Lonely Path

by Melissa F. Miller

  “It was dusk, about this time. The light was fading. I saw a flash of white as we rounded that bend coming from the restaurant. At first, I thought it might be a deer. Are there deer on this island?”

  “It’s not all moose and grizzlies, you know.”

  She ignored the crack. “As the headlights arced over the spot, I realized it was a woman in a white dress. The lights caught her face and I could clearly see she was in distress.”

  “So, you pulled over where exactly?” Dixon addressed the question to Bodhi.

  Bodhi scanned the berm and walked back roughly two car lengths. “Here.”

  The others joined him. They stood on the approximate spot and surveyed the landscape.

  “Where the devil did she come from?” McLord muttered.

  To the left was nothing but woods. To the right, in the distance, cleared farmland.

  “Wouldn’t she had to have come from that farming village?” Eliza asked, pointing to the cluster of barns, farmhouses, and silos that dotted the hills.

  “You’d think so, but no. That clutch of farms is all owned by one family. We had a team out yesterday, crawling all over their places. Nobody had ever seen Tatiana Viant before. They opened up every stall, every shed, and every basement and attic crawl space for our people to search. They found no evidence that anyone had been hiding on any of the farms.”

  “How far is it to the next village to the left of the woods?” Bodhi asked.

  “Far,” Dixon answered. “At least forty kilometers. Too far for a stunned, barefoot woman to walk without being spotted. It’s a thriving little town. Someone would have noticed her.”

  The four of them stood in the dim light and stared at the trees.

  “What’s behind the woods?” Bodhi persisted.

  McLord spoke first. “There’s nothing behind those woods.”

  “There used to be,” Dixon corrected him.

  Bodhi turned his head in the younger officer’s direction. “What used to be there?”

  “The village of Sainte-Anne. My grandmother used to tell us stories about it. It’s a creepy old abandoned railroad village.”

  “The entire town is abandoned?” Eliza asked.

  McLord picked up the strand. “Yeah, you’d be surprised how many of these ghost towns there are in Canada. Company towns where the main employer went out of business and the residents slowly abandoned the place. Or towns where a fire or mudslide destroyed the commercial center and people grew tired of traveling thirty miles to mail a letter and buy a jug of milk. The residents just move out and the towns are left to crumble.”

  “So Sainte-Anne is an abandoned village?” Bodhi asked to be sure he understood.

  “Yes. As far as I know, it hasn’t been officially condemned yet, but the homes are rotting and falling down. Maybe some teenagers will wander into an old mansion on a dare, but it’s effectively a ghost town.”

  A blue van rounded the bend, slowing when the driver spotted the police car and the four figures by the roadside. McLord raised a hand in greeting. The driver waved and continued on his way.

  Eliza broke the silence as the van’s taillights shrank into nothingness. “A ghost town? What better place to keep a woman who’s supposed to be dead?”

  McLord nodded. “We’ll go in and check it out before it gets any darker. You two can wait here or ride with us. The roads are deteriorating. Leave the rental so you don’t break an axle.”

  Bodhi glanced at Eliza. She nodded.

  “We’ll come along,” he said.

  They crossed back to the cars and Bodhi locked the doors to the rental before joining Eliza in the back seat of the squad car.

  Chapter Twenty

  Virgil wiped his damp palms on the thighs of his pants then gripped the steering wheel again. Over the thrum of his heart, he told himself to check the rearview mirror to ensure the police car hadn’t pulled out and followed him.

  He flicked his eyes to the mirror then exhaled with relief. No police car. The road behind him stretched out empty and desolate in the gathering darkness.

  As his pulse slowed, his eyes returned to the mirror, this time to check the cargo, both human and otherwise, in the back of the van.

  Three workers sat, their legs outstretched and their backs against the side of the panel van. They slumped against one another as the van bounced and rocked down the road. Across from them, Mike sat, nearly upright, keeping a tight grip on the stainless steel case that Virgil had placed beside him back at the house.

  “Don’t let this fall over,” he’d told Mike, taking care to enunciate every word, as he’d loaded the case into the van next to him.

  While it was true Virgil would prefer that the case remain upright, he had packed the toxins and venom with extraordinary care. Even if the case toppled over, there would be no spills.

  But the task would prove a good test for Mike. Could the young man follow simple instructions? If so, Virgil would continue to increase his responsibilities and decrease his maintenance dose until he reached a balance that would allow him to function almost normally.

  Virgil returned his eyes to the road ahead and resumed his worrying about the authorities. There had definitely been two uniformed officers standing at the roadside, along with two other people. He wasn’t naive enough to think their appearance there was unrelated to his operation. In the eight months he’d done business out of the house in Sainte-Anne, he’d encountered the police on the stretch of road between the old village and Quebec City exactly zero times before now.

  They had to be there because of him. Because of Tatiana.

  No matter, he assured himself. They’d never go poking around the dilapidated village. And even if they did, they’d find nothing in the house that would lead them to him. He’d cleaned it thoroughly, removing every trace of his presence.

  What about the grounds? his mind whispered at him, snakelike and insidious.

