Hidden Path

by Miller, Melissa F.

  “That’s true, but it’s more of a gardening experiment, I guess. I only know about it because they basically do the same thing I do, only not under controlled conditions and with diametrically opposite goals and methods. But they invited me to speak at a program they sponsored at the county library.”

  “How many people attended?”

  “Oh, less than twenty. Sixteen, maybe. It could have been eighteen. The monk from The Prairie Center was there—the one who tends the garden.”

  “Feng.”

  “Yes, that’s his name. Oh, and—” Her face fell.

  “What is it?”

  “Jason Durbin, the farmer who was just shot, he was there.”

  Bodhi’s pulse ticked up. He didn’t believe in coincidence. “When was this meeting?”

  “Back in the spring, before planting season.” She was staring down at her lap.

  He could see she was twisting her hands around and around beneath the tabletop.

  “Hannah, what’s the matter?”

  “It’s about Mr. Durbin.”

  “What is it? Did you know him?” He was suddenly very grateful he hadn’t taken her to the morgue itself. Although Jason Durbin’s corpse was gone, his blood-soaked clothing wouldn’t have been the most pleasant reminder.

  “No. I mean, I knew who he was. And I knew he had a Crop-Clear claim. He said his neighbor’s spray killed his harvest. He went to the town council and everything.”

  “Oh. I thought you might have been friends. You seem so upset.”

  She peered up at him from under lowered eyelids and took a deep breath. “We weren’t friends, but I am upset about his death. I was there when he was murdered.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Bodhi guided Hannah out into the hallway by her elbow. Somehow, with one hand, he’d gathered up the seeds and dirt, deposited her mug in the bin set out for dirty dishes, and grabbed her purse off the back of her chair.

  He piloted her along a short, tiled hallway to a set of steel doors, which he pushed open with his hip. The doors opened into a wide landing. The sign on the wall had a down arrow labeled ‘Morgue’ and an up arrow labeled ‘Diagnostic Laboratory Services.’

  He eased her away from the door then handed her bag to her.

  “You were with Jason Durbin when he died?” he whispered.

  “I wasn’t with him. I was walking outside the fence.” Her voice shook. This was her chance to tell him everything. Beg for understanding and ask him to help her with the police chief.

  “It was you? You’re the woman who called it in?”

  She nodded.

  “Why haven’t you called back? Chief Clark needs more information—the investigation’s stalled, Hannah.” He furrowed his brow, confused.

  “I know. I’m sorry … I panicked. See, I wasn’t just taking a walk. I was …”

  She stopped as the sound of shoes hitting metal rang out from the floor below. Seconds later, a young man in a white lab coat tripped up the stairs with a specimen carrier bag in his hands. She tried not to imagine what might be inside.

  “Oh, Dr. King.” The man stopped short. “I’m so glad I ran into you. The morgue supervisor asked me to find out what you want us to do with your John Doe’s remains. Is he going to be staying with us for a while?”

  She turned to see Bodhi frown at the man. “Is there a space issue?”

  “No, we’ve got room for him. We just need to know if he needs negative temp.”

  “Ah, yes. We don’t have any solid leads on his identity at the moment, but there’s reason to believe he’s a Chinese national. So, it could be a while. The freezer, for sure. A regular cold chamber won’t do—he may start to decompose before we get his name. Thank you.”

  “No prob, Doc. I’ll let the boss know.” He nodded a goodbye and resumed his jog up the stairs, presumably to the laboratory wing.

  Hannah pressed herself against the wall. She felt her knees buckle. She began to slide along the cinderblock.

  “Hannah?”

  She was hot but shivering. She shook her head to clear her thoughts. She searched his concerned face. Her stomach was churning, but she had to know.

  “You have an unidentified corpse who’s a Chinese national?” she said between chattering teeth.

  “Yes. He was staying at The Prairie Center. I found him in the meadow behind the meditation maze on Tuesday morning. He’d been murdered.” His voice was gentle.

