Lifetime Supply

Wally Tens had never been to prison.

He sat behind the wheel of his purring Dragonsilk coupe, squeezing the luxuriously padded grips in time with his laboured breathing. His three-sided coin dug into his right palm where he held it for luck.

Wally tried not to hyperventilate as he stared at the pool of golden moth-shadowed lamplight in the dark street ahead of him, stormy blackness beyond. He sweated through the armpits of his bespoke Berthulio suit jacket despite the enchanted cool air vents on the silver-swept dash.

Wally felt like a fraud. An amateur catapulted too early into the international pro league.

But. His first big gamble had worked in his favour. The second did too, until this one freak. Why couldn’t a third coin toss solve the asterisk on his second? He closed his eyes and prayed not only to the child of hope and the keeper of souls, but also the lawmaker and even the great eye. It couldn’t hurt.

Movement ahead. Wally’s breath hitched and he half-choked, half-coughed.

It had to be now. Before he could doubt again.

Wally stepped on the accelerator and closed his eyes.

“This is the seventh night in a row I’ve been run over by a car and the Protectorate won’t do anything about it!”

“The Protectorate is doing something about it,” said junior officer Roland in his most soothing tone. “I’m assigned to your case.”

Roland reviewed his notes.

Claims hit run over by car, same place every night, past 7 nights. Can’t identify vehicle. No apparent marks or injuries. Turned away from hospital emergency room.

He leaned back as far as the interview room’s metal chair would allow and tapped his pen to his lip. The man said his name was Brown. Just Brown. That was a little odd, and it seemed familiar, but Roland couldn’t place it. He’d met a few people with only one name through his work with the Protectorate.

Brown looked familiar, too. Average height, average weight, dressed in plain but nice enough shirt and slacks. Ordinary, other than his curious grey eyes and seriously receding but luxuriously cared-for head of peppery straight hair. It was the hair. Roland knew that hair from… something.

“Well M. Brown, I apologize that it took several visits for your case to be heard. Protectorate resources are stretched thin. Let’s go ahead with the procedures for an attempted murder investigation.”

“Murder?” Brown sputtered. He nearly dropped the empty glass bottle he’d been fidgeting with. “What do you mean, murder?”

Roland frowned. “You know, most people are never run over by any cars, let alone seven nights in a row. That doesn’t sound like coincidence.”

“I… suppose,” said Brown, as if he did not truly suppose. “I can’t imagine why anyone would want to murder me.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Roland said with a passable attempt at a reassuring smile. “Why don’t we start with your job? Where do you work, and have there been any unusual incidents lately?”

Roland took Brown through the standard set of questions. He managed to remember them all without consulting the handbook. Brown rambled quite a bit and Roland only wrote down about a tenth of what he said. Works for charity that spays/neuters stray cats & dogs and adopts them. Has twelve kids. No problems at work or kids’ schools. Deceased wife, no living family, all natural causes.

Ordinary. Exemplary, even. Roland chewed on the tip of his pen and looked at the only part of the notes that seemed at all relevant. “I think I can help you easily enough.”

Brown sat up and smiled. “That’s wonderful news. What can I do?”

Roland shook his head. “Do nothing out of the ordinary. You say you’ve been hit in the same place every night?”

“Yes. On Cliffshadow Crescent just behind Ravenshore General Hospital, after I finish my prostate cancer treatment around midnight.”

Roland noted that down and circled cancer treatment???. So Brown would leave and walk right back in to say he was run over by a car, with no detectable injuries. Roland could see why they turned him away.

“Well, all I have to do is stake out the location and wait for it to happen again,” Roland said. He could feal the weakness of his smile, its lack of reassurance.

Brown’s smile faltered. “I see.”

“I know that’s not ideal, but if you’ve been unhurt so far…” Roland held out his hands and shrugged.

“Yes, that makes sense.”

In the pause, Brown reached into his bag and withdrew a glass bottle of Sunny’s Heal-All Carbonated Healing Potion, coconut flavour. He tipped it toward Roland, who declined. He’d tried them before, when he broke his arm chasing a perp down a fire escape. He healed a week faster than the doctor expected, but that was all. And on top of being very expensive and not working particularly well as healing potions, the damn things smelled and tasted horrific.

