Super Meals: Part Thirty Three

            “Bismuth?”

            Doctor Ralph actually said the word out loud. He couldn’t believe it, but saying it aloud didn’t make it any more believable.

            It had taken over an hour to perform all of his experiments on the remaining sample of Walter’s vomit, and the results were basically the same. There were traces of the chemicals from the “food” Walter had eaten for breakfast (which Doctor Ralph had been able to isolate rather easily since he knew what they were already), the standard helping of bodily fluids that were standard in such a sample as this, and…

“Bismuth.”

Saying it aloud again still wasn’t making it any better.

He’d further isolated the compound and ran it through the assorted machines again, this time on its own. While the analysis was going on, he pulled up “Bismuth Subsalicylate” online and checked the chemical formula.

This was where things got…weird.

He started with Wikipedia, then cross-referenced it against the listing from the Mayo Clinic, and again at the online drug reference library. Every site, without fail, listed it as C7H5BiO4.

But that wasn’t the same compound as the sample.

The sample from Walter’s stomach was C7H6BiO4.

There was an extra hydrogen molecule.

Doctor Ralph practically leapt from his chair and threw himself across the room at the mass spectrometer that was analyzing the sample and froze. He waved his hands at it in frustration, as if that would make it somehow go faster. He bounced from foot to foot, making little grunting noises. He slapped a hand on the side of the machine. He refreshed the results screen every thirty seconds for five solid minutes.

Then, finally, when the multi-million dollar piece of equipment had finished analyzing the chemical compound that he had placed within it, he had his results.

C7H6BiO4

Adam was feeling better.

He had crawled from the alleyway and, while sticking to the side streets, made it to the local college campus. The entire way was blisteringly hot for him, and the lab coat he had stolen from the morgue had long since gone from white to burned brown, but he was off the concrete and laying on the grass now, and the perfectly manicured, cool lawn felt soft against his skin.

Students walking by were quite taken aback, however, at the half-naked man lying in a patch of dead, burnt grass, mere feet from the fountain in front of the old music building, but Adam didn’t care. He’d gone from a cold hard slab to melting garbage and asphalt to soft grass. In his eyes, things were looking up.

A small group of students had gathered around him, and one of the braver young men stepped forward and squatted down to ask, “Hey man, you okay?”

Adam opened one eye and looked at him for a long second before mumbling, “Yeh… M’good.”

The young man leaned in and said, “Can we get you some help?” as he extended a hand, but as soon as it touched Adam’s shoulder he snapped it back, hissing at the pain. “Goddamn, dude! You’re burning up!”

“I said m’good…” muttered Adam. He was more awake and conscious now, aware of the crowd around him, but largely ignoring it all in favor of the water pouring over the lip of the fountain ahead of him. He heaved his arms underneath himself and pushed up, sliding his knees under himself before finally stumbling upright.

He left two blackened handprints in the grass, but didn’t notice.

 Several of the students commented on his near-nakedness, but he wasn’t listening. He lurched forward, one heavy foot at a time, until he reached the stone basin of the campus fountain, and fell in.

“You sure you wanna eat that?”

Mimi was halfway through her own meal already, but Walter hadn’t even taken a bite of his. They were sitting at a hard plastic table identical to the thirty others in the fast-food restaurant, on hard plastic chairs that were bolted to the floor. Walter had ordered something called the “Suicidal Rodeo Clown” that consisted of four “beef” patties, eight strips of “bacon,” four “onion rings,” four slices of “cheese,” and served open-faced so as to show off the artistic skills of the “chef” who had used a mix of “ketchup,” “mustard,” “mayonnaise,” “barbecue sauce,” and the restaurant’s signature secret sauce to draw a clown face on the top bun.

When he got it back to the table, Walter flipped the top bun over and smooshed it down with his hand, causing the assorted sauces to cascade over the edge of the rest of the burger.

He was no longer sure he wanted to eat it.

“Not really,” he said. “At least not here. What if something happens?”

“Well,” said Mimi, finishing off her own burger, “wrap it up, then. I gotta go have a quick word with the manager and then we can go.”

“Where to?”

“I dunno, actually. It’s probably not a good idea to go back to the park, so try to think of somewhere while I go have a chat.”

Walter thought while wrapping up his burger.

