouble unarmed—and bringing Rachel with me—I didn’t want to be completely helpless.

            “He said it’s safe until I try to do too much.” I uncapped the needle. “Maybe I won’t have to do anything.”

            Rachel rolled her eyes. “Maybe I can find someone else to marry in time for the wedding.”

            I dialed the pen up to four milliliters. Then up to 10. Then, because Rachel was unbuckling her belt and couldn’t see, up to 20. Then I pulled up my shirt and injected it into my stomach. 

            “Well?” Rachel glared as I tucked my shirt in. “Are you suddenly filled with the awesome power of psychokinesis?”

            I stretched my hands out in front of me. “Not yet, I think. We’ll see. Got your pepper spray?”

            She patted her pocket. We got out and I locked the car.

            A security guard sat inside the desk at the lobby. He looked us over with suspicion. “Yes?”

            “We’re here to see Ross Holtz,” I said. “Office R-34?”

            The guard, a bulky Black man, picked up his phone and spoke too softly for me to hear. “Okay. Second floor.” He handed us two badges to clip to our shirts.

            We took an elevator, turned left, then right, and finally found a door marked R-34, with the name ROSS HOLTZ, SENIOR RESEARCHER on a plaque in the center. I knocked.

            Holtz looked rattled. “Come on.” He held the door open only wide enough to let us inside, then closed it in a hurry.

            The office was big, two or three times the side of the standard business office. Aside from a metal desk in one corner, it didn’t really look like an office. More like a laboratory, except instead of test tubes and microscopes it was filled with computers, a lot of machines I didn’t recognize, a refrigerator, and two wide file cabinets.

A counter along one wall had three sinks. A lab table at the center was surrounded by chairs and stools, and two squat cabinets on rollers were scattered across the beige tile. Rows of fluorescent tubes hung from the ceiling.

Squeaking sounds came from a cage in a far corner—probably the rats Holtz experimented with. Two big metal filing cabinets loomed over one side of the cage.

            Karl Tiormina stood in the center of the room, his necktie loosened and his sleeves rolled up, arms crossed in front of his chest. His expression said he was used to intimidating people, and I did my best not to let it work.

            Holtz leaned against a sink counter, his T-shirt sweaty. “Sorry. I had to tell him. He was—he was suspicious after today.” He glanced at Rachel. “Sorry.”

            “You were asking questions.” Tiormina unfolded his arms. “Parakin is my property. What the hell are you up to?”

            “Asking questions is my job. I only started because I was hired by the parents of one of your employees, Sean DiTocco. They wanted answers about how he died.” I started talking fast so he wouldn’t cut in. “I was at your office this morning because Finn called me last night, after he didn’t come to a meeting he set up with me. I listened to him die. At least two people are dead, and it’s connected to Parakin.” 

            Tiormina’s frown was deep and fierce. “Do you want money?”

            I hesitated. We had a wedding to pay for, after all. But integrity won out, darn it. “What happened to Finn?”

            Tiormina clenched a fist. “He attacked me.”

            “Bullshit,” Holtz said. “Finn would never attack anyone.”

I didn’t remind him that his pal had shoved me off a barstool. “Well?”

            Tiormina grimaced. “He hacked my email. He discovered—things I don’t want people to know about, things that aren’t anybody’s business. Finn wanted a bigger piece of the Parakin profits—”

            “There aren’t any profits yet!” Holtz looked disgusted. “It’ll be years.”

            “In advance. That’s how he put it. He said he helped discover it—”

            “Bullshit,” Holtz said again.

            “And he deserved a bigger reward. We were arguing, in the conference room, and he—he threw a chair at me.” He paused. “With his mind.”

            Holtz’s eyes grew wide. “A chair? That would take—”

            Tiormina nodded. “A lot of Parakin. Look, he attacked me.”

            “What happened?” But I already knew what he was going to say.

            Tiormina looked around the room, finally settling his eyes on a flatscreen computer monitor sitting at the end of one table. Biting his lips, he narrowed his eyes, breathing deeply—

            —and the monitor rose into the air.

            I looked over at Rachel. She stared at the monitor. “It’s strong. I’ve never felt anything like it. It’s not like magic, not the usual kind. Maybe because it’s a drug—”

            “What the hell?” Holtz’s voice exploded. “Where did you get it? How do you—do you know how dangerous that is?”