  It doesn’t matter. They wouldn’t find anything. And if they did, there would be no way to tie it back to him.

  He repeated the sentence silently to himself until he believed it. Then he switched on the radio to drown out his thoughts with music.

  One downside of surrounding himself with the undead was that there was precious little in the way of scintillating conversation in his day-to-day life.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Officer McLord had, if anything, understated the condition of the roads in Sainte-Anne, Bodhi thought. He braced himself with one hand against the roof of the car as he jostled from side to side. Eliza flew sideways, and her elbow connected with his rib.

  “Sorry!”

  “Not your fault,” he gasped as his teeth clattered against one another.

  “Not long now. We’re about to enter the town square,” McLord assured them from the front seat.

  The minutes stretched out in an endless pattern of bumps and jerks until Dixon finally brought the vehicle to a stop smack in the middle of a traffic circle.

  “You’re not going to leave the car here?” Eliza asked.

  Dixon put the car in park and killed the engine. The car’s nose was nearly touching the front of a toppled-over statue of some long-ago community leader.

  “Why not?” Dixon retorted. “There’s not going to be anyone else on the road. And this is a central location.”

  As they exited the car, Bodhi surveyed the square. In the quickly fading light, the boarded-up shops, broken windows, and cracked pavement created an atmosphere of decay and loss. He didn’t imagine it was much different mid-day.

  “Here,” McLord said, after rummaging in the glove box. “We’ve only got one extra, so you two stick together.” He handed Eliza a large, rugged flashlight.

  “Aren’t we coming with you?” she asked as she hefted the light.

  “It’s better if you don’t,” McLord answered. “Officer Dixon and I are going to do a door-to-door canvas. Given that the homes are abandoned, we’ll be letting ourselves in to look around. The last thing we nee
d is two foreign doctors to crash through a rotted attic floorboard and hurtle to their deaths.”

  He had a point, Bodhi conceded to himself. But they hadn’t tagged along just to cool their heels near a headless statue all evening.

  “What can we do to be helpful?” he asked.

  “First, check that light and make sure it works,” McLord said.

  Eliza flipped the switch and aimed the bright light across the square at what had at one time been the courthouse. Long shadows sprang up against the cracked stone wall.

  “It works,” Dixon confirmed the obvious.

  McLord gave him a sidelong look then said, “Why don’t you canvas the commercial district? It’s just a few short blocks. Do not go inside any structures, regardless of what you see inside or how sturdy you think a building might be. Are we clear?”

  “Crystal,” Bodhi confirmed.

  Eliza nodded.

  “Just visually inspect from the street. If you see something noteworthy, let us know when we get back.” McLord checked the time. “We’ll rendezvous in one hour.”

  Bodhi started the stopwatch function on his wristwatch.

  “Be careful,” Eliza called after them in a voice that was at a slightly higher, squeakier pitch than her normal speaking voice.

  Bodhi watched as the police officers’ flashlights bobbed along in the dark, twin beams of yellow. McLord and Dixon mounted the stairs to the remnants of a fine stone mansion set back on a corner lot. It was the sort of house the mayor or the owner of the most prosperous store might have once called home.

  McLord lifted the heavy knocker and let it fall against the door. The thump echoed in the still air. After a few seconds, Dixon lifted his foot and aimed a powerful kick. The wood splintered loudly, Dixon shouldered the door open, and the pair disappeared inside.

  They watched in silence for a moment.

  Then Eliza asked, “Where should we start?” She shined the light in a wide arc from left to right.

  Bodhi closed his eyes and focused on the quiet town’s whisperings, hoping the universe would send him a hint.

  When he opened them, Eliza was watching him. “Well?”

  He shrugged. “No clue. I guess it doesn’t matter where we start as long as we cover the entire square.”

  “Fair enough.” She pointed the flashlight at the nearest building. “Let’s go.”

  They covered the entire square in less than twenty minutes thanks to Eliza’s detail-oriented nature.

  She pointed out that the buildings all appeared to be blanketed with a thick coat of grime. Then she posited, “If Tatiana had been kept in one of these storefronts or office buildings, at a minimum, there would be fingerprints in the dust and dirt that coated the doors. Do you agree?”

  “I do.”

  So they fell into a pattern.

  They walked from one building to the next. She directed the light at the door. He walked up and inspected the surface closely for signs of disturbance in the grime.

  After examining a fruit and vegetable market, two law offices, a physician’s office, the chemist’s shop, the bookstore, an accounting firm, a butcher shop, a bakery, and all three entrances to the courthouse, they’d discovered only four spiders, a dried-up wasp’s nest, and the skeleton of a small rodent (which he pegged as a mouse, but she insisted was a vole).

  “There’s not a single living thing here,” he declared.

  “It really would make a good place to stash someone, though,” she mused.

  “Maybe Dixon and McLord are having better luck.”

  Even as he said the words, he doubted they’d be borne out. But at least the police officers’ flashlights were moving at a steady pace.

  They’d made their way through the first row of brownstones and a handful of grand mansions that fronted the square. Now their lights were bouncing off the windows of homes several blocks away. How much longer could it take before they finished their canvas?