  She squeezed her eyes shut. “I can tell you his name. He was called Zhang San. And he’s the reason I was out walking by Jason Durbin’s farm when he was shot.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Bodhi’s heart thudded in his chest. He was going to have to ask her to positively identify the body. There was no way around it. He’d help her through it, but it was necessary. He knew Chief Clark, Clausen, and Thurman would all want to witness the identification. And, frankly, Hannah looked like she was going to pass out or vomit. Waiting for them to arrive would give her a chance to come to grips with the news.

  He kept one eye on her to confirm that she wasn’t going to fall over while he dialed Chief Clark’s cell phone number.

  “Clark.”

  “Can you come to the morgue, STAT? Bring Clausen and Thurman.”

  “Are you safe? Is he there? Shit, I was just getting ready to call you.” Her voice was stricken.

  He blinked in confusion. “Yes, we’re safe. Is who here? What’s going on?”

  “Fyodorovych called in reinforcements. The NCSC intercepted the message, so it wasn’t delivered, but he’s trying to hire assassins. We think to kill you. And probably Clausen and Thurman, tying up loose ends.”

  Bodhi’s already racing heart started to beat double time. He breathed in for a long four count and out for seven.

  That was better. His heart rate was still too fast, but the organ was no longer in danger of exploding.

  “But if his message didn’t get through, nobody’s coming to kill me. I mean, right?”

  Hannah’s eyes snapped open as she heard his end of the conversation.

  “Unless he gets impatient and decides to do it himself. We don’t know where he is right now. We’ve been out searching every barn, garage, and shed. No trace of him yet.”

  “In that case, I think my issue still takes priority.”

  “It can’t possibly. Does this have something to do with those blasted seeds?”

  “What?” He’d forgotten about the lima beans. “No. It has to do with your dead organic farmer and our John Doe.”

  “Both of them?”

  “Yes. Ms. Lin was there when Jason Durbin was shot—”

  “She’s my female caller?”

  “Yes, and she can identify John Doe. She knows him.”

  He hesitated, not wanting to say more in front of Hannah while she was in her current state. He didn’t think she was in psychological shock, but finding out her secret boyfriend was a Chinese spy might just get her there.

  “Are you being serious?”

  “Entirely.”

  “We’re on our way. Do not go outside. In fact, lock yourselves in the morgue. Don’t open the door for anyone. That includes me—if it’s safe to let me in, I’ll say, um, Asterope. If I say Alcyone, don’t let me in. It means Fyodorovych got to us. Repeat it.”

  “Asterope, good; Alcyone, bad. Do you think this password thing is really necessary?”

  “I don’t want to find out—do you?”

  She had a point there. “Fair enough. But listen, I can’t lock Hannah Lin in a room with a corpse, especially not that corpse. I’ll find an empty office and text you the location.”

  He ended the call. Hannah was watching him.

  “Did you get the gist of that?”

  “Someone wants to kill you, it sounds like.”

  “Yes. Not just someone. The someone who we believe killed your … friend. We need to find a safe spot.”

  “Wait. I have to explain something to you. I … the reason I didn’t come forward
after Mr. Durbin was killed was that I was afraid. I didn’t want people to find out about what I was doing with Zhang. I know you won’t understand. I know it was wrong … but I—”

  “Hannah, shh. Please, it’s okay. I know what you were doing, you don’t have to explain yourself to me.” He soothed her.

  “You know?” She couldn’t keep the shock out of her voice.

  “Listen, I won’t judge you. The fact that you were having an affair or a secret relationship or whatever you were doing isn’t my business. And right now, it really isn’t important. Right now, we need to lock ourselves in an office and wait for the authorities. Okay?”

  She stared down at her feet.

  He lifted her chin with his finger. “Hannah, look at me. It doesn’t matter.”

  “You think … I wasn’t …” She trailed off.

  He watched her face, waiting.

  She opened her mouth. Didn’t speak. Shut it. Finally, she shook her head. “Thank you for understanding.”