Mimi walked around and then behind the counter. One of the older workers approached her and said, “Excuse me, ma’am, I can’t let you be back here,” while blocking her path. Mimi put on her best “Don’t fuck with me” face and held her badge up in the girl’s face, and she immediately stepped aside.

As she walked past her, Mimi said, “Where’s the manager?”

The girl pointed towards the back of the restaurant, at the broom closet that was now an office, and Mimi went towards it. She knocked on the door, and SaraBecca opened it.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Detective Mimi Spatchcock,” said Mimi, holding her badge up again. “You had a gentleman here this morning working at the drive through window…”

“Timmy?” said SaraBecca.

“Is that the name he gave you?” said Mimi, taking her phone out of her pocket.

“Well, yes. That’s the name his caretaker gave us, at least. Why? Was there something wrong with your food?”

“No,” said Mimi, “the food was fine. What caretaker are you talking about?”

“Timmy’s caretaker. He’s one of our special needs hires. He works the window in the mornings, but we only let him hand food to the customers because he’s not able to get his food handler’s card. In the afternoons he cleans. Is he in some kind of trouble?”

“Wait, you’re telling me that this man is mentally or physically handicapped in some way?” Mimi had pulled up a picture of Doctor Ralph on her phone and showed it to SaraBecca.

“Oh! No, that’s Doctor Quinlan. He’s one of the head chefs from the corporate kitchen. Why? Did something happen to him?”

A few minutes later Mimi rejoined Walter at their table, where he had wrapped and bagged his special burger. He stood up when she approached, and asked, “Are we all set?”

“Yeah,” said Detective Mimi. “I have an idea about where our assailant from this morning might be staying in town and got confirmation of his identity. You think of a place you wanna go eat?”

“Yeah, actually,” said Walter. “There’s a bunch of wooded areas off the beaten path over at the college. Why don’t we go try there?”

Super Meals: Part Thirty Two

            “Wait, seriously?” asked Walter.

            “What?” asked Mimi, pulling into the fast food parking lot.

            “Please tell me you’re not seriously going to put me through this again.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “Look, I don’t like being a human guinea pig, all right?”

            Mimi ignored him and pulled into a parking space as he made weak sounds of annoyance. He tried to speak, but stopped, then gestured like he was going to make a point, but stopped again. He wasn’t even making words, just syllables.

            “Gi…” Sigh. “I me…buh…wha…” Sigh again.

            Mimi gave him a moment to get over it, then cut him off, saying “Well, I tell you what, then. How about I go inside and get some food, and you can decide whether you want to come in with me and order for yourself, or trust me to get you something that may or may not…I dunno, make you shit diamonds or something.”

            Walter thought for a moment, then said “That sounds quite painful, actually.”

            “That was the idea,” said Mimi.

            Walter sighed again and opened his mouth to speak, but Mimi cut across him, saying, “You know, you keep sighing like that and you’re going to start hyperventilating.”

            “I…But…No, wait, I mean…”

            Mimi just watched with half a smile on her face, then said, “Come on, use your words…”

            Walter threw his hands up and said, “Fine. Let’s go.”

           

            “I’ll need a mass spectrometer, and, if you’ve got one, a gas chromatograph.”

            Doctor Ralph was on the phone with Tiffany, the District Attorney. He was frustrated at his lack of results from testing Walter’s bodily fluids and decided he would need proper lab equipment to find out more. The hospital would have too many people and security cameras, and besides that, he didn’t have an in with any of the local hospitals.

            He had received a call, however, while he was destroying his room in a fit of rage, and when he listened to the voicemail he calmed down considerably. It was from the county clerk he had bullied the previous day, letting him know that there was a copy of the coroner’s report waiting for him to pick up at his convenience at the District Attorney’s office, and if he needed any further assistance with anything at all while he was in town, he should not hesitate to ask.

            So he called the District Attorney’s office and asked.

            “Of course, Doctor Quinlan,” said the DA. “You’ll find that our coroner’s lab is well equipped with all of the latest…equipment…” She trailed off for a moment, but rallied quickly, saying, “Which we are happy to place at your disposal. I received word from Judge Barnes personally that we were to extend you every courtesy, within the confines of the law, of course, and I would be happy to accompany you—”

            “No, no,” he said. “That won’t be necessary. If you could just let me in, though, and maybe show me to the lab itself, that would be plenty. I don’t wish to take advantage of your hospitality.”

