Trudi Baldwin - Sammy Dick, PI 02 - Acid Test for Yellow Flower

by Trudi Baldwin

  Several other questions flitted through my mind. Where would she store it? Certainly not our little lockers in the gowning room unless the amount were very small. Maybe she was up to something else entirely? Who knew with Marissa?

  I decided to follow her. She was now nearly halfway to the gowning room door. I began scurrying along from machine to machine trying to move as silently as possible in my tennis shoes. The gowning room had doors with half windows on both sides so that the factory floor could be seen from inside the gowning room and the gowning room could be viewed from the hallway. That might help me remain unobserved while I watched her.

  I waited until Marissa glided into the gowning room and then I peeked through the half window to see what she was doing. Without removing her gown, she was glided right on through, heading for the hallway. Now I was really in a quandary as to what to do next. My risk of being seen by her would shoot up much higher if I were caught in the gowning room or out in the hallway and front office area.

  I decided to hang back on the factory floor for a few minutes to see what happened next. One minute ticked away, two minutes, three, four … Crap! Now what?

  Suddenly Marissa’s spooky face appeared through the window of the far door of the gowning room. She opened the far door and entered the gowning room. I stood frozen in horror peeking in through the far door’s window on the opposite side. I could see her quite clearly.

  There she was in all her strangeness! Still gliding along with that odd sleepwalker gait, a glazed look in her eye, heading straight through the gowning room and toting two bright blue plastic containers, one in each hand. Somewhere along the way she’d ditched the usual thin plastic gloves and donned industrial strength plastic gloves. The containers looked a lot like red five-gallon plastic gas cans except these were blue—and imprinted with conspicuous warning symbols with skull and crossbones meaning “Do not touch this shit if you want to live!”

  I couldn’t risk her seeing me. Time to make a run for it and find some kind of cover. I zipped soundlessly back across the silent factory floor in the general direction of the Yellow Flower Line feeling very alone. I glanced up at the high ceiling, twenty or thirty feet in the air, with the exposed air ducts and other pipes snaking along above me. Then back down at the gleaming concrete floor that stretched across the factory. No people anywhere. Everything was impersonal, hard, unforgiving. Not a good place to die.

  I knew I could take Marissa any day of the week in direct hand-to-hand combat. I was in excellent shape, mentally and physically for such a fight, and I would win. But I wasn’t just fighting Marissa. I was fighting Marissa armed with hydrofluoric acid. That put the odds of winning very much in Marissa’s favor. It also put my own odds for disfigurement, permanent injury or outright death much higher.

  I shivered as I crouched behind one of the larger machines debating what to do next. I decided to risk a peek over the top to see if I could spot her. Slowly I raised my head until my eyes could scan the factory floor.

  To reach the yellow flower essence tubes, Marissa had to lug the heavy blue containers up a flight of metal stairs until she was even with the top of the Mother Vat, the huge container filled with the neutral base solution that fed into all the product lines. At the beginning of the afternoon shift, all of the product line essence feeder bottles would be empty. A perfect time to fill Yellow Flower or all of them with acid. I figured this was Marissa’s intent. Either that or she planned to empty her blue cans straight into the central base solution.

  What to do? After the Boston Bombers had been caught, with pieced together crowd photos and merchant-generated videos, the power of a cell phone as a crime witness took on a whole new meaning. I decided to grab my phone and start capturing Marissa in the act. Slipping it out of my pocket, I stepped out from behind the machines and positioned myself where I’d get good, identifying shots. As she lugged the heavy containers up the stairs, I began snapping multiple shots and angles. I knew the new security cameras were on order, but not yet installed. My little phone would have to do.

  Click. Click. Click. Click … Uh, oh.

  On the fifth click, Marissa’s head jerked up. Her one eye scanned the factory floor robotically, until it found its new target, moi! Marissa no longer seemed human. She’d become an auto-drone. The single, dreadful eye zeroed in on its new target. With intent to kill.

  I watched in slow-motion fascination as auto-drone’s eye opened further. Then squinted. All the better to see me with!

