“Don’t feel too sorry for him,” I said. “He meant to do that to you.”
Sheyenne had a disturbingly calm expression on her face as she returned to us. I said, “I didn’t know you were so ruthless.”
She didn’t look guilty at all; instead, she was indignant. “That man killed me. He put toadstool toxin in my drink! I suffered for days as the poison destroyed my body, one organ at a time. Brondon Morris did that to me—and he shot you too. More than once, in fact.” She sniffed. “Believe me, that might have looked messy, but he got off easy.”
Self-consciously, I touched the bullet hole in the back of my head and the putty-filled one in the front. I couldn’t argue with her logic.
McGoo bounded up the metal stairs to join us all on the catwalk, looking around with wide eyes. “We’re all right, McGoo,” I said.
Still self-righteous, Sheyenne presented herself to him and extended her forearms, wrists together. “Are you going to cuff me, Officer? You saw what I did.”
He peered into the churning, frothing vat as the beater kept working. A large rectangular swatch of green plaid floated to the top of the liquid, then was sucked under again.
After a long pause, McGoo said, “I didn’t see anything. He must have slipped on the catwalk.” He indicated a sign on the cinderblock wall next to a pile of pipes from a dismantled scaffold. WARNING: HAZARDOUS CHEMICALS. “Must be an internal problem at JLPN, insufficient safety precautions for the employees.” He looked over at Robin. “Someone should file a workers’ compensation suit.”
We descended the stairs, glad to be down from the vat. I retrieved my .38 from where I had tossed it. Robin rubbed her wrists, flexed her fingers. She smiled at me. “Thanks, I knew you’d come.”
On the side of the huge tank, a laminated sheet announced, SAFETY FIRST! THIS FACILITY HAS HAD ___ DAYS WITHOUT AN ACCIDENT. The number 121 had been written with a grease pencil that hung by a piece of twine next to the sign. With the side of my hand, I smeared out the 121, picked up the grease pencil, and wrote 0.
McGoo was still red-faced and panting as he looked around the process floor. He touched the back of his head and winced. “Jekyll’s around here somewhere. He’s the one who knocked me out.”
“We’ll have to send an emergency recall notice to all the stores and facilities that were about to release the new JLPN product line,” Robin said. “Get word out on the radio, have the mayor make a speech and warn all unnaturals. They can’t be allowed to use any necroceuticals that contain Compound Z.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” said a nasal voice. “That would destroy all our hopes and dreams.”
Harvey Jekyll walked onto the factory floor. A small bookish man with shrunken shoulders and large eyes, he looked more qualified to be a dungeon librarian than a corporate executive. “I’m afraid I can’t let any of you leave here—even the humans.” Jekyll’s nostrils flared, and the wrinkles on his brow furrowed together. “I’m very sorry that Brondon didn’t live to see our ultimate triumph. Do you know how hard it is to find a good, imaginative chemist who isn’t profit-motivated?”
“You can find him right there in the vat,” I said. “But you’ll have to strain out the pieces.”
Jekyll stepped forward, and I noticed how very small his shoes were; perhaps he bought them in the boys’ department. He had small, feminine hands, too. If clichés about endowment were accurate, that might have been another reason why Miranda was so eager for a divorce.
“Brondon was a crusader for humankind,” Jekyll said. “Under my auspices, he created products to make real human beings safe, to make us stand strong against the unnaturals.” Then, as if a thought had occurred to him, he raised his chin and smiled. “However, his death does now make me the official Grand Wizard of Straight Edge. That’s a silver lining, at least.”
We all just stared at him. Two villain soliloquies in one night?
“Harvey Jekyll, you’re under arrest for murder,” McGoo said. “Turn around and put your hands behind your back. I’m taking you in.”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Officer. Murder of unnaturals? No one will care, and once I eliminate you all, I can pin everything on poor Brondon. That way he can serve a final purpose.” The mousy man strutted forward.
I laughed in disbelief. “You’re delusional, Mr. Jekyll. It’s three of us against you.”
Sheyenne flitted up to the catwalk and drifted down to join us, holding the gun that Brondon had dropped. “Four of us,” she said.
“Oh, that won’t be nearly enough,” Jekyll sneered. “One of Brondon’s greatest achievements was creating a concoction that makes a normal human strong enough to fight even an army of unnaturals.” He reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a capped test tube filled with emerald-green liquid. He yanked off the cork and downed the contents. From the grimace on Jekyll’s face, I assumed the potion was as vile as its creator had been.
Jekyll’s scrawny figure began to change.
Chapter 43
Jekyll’s entire body swelled up as if someone had hooked an air compressor to his nether orifice and inflated him like a Thanksgiving Day parade balloon. His shoulders expanded, his chest puffed out, and his shirt split into frayed tatters. His previously bald head sprouted thick shocks of wiry black hair. His eyes became huge, and his mouth sprouted square crooked teeth.
It didn’t take a private detective to figure out that this was the violent brute that had caused so much mayhem around the city.
Not one to call a committee meeting before making a decision, McGoo pointed his service revolver and shot Jekyll full in the chest. I didn’t blame him—this thing had torn the young Straight Edgers to pieces and staked Sheldon Fennerman to a brick wall.
Despite being shot, Jekyll kept growing and kept coming toward us. McGoo had used the revolver loaded with normal bullets, which he’d just fired at Brondon Morris, but I doubted the silver-jacketed ammo in his other pistol would have had any greater effect.
I drew my own .38 and started shooting. Getting into the spirit of the celebration, Sheyenne joined in with Brondon’s gun.
The bullets didn’t bounce off Jekyll’s hide, but were simply absorbed into his swelling flesh like raindrops in a mud puddle. The monstrous creature’s biceps bulged, and his fingernails turned into thick talons. Warts the size of hard-boiled eggs popped up on his leathery skin.
“That thing is ugly!” McGoo said.