Part 38 (1/2)
Sh.e.l.l-shocked office workers streamed out of the building. Gla.s.s and debris littered the lawn and parking lots surrounding the building. Every window was gone. Exterior doors hung lopsided on their hinges. Walls cracked and crumbled.
Smoke billowed from only one opening, on the left side of the hallway where Mara was supposed to be. Ping ran toward it.
As he approached the building, he could not see inside, but smoke and steam poured out of a one-hundred-foot gap in the wall. He stumbled over piles of wood, masonry and Sheetrock, stepped gingerly over the remains of a chair.
He leaned into the building, holding on to an exposed beam. ”Mara, are you in there?” Ping shouted.
”Ping, is that you? Where are you?”
Ping waved his arms in the smoke, stepped over a crumbling ledge into the building. ”I'm here. Where are you?”
”I'm up here,” Mara said looking down from the rafters through gouged ceiling tiles. ”Check on Detective Bohannon. He is down there somewhere. Also, if you see a flaming dinosaur, that would be Agent Suter.”
CHAPTER 56.
PING STRETCHED TO look behind the overturned conference table. An arm extended from below a pair of toppled chairs, moved slowly on the floor. He ran around the end of the table, hopping over debris and dodging dangling wires. Everything in the room was wet and singed. Large swathes of carpet had been burned away, other portions had been shredded. A chair on top of the detective still smoldered, sending a thin stream of acrid smoke up to the ceiling.
Ping lifted the chair. Half of the detective's hair had been burned away. The rest was badly singed. He no longer had eyebrows. The right side of his face, mottled with small blisters, looked sunburned. He opened his eyes, but they did not immediately focus.
”Don't move, Detective. Let me get some help,” Ping said, turning when he heard Mara drop to the floor. ”What on earth happened in here?”
”Turns out Suter is our pretender,” she said. ”He was on the flight. He's from another realm. One thing's for sure, he's not from around here.”
Bohannon pushed a chair away and struggled to get up. The turned-over conference table blocked her view of him but she heard him moving around. Ping, who stood on the other side of the table, leaned down to help him.
”I think it would be a good idea for you not to move around until someone can examine you,” Ping said, reaching for Bohannon's arm.
Bohannon grabbed the edge of the table, tried to pull himself up and screamed in pain.
”Please, wait for the EMTs,” Ping said.
”It looks like I don't have any choice. I think my legs are broken,” Bohannon said, lying back on the sodden floor.
Mara walked around the table. ”Is there anything we can do? Ping, maybe you should go get help, show them where we are. I'll stay here with Detective Bohannon.”
”Yeah, and while he's doing that, you can explain to me just what the h.e.l.l happened here,” Bohannon said.
Making his way around the table, Ping paused to lean toward Mara. ”I don't think it would be a good idea to explain too much to the detective.”
”Considering what he saw a few minutes ago, I don't think there's much we could tell him that would surprise him,” Mara said, keeping her voice low.
Ping made his way out of the room through the hole in the wall. Mara turned to the detective. She sat on some debris next to him.
”Well? What happened?” He still looked dazed. Mara suspected he wasn't completely coherent.
”I'm being questioned? I figure since your partner turned into an iguana, you might cut me some slack,” she said, wiping matted hair from her face.
”Consider it unofficial. What is going on?”
”Well, it's complicated. It might be easier to understand when you're feeling a little better.”
”Just a couple quick questions, and the rest can wait for later.” He leaned on an elbow. ”You said Suter was on the flight. I've gone over the pa.s.senger list dozens of times. I would have noticed if his name was on the list. You think he was traveling under another name?”
Mara pulled the list out of her back pocket and ran her finger down the page. ”Nope. Ethan Suter. It's right here on the pa.s.senger list I got off the web.”
”How could I have missed that?” Bohannon asked.
”Did you get your list from Suter? Could he have removed his name?”
”It's possible. He controlled the investigation. I came on after him, so he could have altered the list.”
”That's probably what happened,” Mara said. ”What other questions?”
”You're saying Suter was on the flight, and he's a clone.”
”A clone?” she said.
”Not the original person who left on Flight 559.” Bohannon lowered his voice. ”You saw what was behind the plane that night you were in the hangar, right?”
”The morgue. Yes, we saw it.”
”Did you go in?”
Mara nodded.
”You saw what was on the tables?”
”Yes, Detective, I saw the bodies of the pa.s.sengers, including Ping's.”
”So he's a-”
”A clone, as you call it, though that's not really what he is.”
”What is he?”
”Like I said, it's complicated. I can explain, but there isn't time. We have to find out where Suter went and stop him.”
”Stop him from what?”
”We are not sure, but, whatever it is, it's not good.”
”I might be able to figure out where he went. He grabbed my car keys before he left. Can you get my jacket? It's over there on the floor. Hopefully my phone is still in the pocket.”