  Marissa, the snake, was awake! Before this, my best guess was that Marissa had been lulled into a rhythmic half-sleep by her unseen handler on some kind of hypnotic autosuggestion, but now the half-sleep had been disturbed. Marissa’s eye transformed from a dull glaze to hyper-penetration. She fixated on the target of her hyper-penetration and our three eyes made contact. I took one look into her burning eye and thought OMG! The snake is really, really pissed off now.

  I watched her debate her next move. First, Marissa would glare at me with angry intent, and then she’d flip her head to look up the last few stairs at the Mother Vat longingly. Then she’d zip her head back in my direction and glare at me wishing me bodily harm.

  Finally, the Mother Vat must have won out because her drone-eye refocused back on it. She ascended the last few metal steps, and lugged the cans along the platform. She leaned down and began unscrewing the top off one of the blue containers.

  I knew I had to stop her. Once she threw the contents in the Mother Vat or spattered it out all over the factory floor from that height who knew what havoc and harm she’d wreak onto the innocent people in the factory who would be returning any minute now. I couldn’t let that happen. I also didn’t want to be maimed, dead or disfigured myself.

  Time to use my pre-set 911s. I hit Send on my two drafts, hurtling them out through cyber-space to both Hayden and Mountain in hopes they’d soon arrive. Then I laid my phone down on the floor in plain sight praying it would survive as evidence, regardless of what happened next. If I didn’t survive my next move or if Marissa escaped, I needed those photos as proof.

  I knew I had to make a move, but I wasn’t sure what it should be. One of my mottos is When in doubt, talk your way out. I approached the bottom of the metal stairs leading to the Mother Vat and looked up at her. “Marissa, put the can down. Right now you aren’t in any trouble,” I lied. “So if you set the can down right now, no harm, no foul. To you or anyone else.”

  She ignored me. She just kept leaning over trying to unscrew the cap on the heavy can she was clutching as if I didn’t exist. Apparently it wasn’t easy to get the lid off. I figured the lid must be baby-proofed. Well, duh!

  I watched as Marissa decided to change her position to get more leverage on the lid. She plopped right down on her butt on the metal walkway and extended her feet out over the Mother Vat like a little girl sitting in a chair that’s way too big for her. Then she gathered the can in closer to her body between her spread out legs as if it were a disobedient child. She turned the can, so she could squint her one eye at the directions on the back of the container. She must have purchased the acid in different, much smaller containers before or she would have been more familiar with the cap. Now her grandiose plans were adding complexity she hadn’t anticipated. Finally, she pulled her feet back in under her to crouch on her knees; she reapplied pressure to the cap. I looked around praying for Mountain or Hayden or someone to burst upon the scene.

  Nothing. Nada. Zilch. The short story of my life. I needed to get that can away from her before she figured out how to get it open. I decided to rush up the stairs and wrestle the can out of her grasp.

  I knew Marissa was no match for me physically. She was now on her knees, slightly facing me and still struggling with the cap. If I rushed her now, I had a good chance of aborting the acid spill with no harm to anyone. Once I turned that decision corner in my mind, acting became easy. I leaped up the stairs three at a time and sprinted across the platform until I stood within a few feet of her.
Surprised, she thrust her chin up and over her shoulder to look up at me, then she returned to her task and began working the cap with frenzied attention.

  “Enough! Stop!” I ordered her in my most commanding voice.

  A surprising thing happened. She stopped.

  Upon seeing her reaction, a quick series of thoughts flitted through my brain. Marissa was acting like she was under the control of someone else, some form of hypnosis or other mind control, like the women who’d murdered Sharon Tate and company at the command of Charles Manson or all those men, women and children I’d read about who’d voluntarily committed group suicide by drinking poisoned Kool-Aid at the command of some crazy dude named Jimmy Jones. Neither Charles Manson nor Jimmy Jones had used physical force to get others to perform these unspeakable acts. They’d used mind control. Maybe physical force wasn’t the best way to stop Marissa. Maybe mental force alone would do it.