  Bodhi and Eliza returned to the spot near the statue. He checked his stopwatch. “We still have thirty-five minutes.”

  Eliza groaned softly. After a moment, she pointed the light away from the neighborhood to what appeared to be a park or garden up the hill behind the courthouse.

  “We might as well walk up there to that green space and see if we find anything.”

  He shrugged. “It beats standing here.”

  They set off for the hill, taking slow, mincing steps on the dark, uneven path.

  Not until they reached the wrought-iron front gates did Bodhi realize their destination was neither a garden nor a park. It was a cemetery.

  Recognition must have hit Eliza at the same moment, because she giggled. “Okay, now it’s officially creepy.”

  Social customs and a passing acquaintance with horror films dictated that he suggest turning back rather than traipsing through an abandoned town’s graveyard in the dark.

  But then again, they were a pair of pathologists—two doctors who dealt in death on a truly daily basis. The venue should strike them as no more hair-raising than their local dry cleaners or library.

  “Are you still game?” he asked, just to confirm.

  “Why the heck not?”

  He pushed open the gate. It swung inward with a creak that would have been a cliché had it not been real.

  “Ladies first,” he said with a bow.

  “Right. Now you’re a gentleman,” she snarked.

  “Also, you have the flashlight.”

  “Fair point.”

  She passed through the gate and he followed close behind her. They wandered through the neat rows of headstones, stopping to check a date of birth or death from time to time, to comment on a moving, sad, or funny epitaph, or to admire a particularly grand mausoleum.

  Here, in the home of the dead, the stillness was comfortable, not unnerving as it had been in the town square. This was a place that was meant to be dormant and lifeless.

  “Looks like the town was abandoned by the nineteen forties. I haven’t seen any headstones with a date later than 1939, have you?” he mused.

  “No, I haven’t. Sure looks like the Lavoire family did okay for themselves, huh?” She jabbed the light at an enormous marble angel perched atop a large tombstone, which was flanked by several equally large and ornate tombstones.

  “I guess so. It seems as if nobody comes out here to mow the grass or leave flowers or wreaths, though—no signs that family visits these graves. Even though the town’s been abandoned, it’s strange that their dead have been forgotten.”

  “Maybe that’s just an American thing,” she said in a voice that suggested she didn’t believe her own theory.

  “Maybe.” That didn’t feel right. In his experience, cultures that buried their dead did so in an effort to continue to feel close to them. “Tell me about the turkey vulture men from your talk.”

  She blinked in surprise and jerked the flashlight. It cast an eerie light up at her face, as if she were a camp counselor telling a ghost story.

  “Well, the water table in Southern Louisiana is very high. The ground can be spongy, swampy. Much like in New Orleans, if you bury the dead in it, they’ll eventually rise up to the surface, waterlogged and putrid.”

  “That’s graphic.”

  “It’s a fact of life on the bayou. But unlike the Creoles, Africans, and Europeans who settled in New Orleans, who solved this problem by creating aboveground cemeteries, the Atchafalaya tribe had designated turkey vulture men. When a tribe member died, the turkey vulture men buried the body. On the first anniversary of the death, they disinterred the body and plucked the remaining flesh off the bones. When the bones were picked clean, they were presented to the family in a special ceremony.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Exactly what?”

  “Exactly my point. Nobody just buries their dead and forgets about them. They continue to honor them.”

  She waved away the point. “Maybe the town hasn’t been condemned but the road leading up here is unpas
sable by car. Or maybe the families did make pilgrimages here for decades and decades, but eventually the connection to Sainte-Anne faded and ultimately broke. I mean, the youngest corpse in this place is nearly eighty. Most of them are much older.”

  “Maybe.” He walked several paces away, toward the back of the cemetery, trying to pinpoint why the graveyard felt wrong to him.

  He turned and stumbled over a loose clod of earth. He regained his footing then crouched near the spot where he’d tripped.

  He reached down and filled his hand with fresh, soft dirt. It poured between his fingers. He squinted at the dark ground in front of him, and his pulse sped up.

  “Eliza,” he called over his shoulder. “Bring the flashlight over here, please. This ground’s been disturbed.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Eliza hurried down the hill to the town, trying with limited success to keep the beam of light steady as she ran. The stillness that had been peaceful in the cemetery was frightening outside its gates, and her heart thudded in her chest.

  At least you’ve got the light, she told herself.

  Bodhi had insisted on staying in the graveyard while she ran to find McLord and Dixon. He was concerned they wouldn’t be able to relocate the freshly turned ground if he left the spot. But that meant he was sitting in complete darkness until she returned.

  The thought propelled her forward even faster. She tried not to speculate on what they’d find in the cemetery. Nothing good, she imagined.

  She raced past the car and turned toward the row of houses where she’d spotted the police officers’ flashlights as she made her way back to town.

  As the ground beneath her feet flattened, she began to jog. She dodged the roots growing up between cracks in the uneven pavement as she rushed forward.

  She met up with the officers as they were coming out of a sprawling home, set away from the rest. It had a sort of faded gothic glamour to it even as shingles hung from the roof at odd angles and several floorboards were missing entirely from the large, wrap-around porch.