Brown shrugged, popped the cap, and chugged the Sunny’s Healing Potion in one go. It smelled of a post-match Dungeon Crawling League change room with too many coconut-scented air fresheners and the nasal sting of horseradish.

Roland covered his mouth and tried not to gag.

It was a nice enough day for a walk, so Roland set out on foot to interview a few of Brown’s contacts. Besides, his senior partner, detective Bollart, would never let Roland drive his car.

He’d offered to keep Brown in protective custody at headquarters – the old fort in the southwest corner of the city – but Brown declined. He also declined to have Roland shadow him for the day. No matter how obvious it seemed to Roland, Brown wasn’t convinced he was the target of a murder attempt.

Anyway the soggy seaside air was much better than having to smell Brown’s potion drinks. Roland was glad to breathe deep of salt, rotting piers, and fish markets.

Hospital staff apologized for being unable to give Roland much information beyond when they’d seen Brown. Privacy regulations prevented them from giving any medical information about a patient, but the emergency room nurses were happy to chatter somewhat condescendingly about Brown’s return visits and complaints about being run over.

He already found himself thinking about Kat. She was grumpy, a little unkempt, and talked to her gun like it was a person, but even as a self-taught private investigator she always seemed better at finding things out than Protectorate-trained Roland.

At Roland’s request, his partner Bollart got this case assigned to him. Bollart was a good detective but not thrilled with mentorship. Sometimes Roland wondered if Kat would do better, even if she was always mixed up in some kind of trouble she didn’t want help with. Bollart didn’t tease her about Kat at least, not like some of the other seniors who joked Roland would go running to her the next time she showed up at a crime scene.

Well. As much as he’d like to see her, Roland wouldn’t prove them right. He could do this on his own. He had his Protectorate Procedures Manual in the chest pocket of the uniform shirt he wore over the required protective mail.

The charity Brown worked for wasn’t much help to Roland’s investigation either. Everyone was friendly and nice and they kept handing him baby animals. Roland could hardly take notes with fluffy puppies held in each elbow and very vocal kittens hanging off his shoulders.

All he ended up getting was that Brown was quiet, good at his job, and willing to work for free when the animal rescue was going through hard times – which hadn’t happened in a while after all Brown’s help. Some of Brown’s twelve kids even volunteered training and fostering puppies and socializing kittens. The only complaint was that recycling got a little out of hand with the number of Sunny’s Healing Potions Brown drank, but that seemed more like light office teasing than motive for murder. Roland carefully pried kitten claws out of his shirt and moved on.

He definitely wasn’t obessed with Kat. Bollart even backed him up on this, and shut down hard a joke that Roland was tracking her on his time off. He certainly didn’t abuse Protectorate resources lik a few of the worst gossips claimed. The most he would do was to ask around about whether she was doing alright and offer to help on the few occasions he ran into her in the normal line of duty. She’d been through harder times than most. Roland wouldn’t pretend to understand, and he knew Kat may never ask for help, but he would be available if she ever did.

Roland waited until school let out so he could chat with the teachers of a few of Brown’s kids. He found that Brown was an attentive parent who tried his best to make it to every parent-teacher conference. The kids were smart, had good grades, and were pretty well behaved with only the occasional detention. According to the teachers the kids only had good things to say about how their father listened and cared, gave thoughtful gifts, showed them how to do little expriments and build terrariums with his excess potion bottles, and cooked a simple but well-spiced dinner every night. Though there were twelve of them, Brown managed to make all his children feel loved.

Roland was having a hell of a time imagining who could possibly want Brown dead.

He strolled home, hands in pockets, frowning his way through the evening fog. Roland brushed past Sarah, on her beat, who asked him with a smirk how the traffic complaint was going. He forced a smile, told her “good”, and kept walking.

Roland changed out of his uniform, made dinner, reviewed his notes, and wondered how Kat would handle this case. She probably wouldn’t. Triple S Investigations stood for Souls, Spirits, Sandmen.

But if she did take the case, for whatever reason, what would Kat do? Roland didn’t actually know her or her methods well, but he’d read some reports on cases she’d tangled into. She… that’s right, she used the library for research. Roland wasn’t sure how to apply that tidbit to his case until he recalled the library kept newspaper archives.

