Dark Path

by Melissa F. Miller

  She still hadn’t answered his question, but he momentarily forgot her evasion when she slowed the car to a crawl and pointed out the window. He turned his head in time to see a white-spotted, white-tailed deer, no bigger than the average toddler, amble across the highway.

  Detective Williams pushed her sunglasses up to the top of her head and grinned in the direction of the retreating doe.

  “Amazing,” he breathed.

  “Right? There are fewer than a thousand of them left, and we sure do love them. If you have time and the inclination, you ought to check out the wildlife refuge. They’ll walk right up to you in there.”

  Once the deer had crossed, Detective Williams gunned her engine and returned to her cruising speed.

  “So, about the church?” he prompted.

  The highway gave way to the breathtaking Seven Mile Bridge that stretched over the Atlantic Ocean.

  With a quick motion, she reached past him and pointed through the passenger side window to a narrow bridge running parallel to the one they were speeding across.

  “That’s the original railroad bridge. The first Overseas Highway was retrofitted over that bridge after the railroad went bankrupt and sold the railway to the state. Old timers say it was so narrow it was really only a lane and a half wide, so if there was a truck coming in the opposite direction, you’d have to put it in reverse and back up to the prior island and then start over.”

  “Is that true?”

  She shrugged. “It’s what they say. And there were no guardrails on that thing.”

  He turned his head. “There are now.”

  “Sure. Because now tourists ride their bikes along it and fish off it. It wouldn’t do for some mainlander to take a tumble. That’d be bad for business.”

  She wasn’t making idle chitchat. She was clearly gearing up to tell him something. He watched the late afternoon sun shimmer silver on the water for a moment.

  “Are you a native of the Keys?”

  “Sure am. Proud Conch.” From behind the sunglasses, her eyes flickered to his. “We’re independent folks. Some natives can be insular, a little tribal, maybe. Not everyone appreciates outsiders—even if our economy does rely on tourism.”

  He nodded his understanding but didn’t speak. He wanted her to keep talking until she got to her point.

  “So maybe that’s why some people have their doubts about Pastor Scott and Golden Shores. He’s a transplant by way of Tallahassee. Not everybody trusts him—or the Golden Island Church. Now, granted lots of folks do. He’s got something like ten thousand members in that church.”

  “All living in the Keys?”

  She laughed. “No, not by a long shot. Loads of people travel down from the mainland for his services. Or watch the cable broadcasts. I hear that after the church bought the island, Pastor Scott came up with a plan to open a bunch of satellite centers across the state and eventually throughout the entire Southeast.”

  “That’s ambitious.”

  “Right. And that kind of naked ambition doesn’t sit well with everyone. Me included, to be honest. If you ask me, a church has no business buying a private island.”

  “So bad publicity for Golden Shores—say the kind that comes with a flurry of dead residents—might make some people happy?”

  “It might. And some of those people rubbing their hands in glee work in local government. Not Doctor Ashland. He’s baffled and seems genuinely bothered by the deaths. But my boss—the chief of police—and the county commissioners, they’re tickled pink that Scott’s reputation is tarnished.” She dropped her voice to a fierce near-whisper. “I’m pretty sure I’ve been assigned to all cases that arise on Golden Island because they don’t think I can solve them. Which suits them fine.”

  Bodhi gazed out at the horizon while he considered this theory. He could believe she was being set up to fail—a woman in a man’s world wasn’t always welcome even in the twenty-first century. But she seemed to be hinting at something more. More political, more scandalous.

  “Do you think a county official is responsible for the deaths, detective?”

  She stiffened her shoulders, surprised by his directness. “Maybe. It seems farfetched. But someone’s killing those people.”

  “Or something.”

  “What kind of something? Please tell me you aren’t going to start babbling about the Devil, too.”

  “The Devil, as in Satan?” he asked in confusion.

  “Yeah. I grew up with one of the Golden Shores nurses. He says Pastor Scott is sending in a team of assistant ministers to provide spiritual counseling to the residents. The topic of the first session, according to my nurse friend, is supposed to be how to protect oneself from the Devil.”

  “Don’t keep me in suspense, detective. How do we protect ourselves from the Devil?”

