Hidden Path

by Melissa F. Miller

  The singing bowl rang out one resonant note and vibrated in the dark pre-dawn house. Someone had struck the large, metal standing bell with a wooden stick. It was time to wake up.

  Bodhi rose and padded to the shared bathroom at the end of the hall to wash his face and brush his teeth. The air was cool and hushed, as if even the house itself intended to be silent for a week.

  He returned to the dormitory room and dressed quietly, so as not to wake his three roommates—only one of whom stirred at the sound of the bell. The bell would ring again, more insistently, in fifteen minutes.

  He walked soundlessly down the old wooden stairs to the parlor, where he checked the whiteboard displaying the day’s schedule. Sitting meditation would begin at six o’clock, followed by breakfast, and a Dharma talk.

  He wandered into the kitchen. The co-leaders of the week’s session were making a large vat of oatmeal. Roshi Matsuo, the Zen teacher, diced apples while Bhikkhu Sanjeev, the Theravada monk, grated ginger to add to the oats. They both paused in their work and raised their heads in greeting.

  Bodhi bowed his head. “May I help?”

  The noble silence wouldn’t officially start until the six o’clock meditation session, so he wasn’t breaking any rules by speaking. He also knew from past experience that, although the guests were asked not to speak unless they were receiving counseling about their meditation work, the monks and teachers did speak, as needed. While he was a guest, he was also a friend to both Matsuo and Sanjeev. He didn’t think they’d take offense at his offer.

  And they didn’t. Matsuo smiled his wide, slow-blooming smile. It transformed his face. “Yes, please chop the walnuts.”

  Sanjeev nodded and made space for him at the long butcher block counter.

  Bodhi washed his hands at the sink and dried them, then took his spot. He shook a pile of nuts onto the counter and began to methodically chop them. The knife in his hand settled into a rhythm.

  Freed from the obligation of making small talk, he focused on each slice into the meat of the nut. He was mindful of the tree that had borne the walnuts. The sunlight and the rainwater that had nourished the nuts. The farmer who had harvested them. The community that would gather to eat them.

  The silence was shattered when the kitchen door slammed open. Feng, a young Theravada monk, rushed through the door. His shaven head was red—Bodhi imagined from the cold—and he huffed out a breath.

  “One of the guests is missing,” he announced without preamble.

  Sanjeev raised his eyebrows. “Did you think you’d find them in the garden?”

  Feng bobbed his head. His white apron was bundled together at his waist. He rolled the fabric down and release several small potatoes and three large carrots into a metal colander that stood near the sink.

  “No, bhante.”

  “Did you see someone running away?” Matsuo inquired in a mild tone.

  Feng shook his head. “No, sir. But the man from New Hampshire did come out onto the porch in his bare feet. He was quite worried. His roommate was there when he went to sleep last night but gone when the bell sounded this morning. I sent him into the parlor to have a cup of tea and calm his mind.”

  The senior monks wore identical nonplussed expressions.

  “Perhaps he needed some time alone before we begin this most serious week of quiet contemplation,” Sanjeev suggested.

  “Or perhaps he’s in the bathroom,” Matsuo offered.

  Bodhi knew as well as they did that the missing man might well have changed his mind about seven days of silent meditation. At most retreats, at least one person would leave before the end. In his experience, the breaking point usually came for someone on the third or fourth day. Although he supposed a particularly anxious sort of person might panic before the retreat officially began and run off.

  “Or he did, in fact, leave,” Sanjeev acknowledged. “That, too, is fine.”

  “The retreat is for those who are willing,” Matsuo finished.

  Feng opened his mouth as if to argue then clamped it shut and bowed deeply before backing out of the door, presumably to return to his vegetable-gathering duties. He pulled the door shut gently as he left.

  In unison, the two teachers each took a deep breath. They filled their lungs and picked up their knives. Bodhi resumed his chopping.

