The Billy Club Bastard Case Files: The Bombs, the Boil, and the Blue Boy, Part 3.5 of 6

Official Royce Freeman tracks down his strange suspect, but can he stop him before his dastardly plan is enacted?

This is the second half of Part 3 of The Bombs, the Boil, and the Blue Boy. To avoid spoilers, read Parts 1, 2, and the first half of Part 3 first. It is the fourth story in The Billy Club Bastard Case Files: Old Dogs Still Got Teeth and is a stand-alone story spanning decades. This part features some familiar faces, such as Royce Freeman from The Case of the Broken Fixers.

Content warnings: violence, gun violence, death, creeps, tobacco use, mild swearing.

SATURDAY AFTERNOON, JUNE 5, 1943
THE WASHINGTON MONUMENT
NATIONAL MALL, WASHINGTON, D.C.

Royce Freeman’s essie started squealing like a stuck pig when he was still twenty yards away from the from the monument’s base. That meant his hunch was right, and that was not good.

“What is that noise?” Sergeant Papadakis of the United States Park Police asked, the screech crinkling his wrinkles as he winced and eyed the essie warily.

“It’s not good,” Freeman answered. The device he was using looked like a cross between a fireplace bellows and an anteater’s snout. The little pump inside was sniffing up hanging particles in the air. When one of those particles happened to be something combustible, it was more than happy to scream about it.

An essie, short for an ‘explosive substance indicator,’ usually had to be about twenty feet from a bomb to start squawking.

If it was going hog-wild at twenty yards, there had to be an absolute truckload of trouble waiting for him.

“That thing is not subtle, is it?” Papadakis asked. Freeman’s brain caught back up with him. Every milling civilian around them was staring at the squealing device. Freeman flipped its switch and hung it over his shoulder.

With the ruckus it had caused, there wasn’t any question over whether or not there were bombs nearby. He unbuttoned the holster beneath his jacket. It’d be better to have a heater at the ready for the next part.

The Greek cop raised his gray eyebrows but made no move to draw his own sidearm.

“See anything?” Freeman asked.

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” Papadakis replied, scanning the milling crowd around them. There was a smattering of tourists and a couple field trips’ worth of school kids. Not the kind of people Freeman was eager to see get blown up.

“See what you can do about getting everybody clear of here,” he said. “Quietly. We don’t want to spook our guy.”

“Yes, understood,” Papadakis replied. He shuffled over to the field trips first and pulled the chaperones aside.

When Freeman showed up on their doorstep, the Park Police were about as appreciative to get an earful from the Office and the real F.B.I. as the Metropolitan Police had been. And about as eager to let him run around the National Mall armed and looking for bombs. In the end, they’d assigned him their most ancient officer and told them both to screw.

Freeman strolled toward the entrance at the base of the towering obelisk. He did his best to look as nonchalant as a Black man could palling around with a decrepit cop while a bag with an elephant snout screamed bloody murder on his back.

There were a couple other park cops guarding the monument’s base that rolled up on him but they took a look at Freeman’s faux Bureau badge and went to question Papadakis. Within a couple minutes, they were shuffling off all of the civilian lookie-loos.

The bomb was easy enough to find, a tan duffel shoved up against the monument’s southeastern corner.

“Hey, how long’s thing been here?” he shouted at one of the officers who’d started helping Papadakis with the orderly evacuation.

Freeman grunted as he took a knee and eased the bag’s cinch-string loose to get a look inside. Bundles of greasy red tubes stared up at him.

“Papadakis?” he called out.

Before the distracted cop could answer, someone else hollered at him:

“Hey, get the Hell away from that!”

A man with a long jacket and floppy hat came hustling around from the west side of the monument. His hat flew free in his rush, revealing dark blue skin on his face. Freeman dropped to the ground as soon as he saw the pistol in his hand.

“F.B.I., drop the gun!” Freeman shouted, as if some goon intent on toppling the Washington Monument gave two shits which agency issued his badge.

