The Jekyll Revelation

by Robert Masello

  ‘So I surmised. But how did Jack leave, then?’

  ‘Must have taken her key’, he said, ‘and locked up after. He likes his souvenirs.’

  I remembered that.

  ‘The morgue tells me he took the heart, too, this time.’

  The residents had been allowed to come rather close, and when I glanced their way, I saw one or two of them shaking their heads, and I heard a woman in a threadbare shawl say to the policeman, ‘Never seen ’im before.’ A man in a fish market apron seconded her, muttering, ‘Not around here.’

  Abberline’s gaze shifted to the constable, who shook his head at the results of their little experiment. Its purpose had become clear to me. I had been brought here to be inspected, and possibly identified, by the local denizens, who, of course, had never clapped eyes on me until this night.

  ‘All right, you lot can go now,’ the policeman said.

  One of the men asked if there wasn’t to be any compensation for aiding in the investigation, but a poke from the baton squelched his request.

  ‘A clever ploy,’ I conceded to Abberline, ‘but now that I have passed my examination, am I allowed to exercise my free will and go?’

  ‘Just one more thing, Mr Stevenson. The Aldgate Arms. You paid the bill for a certain professor, affiliated with the union infirmary. We cannot confirm his identity or whereabouts now. Can you?’

  It occurred to me that Abberline would not necessarily know Lloyd—or “Samuel” as he had been known at the hotel—was my stepson, particularly as he bore a different surname.

  ‘He was a friend, in dire straits.’

  ‘A friend whose room we have searched thoroughly.’

  ‘Did you find anything of interest?’ I thought of the locked drawer in the wardrobe.

  ‘Nothing. It had been quite stripped of any personal effects.’

  I had wondered what Lloyd had been up to all day, and now I knew.

  ‘I suppose you have no more information as to his whereabouts as you do of this fellow Josef.’

  ‘Not at present.’

  ‘Don’t make me come to you again, Mr Stevenson. You do yourself no service.’ At this, he turned away and I felt myself dismissed. It was plain that I would not be ferried home again in the commissioner’s coach. On the street outside, I drew many long, hard stares, and hailed the first hansom cab I could find. Huddled inside, I felt like an animal that can sense the snare being closed, that knows it has only seconds to escape, but cannot fathom how.

  TOPANGA CANYON—CALIFORNIA

  Present Day

  Before he could make the turn into the Cornucopia, Rafe had to wait for several creaking motorhomes to lumber by.

  “Come on, come on already!”

  There was no sign of Lucy or, for that matter, Trip.

  “I’ll check in the house,” Miranda said, “you go out back.”

  Jolting the Rover to a stop next to Miranda’s little Subaru hatchback, he jumped out and ran to the yard. The items on the clothesline were dancing in the wind that had sprung up in the canyon. There wasn’t any light on in his trailer, and the door was shut.

  “Lucy!” he shouted. “Are you in there?” He stuck his key in the lock, but it still wouldn’t open. The dead bolt had been thrown inside.

  “Lucy! It’s me!”

  He heard Tripod barking and scratching at the door, and then Lucy saying “Rafe? Rafe?”

  The bolt was yanked back, and when the door opened, she threw herself into his arms, sniffling, and said, “Why didn’t you call me? I kept sending you texts! Why didn’t you answer me?”

  “My phone was off, Luce—I’m so sorry. And then I couldn’t get through. For all I know, the towers might be down from the fire.”

  “I didn’t know what to do! I was afraid that that man would come by and hit me in the face again.”

  “That man,” Rafe said, “is never going to hit you again. Trust me.” Her nose was red, but only, he knew, from blowing it. “Come on, grab your stuff, we’re getting out of here.”

  Lucy stuffed some things into her backpack, and by the time they got outside, Miranda was racing out the back of the store, kicking off her high heels and letting them fly. Trip hobbled up to her, tail going a mile a minute, and she scooped him up in her arms.

  “Into the car!” Rafe said, yanking open the back passenger door of the Rover.

  But Miranda said, “No, let’s take my car.”

  “The Rover’s bigger, safer.”

  “And it’s almost out of gas. I’ve got a full tank.” She had already opened the side door and tossed Tripod onto the seat. “Get in, Lucy!”

