Riah drew out her phone, tapped in a number that she hadn’t called in six months but had committed to memory long before that.
A woman answered. “Hello?”
“Katie Burleson?”
Immediate suspicion. “Who is this?”
“This is Riah.”
Silence.
“Your sister.”
“How many Riahs do you think I know?” Katie’s words scorched the air.
“It’s been a long time since we spoke and—”
“If I wanted to talk to you, I would have called you. It’s not like you’re hard to find. I’m hanging up now and I don’t want you to call this number again.”
“Katie—”
“Goodbye—”
“He did things to me.”
Riah waited for the line to go dead but it didn’t.
“Our father,” she went on, “he did things to me. Things a father should never do to his children.”
“Of course he did.”
A pause. “You knew?”
“Is that why you called? To try and make me feel sorry for you? What do you think happened when you went off to college? Do you think he just got interested in Mom again? Really? Are you kidding me?”
Riah found her sister’s words informative and sensed that she should feel a deep sense of rage against their father for violating Katie too.
In the background, Riah could hear Katie’s youngest child crying, and a thought struck her: Katie had her first pregnancy, her first abortion, shortly after moving out of the house. She’d always said her boyfriend Jose was the father.
“It wasn’t Jose’s baby,” Riah said softly.
“Don’t call this number again.” And then, without saying goodbye, Katie hung up.
This bitter woman, this hurting woman, had known innocence, known love as a child, but both had died over the years because of their father.
Or perhaps because Riah had never done anything to stop him.
She was left wondering what to do.
She could never help her sister feel loved, it wasn’t in her nature, but could she do something else, not out of love exactly, but in the service of justice? An act on her sister’s behalf?
Yes.
A very specific act.
Yes.
To right a tragic wrong.
The greater good.
Riah made a firm and certain decision to pay a visit to their father as soon as her duties with the twins were completed.
Credentials
RixoTray’s R&D facility lies on the outskirts of Bridgeport, surrounded by a dense wooded area that I suspect also belongs to the firm to create a buffer between their facility and any corporate or residential encroachment.
Our driver slows, gets in line behind the four cars in front of us. They all pass through the checkpoint without a hitch, and only moments later we pull to a stop beside the guard station.
The driver and I roll down our windows. The guard looks at me with a practiced air of suspicion but ignores our driver as if he doesn’t even exist. Apparently, Charlene and I are the ones he’s most interested in.
“Driver’s licenses, please.”
We produce them, as does our driver. We all hand them over. Charlene and I also give him our fake FDA credentials. “J. Franklin Banks,” I tell him, avoiding drawing attention to my real name, my stage name, the one I used on TV. “Food and Drug Administration.” I briefly hold up my clipboard and its attached documents to show him that I mean business.
He gazes at the driver’s licenses, then studies the creds carefully. Fionna had told us they would check our fingerprints, but that didn’t concern me much, since, unless you’ve been printed by law enforcement or as part of a corporate security program, your prints won’t show up on any kind of watch list.
As expected, the guard holds out a small electronic pad about the size of a smartphone. “Fingerprints, please.”
All three of us, in turn, place our forefingers on the pad and no red flags come up. He goes on, “What is the purpose of your visit?”
“We’re here because of complaints involving a research project,” I tell him. “We need to speak directly to Dr. Riah Colette.”
He hands the creds to his partner to study as well. Then looks over a clipboard of his own.
“I don’t see your name on our appointment list.”
“No, of course not.”
He looks at me questioningly.
Charlene scootches toward me, leans toward the window, addresses him. “The FDA no longer announces spot inspections or visits of this nature before they occur. In the past, people have shredded documents and destroyed evidence when they’ve received prior knowledge of our visits. Arriving unannounced is the only way to assure that none of that happens.”
Before he can reply, she goes on, “This complaint involves ethical violations involving the use of human test subjects in experimental drug trials. It is a highly sensitive matter and these are serious allegations. I’m afraid that’s all we’re authorized to tell you.”
Oh, she was good.
I’ve saved the clipboards and their paperwork as the pièce de résistance. Now I hand them to him.
The line of cars behind us is growing longer.
The guard flips through the official-looking documents that Fionna and Charlene drew up based on the information Fionna’s children had gathered on actual FDA complaint report forms.
I can tell he isn’t reading any of the fine print.
They never read the fine print.
Except Xavier on iTunes updates.
At last the guard looks at his partner, who shrugs and passes the IDs back to him. He returns the clipboard, driver’s licenses, and FDA credentials to us and waves us through.
Charlene whispers to me, “One down, two to go.”
Air Force One touched down at the Philadelphia International Airport.
Originally, before delivering his eleven o’clock speech, the president had been scheduled to visit a charter high school to encourage the students to be good citizens and strive toward academic excellence, but he’d changed his plans earlier in the morning to give himself more time to review what he was going to say.
The Secret Service, of course, mentioned nothing about the reported psychic assassination plot as they escorted him from the plane.
Not only was this latest threat ludicrous, but the Secret Service has a policy: never notify the president of any threats against his life unless there is immediate and imminent danger. Considering the fact that he receives more than twelve thousand death threats a year, keeping him up to speed would mean updating him hourly about all the people who wanted to kill him.
And the Secret Service never cancels presidential events just because of uncorroborated death threats.
The speech at the Liberty Bell would go on.
Still, as absurd as this threat was, they had to follow up on it, just as they have to follow up on every threat to his life — all twelve thousand. Two agents had been sent to bring in the person who’d called it in, and whose GPS location had been pinpointed and verified by NSA.
In the lobby of the research facility, Charlene and I again produce our credentials and paperwork.
We place our things on the conveyor belt, step through the full-body scanner, and the security guard working the X-ray machine tells us we’ll need to leave our cell phones with him. “I’m sorry. There are no pictures allowed, no recording devices of any kind inside the building.” He sounds tired. Looks tired. I wonder how long he’s been working already today. Or last night.
I hadn’t thought through this part of the plan. I’m not sure if government inspectors would need to keep their phones with them. While I’m debating what to say, Charlene speaks up. “Only one of us carries a phone and it’s illegal for us to leave it behind. Look at page fourteen of the complaint form.”