            The monitor crashed to the table and fell over on its side. Tiormina rubbed his beard. “I’m getting better. It’s still hard to control sometimes. But I’ve been practicing.”

            “So what happened last night?” I asked again.

            “He threw a chair at me.” Tiormina seemed offended. “I threw it back at him. It hit him, and then he tried to lift the conference table and throw it at me. It was hanging there in the air, and then it just dropped. Fell over on its side. And Finn was unconscious. I left before anyone heard us fighting.”

            Probably just minutes before Finn called me. “You left him to die.”

            “I didn’t know anything like that would happen! He was just—on the floor, breathing hard. And he attacked me!”

            “Where did you get the Parakin from?” Holtz demanded. “From Finn? How much? How long?”

He shrugged. “Finn. A few months.”

            “Months?” Holtz was shouting now. “You idiot! That stuff is addictive!”

            “You didn’t mention that.” I looked at Rachel, alarmed. She rolled her eyes, disgusted with me.

            Holtz took a breath. “It’s all right, you can’t—it’s not heroin where you take one shot and you’re hooked forever. But the rats—if I give it to them too many times and then stop, they get more and more aggressive, like I said, and they go crazy. If Finn was taking it and got hooked—” He glared at Tiormina. “How much?”

            For the first time he looked uncertain. “Once every two or three days. I don’t use the power that much, but I’m getting stronger. And I can stop it any time.” He smirked. “I know how that sounds. But really I can. It just feels so good to be able to do things without having to stand up, or walk anywhere. Just—”

            He waved a hand, and behind the desk in the corner a chair lifted two feet into the air and held it there, grinning like a kid telling a dirty joke.

            I was tempted to try it myself. Partly to see how the stuff worked, partly to see how it felt, and, yeah, partly to show Tiormina he wasn’t the only cool kid in the room. 

            “Okay.” I shrugged. “Like I said, I only got into this to find out what happened to Sean DiTocco. Your management style leaves a lot to be desired, Karl. Leaving one of your employees to die doesn’t exactly qualify you for any leadership awards, but . . .” I looked toward Holtz. “I guess you have to decide if you want to keep working for Darth Vader here. We’re going home.” I turned to Rachel. “You want to stop for—”

            “Wait a minute.” Tiormina let the chair fall with a clatter. “We need to have an understanding. Ross told you everything about Parakin, but it’s not ready. You can’t let anyone else know what we’re doing here.”

            “What do you want us to do? Cross our hearts?” Rachel grabbed my arm. “Come on, Tom, let’s go.”

            I turned for the door. But before I could take a step, something pushed me. Hard. 

            Rachel yelped, and we both hit the floor, with Rachel half on top of me. I rolled over. “You all right?”

            “Yeah.” She twisted around to look up at Tior. “Hey! Not cool!”

            Tiormina was glaring at us. “This is too important. You have to understand—this could change the world. I can’t let you just walk out of here and tell everyone you know.”

            Holtz looked from me, helping Rachel up, to his boss. “What are you talking about? You’re not going to—what are you going to do?”

            Rachel pulled me around, away from Tiormina. “He’s more than just pissed off,” she whispered. “The Parakin. He’s having trouble controlling it.”

Tiormina’s face was flushed. Holtz took a step toward him, and then the same phantom force shoved him back, onto his butt, and he slid across the floor. 

“You idiot!” Holtz pulled his feet under him and staggered to his feet. “The Parakin is doing this to you! You won’t let me bring in other people, and you want everything yesterday! You’ve got to slow down!”

Tiormina glared at him, breathing hard. 

I grabbed Rachel’s hand. “Let’s go—”

“No!” Tiormina stomped a foot on the floor. His eyes seemed to go dark, and then the computer monitor he’d lifted before rose again—and started flying toward us. 

I pushed Rachel and ducked. The monitor sailed over my head and crashed to the floor, sliding along the tile. 

Tiormina cursed. Holtz backed away from him, looking around, and crouched. A stool from near one of the tables jumped into the air, and Holtz sent it at his boss’s head.

Tiormina shoved the stool off course with a flick of his hand and again pushed Holtz down onto the tile—harder this time. His head banged against the edge of the lab table, and I saw blood stain the drawers behind his scalp.