  “Marissa, I command you to stand up and step away from the containers. Now!” My request rang out in a low, resonating, hypnotic voice over the empty factory floor. I’d used the most dominating voice I could conjure up.

  She still stared up intently at me. I watched as her pouty mouth, stained in glossy black lipstick, plopped open and the lower lip began to tremble. A seismic effect followed. The small shudders she’d been experiencing turned into tremors that etched and writhed across her face. Her drone-eye watered up something fierce until the one half of her face I could see was actively contorting. Then the contortions began spidering out until her whole body was writhing in miniature spasms. I briefly thought of my first car when a small rock chipped the front glass. Over time the damage crackled outward until the entire windshield was a spider web of ruined glass. The difference here, though, was that Marissa’s damage was occurring at warp speed, right before my eyes.

  I repeated myself even more forcefully, “Marissa, I command you to stand up and step away from the cans.”

  Marissa set the can aside, pulled herself back up onto her knees, and then stood up.

  Progress!

  Chapter Twenty Two – Reversal of Luck

  But then quick as a striking snake, the whole thing went south. Marissa must have unscrewed the lid on her last try because her next move took me by surprise. She reached down, grabbed the can and flung out a cup or so of acid into the Mother Vat like she was tossing gasoline on a house she planned to set on fire.

  I sprang forward and tried to grab the can out of her hands without spilling any acid on me at the same time. By now I was nearly begging her. My voice desperate, without any of the resonating confidence required for mind control. “Please put the lid back on the can, Marissa. Or hand the can to me and let me put the lid back on, and this will all be over.”

  A mechanical click followed by a hum, momentarily stopped both of us. We recognized the sound of the big beaters turning on in the Mother Vat. We both turned to watch the beaters begin slowly rotating, mixing in her spilled acid. I figured she’d only sprayed about a cup or two into the solution so far. Two times an hour for twenty minute cycles, I’d been informed by Ancient Annie on my first day, the beaters stirred through the central base solution with big plastic paddles, cleaning the edges of the vat at the same time and keeping the base solution thoroughly blended. Unfortunately, the pure, organic base solution was now blending with hydrofluoric acid.

  Marissa looked like she really did want to comply and be done with it, but the war of the worlds inside her just wouldn’t let her go. By now, we both had our hands on the open can as I gently tugged one way and she grabbed it back the other. She began chanting.

  “I must do what I must do. I must do what I must do,” she explained in a plaintive, high, singsong voice. The voice of a little girl singing a jump rope ditty to get the rhythm—before she jumped in—while others turned the rope on the playground.

  Like the night of the party, I suspected Marissa was either high on drugs or truly schizoid to the max. Probably both. At any rate, she was one of the most imbalanced people I’d ever come into contact with. I’d read about people this strange but never actually met one, and especially not one holding an open can of hydrofluoric acid in her hands.

  “Hand the can over to me, Marissa. Just let it all go.”

  The chanting stopped. She pursed her lips back together, as if finding herself, or re-tracking her thinking, swallowed hard, and then continued, still in the high-pitched, little-girl voice, “No one can stop me. No one can stop me. My orders have been given. They will be carried out. I will never risk his displeasure.”

  I was considering how best to wrestle the can completely away from her, but her words caught my attention. His displeasure?

  “Whose displeasure, Marissa? Who are you talking about?”

  Singsong, nearly insane voice now, “I will never say. I will never say. I must do as commanded by him. I will never say.”

  She was just standing there looking at me with one blue can resting on the platform beside her, lid on, the other can clutched to her chest, lid off. The cap gripped tightly in her right, gloved hand. Who knew how much acid she’d exposed herself to? At least she wore gloves, as did I. She looked momentarily confused, alone, and afraid.

  I took that as a sign for me to try and regain control of her again. In the deepest, most frightening voice I could muster, I commanded, “Put the cap back on the can, Marissa. I order you to put the cap back on the can. Now!”

  Then a miracle occurred, she began to screw the cap back on the can!

