Mara Lantern: Broken Realms Part 38

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."

Mara picked up the soggy suit jacket and fished in the breast pocket. The phone was there. She handed it to Bohannon. He pressed a b.u.t.ton and waited for a connection.

"Dispatch, can you give me a location on my vehicle, please?" he asked. "I don't have time for an explanation. Please tell me where the vehicle is located. My badge number is 1-7-8-3.... That's the vehicle I'm driving, yes.... Okay. Do you have an address?... Uh-huh.... No, I'll call it in if I need to. Thanks."

Pus.h.i.+ng debris out of his way, Ping stepped through the hole in the building, followed by two firefighters carrying a gurney. "He's over there behind the table. He's got serious burns, and he thinks his legs are broken."

"So? Do you know where he is?" Mara made room for the emergency workers, stood off to the side while they a.s.sessed the detective.

"I don't think you should go after him. Let me call it in and have a couple units go after him. This is something the police should handle."

"The police? The police can't handle this. Suter is not a shoplifter. You saw him. Do you think two cops are going to know what to do about him?" Mara looked to Ping for help.

The firefighters bent over the detective, checked his pulse and looked at his pupils. One of them cut the legs off his suit pants and nodded to his partner. "They both look broken, but I don't see any bone, so let's get him on the gurney and to the ambulance."

They lifted the conference table out of the way and set up the gurney next to Bohannon, then stood on each side of him and lifted him onto it. He groaned in pain as they moved him.

Mara grew impatient and waved a hand at Ping to say something.

"Detective Bohannon, she's correct. If you know where he is, please tell us. A lot of lives depend on it," Ping said.

The detective shook his head as the firefighters raised the gurney. He was strapped in, and they were trying to navigate debris to get out of the building. "I'll call it in as soon as we get to the ambulance."

Mara raised her hands in a halting motion. "No."

The firefighters froze.

Bohannon craned his neck. The firefighters stood suspended, motionless. One firefighter's foot had stopped in the air, midstride. The other's arm flailed out to his side, stalled halfway in making a midstep balance correction.

"What did you do?" Bohannon shook back and forth on the stretcher, trying to figure out what happened to the men carrying him.

"We don't have time to explain," Ping said. "We need you to understand we are better able to deal with Suter than any number of unprepared police officers. They'll just get hurt or worse."

Mara nodded.

"I'll be d.a.m.ned if I know what to do," Bohannon said. "At the very least I have to report the vehicle stolen. They'll keep an eye out for the car without ginning up a manhunt for Suter."

"Do what you have to do, but tell us where he went," Mara said.

"I still want an explanation once this is over."

"I promise. Now, where is Suter?"

"He's in Oregon City."

Mara went pale. "Where in Oregon City?"

"They don't have an exact address, just the closest cross streets, Center and Second. Mean anything to you?"

Mara turned to Ping. "That's where I live."

CHAPTER 57.

RED AND BLUE lights flashed across the houses in the neighborhood when Diana turned into her driveway as twilight threatened to become night. An Oregon City police cruiser parked along the curb in front of a vacant home on Center Street, two houses down the block. The house had been on the market for several months. Diana stepped out of her RAV4 juggling two bags of groceries and watched a tow truck pull away with a Chevy Caprice in tow.

She wondered who would have parked in the driveway. Perhaps someone looking at the house had pulled in, and then their car broke down. Didn't really explain why the police would be interested. Her curiosity faded as the tow truck and police car drove to Second Street and turned left on Was.h.i.+ngton. The flas.h.i.+ng lights were gone, and her mind turned to getting the front door unlocked without dropping anything.

With the groceries put away, Diana flipped a k.n.o.b on the stove to heat up the kettle. After brewing some green tea, she intended to meditate after a long day of shopping and traffic. As she turned to go upstairs to change, her cell phone, sitting on the counter, rang.

"Mom, thank G.o.d. Are you okay?" Mara asked.

"Yes, Mara. Why wouldn't I be?" Diana leaned against the counter waiting for a response. "Mara, are you there?"

"Yeah, I'm just thinking. Look, I'm on my way home. It might not be anything, and I don't want to scare you, but can you make sure all the doors and windows are locked until I get there?"

"I usually keep the windows and doors locked. What's going on?"

"Can you just check to make sure?"

"Okay, I'm walking around and checking right now. While I'm doing that, you can explain to me what you are so concerned about."

"It's complicated. It would be a lot easier to explain in person. Just make sure everything is locked up. What are you doing right now?"

"I'm getting ready to meditate, to unwind, which you aren't making any easier. How soon will you be here?"

"I'm not sure. It looks like things are backed up on the interstate. With my luck, there was a wreck on the bridge again. Keep your phone with you, and stay alert. Don't completely zone out."

"When you get here, you can explain the don't-zone-out method of meditating."

"Call me if anything weird happens."

"Weird? Weird, how?" Diana walked over to the dinette table, picked up the copper medallion with the azurite crystals she had found there this morning. She turned it over in her hand while she listened.

"You'll know. We'll be there as soon as we can." Mara ended the connection.

Diana set her phone on the table and stroked her fingers across the face of the medallion, tracing the stones and engraved glyphs, wondering who had created it. Mara had done a good job replacing the azurite; it looked new. The repairs had not detracted from the power and the pull of the object, Diana thought. If anything, they had enhanced it. Perhaps she would meditate with it.

Mara growled under her breath, frustrated as she hung up and stared out at the endless, unmoving sea of vehicles silhouetted ahead on Interstate 205 heading south. It took almost an hour to get out of the office park, and they hit a slowdown almost immediately while they were still north of the interchange with Interstate 84.

"Would one of you tell me why we are going to Oregon City in such a panic?" Sam asked from the backseat.

"Suter, the FBI guy, turned into a lizard," Mara said.