  But Lucy was frozen solid, looking at the road, where a biker in a silver helmet and shades, his arms clinging to upright handlebars, was roaring past. “That’s him!” she cried.

  Rafe shot another glance at the motorcyclist as he zoomed away.

  “That’s the man who hit you?”

  “And stole the book!”

  Laszlo must have somehow acquired, or swiped, a real motorcycle. It wasn’t hard to guess where he was going.

  Rafe urged Lucy into the backseat of the Subaru, and then said to Miranda, “Get going!”

  “What do you mean?” she said, the car keys still dangling in her fingers.

  “I’ve got something I need to do.”

  “Oh no, Rafe, let that go! Do not try to settle that score now.”

  But Rafe was already running back toward the trailer.

  “Rafe, Laszlo’s not worth it!”

  “He is to me! Now get going!”

  Whipping off his sport coat, he went straight to the safe, but he was in such a hurry that he put in the combination wrong, then had to spin the dial and do it again. He grabbed the Smith & Wesson, loaded it, and strapped the holster around his waist. He had little to no intention of firing it—besides the shot at the lake, he’d only used it at the training range—but it seemed like a good idea to have it along if he was planning to enter the lion’s den.

  By the time he got out front, there was no sign of the hatchback, which was a relief. He did not have time for further debate. He tore out of the parking area and headed straight for the Compound. In the twilight, he could see the rosy glow of the wildfires off to the east, and a flock of helicopters circling above it, dropping water and foam fire retardant, as the pilots monitored its lethal progress.

  He passed La Raza—the owners were out front, hosing down the roof—his eyes peeled for the Compound’s dirt road and the sign saying “No Trespassing or You WILL Be Shot, M*F.” When he spotted it, he drove up onto the shoulder and parked the Land Rover under the cover of some trees. No use announcing his arrival. He wished he’d thought of changing out of his white shirt and into something darker, but it was too late to do anything about that now.

  He hustled down the driveway and across the little bridge over the dried-out stream, sticking to the shadows, and hunched down behind an old Dumpster when he spotted an adobe house, the lights on in the windows, and heard raised voices outside of it. Two men were really going at it, and one of them, he could see, was his quarry. The Harley was lying flat on its side in the dirt, and the other guy, in a denim vest and jeans, was shouting and brandishing a fist. He had the pumped-up arms and thick neck of a serious steroid user.

  But Laszlo wasn’t backing down. He still had the helmet on, although he was barefoot and wearing an old work shirt that looked like it had been rescued from a rag bin, along with some shreds of what might have once been white gloves. For some reason he just looked different, even from this distance.

  The other guy took a step closer, shouting, “Pick it up, asshole! Pick! It! Up!”

  Laszlo must have refused, because the guy repeated it, and this time he shoved Laszlo’s shoulder hard enough to make him stumble backward.

  Laszlo said, “Don’t do that again.” And the guy said, “Then pick it up.”

  He punched him in the other shoulder, and Laszlo spun to one side. Rafe expected to see him back down o
r run for it; that would be the Laszlo he’d always known—a bully whenever he could get away with it, but a coward underneath it all.

  This time, however, he acted out of character. To Rafe’s surprise, he sprang at his attacker like a cougar leaping from a branch, landing on him with such force that the guy was bowled over, toppling backward onto his own motorcycle. Nor was that the end of it—Laszlo rained a hail of blows on him, his arms swinging like pistons, over and over again. The guy tried to roll off the bike and crawl to his feet, but Laszlo jumped on his back, arms tightly wrapped around his throat, choking him and dropping him to his knees. With his arms bent back and fingers struggling to pry the arms loose, the guy tried to throw his head back, tried to butt Laszlo in the face, but he missed, and Laszlo held on, and on, like a cowboy riding a bucking bronco, choking him harder and harder, until the guy went from his knees to flat on the ground, and then lay still.

  Was he playing dead, Rafe wondered . . . or was he?

  When Laszlo finally let go and stood up, he brushed at his ragged clothes, spit on the guy still lying in the dirt, and walked away. Judging from his gait, however, he wasn’t unhurt himself. His hands were clutching at his stomach, and he was walking like a seasick sailor.