He made it just before the central branch closed. Roland requested a search for M. Brown. Just Brown, no other names. The librarian, a nice older man, told Roland that since this was Protectorate business, he’d expedite the search and should have results ready the next morning.

The evening fog rolled in and it was time for his stakeout.

Roland wanted to arrive early and scope out the area before the fog grew too thick. It was probably the second reason Brown hadn’t been able to identify the vehicle that struck him – that and the part where he’d been allegedly under its wheels and frame. Roland had to assume it was the same vehicle each time, that one person was trying to kill Brown. There was no other way the same accident could happen seven nights in a row.

Cliffshadow Crescent, as its name suggested, fell into the gloom beneath the cliff when the sun set. Like most of the old city, the two- to three-storey buildings were built of hewn island blackstone glistening in the electric streetlamps and the oncoming damp.

The particular area Brown directed him to seemed unextraordinary. Houses faced south or east to avoid too dark a view of the looming cliff, so it made sense no witnesses had come forward. A quiet neighbourhood. Cliffshadow was closer to a back alley than a proper street, really.

Roland looked both ways and stepped into the road. He paced up and down, searching for tire marks, debris, dings or dents in light posts – any evidence of suddenly applied brakes or emergency stops.

He found none. If Brown had been run over, whoever did it had not thought to apply the brakes any of the seven times.

Fog thickened and danced in wisps over windows and streetlamps. Crows chatteredout of sight. A small rat scurried under a backyard fence toward a trash bin.

Silence.

The best vantage point, Roland decided, would be the narrow space between two fences where someone had screwed up a property line. He checked his pockets, made sure he still had his notepad and handcuffs, then hunkered down to wait.

His toe nudged something glass. An empty bottle of Sunny’s Healing Potion. Brown must have lost it when he’d been startled. He didn’t seem the kind of man to litter.

The night was damp and cold. Roland spun the bottle.

Wally Tens couldn’t understand what he was doing wrong. He’d been over it several times. Seven, actually.

His performance was suffering at work. The board bothered him for status updates on his projects.

Wally was preoccupied trying to come up with better ways to take care of Brown. Poison was out; he’d have to get close to something Brown would eat, and he could be seen. Besides, a good poison – or any kind of quick, effective weapon, spell, alchemical – would leave a trail via purchase history, which meant witnesses.

Cliffshadow Crescent was the one place he knew Brown would be that had a very low risk of witnesses, and the moron still kept to his same pattern night after night. And Wally’s car was the best weapon he owned long enough not to be suspicious.

The crunching of bones on the Dragonsilk’s grill and under its wheels each night was very convincing, but Wally hadn’t the stomach to check the body afterward, risk being seen. Cleaning the blood off the bumper was bad enough.

He crawled the Dragonsilk coupe around the corner onto Cliffshadow, partly because of the fog, partly because this wasn’t getting any easier.

No, that was a lie. It was getting a lot easier. The first time he felt like a monster, but now Wally was pissed off that Brown wouldn’t just die already. He had a deadline. Every time Brown failed to die, Wally got angrier and it got easier.

The engine was almost at idle as Wally rolled slowly down Cliffshadow, looking for a better place to start his run. Perhaps it was the angle, maybe he needed to –

Something glinted in the fog-shrouded reach of the headlights. There, to the left: someone crouched between two fences, a glass bottle rolling away from him into the light.

Wally very nearly floored the gas pedal, but, his body frozen as anger turned to panic, his mind recovered before he could accelerate. Drive cool, he told himself. Just let it roll. Let it roll. Nothing suspicious.

Refusing to even turn his head, Wally watched through the rearview mirror. The man stayed in place. Wally was safe, for now.

Who the hell was that? Did Brown go to the Protectorate? Was this surveillance? What did they know?

Wally tuned the corner, put the car in park, and flipped his three-sided coin over and over. Made it himself, years ago, before he’d given up enchanting. Looked like any other coin, but if you turned it over twice, instead of going back to the original face, you’d see a third, different one. A raven, the old Baron, and Wally’s own addition, an image of the coin.

Making his own luck.

