Inside, John found an unlocked storage room and borrowed a white coat and empty clipboard. With his shirt and tie visible beneath, an ID badge purloined from an unattended nurse’s station, and his own reporter’s notepad clipped to the clipboard, John made a convincing young internist. As long as no one looked down to see his worn jeans and dirty sneakers.
He located the room of one of two custodians involved in the mishap at Robert Louis Stevenson Senior High School the night before. He had bandages on his arms and head, but appeared in better shape than one might expect from an explosion that took out an outbuilding.
“How are we this morning?” asked John cheerily. “You were in quite a scrape last night. It’s the talk of the hospital.”
“Doin’ so-so, Doc,” said the custodian. “My buddy Wally got the worst of it. I told him not to play with that thing. How’s he doin’, Doc? They said he was in intensive care but would be coming out soon.”
“Well, if they said he’s coming out soon, he’ll be coming out soon, Mr., uh …”
John searched for a name on the patient’s chart which hung from the end of the bed.
“Just call me Mort,” said the custodian. “Dr. …”
“Uh, Bartlett,” said John, checking his name tag. “So, about that thing. What was it, exactly?”
“Some kinda popgun,” said Mort. He described the spitfire that had gone off, destroying the boiler and the building; the description matched John’s brother Chase’s sketch.
“I see,” said John, scribbling notes on his pad. “Did it fire some kind of bullet?”
“It was just a blinding flash of light,” said Mort. “Next thing I know, I’m being stretchered into an ambulance.”
“Where did this, uh, pistol come from?” asked John. “Did Wally bring it into work?”
“No, it was in the wastepaper trash Wally had collected from the classrooms. Every night we make the rounds and empty wastebaskets. It must have fallen in or been tossed in by somebody.”
“Which room did it come from?”
“There’s only that summer arts camp thing going on at the high school right now,” said Mort. “So it had to come from the art room, or the music room, or the shop class. Or one of the offices. Those are the only rooms being used this time of year.”
“Thanks, Mort,” said John. “You’ve been very helpful.”
“Say, aren’t you going to take my temperature or check my dressing or give me an I.V. or somethin’?”
“Uh, the nurse will be in in a moment to do all that,” said John.
In fact, the nurse came in at just that moment, greeting the patient. She eyed John’s blue jeans and sneakers suspiciously. Checking his I.D. badge, she saw the picture of an African American gentleman with greying hair.
“You’re not Dr. Bartlett …” she said.
“I was just leaving,” said John. “Thanks again, Mort.”
Back in the parking lot, Barnes was finishing up the second issue of Megatron Man, which Chase had given him. “Your brother’s got quite the wild imagination,” said Barnes. “I can see him dreaming up ray-guns and UFOs and stories, just like you find in real life.”
“The story checks out,” said John, who had ditched the white coat and I.D. badge but inadvertently kept the clipboard. “The one custodian describes some kind of weapon that produced a blinding light before the explosion.”
“Did you talk to them both?” asked Barnes.
“The other one I couldn’t get to before raising suspicions.”
John started the car.
“Where to?” asked Barnes.
“To the high school,” replied John. “We need to find some tangible evidence.”
During the drive over, Barnes lamented that Chase Bradford had set aside Megatron Man to accept freelance assignments as penciler for a big, mainstream superhero comic book company. “He’s a sellout,” said Barnes, “complicit in the capitalist apparatus that is taking over art and entertainment. Doesn’t he realize one day that evil corporate suits are going to end up owning everything?”
“If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” said John.
He pulled the car into a spot on the service road along the subdivision across from the high school. The house, facing Six Mile Road, had a real estate sign that read, “Sold!”
“Why are we parking here?” asked Barnes. “They have a big empty lot over there beside the school.”
“That’s students-only,” said John. “And if I park in the visitor lot in front, I’d have to check into the office. Let me do the reporting; you just keep reading your comic books.”
John darted across the five lanes of Six Mile Road with his clipboard in tow. With rolled up shirt sleeves, he hoped to pass as a city inspector.
Walking around to the back of the building, he came upon construction vehicles already clearing debris, and making ready to install a new boiler and erect cinder blocks around it.