  She laughed her melodic laugh. “By making an offering, of course. In return, God will bless you with His protection.”

  “A cash offering, you mean?”

  “I’m sure Golden Island will also take a check or credit card. But yes, they’re going to be recommending that these frightened folks ward off the boogeyman by making a financial gift to the church.”

  The theology wasn’t particularly sophisticated, but it also wasn’t far off from standard religious practices. After all, part of the point of believing, in having faith, was the expectation that the higher power you prayed to would protect you.

  Detective Williams interrupted his musing. “Do Buddhists believe in Satan?”

  “Strictly speaking, no.”

  “What about loosely speaking?”

  He eyed her. “How much do you want to know? It’s complicated, and I can be a bit of a pedant.”

  She grinned. “What kind of pathologist would you be if you weren’t? Coroners and lawyers—never saw anybody else so in love with hemming and hawing, qualifying and overexplaining.”

  He ducked his head. “That’s fair. But, seriously, do you want to the short version or the long version?”

  She checked the time. “Give me the medium version. We’re about twenty minutes from the ME’s office.”

  “Okay. So, traditional Buddhism acknowledges Mara, a devil or demon who confronted the Buddha. Most scholars would tell you Mara isn’t purely evil or bad as the demons are portrayed in monotheistic religions. There simply aren’t those sorts of absolutes in Buddhism.”

  “Hmm. No absolutes at all?”

  “Everything is interrelated and impermanent, so no. In Buddhism, the outcome of someone’s encounter with a so-called demon would depend on how enlightened that person was. But, as Buddhism spread, Asian spirits ended up being syncretized into the belief system.”

  “What kind of spirits—evil spirits?”

  “Well, not really. More like powerful, ancient spirits of the natural world. They had to be recognized and appeased.”

  “How?”

  “It depends, but mainly through meditation and offerings of food, money, maybe some candles.”

  “Sounds like Santería,” she said more to herself than to him.

  “Pardon?”

  “Oh, I said it sounds like the saints. The women in my family were always praying to the saints for this or that. You know, with the candles.”

  Her radio crackled to life: “Williams, this is Dispatch. Doc wants to know an ETA.”

  Detective Williams made a male masturbatory gesture with her right hand. “Ten, maybe fifteen, minutes. Why? Does the stiff have somewhere to be?”

  The dispatch operator cackled. “No, but you know happy hour’s about to start at Mangrove Mama’s down on Sugarloaf Key. His favorite jam band plays on Tuesdays.”

  “Does Doctor Ashland have a large staff?” asked Bodhi.

  “Ha. No. He has a part-time secretary. He’s an independent contractor, not a county employee. So any staff salaries would come out of his pocket. He hires body teams to pick up the corpses—the lowest bid wins.”

  “No pathology fellows or medical students,
then?”

  “Nope. Just Doc.”

  Bodhi wondered how this would go. His experience at the Allegheny County Coroner’s Office was unusual, he knew. Only populous cities could afford to have full-time, professional medical examiners and coroners. And fewer still could swing state-of-the-art, on-site forensics laboratories.

  He could only hope Doctor Ashland’s ego wasn’t too fragile. The God Complex so common among physicians was downright endemic among medical examiners. He’d always figured it was because they dealt exclusively in death.

  Chapter Eight

  Arthur kept his head down and rushed into the botanica. The competing scents of burning candles, fragrant oils, and pungent herbs filled his nostrils instantly. The cramped interior was warm and stuffy, intensifying the flow of sweat down his back.

  At the tinkle of the bell, the woman behind the counter looked up from her cell phone and greeted him in a bored tone. He muttered a hello without raising his head. He rushed to the shelves filled with seven-day candles of every conceivable color, which promised to solve every imaginable problem or to bestow luck, money, love, strength, children, beauty, or any combination thereof.

  He grabbed the Ajo Macho candle his grandmother had requested and turned to speed-walk to the cash register. As he strode off, his sleeve brushed a candle and knocked it off the shelf.

  He reflexively caught the falling candle with his free hand. As he reached out to return it to the shelf, he saw the name imprinted on the label. He was holding the red San Sebastian candle his grandmother had said would bring him luck and prosperity in business ventures.