Wally would not try tonight. Maybe not tomorrow. Had to lie low. He took the Dragonsilk off Cliffshadow and headed home for a stiff drink and a door he could lock tight.

Roland sat at his cramped desk, third cup of coffee in hand, eyes gummy and slow to blink. They wanted to stay shut.

He didn’t feel like much of a detective this morning. The search and stakeout of the alleged vehicular assault site yielded zero clues. Four cars had driven past overnight. Two to their homes to park, two on pass-throughs. He’d barely been able to make out the shapes of the vehicles through the haze diffused lamplight in thick fog. Should’ve done something about that after the first one, but he hadn’t thought of it, and there might not have been a good place to move to. Anyway, none of the cars passed when Brown was walking home, and there’d been no murder attempt.

Why not? Seven nights in a row but not last night? Had Roland been spotted when Brown came over to chat about his day and how he felt about his cancer treatment? Roland had to push him away, hoping he hadn’t ruined the stakeout. The scent of Sunny’s lingered for the rest of the evening, thanks to yet another bottle of healing potion. At least Brown took the new and the old bottles away to recycle.

“No luck catching that attempted killer, then?”

Roland startled and snorted, slopped some of his coffee onto his desk.

Officer Tiffany pulled a handkerchief from a pocket and tossed it onto Roland’s hand. “Sorry, I hope you’re not burned,” she grimaced.

“It’s fine, it’s cooled off,” Roland grunted. “Could’ve used you last night. Saw a couple of cars I’d like to check out but I don’t know them like you do.”

“Sorry, I was on a… another case,” Tiffany said. Roland thought she meant to say a real case, but stopped herself. “Bring me a sketch or a recording and I can tell you the make and model, and if you’re really lucky, where they last had it serviced.”

He nodded, slowly, so he wouldn’t get dizzy. “Thanks, Tiff.”

Someone slapped his desk. Roland jolted awake again.

Detective Bollart loomed over Roland, his tattered long coat damp from the morning fog. He chewed on an unlit cigar and slid a message slip to Roland. “Library called for you. How’s the case, junior?”

“Good, good,” said Roland as he took the message slip and tried thrice to read it. The record search he’d requested was complete.

Bollart nudged Roland’s shoulder. “Kid, don’t burn yourself out on a wild cockatrice hunt for weird potions guy.”

“Mhm,” Roland managed. He pulled himself up on his second try and headed to the library.

Front page news. Only six months ago. That was why Brown seemed familiar. Why Bollart called him the potion guy without having met Brown.

` Local Man Wins Liftetime Supply Of Sunny’s Healing Potions

The article, while seeming to only report the facts, came across a little tongue-in-cheek, asking without asking why anyone would want a lifetime supply of Sunny’s. There was a little blurb on Brown – nothing Roland hadn’t already found out in his investigation – and a note that Sunny’s had seen a nine hundred percent sales increase during the contest period. Sunny must have been pleased, thought Roland, though he knew the real Sunny was probably long gone and a board of executives ruled in his stead.

Roland sat with his fifth coffee reading his transcribed copy of the archived newspaper. There was something here, he thought, but he couldn’t see it. Not enough coffee. Too tired.

Still, he may as well try to talk to the Sunny’s marketing executive who’d set up the contest and awarded the prize.

“M. Tens, there’s a Protectorate officer here to see you.”

Wally hit too many keys on his typewriter and its arms jammed. “Give me a few minutes, thank you,” he said, and the secretary closed his office door behind him.

He’d been at work, not working, instead fiddling with an idea for an enchantment for the Dragonsilk. An old habit – working arcane formulae as a distraction from stress, now returning. Should’ve focused, had this enchantment ready the other night.

He straightened his tie, smoothed his jacket, tried to separate the arms of his typewriter, smoothed his jacket, swept his hair back, straightened his tie, smoothed his jacket. Even without the enchantment finished, here was no way the Protectorate could be on to him. He’d been so careful. Left no trail, no clues. This visit must be unrelated.

All he had to do was stay calm.

Wally took a deep breath. He stood, paced around his office, turned his three-headed coin over and over in his palm. When he felt calm enough, he peeked through the shades of his office window to the marketing department beyond.