            It was an empty statement – Doctor Ralph knew that with a phone call he could make all of their lives hell, but he was feeling quite positive about his chances of discovering what made Walter so special, so he extended some magnanimity to these small-town yokels.

            “Of course, doctor,” said the DA. “Shall we say 20 minutes?”

            Doctor Ralph looked around his trashed room and thought he should at least try to straighten up a bit so the maids wouldn’t raise too much of a fuss. “Let’s say 30 minutes, if you don’t mind.”

           

            “The fuck?”

            The garbage man was climbing down from the cab of his truck, which he’d stopped, halfway down the alley.

            There was a pile of garbage – half-garbage and half-ashes, actually – on the side of the alley that was still smoldering. It looked like someone had started a dumpster fire before tipping it over, and now the contents were strewn everywhere.

            And something was moving.

            The garbage man jumped back from the pile as the something lurched within it and groaned. He squealed, covered his mouth with his hands, then looked around to see if anybody else was there to hear him. Aside from whatever, or whoever, was in the burning pile, he was alone.

            “Hey – you okay?” he called out.

            The pile shifted and groaned again, and as some of the dirt, ash, and garbage fell aside, the garbage man saw a hand reach out, then fall to the ground.

            He followed the line of it down the wrist and to the arm, then to the shoulder and head, which was coated in thick, greasy black hair. He reached down, saying, “Here, let’s get you out of there, eh?”

            When he touched the stranger’s hand, though, he recoiled in pain.

            “Goddamn, man, you’re burning up! You sick or somethin’?”

            The garbage man wiped his hand on the chest of his sweaty coverall and moved back to the cab of his truck, where he grabbed a bottle of hand sanitizer and pumped a couple of squirts into his hands. “Hey man,” he continued, “Lemme call you an ambulance or somethin’, okay? I gotta… I mean, I’m gonna…gotta go.”

            Adam rolled over in the garbage and pulled a bag of trash over his face, shielding it from the sun as the garbage truck pulled out down the alley.

            By the time it turned the corner out of the alley, the bag was already melting and the trash inside was blackening from the heat.

            When Doctor Ralph arrived at the morgue, the DA was standing outside waiting for him. She extended a hand as he approached and he shook it once. “Doctor Quinlan,” she said. “I thank you for your patience with our office as we work to accommodate you. I certainly hope there will be no need for you to contact your…” she paused, just for a second, then finished with “…associates.”

            I threaten to sue your city into the ground and you thank me for it, thought Doctor Ralph. I love these shitty, small towns.

            “Of course,” he said. “I hope there won’t be any further delays or cause for unpleasantness.”

            The DA almost tripped over herself as she went for the door and opened it for him. “Not at all!” she said. “You will have full use of the facilities, and I’ve sent our coroner home for the afternoon.”

            “Oh, I don’t know if there was any call for that. I don’t want to be any trouble,” said Doctor Ralph.

            “Not at all,” said the DA. “She’s had a rather emotional couple of days, recently, so it was really for the best to give her some personal time off.”

            They went downstairs and instead of entering the morgue itself, the DA held her ID badge up to a panel on the wall. A moment later, the doors clicked, echoing in the hallway as they unlocked, and she ushered him through.

            The room beyond was, indeed, quite well equipped. Not like his lab, of course, but, he had to admit, it was quite a step up from what he was expecting. He instantly spotted the analytical machines he was looking for on the far wall and took a step towards them, but caught himself and stopped.

            “Was there anything else you needed?” he asked the DA.

            She jerked, then said, “What? Oh! No, no – I’m sorry, I’m quite all right, thank you.”

            “Then I’ll thank you for some privacy, please. As we agreed,” he said.

            She hurried away, and when he was certain she was all the way out of the building he took a vial out of his briefcase. The liquid inside was thick and yellow – the last of Walter’s vomit – and he grinned at it as he switched on the machines.

            “So what are we eating?” asked Walter.

            “Well I’m getting a double-bacon burger meal,” said Mimi.

            “And…?”

            “And what?”

            “And what do you want me to get?”

            “I don’t care what you get,” she said. They were standing in line, approaching the counter a single step at a time as the streaky teenager behind the counter punched in order after order for the people ahead of them.

