"I still think we should have called in the Emergency Response units and have the place surrounded when he comes in," Stottlemeyer said. They were hunched in the dark behind some machinery, waiting for their suspect to show up. The night watchman had been gracious enough to cooperate with them and let them in.
"If the place is surrounded by cops, nobody's going to show…could you move to your right, Ambrose? I'm feeling like you're breathing down my neck."
"I'm not," Ambrose told him, but he complied with his brother's wishes anyway.
"What is the guy coming here anyway?" Disher inquired, squinting as Adrian abruptly shone the beam of his emergency flashlight in his face. The lieutenant had been trying to coordinate evacuations on Nob Hill when Stottlemeyer had called him in, and as such he'd just barely made the helicopter to the nuclear plant.
"They want to get extra toxic waste so they'd have bargaining power in case they are caught," Adrian shone the beam on his own face, "If we catch the mastermind with it, we've got an airtight case."
"You do have the…Mr. Monk, please don't!" Natalie grimaced as he aimed it at her face next.
"He has to," came Sharona's voice from the side. The twenty-seven cups of black coffee Stottlemeyer had been able to procure for her had done a remarkable job of getting her about three-quarters sobered up, although she'd still burped and staggered from time to time. "He has to see your face in the dark."
"I see," Natalie nodded slowly, closing her eyes against the intruding flashlight. "As I was saying, Captain, you do have backup in case it gets ugly?"
"I've got ten divisions of the state National Guard just down the road in case of a firefight waiting at my command," Stottlemeyer held up his radio, "I'm hoping it doesn't come to that."
"I'm surprised you didn't bring the suits, Monk," Disher was amazed the detective was wearing no protection.
"I would have, but since it's an emergency, I had no time," Adrian admitted. There was the sound of a wheel scraping in the dark. "What are you doing now, Monk?" Stottlemeyer asked, rolling his eyes.
"The handle was off to the side, I'm putting it nice and straight at the top….too far." Steam hissed away from the valve. "I'd really appreciate it if you'd NOT give away that we're here, Monk!" the captain hissed.
"Hey, I'm dying here!" the detective hissed back, "There's puddles of lord knows what here, and I can't begin to guess how many germs are on these machines!"
"What about me? My head's spinning!" Ambrose was also a bit uncomfortable being outside of a house.
"I'm thirsty, get me another coffee," Sharona lamented. Stottlemeyer raised his hands to the heavens in rage, clearly fed up with the stakeout already. "SHUT UP!" he bellowed softly.
Everyone grew silent except for the scrubbing sound of Adrian cleaning the equipment railings. "Listen, Natalie…Adrian, not right in the eyes!…I've done some thinking since I sobered up, and maybe I've been a little hard on you," came Sharona's voice.
"A little hard?" Ambrose interceded.
"OK, a lot hard!" the coffee hadn't taken her temper away, "But, I've taken a look at myself in the mirror, and I realized that if Adrian's happier with you, I'd better accept it. You are, after all, a better detective than me."
"Hey, no problem," after gesturing for Adrian to shine the flashlight in her vicinity, Natalie extended her hand in friendship to Sharona, who shook it. "I wouldn't call yourself a bad detective," Natalie told her, "There's no way on earth I could have been able to solve the Ray Kaspo case. I don't know a thing about poisons and organ transplants and…"
"SSShhhhhhh!" Stottlemeyer hissed. The sound of footsteps now permeated the air. A shadowy figure had entered the darkened factory. It looked around, nodded once it seemed convinced it was alone, and made a beeline for the radiation suit room. The posse stood up and slowly tiptoed after it, Stottlemeyer and Disher with their weapons drawn. They slowly approached the room, listening as their subject was starting to dress up. Adrian strolled inside. "Working late, Mr. Ertley?" he asked.
The general manager jumped in shock. "Oh, uh, Detective Monk, I didn't know you were here," he said nervously, "Uh, yeah, I just wanted to check to…"
"You must be really hungry, having seven candy bars," Stottlemeyer gestured at the objects in Ertley's back pocket, "A little Christmas snack, I suppose?"