  After finishing his work in the kitchen, Bodhi had time to spare before the sitting meditation began. He walked out the back door and went first to the labyrinth, circling within the low stone walls slowly and watching his feet carry him along dusty spirals cut into the earth.

  Then, eager to warm his muscles before an hour of sitting cross-legged on the farmhouse floor, he decided to take a brisker walk. He wended his way through the meadow beyond the maze. It was tall with drying wildflowers and pods at this time of year. But he could envision it as it must be in the high summer, alive with the songs of bumblebees, butterflies, and dragonflies, the sweet fragrance of honeysuckle, and the riotous colors of the flowers and grass.

  He followed a sort of rough path carved into the grass by feet that had come before his. The long grass lay trampled and flattened in a more or less diagonal line leading to the road.

  He found the body near an old, wide tree stump. At first, he wasn’t sure what he was seeing. But as he drew closer to the lumpy shape on the ground, he knew before he knew.

  His heart ticked up. His pulse jumped. And the hair on his arms prickled with electricity. Then his brain processed what his body had already divined. The shape near the tree stump was a man, lying face down in a patch of scrubby grass.

  Bodhi covered the rest of the distance at a sprint. He rolled the man to his back and stared down at his slack face. Eyes open and staring sightlessly. Lips already blue. And a thin line of dried blood dotting his neck, which was banded with livid bruises.

  Bodhi automatically came to a preliminary determination of cause of death: asphyxia caused by ligature strangulation. The man had been garroted. The primitive garrote, a length of fishing line attached to two sticks, rested neatly on the tree stump.

  Bodhi’s stomach lurched. The Prairie Center was a place of peace. Now, it had been stained with violence of the worst kind—murder. He turned in a slow circle. The body would not be visible from the street or the house. The murder weapon was brutally efficient. The man would have been overcome from behind, struggled briefly and died quickly. Those were marks of a professional killer.

  And yet, the scene felt improvised. No real effort had been made to conceal the body. The weapon had been left behind, as if the killer had fled in a hurry.

  He searched the man’s blank face carefully, but couldn’t place him. If he was a visitor, he was someone Bodhi had never crossed paths with before. He searched the man’s pockets. They were all empty. He carried no identification and wore no jewelry and no watch. His clothing was damp with dew.

  Bodhi stared down at the man for a moment longer. Then he turned and scanned the gardens outside the kitchen. Feng had moved from the vegetable garden to the herb garden.

  He ran toward the monk. “Feng,” he called, waving his arms over his head wildly as he raced across the lawn.

  The monk looked up at him with a small quizzical frown. “Yes?”

  He skidded to a stop at the entrance to the garden and gasped, “The guest who went missing—was he Asian? Chinese, maybe?”

  Feng shook his head. The shears in his hand swung from side to side in time with his head. “No. Why?”

  Bodhi blinked. He was so sure he’d found the missing student. “What? He’s not?”

  “No. He’s … I don’t know, Eastern European or maybe Russian?”

  “Has he come back?”

  Feng snipped several stems of lemongrass and placed them in the small basket that hung over the crook of his elbow before answering.

  “No. But Bhikkhu Sanjeev says his suitcase is still in the closet, so perhaps he’ll return.” He shrugged and returned to his work.

  Perhaps he would. But,
then, who was the dead man in the field?

  After a moment, Feng raised his head again. “We do have an Asian man staying here, though. He didn’t come for the retreat—he showed up a few weeks ago.”

  Bodhi’s heart thumped against his rib cage. “What’s his name?”

  “I don’t know it.”

  Chapter Six

  Bette was at Durbin’s Organic Farm, picking up her fresh eggs, when the call came over her radio.

  “Chief, we’ve got a body at that Buddhist center.” The dispatch operator’s voice crackled over the radio.

  Bette grimaced at Jason’s oldest daughter, Claire, and shoved a ten-dollar bill into her hand.

  “Wait, Chief Clark. I have to give you your change!”