  Rafe, crouching low, followed him. There was a barn, or maybe it had been a stable, out back, and Laszlo threw open the big doors and disappeared inside. A few moments later, the lights went on.

  Who was this guy, Rafe wondered, so altered from the Laszlo he thought he knew? When he got to the open doors and peered inside, he saw a Formica table with chairs, some bunk beds, a huge TV sitting on a minifridge, wires trailing across a dirt floor. It looked like the worst frat house in the world. Way in the back, harsh fluorescent light spilled from what must be the bathroom.

  This could be his best chance to get the book.

  He crept into the barn, looking for any clue, and saw it when he spotted the big black Hefty bag crammed under a bunk to his left. The shredded work shirt and scorched gloves were lying on the mattress. He glanced in the direction of the bathroom and heard water running, but couldn’t see anything more than a rack with some dingy towels hanging from it.

  He went to the bunk first, lifting the pillow, checking under the blanket, scanning the wooden shelf next to it, where he saw a pair of shades, some loose coins and pills, an old whiskey flask that might have come from the trunk. But no book. He’d have to go through the garbage bag, and fast.

  On top he found nothing but a pile of shirts and pants, and sticking his arms to the very bottom, only some heavier items like a leather jacket and boots and shoes. He rooted around, but came across nothing even resembling the journal. Damn. Now what? He would absolutely have to confront Laszlo, and having seen the fight over the motorcycle, he was glad he’d brought the Smith & Wesson after all.

  The water stopped running, and Laszlo came out of the bathroom wearing only a pair of jeans and rubbing a towel over his wet hair and pressing it to his face. His chest and shoulders were much hairier than Rafe would have guessed. When he put the towel down and saw Rafe holding the gun, he stopped, and smiled.

  Since when had his teeth become so prominent? Rafe wondered.

  “What are you supposed to be? The sheriff?”

  The voice was Laszlo’s, but raspier. Probably from all the smoke in the air. But the face . . . it wasn’t really his anymore. The jaw stuck out, the eyes were sunken beneath a bulging forehead. Rafe’s first thought was of steroids again, but he’d seen Laszlo so recently this change couldn’t have happened that quickly. Or so extremely. The man had turned into a gargoyle.

  “Where’s the book?”

  “Huh. I thought you were here because I slugged your fat sister.”

  “We’ll get to that. Where’s the book?”

  “Where’s the five hundred bucks? Or was she too retarded to mention that?”

  Rafe suddenly understood what it was to have a twitchy trigger finger.

  “Just give it to me.”

  The rafters shook with the roar of a helicopter passing low overhead, and Laszlo glanced up.

  “There goes the store.” He twiddled his fingers. “All up in smoke. All those shitty paintings and macramé.”

  Rafe wasn’t sure what to do next. He wasn’t about to shoot him, and what made it worse was that Laszlo undoubtedly knew it. He’d played his ace and they were at a standstill.

  Laszlo tossed the towel onto his bunk, as casually as if he were at some health club, then picked up the old flask and put it to his lips. He turned it completely upside down, even shook it, but it seemed it was empty. He plopped down on the edge of the bunk, one hand rubbing his gut, the other clutching the flask. “You try this shit?”

  “No.”

  He grunted. “I was just checking myself out in the mirror.”

  Rafe suddenly understood. He remembered reading Stevenson’s horrified reaction to his own image in the mirror. Until this second it had seemed like some sort of fiction or hallucination. Something those Brownies he talked about might have concocted. Rafe hadn’t believed it was actually true.

  But now he did.

  “It’s worse than coke. You gotta have it, but look what happens.”

  There was a crackling sound as brush and twigs outside began to catch fire from the blowing sparks. Fire engine sirens blared.

  “It’s getting close,” Rafe said. “We’ve got to get out of here.” Even the journal wasn’t worth dying for.

  “Yeah, I guess you’ve got a point.”

  Rafe lowered the gun a notch, and the second he did, the flask came flying, cracking him in the eye like a hardball. He dropped back, stunned, and before he could recover, a fist punched him in the stomach. He reeled back, dropping the gun, and Laszlo hit him again, catching him under the chin. He went down on his back and Laszlo leaped onto him, perching on his chest like a malevolent spirit, leering into his face. “But come on, Salazar—who’s afraid of a little fire?”