            “What, seriously?” asked Walter. “You don’t want me to get a…test meal?”

            “Do you want a test meal?”

            “Well…” He had to think about it, which surprised him.  Part of him hated the uncertainty, but part of him still wanted answers. A third part of him, the one that he didn’t like admitting was louder and stronger than the other two, really wanted to see what else he could do, and what other super powers were available to him.

            “So what do you want?” asked Mimi.

            “Huh?”

            “What do you want?”

            “I don’t know what I want, okay!?” His voice was raised in exasperation. “I mean, yeah, part of me really wants to see what will happen, but it’s kinda terrifying, y’know? So how about you gimme a fucking second to think about it?”

            The whole restaurant had gone quiet at his outburst, and he dropped his head. “We’re at the front of the line, aren’t we?”

            Mimi nodded.

            “And you were just asking me that because I need to order, weren’t you?”

            She nodded again.

            “I’m a giant asshole, aren’t I?”

            “Nah, man, it’s cool,” said the teen behind the register. “One time some tweaker came in all fucked up on salts or something? And knocked over the whole salad case, then jizzed on the soda machine.”

            Walter deflated and turned around. “That sounds…interesting,” he said.

            “Oh yeah, man. We get all kinds of crazy people in here.” He smiled and brushed some hair out of his eyes. “So what’cha want?”

            Walter looked at Mimi, who shrugged. “Did you order already?” he asked her.

            She nodded again.

            He looked up at the menu, at the same twenty items that have been on the marquee for decades and the ten rotating meal options that were the latest trend or seasonal specialty. Nothing looked good, and Walter lacked the imagination to try and put together something on his own, so he leaned in, over the register, and lowered his voice.

            “You guys got a secret menu?”

            The teen smiled – he felt like the bouncer of a secret club who had just been given the password.

            “Fuck yeah, dude. Check it out…”

Super Meals: Part Thirty-One

            Adam stumbled down the alley, his stolen lab coat smoldering on his back. His pasty skin was hot to the touch, but he didn’t notice. The sun was high and the pavement was baking, but he didn’t feel it.

            He stumbled against a dumpster that was searing, but his hand melted the paint off of it where he fell.

            Collapsing into a pile of trash, he curled into a fetal position and shivered. A half-smoked cigarette rolled across the ground and he picked it up, then put it to his lips.

            It started to smoke under his fingers and he took a long drag. A deep breath, and his shivers stopped.

            On his back, in the alley, he slept.

            Walter had finally been released, but he was still at the police station. He sat at Mimi’s desk in the shared office space populated by the other detectives, but everybody was ignoring him.

            Including Mimi.

            She had been searching the Internet and scribbling notes on a legal pad ever since they’d arrived. At the top of the page she’d written “Doctor Ralph Quinlan” and circled it, then drawn lines to other circles she’d made on the page. Inside the circles were names and places, like “Manila, Philippines – Angelica Ocampo” and “Reims, France – Lucas Dubois.” At one point, while Walter was waiting to be acknowledged, another officer came by Mimi’s desk and dropped off a folder saying, “Detective Spatchcock? The medical examiner’s office sent this over – it’s the ID and final autopsy report on that dead transient you were investigating.”

            She immediately opened it, scanned the page, then wrote “Walla Walla, Washington – Nathan Alexander,” circled it, then drew a line from it up to Doctor Ralph’s name.

            “Who’s that?” asked Walter.

            “Remember that dead homeless guy I told you about yesterday? The one who was…” She paused as another officer walked by. When he was gone, she said “…special?”

            Walter thought for a moment and Mimi cocked an eyebrow at him. “Oh!” he finally said. “Yeah, the…special guy. Gotcha. What about him?”

            She thought about it, then leaned back in her chair and said, “Hungry?”

            “Yeah, actually,” said Walter, laughing. “I am. I puked up all of my breakfast when that guy drilled me in the stomach, remember? All I’ve had since then is your shitty police station coffee and half a stale donut.”

            “What did you expect?” she said, smiling and standing up. She grabbed her coat and said, “Come on, let’s get some lunch.”

            Walter followed her out to her car, asking, “Well? What’s up with the homeless guy?” They walked past a handful of officers and Mimi didn’t speak, just held up a hand to silence Walter. When the officers were gone, she motioned to her car and said, “Get in.”

