Broken Pixels (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 4) (2 page)

“Mason Fix-It Shop. This is Mara. How may I help you?” she said, her voice raised slightly.

“Hey, Mara. It’s Bohannon. You got a few minutes to talk?”

Mara recognized the Portland detective’s Southern accent from the first word. “Sure. What’s going on?”

“You remember, after your plane crashed in September, the investigation by the feds, right? The NTSB? They recovered the jet from the river and ran the whole thing from a hangar by the airport?”

“Yes. You and Suter arrested me and Ping for breaking in there. I remember. It’s where they kept a secret morgue to hide the bodies of the passengers who died in the crash,” she said.

“I had almost forgotten about all that. You know, it’s probably a good idea not to get into this on the phone. How about I stop by in about half an hour?”

Mara frowned at the antique phone and said, “No problem. Should I be worried?”

“Let’s talk when I get there.” Bohannon hung up.

Replacing the receiver into the arm extending from the candlestick telephone’s neck, Mara stared up at the stained-glass light fixture suspended above the counter and wondered what could be happening now. After a moment she shook her head, deciding she didn’t have enough information to worry yet. She’d just wait the few minutes until the detective arrived. She lifted the repaired antique telephone, disconnected it from the shop’s phone line and placed it in the box used to transport it. Grabbing a roll of tape, she sealed the box and slid it under the counter.

She grabbed from the shelf nearby what looked like a small brown suitcase and placed it on the counter. After flipping open the metal clasp mounted under the plastic handle, she lifted the top half of the casing, revealing a vinyl record turntable centered in the bottom half. The old portable record player had been knocked around when the zombies possessed by Juaquin Prado’s dead spirit had broken through the shop’s front window. She was just now assessing the damage, if any.

At first glance the arm seemed bent which held the stylus—the needle that rested on the grooves of a record as it played. Mara wrapped her fingers around the aluminum arm and pressed it with her thumb against the angle of the bend. She rested the arm on the tiny stand that held it when not playing a record and lowered her head level with the countertop. Eyeballing the arm, she decided it was no longer warped. She focused on the needle itself, reaching out and touching it with a fingertip. It felt well-seated. It was time to give it a whirl.

Standing upright, she felt along the back side of the player’s lid for the cubbyhole that held the power cord. Finding it on the left side, she extracted the cord and pulled it over the edge of the counter and down to the floor, where she plugged it into a power strip. Straightening once again, she eyed the empty turntable and then glanced across the shop at a stack of albums on the floor under the shelves holding other record players and radios. She retrieved the record on the top of the stack—Bing Crosby’s
Merry Christmas
—and slid the black disc from its sleeve as she returned to the counter. Holding the record by the edges, she lowered it to the player and flipped the control lever to Play. The arm lifted and played what sounded to Mara to be a very tinny version of “Silent Night.”

Just as she decided to disassemble the player’s arm, the bells above the shop’s door jangled, and Detective Bohannon stepped through the entranceway, nodding in her direction. Mara manually lifted the stylus from the record and set the arm on its tiny stand again.

“Detective, don’t tell me that it’s been a half hour already,” she said.

“Looks like traffic was flowing in my direction, and all the lights decided to be green today. I made good time,” he said, walking up to the counter.

Mara sat on her stool. “So what’s so sensitive that you didn’t want to talk on the phone?”

“George Pirelli, the guy who headed up the crash investigation looking into Flight 559, is on his way to Portland. He saw that video of you battling the dragon on the news a few days back,” the detective said.

“So the NTSB is investigating dragons now?” she asked.

Bohannon chuckled. “I probably don’t need to tell you this, but I don’t think Pirelli actually works for the NTSB. I’m not sure who he works for, but the fact that he could hide more than a hundred corpses and then make them disappear without it becoming public knowledge is a good indicator that his return to Portland might be trouble. Especially for you—and Mr. Ping if he gets connected to the dragon somehow.”

“So this Pirelli guy knows I’m the person in the video?”