The bomber’s pistol barked three times before he sprinted back around the monument’s far side. Screaming and running broke out all around, but Freeman only had eyes for one person.

“One, two, three,” Freeman whispered to steel himself. When he was sure there weren’t any more bullets heading his way he rushed in pursuit.

“Mister Freeman!” Papadakis called after him as he dodged around the stampeding sightseers.

“Clear this place out!” Freeman shouted over his shoulder. The best thing the park police could do would be to limit the other casualties.

His hands were shaking; he didn’t trust himself to aim a gun. It wasn’t that he was scared, it was that he was too old for all the bullshit. Freeman wasn’t encourage anybody to start shooting with a crowd around. He didn’t have some vain hope of saving his own gnarled hide. If the blue guy was going to detonate his bomb, it wan’t going to hurt. He was too close to notice if it went off.

Freeman charged around the corner, tracing his hand along the stone to steady himself. Trailing copper against the white marble caught his eye. The bomb he’d stumbled upon was wired to blow.

He lurched to a halt at the monument’s southwest corner and peeked around. The wires led straight to an identical bag jammed up against the monument’s western face.

To Freeman’s north, the blue man was squatting at the next corner, fiddling with the leads running into a third bag. Freeman didn’t have to make much a leap to surmise that there was a fourth bomb on the monument’s other corner.

“Hey!” Freeman shouted. The blue man kept at whatever he was doing, but raised his free hand. Freeman ducked back as another pistol salvo cracked chips off the monument.

It was in that moment that Freeman wished he’d brought an actual gun. He pulled the M1935-C Band-It out from its holster beneath his jacket. He unfolded the grip and stock, then flipped off its safety. He’d packed the rubber-band-launching carbine with the vague notion that it might prevent a civilian cop from plugging him by mistake. He realized then that it wouldn’t matter: the Band-It looked like a real enough firearm that whoever popped him wouldn’t get much more than a pat on the back.

Folks of his complexion were going to get got whatever they were holding, so he might as well have brought a bazooka.

Freeman hunched low, suppressed a grunt elicited by his aching back, and leaned around the corner. The blue man was gone.

“Shit,” he muttered. He set his Band-It down and took up a handful of the bare copper strands. His switchblade had never been much more than a stylish letter opener in his previous life behind a desk but it cut through the wires easily enough.

At least when the blue man blew them all to Hell, he’d only have half of his bombs to do it with.

Freeman pulled the Band-It to his shoulder and advanced. There wasn’t much to see: the monument’s bare marble face on his right, gravel at his feet, the Mall’s wide open green in every other direction with Papadakis and the Park Police herding everyone away. The blue man had to be on the far side of the obelisk and the only thing to do over there was to get the last of his bombs set.

“We’re doing this the hard way,” Freeman muttered. He let the Band-It guide him around the monument’s next corner. Another duffel packed with enough dynamite to crack the moon and another snaking trail of wires. At the far end, he spotted his guy, hard at work on another bag. Freeman crouched as low as his old knees would let him and the sliced the copper leads.

One more to go.

“Hey, buddy!” he shouted. He aimed down the Band-It’s sights and pulled the trigger. It thumped against his shoulder like a blackjack, flinging a rubber band went wide and low, skipping off the gravel to disappear somewhere in the grass.

The blue man fired his pistol without looking and continued to work on his duffel. Freeman dropped low and worked the Band-It’s heavy lever. He chunked the next band into place and fired again, this time aiming higher. The recoil nearly knocked him over again, but he racked the lever and fired once more.

The bands sprung forth. The first clipped the monument, leave a red smear across the marble before bouncing off-course. The second went low, spraying more gravel. Just as the blue man was jamming another lead into his dynamite bundles, the band struck.

The heavy-gauge rubber wrapped around the duffel like the arms of a hungry octopus, sealing it up as it snatched it right out from under the blue man. One second he was about to blow up the tallest building in Washington, D.C., the next his bomb was sealed tight and fifteen yards past him, sealed tight as a Mason jar.