"Uh, yes, well…"
"Mind if we take a look?" the captain grabbed several "bars" before Ertley could react and tore up the wrappers. Underneath them were lead-lined vials. "Boy, you must like pretty sugary O Henrys, Ed," he remarked.
"Uh, well, I can explain, it's…"
"I'm sure you can explain, Ed, but I think I can explain it better," Adrian stepped toward him, "I figured it out when Sharona here drunkenly told me she could snack whenever she wanted. We've discovered you didn't join the last San Jose mayoral race until Emilio Almonte made his intentions to run clear. To someone with your twisted thought process, there was no way you could let someone you considered un-American to hold such a key post in your town. Once you lost, your hatred was so great that you swore revenge against him and all Mexican-Americans. So you sent out your Caucasian Provinces legions to help you build the bomb to end all bombs. And you played your part here too. Your uncle, we've found, is the head of O Henry's primary west coast distribution center in Oakland. He gives you pretty free access to his plant, he's told us. You took advantage of that; you got a hold of as many spare wrappers as you could, then fixed them around the vials like this," he produced a potholder from his coat pocket and took hold of some of the faux candy bars from Ertley's pocket. "Since you eat O Henrys almost religiously, no one would suspect anything out of the ordinary if you had several bars on you. As general manager, you had security clearances to every section in the plant, so getting to the nuclear waste was no problem for you, even at night when everything was locked up tight. And with a radiation suit of your own on, who could tell it was you?"
"You'll have to speak a little clearly, detective, I understood none of that," Ertley told him.
"Let me say something a little clearer then: Louis Armani," Adrian said, "He was horrified by the extent you were willing to go to get revenge, and wanted out. He called out to Chief Richard Taylor and gave him key pieces of information about the plot. You hunted Armani down and eliminated him, but now Taylor was on to you. He had to be taken out as well. So you and John Pole, who with his degree in chemistry had been your primary assistant in building the bomb, put together a highly poisonous concoction to take him out. The police chief's convention was well publicized, and you knew no one would think that one man in a room full of dead men could have been the target of such a wide poisoning. Since Pole had done so well for you making this deadly concoction, you entrusted him with the task of giving it to the police chief convention. But Pole was up all night putting the poison together, and he misread the catering instructions out of sheer exhaustion. And so poor Clarissa Hart had to die for something she knew nothing about."
"The catering company said a man fitting Pole's description had been snooping around the building all day," Disher spoke up.
"When you realized Pole had made a mistake, you shot him in cold blood," Adrian went on, "And you resolved to kill Taylor yourself. Being such a clever planner, you had a good backup plan, and it involved Manny Nast. Like Dr. Lancaster, you decided to use his love of Santa—clearly well known by all who know him--against him. And you'd already prefabricated his house—which you specifically bought for him for the purposes of framing him for anything you might have tried—with a special safe, but I'll get to that in a moment."
"You're not getting anywhere," Ertley shouted, "I don't have to take any of this!"
"Oh yes you do," Stottlemeyer told him, "Tell him, Detective Monk."
Adrian nodded. "You scoped out Chief Taylor's house secretly over several nights," he said, "Everything was locked up tight. But you took notice that he left his milk on the table by the fireplace at night. So you devised a clever plan. I'm guessing you read Hardy Boys as a child, because the plot's taken directly from there."
"Book number eleven, 'While the Clock Ticked,'" Ambrose cited it directly.
"Thank you, Ambrose," Adrian told his brother. Turning back to Ertley, he said, "You put on your Santa suit and climbed onto the roof just after dark and waited for Taylor to come home. In the meantime, you assembled a clever little device, helped in part by some of the items your followers had stolen from Edwards Air Force Base."