  He smiled. “No thanks needed. Now, come on—we need to get out of this stairway.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Gavriil was getting antsy. The doctor and the scientist had been in the hospital for over an hour. He’d spent that time sitting on a bench near the patient drop-off and pick-up that seemed to be where the not fully mobile population of the county waited for their rides upon departure.

  He assumed these easily winded, slow shuffling bench sitters were all receiving outpatient treatments because American television had taught him that patients being discharged from hospital stays were wheeled out in wheelchairs as a matter of policy.

  This detail didn’t matter to him but it gave him something to ponder while he waited for the pair to finish their business and leave. He wondered what business they had. If the doctor had made the connection between San and his asset, he expected the federal agents would make an appearance soon.

  No more than three minutes after he had the thought, the agents’ sedan rolled into the parking lot. He watched from behind the magazine the kind lady with the oxygen machine had left behind when her daughter-in-law picked her up.

  The male agent was driving today. Gavriil wondered if the pair switched back and forth every other day or if it depended on where they were going or if they had a passenger or some other variable.

  The man didn’t park in the visitors’ lot. He drove right up to the circular patient loading area and stopped the car six feet away from Gavriil’s bench—maybe fewer.

  Gavriil rarely experienced an adrenaline rush these days, unless he was killing someone. But at the moment, his blood was rushing in his ears and his mouth was drier than vermouth. He willed himself to sit still. No tapping toes, jittering leg, or drumming fingers. No outward sign of nerves.

  The female agent and the police chief jumped out of the car and hurried through the doors into the hospital. His thigh muscles twitched, desperate for his brain to send the signal to leap up and follow, but his brain stayed cool.

  He stared at his magazine, reading an extensive product review of a countertop yogurt maker for the home cook. After a moment, the car pulled away, circled the parking lot, and disappeared from view.

  Had he merely dropped them off? Or was he going right now to get backup to arrest San’s collaborator?

  Gavriil supposed it didn’t matter. One way or another, they’d be coming through that door again. And he was ready.

  He checked the weapon on his hip. It was loaded. The silencer was in his pocket. He’d timed himself under all sorts of field conditions. He could screw a suppressor into place in less than a tenth of a second.

  The four targets would exit the building, possibly to be picked up by the fifth. Gavriil would stand, drop the homemaker magazine, click the silencer onto the end of his gun, and mow them down with a series of muffled pops. Not silent, but definitely suppressed.

  He flipped the page to a recipe for cheeseburger casserole.

  An hour passed. Fifteen minutes more. His legs were getting stiff and numb. It wouldn’t do if his feet fell asleep. Shooting multiple people while hopping around as the sensation of pins and needles ran up his legs was not the plan.

  He stood. Stretched. Decided to do a quick lap around the perimeter of the building. It was best practices, anyway. You never knew what you were going to find.

  What he found was the black sedan parked at one of the hearse bays at the morgue’s loading dock. The man must have circled the building and come in through the delivery entrance. Now there were two exits to cover and two cars to watch.

  His plan to massacre them as they walked out the door crumbled around him. It was probably for the best anyway. Shooting someone literally at the emergency room door was a good way to improve their chances of survival.

  Patience. You’ll have your chance, he told himself.

  He ran around the side of the building and got into his rental car, moving it to the gas station across the street. From his new vantage point, he could see both the scientist’s white car and the agents’ black one. Then it was just a matter of following their two-car convoy when it inevitably passed him on the highway.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  The new plan wasn’t much of a plan, Bette thought to herself. She sat behind the wheel of Clausen and Thurman’s car, which was parked sideways across the driveway to The Prairie Center, and waited for Bodhi. He’d gone inside to gather his belongings and say goodbye to a bunch of folks who presumably couldn’t even respond.

  But she did agree with Thurman’s assessment that The Prairie Center was too exposed. There were too many ways to approach by vehicle—by driving straight up the driveway or by looping around on the access road or, with enough gumption, by careening through the woods. There were too many ways to approach on foot—provided the approacher didn’t have any qualms about trespassing, which she imagined described Fyodorovych accurately.