The blue man popped to his feet in time for Freeman to rack the Band-It and fire again. He had his aim down pat and the next band struck the cerulean goon right in the ankles, sweeping his legs out from under him. The blue man hit the ground like a sack of crap. His pistol tumbled out of his reach.

Freeman rushed over as best he could. Between his aching knees, sore back, and freshly throbbing shoulder, it wasn’t much of a sprint. Still he got there in time to snatch up the pistol before the blue man could and recover it.

Freeman was still catching his breath and didn’t have time to think up anything pithy before the strange man cowered back. He reached under his collar, almost earning himself a close-range rubber band, and pulled a white fabric collar up and over his mouth and nose.

“Stay back!” he demanded.

“You’re going to have to calm down, pal,” Freeman said. He kept the Band-It trained on him.

“None of y’all are pure, and I ain’t about to catch it,” the blue man squawked. “Get back, I said!”

“Buddy, trust me, I don’t want to be here either,” Freeman grunted. He eased himself down and leaned against the monument’s cool stone face. The blue man scrambled, kicking up gravel as he tried to put distance between them. “Don’t make me - !”

The blue man flung a fistful of pebbles at Freeman, cutting him off. The Band-It jumped in his hands and another band sprang out and wrapped itself around the blue man’s arms, pinning them to his sides.

“You’re lucky that ain’t around your neck,” Freeman sputtered as he brushed dirt off his face. “Now just what in the Hell are we doing here?”

“‘Hell!’” the blue man repeated from the ground. His eyes were wide and he looked like an absolute nut. “So you already know!”

“Pretend I don’t,” Freeman grunted.

“You know what this tower does,” the blue man hissed. It sounded like an allegation. “You know why it stands so tall.”

Freeman played along.

“Yeah, I do,” he said. “But that isn’t something some hick would know.”

“I been touched by a one of His selected, and He called on me to fulfill His word,” the blue man continued. “His third son was selected from beyond the sky to teach us how to save this place, how to start over, clean and pure, ‘fore it descends into Hell.”

“‘Beyond the sky,’ huh? And what’s that got to do with the monument?” Freeman wondered.

“Every tower falls. That’s is what they were made to do. But this tower, it defies its fate to spite Him. It had to be as tall and pure as y’all befouled snakes could make it, to hold the Stone of Truth up out of this cess pit. ‘Cause you filthy damned swine can’t stand to see what it would show.”

Freeman could hear the nut capitalizing those letters. The blue man kept babbling:

“That point up there, the tip of the needle where y’all thought we couldn’t reach it, that’s the Stone, crafted by our shepherd Himself. His hands gave it it’s power. And y’all denied Him, y’all tried to imprison the divine. I’m its liberator.”

“Well… say, what do I call you?” Freeman asked.

“Liberator,” the man sneered.

“Okay, Libby, let me catch up here. Your story is snarled up like a rat king.”

“Don’t play dumb with me, boy,” the blue man snarled. His blue gums were showing. Freeman had to take a breath and fight back the urge to pop Libby.

Even blue as a bluebird’s backside, the white man still knew how to push his buttons in a way only a white man could. Freeman gave himself another second of grace before he addressed the attempted bomber again:

“Son, you’re telling me you know a Martian.”

“His third son ain’t no Martian. We thought he was an angel but he ain’t no angel, either. Angels can’t die. He’s a guide. He was.”

“And why exactly did he want this particular monument knocked over?”

“I said don’t play dumb with me. You know exactly what the Stone of Truth will do!” Libby shouted.

“You can talk to me or you can talk to a shrink,” Freeman said with a shrug. He squatted next to the bound man, leaning against the stone. “Shrink’s going to start carving out parts of your brain between electro-shocks. Me? Well, you might open my eyes, too. Show me a little truth for once.”

Libby looked around. The Park Police were far off, still hustling the crowds back. It was just the two of them.

