Dick stumbles into his apartment a little after seven and pulls out his phone, not surprised when he sees the voicemail icon lit up.
“Dickie, you’re not going to believe it!” Dee says excitedly. “He’s dead! Otis is dead! The cops found him. Call me. Someone was listening. My prayers have been answered.”
Dick continues to his room and collapses on the bed, a sliver of pride haloing his grief. His sister and nephew are safe.
He feels like he’s just closed his eyes when his phone startles him awake, and he squints into the blinding morning brightness then at the clock on his nightstand to realize he’s slept nearly fourteen hours.
The phone rings again, and he grabs it, but then, remembering the day before, hesitates. Otis is dead, and he is the one responsible. He stares at the unfamiliar number as it rings a third time, then taps the answer button and lifts the phone to his ear.
“Hello? Hello, is anybody there?” squawks the caller, and Dick realizes he forgot to say hello.
“Yeah, I’m here. Sorry about that.”
“Is this Richard Raynes?”
Closing his eyes, Dick tries to figure out where he went wrong. A fingerprint? Someone saw him sneak into Otis’s house? Otis scrawled Dick’s name before he died?
“This is Dr. Richard Raynes,” he says, irrationally thinking the use of his title will somehow affirm his upstanding citizenry and clear him of suspicion of murder.
Murder. The thought sobers him.
“This is Paul Chester, president of Irvine’s Little League.”
His body sighs in relief.
“I understand you’re the assistant coach for the Cubs.”
“That’s right,” Dick answers, though he’s not sure that’s still true.
“Well, after what happened Saturday, Mr. Simms has been removed from managing, and we were hoping you wouldn’t mind stepping up and taking over for the remainder of the season. I know it’s a lot to ask, but we’d sure appreciate it.”
Dick has no idea what incident the man is referring to. Jim was so upset after the game they left quickly. But he’s so overwhelmed with relief he’d agree to just about anything that doesn’t involve confessing to murder.
“Of course. That would be wonderful. Yes. It would be an honor. I’d be happy to.” Realizing he’s blathering, he forces his mouth shut.
* * *
He arrives at Pentco at ten fifteen, over two hours late and, as he walks to his cubicle, feels his boss’s eyes following through her office window. Already on thin ice, he decides this might be a good time to appease the gods, or in this case, the middle-aged pencil-pusher who recently took over the reins of the lab.
He sets down his briefcase, grabs the project folder for his current assignment, and carries it to her office.
With a light rap on her open door, he pokes his head in and says, “Good morning.”
Joanne looks up to peer over her reading glasses then sets down the report she was studying and runs him over with her eyes, her expression sighing as she says, “Morning, Richard.”
“Morning. I finished the report on Nite-air.” He steps inside and places the folder on the desk in front of her.
Nite-air is a new medicine Pentco is adding to their cash-cow line of allergy products. Its added benefit is that it also helps the user sleep. Dick completed the formula a month after the project was assigned but, not wanting another, has milked it along for three.
Joanne takes off her glasses, which he doesn’t want her to do because, whenever she does that, she sighs and leans back in her chair, which causes her jacket to fall open and the white silk of her blouse to pull against the lace of her bra, which is always several shades darker, and which happens to be one of Dick’s weaknesses. He focuses on her red-painted lips, the deep crimson a good distraction.
“This took longer than I thought it would,” she says, her slouch perfectly timed with her sigh. Indigo. Or perhaps purple? Dick snaps his eyes back to her red mouth.
“A problem with the beta blockers,” he says.
Joanne is not a chemist, so he could say just about anything and she’d have no choice but to believe him.
Leaning forward again, she clasps her hands in front of her, the nails the same color as her lips, and asks, “Is everything okay, Richard?”
Dick feels the blush in his skin.
“Yup,” he says. “Can I go now?” He realizes after he says it he sounds like a five-year-old asking for a hall pass.
Joanne frowns then reaches sideways toward a stack of folders on her desk. “Before you do, I have your next assignment.”
The folder she unearths is exactly like the one he just returned. “Alert-air,” she says. She slides it toward him. “Same idea, but rather than helping the user sleep—”
“It helps them stay awake,” he finishes and tries to contain the sigh but does a poor job of it, the words nearly coming out a groan. Trying to recover, he says, “Great. I’ll get right on it.”
He reaches for the folder, but she pulls it back and laces her hands on top of it, and the thought crosses his mind to grab it and make a run for it.
“Richard, it’s pretty clear this work doesn’t interest you.”
He says nothing, a lump forming hard in his throat, fairly certain this is the moment she fires him. Which perhaps he deserves, and a week ago, he wouldn’t have cared about, possibly even welcomed. But now, surprisingly, he cares very much. His first baseball practice with his team is tomorrow afternoon, and if he loses his job, he’s not sure, with his history, he’d be able to get another.
“I’ve looked at your file,” she goes on, “and read your final report on Freeway.”
The flush of embarrassment returns. Freeway is his greatest failure. For his doctoral thesis, Dick chose to explore the new field of leukotriene antagonists, otherwise known as oral anti-allergens. When he began his research, oral allergy drugs paled in comparison to inhaled steroids. The primary problems were that ingested medicines metabolized too quickly, and the absorption varied depending on how full the stomach was at the time of consumption. Dick worked on a solution of adding a binding agent which controlled the rate of release. The thesis was good and showed promise for a new treatment for an ailment that afflicted hundreds of millions of people. The drug companies saw dollar signs, and Dick received several offers from top pharmaceutical companies. Pentco’s offer was competitive, and Caroline wanted to move to California, so theirs was the offer he accepted.
His research progressed, though slower than anticipated. The problem was finding a binder that didn’t compromise the effectiveness of the anti-allergen. His boss at the time, an accountant type with a nervous paranoia about his job, gave Dick a hard deadline of two years. Caroline was also losing patience. Money was tight, and they had a new baby on the way. Feeling the pressure, he rushed the conclusions, which turned out to be a catastrophic mistake. Two months after submitting for FDA approval, he needed to retract the application. His clinical trial subjects were showing a buildup of poly(A) proteins in their blood, a dangerous side effect that could prove fatal. The fiasco cost Pentco millions, and the plug was pulled on the project. Dick was reassigned from lead research chemist to staff chemist and has been working on mundane rehash assignments since.
“Based on what I read,” Joanne says, “it sounds like you had a theory about what went wrong as well as an idea of how to fix it?”
Unable to look at her, he nods. He knows exactly what went wrong, and for ten years, every other minute has been spent considering the solution. The problem wasn’t the medicine but the binder, a minor player he hadn’t given enough thought to.
Joanne pushes the Alert-air folder aside. “Fine,” she says. “Take a week to work up a proposal, then let’s talk.”
Dick doesn’t move.
“Is there something else?” she asks.
Dumbly he shakes his head and turns, then reconsidering, turns back and, voice tight with emotion, says, “Thank you.”