The Hatching (The Hatching #1)(30)
Near the plane, the grass was wet from the firefighters’ hoses, and he felt mud sliding under his shoes. He wished he were wearing a pair of good boots. As he stepped past a piece of metal the size of a car’s hood—part of a wing?—a tall, olive-skinned man in a suit held up his hand. “Sorry pal.”
Mike held up his badge. “Agent Rich. Just need to poke around a little.”
“Moreland,” the man said. “And sorry, but you aren’t going to be poking around at all. PD. We got the scene.”
Mike felt the phone resting in his pocket and resisted the urge to pull it out. The director had said he’d get the support he needed, but he was pretty sure it would look better if he could show some initiative. “Look, Moreland, I don’t want to come in here like a dick. I know how it is when the feds step in, and I’d like to play nice. Today was supposed to be my day off. I’ve got my daughter with me”—he pointed to where Annie was now sitting on the bumper of one of the ambulances and evidently telling some sort of story to a crowd of EMTs—“and I was just at the hospital visiting my partner, who got shot yesterday. You hear about the shooting in the northeast?”
“Yeah. That you guys?”
“Yeah, that was us, and after shooting two Aryan Nations motherf*ckers, watching my partner get hauled off to the hospital with a gunshot wound and a couple of broken ribs from where his vest took a hit, and supposedly having today off to visit my daughter, the same daughter whose soccer practice I missed last night because of the aforementioned shooting, well, I’m not too thrilled to be here. But the thing is, I got a phone call ordering me to be here. A phone call from somebody so high up it scares the shit out of me. If I needed to, I could phone him back and make it rain suits from here to Sunday. I could have your * designated a federal case if I need to. But I don’t want to do that. And why would that be?”
Moreland couldn’t seem to decide if he wanted to smile or scowl at Mike’s rant, but he played along. “Because you don’t want to come in here like a dick.”
“That’s right. I don’t want to come in here like a dick. So all I’m asking is to poke around a bit, and if I can do that and reassure the same person who called and told me I was working today, that I was working regardless of my partner getting shot, regardless of me downing two Aryan Nations chumps yesterday like a regular hero, regardless of the fact that I had to ask the f*cking EMTs to babysit, if I can reassure that same person there is nothing to worry about, that would be great. I would very much like to avoid making it rain suits down like spring showers, and I am sure you would very much like to avoid having your * designated something that needs to be investigated by the federal government.”
Moreland didn’t say anything for a few seconds, but Mike saw the man’s eyes flicker in the direction of Annie and the ambulances. Finally, Moreland relaxed and moved to the side a little. “You been practicing that speech?”
Mike grinned. “Little bit. First time I’ve ever had to use it. Pretty good, huh?”
Moreland shrugged and then pulled a pair of nitrile gloves from his pocket and handed them to Mike. “The ‘rain suits from here to Sunday’ thing wasn’t bad, but I’m not sure about designating my * a federal case.”
“Improvised that one. I’ll work on it.” Mike took the gloves and worried them onto his hands. “We’ll have a full team out here in a couple of hours, but in the meantime, anything I need to know?”
“That small section over there, where they’re still hosing things down, was probably the engines. There are parts of the plane scattered all over the field. If there had been kids out here, it would have been a bloodbath. But mostly what you’ll want to look at is in here. A couple of bodies, pretty burned, but that’s about all there is to see until the techs get through with it. Haven’t heard from the tower yet, but near as I can tell the plane came down in one piece and then split apart once it hit. Nothing to make me think it was more than an accident. Doesn’t look like a bomb or anything. That’s not exactly my specialty, though. FAA guys should be here within the hour.”
“Anything else?”
“Yeah,” Moreland said. “You go in there, you’ll never want to eat barbecue again.”
Mike was careful working his way up into the body of the jet. The plane wasn’t flat, but it felt close enough. Water from where firefighters had hosed down the wreck dripped from the ceilings and pooled on the carpet. Mike’s shoe skidded on something, and when he reached out to steady himself he felt the sharp tear of metal slicing through the skin of his hand.
“Fuck.” He balled his hand into a fist and then opened it so he could see the cut. The impact of the crash had torn open the jet as if a giant cat had worked its claws through the plane’s metal body, and the seams of metal were jagged enough that they’d opened a flap in his hand. The nitrile glove was shredded; he peeled it off and stuffed it in his pocket. He realized that, despite everything looking like an accident, he was already treating it as a crime scene. That phone call from the director had gotten into his head.
He could feel the blood leaking from his palm and running down his arm, so he worked his tie off his neck and wrapped it around his hand. He didn’t want to get blood all over the place. He pulled a mini Maglite from his pocket. There was some natural light coming in through where the metal had been peeled back, but when he came to the first body, he was glad he had the flashlight.