            They both climbed in and Walter shrugged his shoulders, motioning to her again, but she held up a finger, silencing him as she pulled out of the parking lot. When they were half a block away she finally said, “Okay, we should be good.”

            “Good for what? Do you think a cop killed that guy or something?”

            “No, but…well…” She looked over at him and sighed. “Look, I don’t have the best reputation around the station, okay? That’s why they gave me the job of investigating the death of a homeless guy under a bridge – it’s a shit assignment.”

            “Okay…” said Walter, rolling his eyes. “What does that have to do with anything?”

            “It’s just…I didn’t want to say anything in the station because I didn’t want anybody thinking I was crazy or making fun of me or anything.”

            “Why would they do that?”

            “Because that guy? From this morning? I think he’s been killing people all over the world and now he’s made his way here.”

            Walter thought about this in silence.

            Mimi drove on.

            Finally, Walter said, “All right, why do you think that?”

            Mimi said, “Look, you ate the food, you had a… I dunno, let’s call it a reaction. That homeless guy? Same thing. We even have medical proof of it from the medical examiner’s office. All morning I’ve been looking this guy up online, and all over the world there have been cases of that fast food place opening up a new restaurant or giving a press conference or something, and he’s there.”

            “Oh, let me guess, there have been mysterious deaths every time, every where?”

            Mimi looked at him, but said nothing.

            “Wait…” continued Walter. “Wait, fuckin’ seriously? No shit?”

            She pursed her lips and turned to look at the road ahead of them, but Walter thought he might have caught just a faint nod from her as she did.

            “Are you fucking kidding me?” he said. “What the actual fuck!? What are we gonna do?”

            “We?” she asked. “I have no idea what we are gonna do. Right now I am going to buy you lunch and then you are going to go home and lock your doors.”

            “What, that’s it?” he asked. “Just go home and…what? Wait for you to save me?”

            “I’ve kinda already done that, remember? Twice.”

            “But can’t you, like, put out an APB on this guy? I mean, you have all kinds of pictures of him and his name and stuff – can’t you, I dunno, just go get him?”

            She tilted her head and rolled her eyes at him again.

            “And where, exactly, do you think he is?” she asked.

            “How should I know? You’re the cop.”

            “Yeah, and like I just said, I’ve got a shit reputation and people don’t like me very well at the station, so I’ve gotta handle this very carefully…” She thought of Jane and the 24-hour deadline the District Attorney had given her and muttered, “…and very quickly.”

            The hotel room was trashed.

            Doctor Ralph sat in the corner, head down, his hands around his knees.

            The portable laboratory was strewn around the room, flung wildly in a fit of rage. The blankets and sheets had been pulled off the bed and tossed, the desk and chair were overturned… The only things not somehow mangled or broken were Doctor Ralph’s suitcase and computer, which were on the floor in front of him.

            He looked up; his hair looked like a haystack after a storm, and he had dark bags under his eyes. It was the worst he’d looked since grad school. He crawled to his computer and unlocked the screen, then activated the voice recorder.

            He stated the date and time, then said, “Research log, subject one hundred eighty nine. Name unknown, age unknown, height approximately five foot, eleven inches. Weight…approximately two hundred to two hundred twenty pounds. Blood type, unknown…” He sighed. “Meal, unknown. Results…let’s call it enhanced speech. Subject’s voice seemed to emit a blast of some sort. No visual phenomena, no apparent personal effects to the subject himself. The force of the blast was not adequately measured, but appears to be at least three or four G’s. Initial impression was that the potential force is much higher, but could not be captured and was not witnessed. Physical sample from subject was given a rudimentary examination but results were…inconclusive.”

            He dropped his head into his hands again and ran his fingers through his hair. Cupping his face in his hands he whispered, “Fuck me…”

            He blinked hard and slapped his cheeks, then said, “Biological sample included traces of foodstuffs from restaurant, reference subject 93 for menu items, as well as bile, stomach acid, bismuth subsalicylate – commonly known as Pepto – but no blood or other bodily fluids. Unlike the previous one hundred eighty-eight subjects, 189 has actually survived ingestion of a…super meal…” He sighed again, hating himself for having to say that, then finished by saying, “Further studies to be performed.”

