Out of the Black - Lee Doty [4]
"Yep," said Malloy, interrupting from above. "Come on. The fun's just begun."
As Ping stood to follow, he couldn't completely shake free of his walk down memory lane. He found himself thinking about how the world had shivered and lost focus as all his thought compressed to the glistening dark spot between his toes. He'd woken later to the teasing laughter of his brother. "You okay kid?" the camp counselor had asked through the fog of returning reality.
Malloy was staring expectantly at him. "You okay?" he repeated.
"Sorry. Just thinking."
Malloy gave him a resolute nod "We've done a lot of that, too."
"All the bodies like that?" Ping asked, glancing back over his shoulder.
"No two alike."
"Any ID?"
"We haven't touched anything," Malloy checked his tablet, "forensics should be here in fifteen."
The other officer joined them as they reached the front of the destroyed car. He was an efficient looking black man in his twenties. An ugly pale scar crawled from the bottom of his left ear to his collarbone- Ping wondered how he'd survived whatever had caused that, and why he hadn't had the scar removed. The patrolman's arms were so corded with muscles that he looked like he could crush the black maglite he held. Black points and curves mostly hidden by collar and short sleeves suggested a hidden mosaic of tattoo beneath his shirt. "Rodriguez" was on his nametag.
Like his partner, he didn't look like he was used to being afraid. He glanced at Ping's badge and gave a nod of recognition. "Welcome to the twilight zone," he said with a tight grin.
"I hear it's a dimension of mind," Ping said, glancing at the strings of interlacing automatic weapon craters in the concrete wall behind the car. Bob Marley continued to wail from the damaged car's powerful speakers. The music seemed to resonate in every molecule of the chilled night air. It filled any pause in the conversation, slid around each word. "Let's get together and feel all right."
"You notice this?" Rodriguez used the maglite to illuminate a spot on the overpass above the car.
What Ping could make out looked like pieces of the car's roof, mangled and fused to the infrastructurof the bridge. Dark viscous liquid dripped from several protrusions.
"That's not..." He stopped as he made out the shape of a twisted leg protruding from the wreckage above him. Its black shoe was untouched by the destruction.
They moved through the minefield of physical evidence, skirting piles of biology and destroyed metal. At last, they reached the car, approaching the driver's door from the front. The roof had been blown off from the back, but about ten centimeters of damaged metal clung to the windshield's upper frame. The windshield was spider-webbed with cracks, most of which emanated from the roughly horizontal cigar shaped hole directly in front of the driver. Jagged shards at the bottom of the frame were all that remained of the car's side and rear windows.
At the driver's door, the interior of the car appeared for the first time. The first glance revealed two bodies: the driver and a passenger in the back seat. The driver was buckled in, but the passenger was on the floor of the back seat, mostly hidden from view.
"What's wrong with this picture?" Malloy asked with a sideways glance.
"What isn't?" Ping answered, but then he noticed: "This wasn't an explosion."
"Something blew off the top without destroying the interior of the car," Rodriguez said.
There were several slashes in the seats and blood everywhere, but no burn or shrapnel damage. The passenger side airbag had deployed and now lay spent over the empty passenger seat. The driver's airbag hadn't deployed,