“The Stone of Truth is a tool He gave us to find the deceivers,” he said carefully.

“Yeah, of course,” Freeman nearly whispered, nodding conspiratorially.

“That’s why they hid it up there, out of our reach,” Libby continued.

“Exactly, yeah.”

“They don’t want us to know the truth. That this world is full of poxes and poisons, but it don’t have to be. They’re keeping us this way.”

“Who is?”

“The vipers. The swine. They want to reign in Hell. They’re either too greedy or too lazy to do what it takes to usher in His kingdom. They are fine with the mire and the suffering. You think you’re their emissary, but you’re their victim, just like the rest of us.”

“And what’s your stone going to do?”

“The Stone calls out the deceivers. When the tower falls, it’ll get drawn to their warren, they can’t hide from it. When we know where their nest is, we can eradicate them and get this world moving toward salvation, and purity. Ain’t nobody else need to die from germs or devils. My people, we know the way, and we’ll teach you.”

Freeman took another deep breath and massaged his forehead. He realized where he recognized that type of mask from. It was the kind folks were wearing back during the flu years. It was the responsible thing then, but it had been decades since he’d seen one outside a hospital.

“You called it a ‘needle,’” Freeman asked after a moment, his voice little more than an exasperated groan, “You mean like a compass needle?”

Libby nodded. Freeman could tell the blue man was beaming behind his mask. He thought he’d made himself a convert.

Freeman sighed.

“I’d like to know how y’all figured all this out,” he said. “I saw your Bibles, y’all made some interesting amendments in there. Y’all got a pastor?”

“Brother Parcival,” Libby replied. “His sainted pa set us on the path, ’til Brother Parcival found the third son.”

“And where’s Brother Parcival?”

“He’s back home, but the town don’t take visitors,” Libby replied. “Too dangerous, anyone could be infested or infected.”

“I clean up real nice,” Freeman said, smiling wide.

“So did those reviled cusses from the telephone company. But they brought the flu with ‘em, and folks kept dying, even after we tore all their damn telephone lines down. They tried to come back, but the sheriff kept ‘em away. We’ll keep you away, too. ’Til you purify yourself, ain’t nobody in the Gap going to speak a word to you.”

Freeman parsed that world salad. Between the corpse in the hotel and what Libby had given up, there were enough details for him, or at least A.D.A., to track: a small town in Speck County, Virginia with ‘Gap’ in its name that was hit by the Spanish flu and that briefly had telephone service that was never restored after locals threatened the workers.

Gravel shifting caught Freeman’s attention and he snapped his Band-It up to find Libby kneeling before him.

“I can show you, I been consecrated. Look at me: full transubstantiation.” He was showing off the deep blue hue that permeated his skin. “I can purify you, we can liberate the truth together.”

Libby pointed his chin upward. Freeman squinted as the studied the obelisk’s distant apex, then replied to the offer:

“I’m going to be straight with you: you tried to knock over the Washington Monument just to see which way it was pointing when it landed. I seen some real nutty shit, so, okay, fine. But what gets me is that you didn’t give a rat’s ass about bombing a bunch of tourists and schoolchildren in the process. If what y’all believe don’t have anything against that, count me out.”

“It was the only way,” Libby protested.

“You could’ve done it at night, you dipshit,” Freeman snapped. He lurched to his feet and advanced on the bound man. Libby’s eyes went wide and he flopped over, squirming to get distance before the ‘infected’ official could touch him.

“Stay away from me!” he huffed as he tried to worm-crawl away. “You ain’t clean!”

“You’re going to have to get okay with dirt, Libby,” Freeman said. He snagged the band around the blue man’s ankles and started dragging him along. Freeman snarled over his shoulder: “And I hope you ain’t expecting any more visitors from ‘beyond the sky’ for a while, ‘cause where you’re going there ain’t much sky at all.”

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Copyright © 2025 Daniel Baldwin. All rights reserved.

Written and edited by Daniel Baldwin. Art by Tyrelle Smith.