            He clicked off the voice recorder and saved the file to his secret cloud drive, then said, “Just as soon as I find the fucker again.”

Super Meals: Part Thirty

            Earlier that day, as Jane was performing an autopsy on her baby sister, Adam was confused.

            He was lying down, he was naked, and it was dark. Beyond that, he wasn’t certain of anything.

            He could remember eating…something. There was a man who brought some fast food to him and the cops let him deliver it. It was quite good – some strange new test meal or special burger – he’d never heard of it or had one before, and he couldn’t remember ever seeing it on any menu.

            Didn’t he say that he’d been signed up for some special test program or something? He didn’t remember signing up on the fast food chain’s website, but with companies sharing or selling emails to each other these days, who even knew what they were signed up for online anymore?

            He was lying on a flat, cold surface. His joints were stiff, but he could sense the feeling coming back a little bit at a time. His fingers slid over the surface – it was smooth, like metal, and he tapped his fingernails on it, hearing it ring.

            Wherever it was, it was enclosed. He flexed his muscles one at a time and as he regained the ability to move his arms he reached out to his sides and felt the walls around him. They were smooth and metallic as well, and when he pushed his arms against the sides, the platform he was lying on rolled with him.

            So whatever he was on, he thought, was on wheels, or rollers, or a track. It only moved a few inches, though, forwards and backwards before thumping against walls again. He reached up above his head and felt the wall above and behind him, but found nothing. As he got mobility back in his feet, he rolled himself down and felt around at the bottom of the enclosure. There were seams around the sides, and it was cold on the soles of his feet. He pushed against it and the table he was on slid back a few inches, and then stopped.

            When he pushed against the bottom with his feet again he felt it shift just a hair. Maybe it would open?

            Scooching his butt down the table until his feet were flat on the door, he flexed his legs and worked at bending his knees to push against it. Little by little his strength came back until he could actually kick at it. He kicked as hard as he could and barely heard a thump.

            No strength.

            He kicked again, hoping to draw attention to himself, but, if anybody was there, they weren’t responding.

            He kicked again.

            And again.

            The door began to pop now, but not open all the way.

            Until it did.

            He had no idea how long it had taken him to get enough strength back in his limbs to kick the door open, but the room beyond his little cubbyhole was empty. A single caged light bulb on the ceiling gave off a weak, pale glow, but after being unconscious for…how long? He didn’t know. However long it was, he had either had his eyes closed or been in the dark the whole time, so even the terrible lighting was blinding.

            Pushing against the side walls again, he wheeled the table he was laying on out of the hole and gradually opened his eyes.

            The room was narrow, but long. Square doors three high ran the length of the room. At one end was another flat, steel table, but on wheels. At the other end was a set of double doors – they had steel pads on them for people to use when pushing them open, but no doorknobs or locks.

            That meant he could get out.

            Next to the double doors at the end of the hall was a set of coat hooks on the wall with several white lab coats hanging up on them.

            He took a step forward.

            He fell flat on his face.

            From the floor he reached up and felt his nose, fearing it was broken or bleeding, but, thankfully, he hadn’t landed hard enough. He reached up and grabbed the handle on one of the doors and tried to haul himself upright. It took what felt like forever, and he worked his way upright one limb at a time. He got one knee under him, then the other. Resting on his haunches, he reached up to the next door handle and pulled, making his way into a squatting position. When he was finally standing upright, he couldn’t even walk. He slid his feet forward in a slow shuffle, laying on the doors and walls the whole way.

            Reaching the end of the hallway he reached out and took a lab coat, wrapping it around his shoulders and buttoning it shut.

            Half-sliding, half-falling, he slipped through the swinging double-doors into the hallway beyond.

            It took him ten more minutes to walk the ten feet to the staircase.

            Twenty more minutes and he was at the top of the stairs.

            It only took him five minutes to walk down the hall to the front door of the morgue, lean on the push-bar, and stumble out. He made it to the alley and fell around the corner.

            As he did, Mimi exited the building, got in her car, and went to pick up Walter.

Super Meals: Part Twenty Nine

            Doctor Ralph was giddy.

            It wasn’t an emotion that he really identified with as he had felt it so rarely he almost didn’t recognize it when it occurred, but he was definitely giddy now.