The Protectorate man leaned on the secretary’s desk, looking down at his uniform. Feeling out of place, perhaps, Wally thought – blue and black chainmail and shirt, a standout in the artistic side of a business office full of suits and ties.

The man looked young. Quite young. The uniform suggested a beat officer, but typically detectives were the ones who handled questioning, according to the radio dramas Wally followed. A junior detective, then, alone without his senior partner. Exhausted, too – coffee in hand, eyes dark and low.

Good. This was good. It meant the Protectorate thought it minor, not worthy of the attention of a real detective.

Wally gripped his coin and tried on smiles until he found one that felt convincing. He opened the door. “Good afternoon, officer…?”

The man straightened, rigid. “Junior detective Roland,” he corrected, awfully polite.

Wally gave the slightest bow. “Of course. Please come in, detective.”

He hoped he wasn’t sweating too much as junior detective Roland closed the office door behind him. Wally sat behind his desk, forcing the smile. He steepled his fingers, then moved his hands to his pockets, and finally rested them on his desk. Casual, he hoped.

Detective Roland looked around the office. He seemed more curious than focused, glancing at the mostly-bare walls, eyes landing on the Board Certificate of Merit.

“Is that for your contest campaign?” Roland asked.

“It is,” Wally smiled. “Did you try your hand at the prize?”

Roland shook his head. “No, no. Sunny’s Healing Potions are… not for me.”

Wally smiled. “I understand the flavour is divisive. I only handle marketing, not taste.”

The detective nodded and sat down in the plush guest chair. “I’m sorry to bother you, M. Tens. I just had a few questions about the contest and winner.”

Wally smiled. “Of course. Anything.”

“You met the winner? M. Brown?”

“Yes,” Wally smiled, “I personally awarded his prize.”

“This was… about six months ago?”

Wally smiled. “Yes, I think that’s right.”

“Did anything strike you as unusual or out of the ordinary about M. Brown?”

Wally pretended to think, then smiled. “Not particularly, that I recall.”

“Not particularly? Was there something a tiny bit unusual?”

Wally smiled. “Well, he mentioned he had twelve kids. That seemed like a lot.”

“It does. You must have had a chat or interview of some kind before or after the ceremony?”

“Probably. I don’t remember much,” Wally smiled.

“All right. Sorry, last question, and I know this is a long shot, but… can you think of anyone who might have a reason to want M. Brown dead?”

Wally nearly smiled, then remembered to feign shock. “Brown? No. Who could possibly want a widowed father of twelve and cancer patient dead?”

The detective paused a moment, then stood. “Sorry to bother you. Thanks for your -”

He paused.

Wally held his breath.

Detective Roland pointed at a small framed photograph on Wally’s desk. “Is that your car?”

Wally smiled. “Yes, it’s a Dragonsilk coupe. Import from Aulonia.”

Roland’s finger traced the smooth, aerodynamic curves. “Wow. I’m not a car guy but that looks nice. An officer I know would be really impressed.”

Wally smiled and held back a boast about the near-silent ten-cylinder engine. “That’s kind of you to say. Thanks for stopping in, detective.”

He escorted Roland out his office door, smiling all the while. He reached out to shake the officer’s hand and dropped his coin, still in his palm.

Roland picked it up for him, fumbled a few times so it turned over, did a little double-take. “Huh. Neat trick.” The detective stared, then twitched. “Sorry. I’m easily distracted when I’m not sleeping well. Thanks for seeing me, M. Tens.” He handed back the coin.

“No problem at all,” said Wally with the last smile he could manage.

Wally closed the office door and wilted onto the carpet, furiously turning the coin in his palm. He fumbled to the intercom on his desk. “If you tell the board about this, you’re fired.”

“Of course this isn’t a date, you’re interested in someone else.”

Officer Tiffany would have nudged Roland with her elbow, he was sure, if they weren’t both crammed into a tight little alley behind a trash bin without room to move.

If Roland denied he was interested in Kat, Tiffany would take it as embarrassment and defensiveness, therefore confirmation. If he agreed sarcastically, she’d take it as deflecting confirmation. Roland ground his teeth and didn’t engage, which he was sure Tiffany would take as silent treatment confirmation.

He jolted – Tiffany kicked his ankle. “Thanks,” Roland said again. “For keeping me awake. For coming. Again.” It was their fourth night out.