“No, he only knows what my lieutenant has told him, and I haven’t told my lieutenant that you’re the one in the video—and I haven’t said anything about Ping being the dragon.”

“Why haven’t you told him?”

Bohannon leaned against the counter. “The lieutenant knows this whole situation is a little funky, to say the least, and doesn’t want to be in a position of reporting things that will make him look like a nut—stuff like there’s this Chinese baker who turns into a dragon. If Pirelli needs to know something with regard to public safety, something he can do to prevent people from getting hurt, then he’s all ears. Understand?”

“I guess that makes sense. So what’s this federal investigator up to?”

“I’m not sure, but he knew, when he left Portland the last time, that something strange had occurred on the flight, that the passengers had somehow been replaced with clones or doppelgängers or something. For whatever reason, he decided to ignore that and move on. If I know anything about bureaucrats, they like to paper over their mistakes. Given some of the things that have happened with the passengers—here in Portland and elsewhere—I’m sure Pirelli is feeling pressure to figure out what’s going on and deal with it somehow.”

“If he doesn’t know I’m the girl fighting the dragon, why should I be worried?” Mara asked.

“He’ll probably identify you eventually. I mean, you were arrested for breaking into his hangar-slash-morgue and don’t be surprised if he finds something to tie Ping to the dragon.”

“He won’t be able to prove anything about Ping and the dragon,” Mara said.

“Why not?”

“The dragon is gone. Sent back to its own realm Friday night, right after it burned down my mother’s house.”

The detective’s eyes widened. “What? How did that happen?”

Mara held up a hand. “It’s a long story. Just take my word. You won’t be hearing from the dragon again.”

“Okay, then what did you do with the robot?”

Mara went blank for a moment. “What?”

“You know, Cameron Lee, the robot passenger from another realm, whose head you were using as a tracking device to find your mother and the dragon?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Pirelli’s got a copy of the report we received from the hospital, when they asked us to come take a look at Cam. Remember how the administrators at the hospital were weirdly vague about the whole thing? Pirelli will want to take a look for himself.”

“Well, that might be a problem.”

“How so?”

“We lost his head.”

Bohannon inhaled deeply, a look of exasperation on his face. “You lost his head? How?”

“The Aphotis appeared in my living room and took it.”

“Come again?”

“Remember Stella Reese—the woman who shared her memory with me about the phenomenon that appeared in her kitchen and tried to evaporate her?”

The detective nodded.

“Same thing happened in my house, except it happened to Cam’s head, and we were in the other room when it did,” she said.

“What about the rest of his body? Is it still at the hospital?”

“As far as I know. I haven’t been back, but I was planning to go there this afternoon and see if I could help Cam.”

“It might be best if you just kept your distance and let Pirelli take the body. If he runs into you again, it could turn into a real mess. Corpses may not be the only thing he can make disappear.”

Mara leaned across the counter. “I can’t do that. Cam needs my help.”

“What can you do for a headless robot?”

“He’s a real person, and he asked for my help. I’m the one who put him in this situation, and the least I can do is try to help him.”

“He’s asking for your help? I mean, how?”

“He sent me a text message.”

“From his headless body?”

“Yes.”

“Well then, you better get over to the hospital and move that body without anyone knowing it was you, because Pirelli will eventually make his way there, and, after that, you are not likely to see Cam again.”

Ping and Sam dashed out the back door of the bakery into the dark, drizzly alley, jogging through the headlight beams of Mara’s Subaru Outback before reaching the passenger doors and jumping inside. Ping sat on Mara’s backpack in the front passenger seat and had to lift his hips to extract it from beneath him.

“Oh, sorry about that,” Mara said, reaching for the backpack. “I thought I should bring along some tools and things, in case I needed them while I worked on Cam, even though he specifically said I was not to use our archaic instruments on his body.”

She handed the bag over the seatback to Sam, who was settling into the backseat. Turning around, she put the car in gear and slowly navigated from the alley into the slow-moving end-of-workday traffic on Woodstock Boulevard. After going less than half a block, heading east, they stopped at a traffic light.

