35: Mad Jack

35: Mad Jack

Character: Norman Jayden

The clues in the proper order

WARNING: Norman can die in this chapter!

You are Norman again, and the chapter opens with you driving up to the salvage yard.  This was sort of a spooky chapter for me because there was a scrap yard that looked a lot like this one on the outskirts of the Sydney Industrial District that one of my mates lived near when I was in Uni. 

We actually scavenged parts for his Ute there - the owner let you go in and get what you needed and then you showed him what you took and he decided how much you owed him and you paid.  The thing about that is that what you paid had more to do with whether he liked you or not than it did what you were buying, and the spooky bit is that he was West African and actually looked like the character in this story!

Once you are out of the car your first destination is pretty obvious - the heavy claw ahead of you is occupied, and that is the perfect place to start inquiring for the man we want to talk to - and what do you know?!  We give him a yell and down he comes.  We suggest going inside out of the rain and he leads us into the open bay of one of the metal buildings nearby.

Our attempt at intimidation does not go over quite as well as we hoped, and Jack heads back to his picker and work.  This is an excellent time for us to check the area for clues with our ARI, so go ahead and put it on and start scanning!  Before you get too far into this let me just warn you - you are going to find a skull under some scrap metal but you need to make sure that this is the last clue you find because it triggers the continuation of the chapter, so find the other clues first!

If you do an ARI scan from where you are standing after Jack leaves you will find the blood trail.  To the left of the blood trail you will find a set of size-10 shoe prints, a set of size-13 shoe prints that you speculate belong to Mad Jack, and a set of tire prints that do not match the car you are seeking.

Inside the room nearby the tracks you will find a set of fingerprints on the Thermos bottles that you assume are Mad Jacks, and you can view a poster above the bedroll that must be Jack's crash pad.  As you venture further into the garage you find another set of tire tracks - and it is the same brand as the killer's!  Nearby the tracks you find what looks like a large blood pool, and on the workbench nearby tools that you lift fingerprints from.  On a bench in the back of the garage you discover more fingerprints, and on the winch nearby that bench you find traces of orchid pollen.  Curious...

Next to the winch on the floor are two more sets of tire tracks, though not from the right car.  As you move back towards the door you will find more footprints - man this place is just full of clues!  There is also paint residue nearby, and outside there are tire prints but the rain has degraded them to the point that they are mostly useless.

So you have pretty much discovered all that there is to discover, so look to the left of the garage as you enter and you will see a piece of scrap metal you can lift up.  May as well do that now!  Ooh!  A Skull!  Now THAT is a clue worth finding!  How did that... oh shit!  Is that a gun pressed to the back of our head?  I believe it is!

Jack is not shy about sharing his plans now - admitting that the skull belongs to a cop who got too close and had to be dealt with - and now he plans to do the same to you!  So get your hand up and walk, yeah!  Okay, so it is looking pretty grim - Jack took our pistol and threw it on the floor and now we are being lead deeper into the garage.  Clearly we are going to need to kick his ass!

A fight ensues - but you knew that was going to happen - and as long as you got the sequences right, it was not long or painful.  In fact Norman sort of surprised me!  Getting Jack to talk by intimidating him and threatening to set off the petrol tanks and burn him alive was simply inspired!  But this was all going too smooth - and the other shoe had to drop, right?  Just as we were making good progress and giving Sylvester Stallone a role model to follow for his next cop film that did not involve his mother carrying his cuffs, that damn drug kicked in!

Here is the crux of the scene - if you are not good with the controls you are going to drop the drugs, and if you do, you are going to end up handcuffed to your car's steering wheel, and on your way to the auto crusher... 

If you are good with the buttons then you did not drop the drug, and Mad Crazy Insane you-can't-really-blame-him-you-were-going-to-burn-him-to-death-alive Jack gets cuffed and is on his way to jail.  If not, well, not...

There really is not much in the way of visual clues to take you in the right direction - meaning to help you escape, so I will simply explain it to you - you have to escape!  Just kidding!

Forget about honking the horn, turning on the windscreen wipers or playing the radio - none of that is going to save you!  Look to the right and you will see that you can interact with the glove box.  Do that, and then take the Beretta 9mm from it and use that to shoot your cuffs off, then climb out of the car and make your escape as your cherry Fed car gets all ground up.  Man, I loved that car almost as much as I love the ARI.  Sniff.

We whip out our backup piece once we are on the ground again but Jack is not in the cab of the picker - he is right behind you! (not kidding here) And so another fight ensues. If you get your buttons right the fight quickly takes an interesting turn involving the picker, and things do not go well for Jack I am afraid.

Okay, ideally we would have taken him in for questioning - but the truth is we already got the information out of him that he had, and interrogating him really would have just taken more time that we really do not have, so maybe things worked out for the best?  I mean yeah, there is a lot more paperwork involved when you kill a suspect, but on the other hand most of that you can do at your desk, and bonus!  You do not have to take time out of your life to testify in court! 

Let me tell you, it really is no fun sitting around a courthouse for six hours only to learn that they are not going to call you to the stand today, so you have to come back tomorrow and sit around...  That accurately describes police work and I am glad I don't do that anymore...  Though if you like that sort of thing, it can be okay I guess...  But bring your own coffee, trust me on that - the canteens at courthouses always have battery acid for coffee.

As the chapter ends and you transition to the next one you will unlock the trophy "Goodbye Mad Jack" (bronze) unless you somehow let Norman get killed, in which case not.