Before I could even think about racing for the door with Rachel, Tiormina sent a cabinet rolling toward us, barreling across the tile as fast as a truck. Rachel scrambled out of its path, clawing in her jacket for her pepper spray. 

Tiormina grunted, and then a row of lights crashed down on Rachel. Glass broke over her neck and shoulders, and shattered over the floor around her. Rachel yelped, throwing an arm across her nose and mouth to keep out the gas from the fluorescent tubes. 

She was fine. But now I was mad. 

Rachel saw—or felt—my sudden anger. “Tom! Don’t—” But I ignored her. Staring at Tiormina, uncertain but determined, I bit my lower lip and tried reaching inside my mind, grasping for something—a thought, an impulse, something that would tell me what to do. 

He stared back at me, smiling. 

Rachel was still yelling at me. Then I felt something in the back of my head, like a mosquito inside my brain, and for a moment I was blind. Then I blinked, looking across the room, and my eyes zeroed in on a laptop computer, monitor open, sitting on a counter behind Tiormina. 

I barely had to think about it. I lifted the laptop with whatever was inside my head. I sent it zooming toward Tiormina, and then I crashed it down on his skull.

Tiormina roared, and another one of the cabinets on rollers hurled toward me, flying across the floor. 

I crouched, grit my teeth, and forced my mind to catch it, spinning it off course and banging it against the lab table. Then I pushed a hand forward and shoved him as hard. I could feel blood pulsing in my brain, and my heart was racing.

 Tiormina staggered back two steps, caught his balance, and snarled at me. Holtz shouted something, and a computer keyboard hit my shoulder from him and started battering at my face as he pushed me, trying to force me down to the floor. 

I bit my lip, looking for something to throw at him. Pain spiked in my head, and I was sweating as if I were in the middle of a marathon. I dropped to my knees and tried shoving Tiormina again, and keys broke off from the keyboard as he kept swatting at me with it. I grabbed for it with my hands but he yanked it out of my reach and then lifted it to slam it down on my head—

But Rachel was on her feet again, darting toward him. Tiormina was focused on me, and he didn’t notice her until she shot him in the face with her pepper spray. 

The keyboard dropped, and so did Tiormina, coughing and gasping from the spray. 

I stood up, my legs wobbly. I picked up the laptop again with my mind and let it float in the air. Then I spun it around. I raised it up close to the ceiling, let it swing from side to side, and started flying it around the room, enjoying the feeling of controlling it with nothing more than my thoughts.

Rachel poked me in the ribs. “Stop showing off.”

I let it clatter to the tile. My head ached like the beginning of a migraine.

Holtz stood up, holding his head and groaning. “Oh God. I’m so fired.” He looked down at Tiormina, still gasping and retching. “And the company owns it. It’s in my contract. They own everything. Damn it.” He knelt on the floor. “I’d better help him. Maybe he’ll listen to me now.” He looked up. “You two get out of here. He’s going to be mad.”

“How long does the effect of the Parakin last?” I rubbed my head, fighting my own sudden shot of nausea.

“How much did you take?”

“Twenty units.”

“Twenty? Jesus.” He rolled his eyes as Rachel punched me. “A day or two. That’s a lot for a first dose, but you should be okay if you don’t push it.”

I pulled the injector from my pocket and dropped it on the floor. With a little regret, yeah, but I knew Rachel would frisk me for it before we got to the car. “Okay. Come on.”

“Jerk.” She watched me as we headed to the door. “How do you feel?”

“Little headache. Here, let me get the door—”

She punched me again. “Not a chance. I’m driving. No psychokinesis, or else no sex until the wedding. Maybe longer.”

            I held up a hand in surrender. “Anything you say.”

 

Rachel went to work the next day. “No playing around,” she warned me as she was getting dressed. “I don’t want to have to tell my mother that the wedding’s off because my fiancé’s head exploded trying to lift a Volvo with his so-called brain.”

            “My brain will only work on detective stuff,” I promised. “And maybe the Wordle.”

Of course I did play around. I tried drinking some juice without using my hands. That was messy. I did manage to put my cereal bowl into the sink when I was done with breakfast, and carried my coffee mug very carefully through the air into my office. My head started to hurt again, so I just stared at my blank monitor for 15 minutes.

