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 14th 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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