Replica (Replica #1)(72)
Gemma picked out a sunburned middle-aged couple who looked normal enough and fought her way over to them. The man wore leather sandals and a baseball hat with the logo of a hunting lodge on it. The woman was wearing a fanny pack. Both of them were staring out toward the billowing clouds of smoke in the distance, which made it look as if a volcano had erupted mid-ocean.
“What’s going on?” Gemma asked them. It was funny how disasters made friends of everyone. “Is anyone saying how the fire started?”
The man shook his head. “Nothing official. Heard maybe a gas line blew up. Of course the island’s loaded with chemicals, would have caught fast—”
His wife snorted. “It was no gas line,” she said. “We’ve talked to a dozen locals say they heard at least two explosions, one right after another.”
“Explosions,” Gemma repeated, shifting the backpack strap on her shoulder. Sweat had gathered under the collar of her shirt. “Like a bomb or something?”
The woman gave Gemma a pitying look. “You’re not from around here, are you? People have been calling for the institute or whatever it is to be shut down for years now. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone decided to take a shortcut. Of course the rumors . . .” She spread her hands.
“What kind of rumors?” Gemma pressed, although she remembered from the Haven Files a long list of all the different things supposedly manufactured at Haven—everything from incredibly contagious diseases to human organs.
“Some people think they got aliens out there on that island,” the husband said. Now Gemma understood the reference to Roswell, where an alien spaceship had supposedly crashed and then been concealed by the military. “Well, I tell you, we come up every year from Orlando to do a little paddling and bird-watching in the reserve. Great birds up here—white ibis, knots, and dowitchers on the old oyster bars. You interested in birds?” Gemma arranged her face into what she hoped was a polite expression and nodded. He harrumphed as if he didn’t believe it and went on, “I’ve got a pair of binoculars can spot a pine grosbeak at a distance of eight hundred yards, and I’ve done a little sighting of the island and never seen any glowing green men.” He kept his eyes on the fire in the distance. “But I’ll tell you they have guards in mounted towers, barbed-wire fences sixteen feet high. They’ll shoot you if you get too close and won’t blink about it. They say they’re doing medical research out there, stuff for our boys overseas, but I don’t buy it. They’re hiding something, that’s for sure.”
Another chopper went by overhead, and Gem felt the staccato of its giant rotor all the way in her chest. It seemed obvious that no one knew what was happening or had happened out in Haven, but still she fought through the crowd, searching for an official, for someone in charge. Forcing her way through the knot of protesters, she saw a policeman arguing with a dark-haired boy with the kind of symmetrical good looks that Gemma associated with movies about superheroes. The cop was holding a professional-looking camera and appeared to be deleting pictures.
“. . . no right to confiscate it,” the boy was saying, as Gemma approached. “That’s private property.”
“What did I say about taking pictures?” the cop said, angling away and blocking the boy with a shoulder when he tried to reach for his camera. “This isn’t the goddamn Grand Canyon. We’ve got an emergency on our hands. Show some respect.”
Gemma couldn’t help but feel sorry for the boy. He looked furious. He couldn’t have been much older than she was, and the camera looked expensive. “I’m not a tourist,” he said. “And I can take pictures if I want to. This is America.”
“This is a crime scene, at least until we say otherwise,” the cop said.
The boy clenched his fists. Gemma found herself momentarily frozen, watching him. For a second his eyes ticked to hers, but they swept away just as quickly. She wasn’t offended. She was used to being invisible to other people, preferred it, even.
“All right.” The cop had finished with the camera. He popped open the back of the camera, removed the battery, and then returned the now-useless camera to Jake. “Now for your phone, please.”
“You can’t be serious.” The boy had gone completely white. Gemma was getting angry on his behalf. Why wouldn’t he have the right to take pictures if he wanted to?
The cop was obviously losing patience. He raised a finger and jabbed it right in the boy’s face. “Now look here, son—”
“My name is Jake,” the boy said smoothly. “Jake Witz.”
“All right, Jake Witz. You want to make trouble, you just keep on yapping. But I’ll bring you down to the station—”
“For what? Having an iPhone?”
“That mouth is gonna get you into trouble. . . .”
Gemma was too stunned to move. Jake Witz was the name of the guy who ran the Haven Files website. It had to be a coincidence—he bore no resemblance to the guy in the profile picture on the site. This guy looked like he could be a Clark Kent body double, just without the glasses.
And yet . . . When she looked closer, she thought she saw certain similarities. The line of the boy’s jaw, which in the older man had been blurred. The same slightly-too-large nose, which on the boy looked strong and perfect and on the older man had just looked comical. Relatives, then? She couldn’t be sure.