  Her house was a fortress. And not by accident. Bodhi’d be safe there. He’d have to bunk with Thurman. And Clausen and the Supra Seed scientist could share the other guest room. Bette wasn’t giving up her king bed for anyone.

  Why Clausen had insisted on wrapping Hannah Lee Lin into their protective cocoon remained a bit unclear to Bette. She’d told them everything she knew when she identified the garroted man’s body—which wasn’t much.

  His name was Zhang San. He was in the country visiting universities to decide on a post-doctoral program in engineering. He’d arrived in town a few weeks earlier, just passing through, and they’d spotted each other at the library and had bonded. He’d decided to extend his visit.

  This was all entirely believable. The last census had put the county’s Asian population at 0.02%. Bette half-suspected that Hannah made up one hundred percent of that 0.02%. Seeing someone who looked like her, in the general sense, would have been a rare treat.

  Hannah’s story about San included nothing that indicated she knew he was a spy. Nothing that indicated she was romantically involved with the man, although she’d implied as much. After a quick pow-wow with the NCSC agents, Bette and Thurman had agreed Hannah most likely been an unwitting mark. Maybe San had rifled through her notes from work or had broken into her computer, but she seemed unaware of any breaches. Only Clausen seemed skeptical about Hannah’s story.

  At least she’d given Clausen and Thurman a name.

  She’d given Bette a big, fat nothing. When Bette had questioned her about Jason Durbin’s shooting, she’d gotten tearful right away.

  She insisted she’d just been out walking.

  Going to meet San, Bette had asked.

  Not exactly, had been the answer. There was no prearranged trust. She hadn’t heard from him in several days; she was worried. She wanted to check on him.

  He had no cell phone and she didn’t want to call The Prairie Center—he was embarrassed about his English, although she claimed he could speak the language, and the monks discouraged calls to the house phone, anyway.

  She’d dec
ided to walk to The Prairie House instead of driving because it was a pleasant night. She’d spent the day cooped up in the laboratory. The fresh air would do her good.

  The rest was exactly what she’d said when she called the emergency dispatch—Durbin had yelled, a shot had been fired, she had run.

  She told Bette she didn’t know the farmer had been hit. She hadn’t heard anything after the shot. She’d panicked and had run all the way home. She hadn’t brought her cell phone with her because it was dead. Which was why when she got home, she called through her computer. She wasn’t trying to mask her identity. She was sorry she didn’t respond to the public request for her to call back, but she didn’t know anything more.

  The story more or less hung together, but it didn’t help Bette one bit. Maybe it was a good thing Clausen had insisted on driving Hannah’s car back to her apartment to get her things and then bringing her to Bette’s house. Bette could take another crack at her.

  She peered through the windshield, scanning the horizon, while Bodhi finished up inside.

  “Please come back for a visit when you can do the work,” Sanjeev said from the doorway of Bodhi’s shared dormitory room.

  Bodhi turned from the bed, where he was rolling his clothes to repack them. He heard disapproval in the monk’s words but he knew if he mentioned it, Sanjeev would claim that any judgment Bodhi felt came from himself. So he let it go.

  “I’d like that.”

  Sanjeev watched him for another moment. Then he said, “Matsuo tells me he mentioned Feng’s sustainable farming group to you last night.”

  Bodhi cocked his head and searched the teacher’s face, trying to make sense of the non sequitur. “Yes, bhante, he did.”

  “They have good intentions.”

  “Of course.”

  Sanjeev smiled at him. “Be well, Bodhi King.”

  “Be well.”

  Bodhi had already said goodbye to Matsuo, so he zipped then shouldered his backpack, smoothed the bed linens, and walked out of the bedroom. He was halfway down the stairs when Matsuo’s words from the previous night came back to him: Feng burns with a righteous anger. A burning anger directed mainly toward hybrid crops.