“I appreciate you coming with us, but I think Sam and I probably could have dealt with getting Cam’s body out of the hospital storage room,” Mara said.

“I’m sure that’s true, but I thought it might look odd if someone were to observe two teenagers removing a body from the hospital. It’s less likely to draw attention with an adult on hand. If nothing else, it can’t hurt to have an extra pair of hands or someone to act as a lookout. Besides, I feel a little responsible for putting you in this position. After all, I was the one who suggested you wait before doing something about Cam. Now that federal investigator is on his way,” Ping said.

From the backseat, Sam extended his arm between them, holding out a paper coffee cup, its lid sealed with several layers of tape. “Why do you have this old cup in your book bag?” he asked.

Mara glanced into the rearview mirror to see Sam and said, “I would appreciate it if you would not root through my belongings without my permission.”

“It’s just a bunch of tools, the Chronicle, a couple rocks and this cup. It’s not like it’s your underwear or something,” he said. He shook the cup. “It feels more like powder than liquid. What’s in it?”

The traffic ahead cleared, and Mara pressed the gas hard enough to force Sam to sit back, thereby retracting the cup from the space between Mara and Ping. Keeping her eyes forward, she said, “I think those are Juaquin Prado’s ashes. I found them on a shelf in the office at the shop when I was gathering some tools.”

“Gross. What are you doing with a dead man’s ashes in a cup?” Sam asked.

Ping turned and said, “Prado turned to ashes after being shot during a bank robbery, and Detective Bohannon brought them to us. Your sister used them to identify the correct node to select to travel to Prado’s realm via the Chronicle. That’s how she learned Prado’s spirit had gone viral and caused the shedding to spread.”

“Great. So why do you have them in the book bag?” Sam caught Mara’s eye in the rearview mirror.

“I had forgotten we even had them. I was just going to ask Ping how we should dispose of them.” She looked to Ping. “What do you think?”

He shrugged and said, “I suppose, technically, they are evidence in the bank robbery case. Perhaps you should return them to the detective.”

“Excellent idea. That’s why you’re the brains of this operation. I was thinking I would have to bury them or something.” She glanced toward Sam in the backseat and added, “Put the cup in the bag and stop snooping.”

* * *

Twenty minutes later, after circling the hospital once and accidently backing out onto Market Street in southeast Portland, Mara found her way to the entrance of the parking garage. She wondered why no signs pointed the way, at least until she pulled up to the tiny booth with a retractable gate arm in front of the building. A sign on the side of the booth read Employee Parking Only. Mara craned her neck to find a way in around the barrier but only saw an exit lane, which featured a barrier arm extending from the opposite side of the booth. When she turned to face forward again, an attendant exited the booth, pointing to an electronic card swipe mounted to a pole two feet behind Mara’s window. She had missed it when she pulled up. She rolled down her window.

“If you don’t have an employee pass, ma’am, you can’t enter the garage. Back out before someone pulls in behind you,” the attendant said.

“We’ve got to pick up a large package, and I was told to come in this entrance,” Mara said.

The attendant shook his head. “I don’t know who told you that, but there are no pickups in the garage. You might want to check at the rear of the building. A couple vendor loading areas are there. That’s the only place I know of where you can make a pick up. Now please back out.”

Mara put the car in Reverse, but Sam reached over her seat and tapped her on the shoulder. He opened the back passenger window, leaned out and called to the attendant. “Excuse me, sir. Could you help me with something?”

The attendant looked put out but sauntered closer to the car.

Locking gazes with the man as he approached the side of the car, Sam nodded and said, “She swiped her card, and it didn’t work.”

The attendant nodded in sync with the boy. “Yeah, I saw her swipe it, and the gate didn’t go up.”

“When she showed you the card, it might have had a scratch on the back, but it was definitely a valid pass to get into the parking garage.”

The attendant continued to nod. “Happens all the time.”

“What do you normally do when that happens?” Sam asked.

“I just open the gate manually.”

“That sounds like a good idea. Why don’t you go to the booth and open the gate manually? After we enter, you won’t even remember the problem.”