My phone buzzed. Ross Holtz.

“He’s in the hospital.” Holtz was blunt. “Stroke.”

“Will he be okay?”

“They say he’ll recover, but that’s just from the memo that got sent around this morning. He was all right when he left—mad at me, and you guys, of course, and maybe he wasn’t walking that great. I guess he got home, and his husband found him having convulsions or something later. I should have—I don’t know. I don’t know what to expect when he comes back. If he comes back.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Yeah, he’d attacked me and Rachel, but I didn’t necessarily want him to end up paralyzed. Or dead.

“Yeah. He should have listened to me. I don’t know what’s going to happen now.” He sighed. “Okay. I’ve got to clean up the lab now.” He hung up.

            I refilled my mug, took a deep breath, and made the call I’d been dreading.

            Casey Atkins was wary. “Can I help you with something?”

            “I just have a question or two.” I did my best to sound friendly. “About Brendan. Sean’s roommate?”

            “Yes. What about him?” She was doing her best to sound casual, but I could hear a hint of defensiveness in her voice.

            “You said he had a crush on you? That he tried to hit on you before you and Sean were seeing each other?”

            “Yeah.” One word. She wanted to see where I was going.

            “Is it possible it was more than a crush?”

            That rattled her. “W-what do you mean?”     

            “Was he jealous? Angry? I’m not suggesting anything, I’m just trying to fill in the gaps. Did he resent Sean in any way?”

            She was silent for a long time. I waited, half-hoping my theory was wrong. But it fit. It was the only one I could think of that explained everything. 

            She took a deep breath and lowered her voice. “We hooked up, all right? A couple of times. Before Sean, and—after. During, whatever. Just a few times. He got—weird. Sean never knew about it, unless—but if Brendan told him, I’d know, right? So there’s nothing there. There’s no way Brendan could have thrown Sean over that balcony, he’s just not big enough or strong enough. Just—that couldn’t happen, all right? All right?”

            “All right,” I said quickly. “I’m very sorry. I’m only trying to get a complete picture. I won’t bother you anymore.”

            “Good.” She hung up.

            I groaned to myself. There are parts of my job I hate, and this was one of them. I finished my coffee, took a break to try moving my computer mouse without my hand for a few minutes, then called my clients.

            I told them everything about Parakin’s power and its side effects, leaving out the details of my encounters with Holtz and Tiormina. They seemed to accept it, just asking a few questions about Sean’s work. Steve DiTocco asked if it would be prescription or over-the-counter when it came out, but Evelyn hushed him as if he’d been making a joke. 

            Finally I said, “What I think happened, and I can’t prove any of this, is that Sean’s roommate Brendan got hold of the stuff, and they had an argument involving Sean’s girlfriend Casey. Brendan lost his temper and, well, hurled Sean off the balcony with his mind, but at the same time he suffered an aneurysm that killed him.”

            “Oh, no.” Evelyn groaned softly.

            “Yeah. I don’t have any proof, so I know it’s not very satisfying. There’s no one to arrest or punish, even if the police agreed with me. There might be a lawsuit against Tior Pharma, but that’s up to you.”

            “Would anyone take the case?” DiTocco asked.

            “Well, it could be expensive. But a good law firm could get documents. Force people to give depositions under oath, that sort of thing—”

            “No.” Evelyn was firm. “Nothing will bring Sean back. If his friend died too—that’s just double the pain. Let it go.”

            Her husband grunted his agreement.

            They told me to send my invoice, thanked me, and we ended the call. Not a satisfying conclusion, like I’d said. But some cases are like that. I went back to work on another case.

            Rachel called me 15 minutes later as I was trying to use my power to draw shapes with a pen. “I can’t wait. Let’s do it tomorrow.”

            Huh? “You mean, uh—my mom will kill me. Us. Mostly me.”

            “We can still do the ceremony thing. It’s too late to cancel anyway. I’m tired of waiting. I want to be married.”

            For most of our relationship Rachel had insisted she had serious problems with commitment. But this wasn’t the time to mention that, for my own safety. “Sounds good. We can go down to city hall in the morning. You sure?”

            “You kidding? I want this over with.” She laughed. “I meant that in a good way.”

            “I know.” I smiled. “Tomorrow. Can’t wait.”

            We hung up. I was getting married.

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