  Bette waved a hand over her shoulder as she jogged down the muddy hill to her car with the carton of eighteen eggs tucked under her arm. “Keep it,” she called.

  She fiddled with the radio with her free hand as she slid the eggs into the footwell of the passenger side of the car for safekeeping.

  “Kelly, please confirm the location for me. There’s a body at The Prairie Center?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Not in the house, though—out in the field.”

  Bette swore under her breath. “One of the monks?”

  “No, ma’am. Sounds like a John Doe.”

  “Thanks, Kelly. I’m headed there now.”

  She buckled her seatbelt, raised her travel mug of coffee to her lips, and bumped along the rutted path leading from the Durbins’ farm to the county road.

  Her mind rolled through her mental compendium of interactions with the Buddhists. They were usually quiet. No complaints, no issues. They didn’t call when hunters trespassed on their land. They didn’t have domestic disputes. They opened their doors to the locals every other month for a potluck meal and religious lecture and they sponsored one of the ten-and-under baseball teams. They were the quintessential good neighbors.

  She sped up and passed Tucker Rogers, who was towing a thresher behind his pickup. The threshing machine didn’t seemed to be well secured to the trailer, so she was happy to see Tuck was using his hazards and driving at a conservative twenty miles per hour. She offered up a silent prayer that he made it all the way home with the machinery.

  She pulled into the driveway and parked about a third of the way up. If the body was in the field, there was no point in driving all the way up to the house. As she killed the engine, a robed figure stepped down from the porch and started to walk in her direction.

  She shielded her eyes with a hand and squinted at him to see whether it was Matsuo, the Japanese monk, or Sanjeev, the one from Sri Lanka. The man beamed a smile at her in greeting as he tripped hurriedly down the driveway. Matsuo.

  “Morning, Matsuo.”

  He nodded gravely. “For some, a good morning. For others, perhaps not.”

  She couldn’t argue that point. “So, who died?”

  “We’re not sure.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The man was staying with us, but we don’t know his name.”

  Bette let her eyebrows shoot up her forehead and gave Matsuo her best skeptical face.

  “It’s true. He’s Chinese and, as far as we know, he didn’t speak any English. He showed up two weeks ago with two visitors who said they’d met him at a coffee shop in Elm.”

  “Did he speak English then?”

  Matsuo laughed weakly. “No, he approached them at the counter and showed them one of our brochures. He likely assumed they were headed here by their appearances.”

  That part was believable. She was usually able to pick out The Prairie Center’s guests when they came into town. There was something about the way they carried themselves. That, and the scent of patchouli that traveled around them in a cloud.

  “So you opened your doors to some guy who spoke no English and didn’t ask him for any identification or a credit card or anything?”

  “Of course we did.”

  Of course they did.

  “Okay, well, he’s not getting any younger out there. Let’s go have a look.”

  He coughed. “So, here’s the thing. We’re hosting a week-long silent retreat. It just started this morning. Sanjeev and I were planning to address the guests in a joint Dharma talk after their sitting meditation ends. Could I send you out to the field with the man who found the body instead?”

  “Well, I suppose so. As long as he speaks English.”

  Matsuo smiled and bowed. “Dr. King speaks English very well. Thank you for accommodating me in this way. Please stop in for some tea when you’ve finished up, if you like.” He turned and gestured to a man standing near the steps to the porch.

  She managed to stifle the sarcastic comment that bubbled to her lips as the monk walked away. If Matsuo thought she was finished with him, he was sadly mistaken. A person couldn’t just delegate away a dead Chinese guy in his field. That wasn’t how any of this worked.

  Dr. King strode toward her. He was tall and thin, with unruly curly hair and bright, alert eyes. He was wearing street clothes—tan pants and a black long-sleeve shirt and, despite the chill, sandals. He approached her with his hand outstretched.

  “Chief Clark, I’m Bodhi King.” His hand was warm and his handshake firm, but not bone-crushing.

  “Matsuo said you’re a doctor?”