  At that precise, and oh so wrong, moment, a male voice rang out behind and below us on the factory floor. Hayden. Alarmed and confused, shouting up to me, “Parker, you sent me a 911 text. What’s wrong? What’s going on?” I could see Hayden down below us and the other members of our crew still a ways back, but rushing in behind him. Oh, holy shit! Now what?

  My voice was now booming out into the vast reaches of the factory as I tried to alert the others to the danger, yet coax her into sealing the acid back up. “Marissa, that’s right. Put the cap back on the hydrofluoric acid.” I pronounced the word in distinct syllables to warn Hayden: hy–dro–flour–ic a – cid.

  I turned my full attention back to Marissa, coaxing. “That’s right. Keep going.”

  Hayden yelled out, “Hydroflouric what the fuck?!”

  The yelling dismantled Marissa and threw her off track again. Or back on track might be a better description. Back onto the mind control track of her secret commander and away from my control. “I must do what I must do,” Marissa chanted and began trying to unscrew the cap again. The baby-proof mechanism must have clicked back into place.

  In as soft a voice as I could use and still get my voice to carry down to Hayden, I explained, “Hayden, those cans are hydrofluoric acid. Get Sally Snort. In Distribution or in the back lot in a black van. Tell her to bring the acid kits. She’ll know what you mean. Please, please trust me on this, Hayden, and don’t ask questions. Just do it. Now!”

  I saw him take off at a run toward the Distribution Room just as Tattooed Tanya, Lazy Larry, and TMI Trinity slid in behind where he’d been standing.

  “Get back!” I growled at them in low voice. “Please get back. She has acid in those cans.” I could see the team look up at Marissa stunned and uncertain as to what to do next. Then I saw Larry pull his phone out and begin video-taping the whole thing. Good. Visual evidence—that is if any of us survived.

  I didn’t think I could win over Marissa again in all the confusion. I decided to reach in and just snatch the can out of her hands before she managed to overcome the baby-proof lid again. I shot my hands in close to her body and tried to wrestle the can away from her.

  Big mistake! Marissa, the wild snake, emerged out from under the little-girl guise and she hissed at me. “You will never take this from me! Never!”

  The internal war of the worlds was officially over. Time to do battle—in the real world.

  “What the fuck you wanna bet, Marissa?!” I hissed right back as
I yanked the blue can away from her.

  This shoved her snake-mode into even higher gear. She flung her arms out in front of her and clasped her two gloved hands together to form a rock-solid piston. She began whipping her dual-arm piston back and forth like a home-made battering ram. Her locked fists connected with the can I’d only half secured in my possession. The can flew from my grasp, winging out, over the balcony of the platform, flipping twice in the air, as I screamed to my team, “Run, for fuck sakes, run! It’s acid.” And thank God, they listened and ran!

  As I watched them scurry away, I failed to see or prepare for Marissa’s next move. She charged right at me, full body force to my stomach with a head butt. Upon connection, the breath whooshed out of me flinging me backwards onto the metal platform. I landed with a horrendous thud and just lay there watching the duct work above me revolving, fading in and out of focus, while I gasped for breath, but that wasn’t enough for Marissa, not even close.

  Before I could roll over out of the way, she crashed down on me again, sumo wrestler style, where the wrestlers jump up into the air and plummet down on their opponents, counting on their massive body weight to crush the other fighter into a Japanese pancake, which is a lot flatter than an American pancake.

  Luckily, Marissa weighed far less than a sumo wrestler, but the crush of her full body weight falling straight down on top of me hammered me further into the metal platform. I could feel the metal indentations of the walkway spike through my shirt and gown and claw into the skin of my back as all the air whooshed out of me again. I winced and figured I’d cracked some ribs under the blow. For a second, she lay there on top of me. Then I felt her lift herself off.

  My vision had blurred again. I began sucking in air as fast as I could, scanning above and around me, the best I could, to find out what she was up to. This time I could see both her eyes because she was flying down at me again. Her eyes blazing like crazed infernos, her gloved fingers stretching out ready to tear my own eyes right out of my face. My mind had cleared enough for me to think more clearly. Who knew if her gloves had acid on them or not? Probably, was my guess, and I wasn’t planning on any acid landing in my eyes.