“You do owe me,” she reminded him with a sidways wink.

A car drove past on Cliffshadow. It was dark, but the fog wasn’t so bad tonight, and Roland could see it was a white unmarked cargo van. Tiffany cocked her head, eyes closed, and reported “Rhino Hauler, 781. Rear left tire out of alignment. Needs an oil change.” Roland added it to the list in his notepad, elbows tight.

“That’s amazing,” Roland said again.

“Thanks. I’d think you were flirting if it weren’t for -”

“Shut up, Tiffany.” He said it just sarcastically enough that she giggled.

Roland checked his watch. “Okay, he should be coming through soon.” Tiffany nodded, and Roland reviewed his list of vehicles that had come by.

Brown stepped out of a dark alley between two houses. Technically trespassing but it was not exactly Roland’s priority. Brown was whistling, swinging his bag, stepping to the tune. Cancer treatment must have gone well. He even stopped under a streetlamp and looked both ways before crossing the street.

Headlights flared, an engine roared. Roland and Tiffany reached out, stunner spells at the ready. Brown panicked, spun around, dropped his bag, stepped into the street. Roland and Tiffany groaned.

The car slipped down the street, much quieter than the initial roar. Roland couldn’t focus on it; his eyes kept fuzzing. Tiffany blinked and rubbed her face, too. Roland loosed his stun bolt, doing his best to aim at the infuriatingly blurry, indistinct car. Tiffany released hers too.

A wet crunch and Brown went flying. A loud pop, too, and the car screeched into the lamppost.

Roland still couldn’t see the car. Couldn’t make his eyes focus on it. Almost painful. He growled, looked to Brown instead, and gasped.

Brown was a pulped bloody mess smeared across the black cobblestone street. Someone retched; it wasn’t Roland or Tiffany, still jammed in shoulder to shoulder.

A door slammed. The car reversed and peeled away down the crescent.

Roland pulled himself out of the nook and ran to Brown. The man’s head was split open, but right before Roland’s eyes, the brains and blood and broken bone healed over, closed up, good as new. In only seconds, Brown was up and dusting himself off.

“Did you get it?” Brown asked. He retrieved his bag and withdrew a bottle of Sunny’s, popped the cap, and casually sipped the drink.

Roland gaped, then gagged at the smell. Tiffany stepped up, cautiously, as though Brown might explode. “Never mind that,” Roland said, “Are you alright?”

“Fine,” Brown nodded.

“You didn’t tell me he could do that,” Tiffany whispered.

“He didn’t tell me he could do that,” Roland said with an accusing stare at Brown. “It shouldn’t be possible. No one can heal like that.”

Brown shrugged and finished his drink. “Would you have believed me? You definitely wouldn’t have let me prove it by running me over with your car.”

Car. The car! Roland spun round. The car was gone, but there was a dent in the lamppost, and something shiny in the light, beside a sewage drain. He stepped over and… it was a standard silver coin. Roland turned it over. Ordinary. He pocketed it.

“Tiffany, could you see that car?”

“Not even a little. Something magical about that for sure.”

“Damn!”

“Hold on though.” She grinned. “I could hear it just fine.”

Roland held out his notepad. “Okay. Good. Shoot.”

“Dragonsilk coupe. Aulonian. Imported. Not serviced since the import, probably. One of our stun bolts popped the front right tire.”

“Dragonsilk?” Roland frowned. He reached for his pocket, held the coin in his palm. A raven. He turned it over. The Baron. Roland held his breath and turned it again.

To reveal a third face. The image of a coin.

Brown clapped his hands. Roland and Tiffany both jumped. “Found any clues? Would anyone like a drink?” He held out three bottles of Sunny’s.

“I have a warrant for the arrest of M. Wally Tens on eight counts of attempted murder with a deadly weapon.”

The boardroom went totally silent save for the whir of the slide projector displaying a quarterly profit chart that cast a red tint over the mostly-elderly board members assembled around a long, curvy weirdwood table. Roland watched them, hands on his hips, wearing his uniform mail. His partner, senior detective Bollart, backed him up, looking and smelling like a greasy sailor.

Wally lept to his feet so fast he knocked his chair over backward. “You can’t prove anything.”