Disher held up a bag containing a small metallic device with lots of gears and lights. He then held up a bag containing the jaws Natalie had discovered. He then held the two bags together. They matched up perfectly. "You put the poison in a special vial that was held in the jaws here and lowered it down the chimney," Adrian told him, "You had a special camera attached to the mechanism here so you could watch your package being delivered. Once it was in place, you pressed the button here," he pointed to the button in question on the device, "And the poison was released into Chief Taylor's milk. Once you got this thing back up the chimney. All you had to do was sit back and listen to him die. Then came your chance to frame Manny for your deeds."
"You've been hanging around this plant too long, Detective; you haven't said a legitimate thing yet!" Ertley told him curtly.
"I think I have," Adrian said with rare self-confidence, "You knew no one would believe Manny if he brought it up to the authorities that he'd seen Santa. He was your perfect fall guy. You waited until he was asleep, then you crept into his house. Since you'd had it prefabricated, you had the key to the front door, that's why there was no sign of anyone having broken into the house—we did a fly-over just before we came here so I could check to be sure. You chloroformed Manny, put then some of your spare vials in his hands so his fingerprints would be on them. Then it was time to activate the safe—your safe. You'd had it installed as a double safe, actually. Manny only saw the part with his own money in it, but he didn't know that behind it was a second, lead-lined compartment with some of the toxic waste you'd stolen. One of the things I'd spotted on the fly-over was the false siding that concealed the back of the safe. You dropped the vials you'd had Manny hold in there. Then you opened up the hidden handles on the front part of the safe and dragged it out of the wall. The safe with the waste clicked into place up front; with the back paneling preserved, no one could tell the difference. Then you dragged the safe with Manny's money out the front door and left him to take the rap."
"Nice, Detective Monk, very nice, but unfortunately you have no proof," Ertley told him smarmily.
"Oh we've got proof all right, Ed," Stottlemeyer spoke up, "I ordered a search warrant on your place; they not only found this Hardy Boy device here, but also Mr. Nast's safe, bomb parts, more radioactive containers, and your Caucasian Provinces membership card. You're going down, Eddie."
Ertley became abruptly defensive and arrogant. "I had a feeling you'd fail to see my point of view, Captain," he said darkly, "Too many Americans have grown blind to the epidemic of foreigners taking over our country and stealing us blind of our jobs and livelihoods! What I'm about to perform tonight is a civil service. When all three bombs detonate, there'll be…."
"THREE bombs?" Stottlemeyer went ghostly white, "You made THREE bombs?"
"That's right, stupid!" Ertley told him, "The devastation will cleanse us of these despicable minorities and make the West Coast safe again for decent Americans like…"
Stottlemeyer put his hand over Ertley's mouth and shoved him against the wall. "You," the captain thundered as he handcuffed him, "are NOT a decent American! Nor is anyone else who believes in your sick, twisted ideology! But one thing you ARE going to do is tell us where those bombs are right now!"
"If you think I'm going to tell you anything, you're even stupider than you look," Ertley told him, "I've trained my followers well not to say anything to the authorities. And if you try and force anything out of me, I'll claim police brutality, and you'll lose your badge and end up in jail."
"I don't care!" Stottlemeyer grabbed him by the collar, "You've got nobody here to back you up, Eddie; you're going to talk!"
"GRENADE!" Disher cried out. One landed right near them. They scattered just before it blew up. "Oh, almost forgot," Ertley said coolly, "I'm not alone. 'The Goblin' decided to come along tonight. He was hoping you'd show up."
A wave of machine gun fire strafed their feet. One shot blew the radio out of the captain's hand and short-circuited it just as Cargill's voice came through saying, "Captain, we've found the Davenport's car near the 5/80 interchange, it's…" A man in a black leather jacket with an admittedly tacky Green Goblin mask over his head ran down the nearby staircase at them, firing homicidally. "Stay down!" he ordered in a falsely deep voice, "Throw your weapons over to me!"
"I don't think we're going to do that," Adrian stood up with unexpected defiance, "Incidentally, there's no need to disguise yourself anymore, Trevor."