A talkative worker in a hard hat with nothing to do but wave an orange flag at the non-existent traffic in the empty parking lot filled the columnist in on what had transpired.
“The place was a mess,” he said. “Cinder blocks are brittle; they crumble like dry cookies. There was twisted metal from the boiler, but that’s already been hauled away for scrap.”
“I’m told there was a weapon found at the scene,” said John.
“Maybe the custodians were hunters. Anything like that was already gone this morning when I got here.”
“Could a gun fired at a boiler have caused this explosion?”
“Naw, a bullet would have just ricocheted off the cast iron.” “Do they often explode like this?”
“I’ve never heard of such a thing before,” said the hard hat. “Usually when a boiler dies, it just rusts out the bottom, like an old water heater, or otherwise gives up the ghost. They go quietly—a whimper, not a bang.”
John entered the high school using a side entrance and began walking down along and axial hallway that ran the length of the school, parallel to Six Mile Road, all the way to the far end where students were dropped off and picked up by yellow buses during the school year. John didn’t walk that far; he passed the choir room and the shop class that were closest to where he entered, then passed the student activities office.
Looking up, Student Activities Director Ernie Penn Pierson called out from his glazed inner office, “Can I help you?”
John introduced himself using his real name, identifying himself as a report for The Detroit Day.
“Yeah, I’ve heard of you,” said Ernie, annoyed. “You used to write about the Bermuda Triangle and haunted houses and how the Kern Block downtown was the lost site of the Biblical Garden of Eden. The vice principal held a lunch hour press conference in the auditorium. There were representatives from your paper …”
“Yeah, well, there were a few follow-up questions.”
“Such as?”
“Well, have you noticed anything unusual around the school lately?”
Like the preternaturally gifted visiting artists who appeared out of the blue to save my arts camp? Ernie thought to himself.
“No,” he told Bradford. “We’re just picking up the pieces, having ourselves a fine summer arts camp.”
“Sounds like some professional-sounding jazz coming from the band room,” noted John. “How long does this summer camp continue?”
“Another week,” said Ernie. “The second and final week is next week. We finish with a big concert and talent show. A big bang, but hopefully no more explosions. Anything else?”
“Speaking of explosions,” said John, “do you know anything about a ray gun being involved?”
Ernie glared at John, then burst out laughing. “Nope, don’t know anything about a ray gun. The kids have started some wild rumors. But I can assure our mad science lab is closed for the summer. What did the vice principal tell you on the way in? She was here last night—never mentioned any ray gun.”
“I didn’t talk with the vice principal yet,” said John. “But I spoke to one of the custodians, and he told me …”
“A burn victim on painkillers,” said. “Delirious.”
“Like I said, I haven’t spoken with the vice principal yet …”
“And you’re not going to, either,” said Ernie, getting up from behind his desk. Although of slighter build than John, his body language was aggressive. “I’m escorting you out of the building, Mr. Bradford. The next time you visit unannounced, you will find a guard posted who will shoot you on sight. Not with a ray gun, but with bullets.”
Back across the street, John tossed his clipboard into the back seat and climbed into the car.
“What’d you find out?” asked Barnes.
“No tangible evidence,” said John. “But a lot of suspicious denial. A little touchy about the ray gun rumor, for some reason.”
“What’s our next move?”
John glanced over at the copy boy. “I won’t be able to show my face around the campus until the closing concert weekend after next,” John mused. “But you can pass for a high school student, especially with those comic books, and you play oboe, don’t you?”
Past Barnes, John saw the real estate sign in front of the sold house.
“Explain that you just moved into the neighborhood and will be attending Stevenson this fall …”
“Which arts track am I on? Music, drama, art, shop?”
“Play the field,” said John. “Get to know the kids, see what they may know about a deadly popgun that fell into a wastebasket.”
Next: Undercover Overachiever
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Archival Images:
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| Rudy Mayo, John Bradford, Cecilia Munoz, and Barnes in the offices of The Detroit Day from Megaton Man #0 [Bizarre Heroes #17] (Fiasco Comics Inc., June 1996). |
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