“Judge disagrees,” senior detective Bollart rumbled over Roland’s shoulder, as a lawyer in the corner made a shut up motion toward Wally.

Roland puffed up and held out a silver coin, showed it to the room. “We recovered your three-sided coin from the scene of the crime, an expert witness identified the disguised vehicle as a Dragonsilk coupe, and we matched the damage on your Dragonsilk to -”

“No need to present the evidence, kid, this isn’t a trial,” Bollart whispered. Roland nodded and crossed his arms at M. Tens.

Wally’s suit wrinkled as though sensing his panic. He pointed around the boardroom, eyes wild. “They made me do it!”

The lawyer threw her pen at Wally. “M. Tens, I strongly advise you to -”

“Profits are down!” Wally shouted. “Brown drinks too many gods-damned Sunny’s Heal-All Carbonated Fucking Healing Potions! They don’t grow on trees! Not even the ingredients do! Margins are thin! The board threatened me!”

The mostly old board members leaned back in their chairs, eyes wide, desperate not to be seen. The lawyer kept saying shut up shut up shut up.

“The board told me I needed to solve the problem I made with that stupid potions-for-life contest because Brown is a damned freak of an addict who drinks that shit like he’s dying of thirst! He’s single-handedly destroying this company’s profits -” he gestured wildly at the projected slide, showing quarterly profits diving into the red – “and this board told me they’d have my job if I didn’t ‘solve the problem’,” Wally shouted with finger quotes.

Roland blinked. He looked around at the board members, mostly wide-eyed and frozen, sinking into chairs. Then back to Wally, wide-eyed and manic, almost frothing. Roland cleared his throat. “The board told you M. Brown is drinking too many of the unlimited lifetime supply of drinks you awarded, so you decided to kill him?”

“Unsubstantiated, and if true, which we refute, not an order to murder,” muttered the lawyer.

Roland and Bollart exchanged glances. Roland never led an arrest like this before. Bollart let him practice on some easy ones, but this was –

“Why isn’t he dead?” Wally shouted. “Please just tell me, why isn’t Brown dead?”

Bollart shook his head, stomped over the fancy boardroom table, jumped Wally and clapped him in handcuffs. Roland was too tired to hold back the explanation.

“According to our wizard’s analysis, the Healing Potions built up in Brown’s system and triggered when needed. Very unusual, never seen it before, not sure why or how.”

“That’s impossible,” Wally mumbled, then screamed. “That’s impossible! You don’t think that if you could just drink more healing potions, everyone in this room wouldn’t be doing it? That’s not possible!”

Whispers swept through the boardroom. Roland tried not to be cynical but he could already see the corporate machine begin to chug. If there was a way to replicate Brown’s freak coincidence, they’d find it.

“Nice work, kid,” said Bollart over a mouthful of unlit cigar. He shoved Wally Tens out the door. Roland could hear Bollart growl “Better hope the cooks at the all-you-can-eat prison buffet don’t treat you like you did Brown.”

Nice work, Bollart said. Bollart! Nice work! Roland took a deep breath and tried not to grin at the still-stunned board.

The elderly president stood, unsteady yet dignified. “I’m so terribly sorry for any trouble my employee caused you.”

“Former employee. And apology is not an admission of guilt or complicity,” called the lawyer.

Roland sighed. “That’s all right, M….”

“Sunny,” said the old man.

“Huh,” Roland replied.

Bollart had handed Roland a pocketful of money and told him to buy a six-pack and take the next two days off. Roland was happy to obey. He shuffled home, drinks hanging from sore fingers.

He realized he was walking past Kat’s slightly run-down apartment building, slightly green from algae on damp edges of blackstone. He hurried onward, unsure of how he’d got there, almost stepped into the path of a streetcar which rang its angry bell at him.

Roland hadn’t thought about her for days. Most of the case. That was good. He gave her window a stupid salute and wondered if she’d approve of how he handled things. Maybe he’d have a chance to tell her about it someday.

He tried not to be as cynical as Kat, but Roland could almost hear her telling him that while he’d caught the murderer, the board’s profitability problem remained, as long as Brown kept drinking potions or until they could replicate his unexpected ability.

Roland would keep watch on Brown.