  “I’m a retired forensic pathologist—I do some consulting here and there.”

  “So a medical examiner found my body?”

  “More or less.”

  “Handy.”

  “I was taking a walk and just sort of … stumbled over him. Over there, in the meadow.” He pointed toward the high grass near the road.

  “Lead the way.”

  As she fell into step beside him, she took a discreet sniff. No patchouli. He smelled like soap and cedar. But maybe her sniff was less subtle than she’d thought because he gave her a sidelong look.

  He stepped over a knee-high patch of Bluestar plants. She noted that he was careful not to trample the wildflowers. He led her toward a line of trees, and she spotted the body near an old stump.

  “Did you touch it?”

  “Yes. He was on his stomach. I turned him over to check for a pulse.”

  Her eyes moved to his face. “I realize you didn’t do an examination. But do you have any thoughts on cause of death?” She waited for him to say ‘heart attack’ or ‘he tripped and hit his head.’

  “Ligature strangulation.”

  She felt her eyes go wide. “He was strangled?”

  “Garroted, to be precise.”

  She shook her head, not believing what she was hearing. “That can’t be.”

  “I’m afraid it is. The murder weapon’s right there on the stump.”

  Bette stepped around the body, averting her eyes, and made a beeline for the garrote. Dried blood was flaking off the fishing line and falling on to the stump.

  “You didn’t touch this, did you?”

  “No.” He responded from beside the body.

  She took one last look at the garrote then forced herself to join him at the corpse. She’d seen her share of dead people—usually, crash victims; the occasional fatal farm machinery accident; and a handful of deaths by natural causes she’d encountered in the course of well-being checks. But murder didn’t often come to call in Onatah, Illinois. She’d only investigated a single homicide, and that had been when she was a rookie cop, right out of the police academy.

  No need to let the forensic pathology consultant know that, though. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the pair of gloves she’d taken from the kit in her car. As she snapped them on, he nodded approvingly.

  “I’m sorry I don’t have a pair of my own,” he said. “It’s not the sort of thing I’d pack for a silent retreat.”

  “I’d be worried if you had.”

  He laughed politely. Then he gestured for her to crouch next to him. She squatted and sank back on her heels. He pointed at the man’s neck.


  “The bruising above the indention left by the wire indicates the perpetrator looped the wire around his neck from behind and held it tight until he asphyxiated.”

  “Would it have taken long?”

  “Probably not. And there’s a good chance he lost consciousness before he died.”

  She figured that was a small mercy. She stared down at the dead stranger.

  “Your monk says nobody knows who this guy is.”

  He nodded. “That’s what he told me, too. I guess this man came in a few weeks ago, with some travelers who’ve since moved on. He kept to himself, which isn’t all that unusual. But aside from the monks who live here and maybe one or two others, most of the people staying at the center right now only arrived within the last twenty-four hours—including me. I doubt he had time to make any friends.”

  “You really want to go a week without talking?”

  “Wanted to. The plan seems to have changed seeing as how I’m out here talking to you and not inside on my cushion.”

  She stood and brushed her hands on her pants then regarded him closely. “I’m going to need to talk to everyone in the house. You know that, right?”

  Bodhi sized up the police chief. From their limited interactions, he could see she was smart and direct. He assumed she was also tough, given the nature of her job.

  “I understand you have an unidentified murdered victim.” He paused, then said, “Please don’t think I’m trying to tell you how to run your investigation. I wouldn’t dream of doing that.”

  “Good.”

  “But if I could offer a couple suggestions?”

  “Go ahead,” she said in a cautious tone.

  “Let me act as liaison between you and the center.”

  She began to shake her head before he finished the sentence. “Out of the question.”

  “Hear me out, please. Matsuo and Sanjeev are spiritual leaders. So, while they owe you and the community a duty to answer your questions and cooperate with your investigation, they also have a duty to the students who are staying at the center. And I think you know which one will control.”

  “If they obstruct my investigation, they’ll regret it.”