  Rafe groped for the gun.

  “You looking for this?” he said, lifting it and pointing the barrel at Rafe’s mouth.

  Laszlo just smiled, enjoying the moment. Blood was running down into Rafe’s left eye, tinting his vision, but with his other he saw the timbers of the barn turning red, too, then bursting into flame. Laszlo turned to look, and Rafe bucked his legs into Laszlo’s back, knocking him forward and pushing the gun away from his mouth. The shot was deafening and kicked a fountain of dirt into the air, but rolling away, Rafe was able to get out from under before Laszlo could take any better aim. The second shot grazed his shoulder before shattering the TV screen, and the next one ripped into the fridge with the clang of a bell. Rafe ducked behind the table as another round splintered the chair beside him. Laszlo was standing, laughing, lit by the glow of the fire surrounding the barn and shouting over the roar of a hovering chopper. “How many shots do I get with this thing?”

  Rafe wasn’t sure.

  And then the roof caved in, the old shingles and boards and rafters collapsing under the weight of the bucket drop. All Rafe could see, between the blood from his eye and the water gushing down, was Laszlo looking up in surprise as the flood of liquid and debris came crashing down on him. Rafe hurtled over a still-sizzling timber and stumbled, half-blind and -deaf from the gunshot, toward the open doors of the barn. Outside, the Compound looked like an immense bed of coals, every branch and twig and leaf burning on the ground, the trees like torches. He ran toward the adobe house, and when he saw the biker still lying beside his motorcycle, made a sudden detour. He rolled him over, felt for a heartbeat or a pulse, any sign of life, but the guy was gone. His eye fell on the overturned bike—the gas tank had been punctured and a thin trickle of fuel snaked along the soil, past the saddlebags and exhaust pipe.

  Was it in there, he thought? Was the journal in the saddlebags?

  On all fours, he scrambled across the dirt, but when he fumbled at the latch, the heat of the red-hot metal seared his fingers. He blew on the tips, licked th
em with his dry tongue, but before he could try again, the limb of an ancient oak crashed down in flames, bouncing on the dirt beside him, throwing a shower of sparks everywhere . . . and igniting the trail of gasoline.

  The flame raced toward the bike, enveloping it in a halo of fire as Rafe scuttled backward. He kept going, and was only a few yards away when the whole motorcycle went off like a hand grenade, shrapnel flying into the air.

  If the journal was in there, it was hard to believe that anything but cinders could have survived.

  The fire was swiftly encircling the whole compound. Before he was completely cut off from the road, Rafe got up and raced over the little bridge and toward the Land Rover, ducking inside just as another burning branch slammed onto the windshield. The car was as hot as an oven, but the engine turned over, and once an emergency vehicle and an ambulance had zoomed past, he pulled out, heading west and praying he had enough gas to get out of the danger zone. It was only when he’d zigged and zagged his way down to Pacific Coast Highway that he hit Empty, and coasting on fumes alone, managed to guide the Rover into the gravel bed of a plant nursery across from the beach.

  He slumped back in his seat, his ears still ringing, and wiped the blood from his eye. Wincing as he felt the burn from the bullet that had grazed his shoulder, he stared out at the ocean, glimmering pink in the reflected glow of the encroaching flames, the blue and white lights of the helicopters darting above the water like fireflies against an inky-black sky. Clouds of smoke and ash, looking like rosy swirls of cotton candy, drifted out over the open sea. It was a weirdly mesmerizing scene, an awful beauty born out of fire and death and destruction. Rafe had to hand it to Mother Nature—she could sure as hell paint a picture when she wanted to . . . a picture he knew he would never forget.

  12 November, 1888

  Fanny, in an old sweater, was down on her hands and knees, digging in the dirt, ripping out weeds, and flinging them over her shoulder as if each one had offered a personal affront to her dignity. ‘English gardens,’ she said. ‘All weeds and no flowers.’ She threw another one, so angrily it landed on the table atop the latest instalment of the serialized novel I had been slaving over. “The Master of Ballantrae” it was called, a title that even Henley had not mocked.