            His portable science kit was laid out across the bathroom counter in his hotel room. Beakers, vials, tubes, jars; even a Bunsen burner was lit and the solution he had placed in a stand above it was bubbling away while he analyzed results. Were he back in the lab with full access to all of his equipment, he would have dropped a sample of the vomit into his chemical analyzer and hit a button. Seventy-two hours later he would have known the full spectrum of chemical compounds present in Walter’s body and just ruled out the ones he knew were from the food.

            But here, in the bathroom, he had to do things the old fashioned way, and the idea honestly excited him. Something about the challenge of identifying and separating the assorted compounds, and then narrowing down the results...it was like being back in college, or working the early days of this job for the fast food company, when things were new and he was making real discoveries. Anymore these days, even though he didn’t realize it, the majority of his job consisted of trying to find new ways to do the same thing using existing chemicals he’d already either discovered or invented himself.

            Walter was new, and a challenge, and Doctor Ralph loved a challenge.

            First he boiled out the substances that originated from the food; it broke down at body temperature, so it was easy to isolate and remove from the solution.

            Then he used his centrifuge to pull out the blood and isolate it, then the other bodily fluids like bile, spit, mucus…

            To most people it would be quite disgusting.

            To Doctor Ralph it was the most fun he’d had in years.

            A block away, unbeknownst to any of the involved parties, Detective Mimi and Plain Walter were sitting in the police station giving their statements. Mimi was filling out page four of her report, and Walter was sitting in an interrogation room with a uniformed officer recording his statement on an old fashioned reel-to-reel tape.

            “Why were you in the park?”

            Walter remembered what Mimi had told him – to stick to the story and don’t change it, ever, for any reason (cops liked to ask the same question over and over again to try and trip you up and get you to answer differently and catch you in a lie).

            “No reason of consequence, considering I was the victim in this situation.”

            “But it would really help us out if you—”

            “No, it wouldn’t. You’re trying to find a reason to blow me off and not help me by saying this is somehow my fault. Like there’s something wrong with eating breakfast in a public park at 9am with a friend. But there’s not. What is illegal, however, is jumping out of a bush and sucker punching me and attacking a cop, like your superior officer sergeant Detective Mimi Spatchcock.”

            “Mister Elliot I really don’t appreciate that tone of voice when I’m trying to help you out here.”

            “Really? You gonna call Mimi in here next and interrogate her, too? Is this standard operating procedure for people who file police reports? I thought you were supposed to interrogate bad guys.”

            The officer sighed, and Walter sighed right back at him. He wasn’t worried about his power-shouts, as he was calling them, now, since he tried using it on the ride over and found it wouldn’t come.

            He was, however, starting to suspect why, and he wanted to see Mimi again so they could talk about it.

            Mimi wanted to talk to Walter, too.

            She’d called the fast food place where they’d gotten breakfast that morning and asked about the people working the drive-thru window that day. Three of the names were nobodies – register monkeys who weren’t the guy she was looking for.

            Then the manager mentioned that they’d received a visit from corporate and Doctor Ralph Quinlan had taken a turn on the window that morning before leaving quite unexpectedly and, I’m sorry, no, I don’t know where he’s staying.

            It didn’t matter, though. She had a name, which she Googled immediately and found pictures of him online from throughout the years. Never in the foreground, of course, but always at the side or in the background of significant events in the history of the fast food chain over the last ten years or so. In one shot he was back and to the left of the CEO as they announced the opening of their first store in the Phillipines. In another photo, commemorating the opening of a processing plant in China, he was skulking in the background behind the fast food chain’s international division.

            For fun, while she was waiting for Walter to get out of his questioning, she flipped through the police blotter sections of the newspapers where she’d found photos of Doctor Ralph. Nothing new or unusual stood out in any of them, except one, from a year previous when the fast food chain had launched a new product in France. The mayor of some small, tourist-trap of a wine town had attended the festivities along with several members of his extended family, but the event was marred by the disappearance of his nephew.

            His nephew, the article said, was a serious drug user who had spent time on and off the streets and in and out of rehabs. He was supposed to be clean at the time of the launch, but his family feared that he had relapsed and was living back on the streets again.

            Intrigued, Mimi Googled the nephew’s name and found another article about him from two weeks later. He’d been found dead in an alley behind a crack house, surrounded by drug paraphernalia…

            …and several half-eaten bags of fast food.