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, turnin