  He stared at it for a several seconds. Then he continued on his way to the counter, now with a candle in each hand. It wouldn’t do to ignore a sign from Saint Sebastian. Arthur may not have been superstitious, but he also wasn’t stupid.

  “Find everything okay?” the cashier asked.

  “Yes.” He wished she’d hurry before anyone he knew saw him in here.

  She keyed in the price for each candle. Then she wrapped each of the glass candle holders in stiff brown paper before arranging them carefully in a thin plastic bag.

  “You sure you don’t want to get the oils, too?” she asked in a voice that left no doubt how she felt about such a foolish oversight.

  His grandmother had wanted the extras, but the upsell rubbed him the wrong way.

  “Why would I need them? Aren’t the candles supposed to work on their own?”

  She arched a brow. “Of course, they’ll work. But if you prepare them and anoint them, you’ll intensify their power. I guess it just depends on how much business success you want—or how strong the bad spirit is.”

  “What bad spirit?”

  “Whatever spirit it is that has you worried. That’s what this gold male garlic candle’s for—protection from evil forces. You know, demons, enemies, negativity, all that stuff. Of course, if you want to protect yourself from something really malevolent, you’ll need to make a real offering.”

  “Uh, sure. Let’s add the oils.”

  She pawed through a drawer behind the counter and dug out the additional items. He watched her drop them into the bag and ring them up on the register.

  “When you say to make an offering, you’re talking about setting out coins, right?”

  She twisted her full mouth into a bow of disbelief. “Brother, if you have a serious problem, you’re gonna need a serious solution. I’m not talking about some coins. I’m talking about a sacrifice. A chicken. Maybe two. You know a guy? Because if not, I can give you a name of a—“

  “Forget it.” He pushed his grandmother’s two crumpled tens and a crisp ten-dollar bill of his own into the woman’s hand and grabbed the bag.

  He was halfway out the door when she called out after him that he forgot his change.

  He ignored her and raced outside.

  Pastor Bryce had decreed that Golden Shores was in the grip of Satanic forces. That was a serious problem, which was why Arthur had reluctantly come to the botanica in the first place.

  He knew once he talked to the residents about the devil’s presence, they’d panic. And his grandmother would be one of the worst. She could burn a candle, and he’d convince her to make a generous donation to the Golden Island Church.

  But there were limits. And decapitating a chicken and spilling its blood were off limits.

  He bowed his head and prayed.

  Chapter Nine

  For the living know that they will die;

  But the dead know nothing,

  And they have no more reward,

  For the memory of them is forgotten.

  Ecclesiastes 9:5

  The world is afflicted by death and decay. But the wise do not grieve, having realized the nature of the world.

  The Buddha, Sutta Nipata

  Doctor Joel Ashland was a sturdily built, silver-haired man with a deep tan and bright blue eyes. He wasn’t quite out of coroner central casting, though, because he wore his hair in a long, low ponytail, and his white laboratory coat covered a faded Hawaiian shirt. A pair of floral board shorts in a clashing pattern and a pair of blue plastic Croc shoes completed his ensemble. Diamond studs sparkled in his earlobes.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” he enthused before Detective Williams had made the introductions.

  After a brisk handshake and an exchange of pleasantries with Dr. Ashland, Bodhi turned to her and whispered, “This guy is your county’s medical examiner and you expected me to be staid and conservative?”

  She smiled. “I always imagined Doc here was one of a kind. I guess you’re more like a matched set of hippies—although your fashion sense is better.”

  He laughed.

  Dr. Ashland had turned away to gather some files from his cluttered desk. He looked over his shoulder. “What’d I miss?”

  “Oh, just Detective Williams telling me a joke.”

  “Impossible. Felicia doesn’t kid around. She’s all business, all the time.”

  Detective Williams made a sour face, and the medical examiner winked at her.

  He picked up a glass candy dish from his desk. “Anybody want a ginger candy before we go in?”

  “No, thanks,” Detective Williams said.

  Bodhi shook his head and watched Dr. Ashland unwrap a piece of candy and pop it into his mouth.

  “Ginger? You get nauseous?”

  Dr. Ashland smiled. “Crazy, huh? You’d think after all these years, I’d be unfazed. And maybe I would. I truly don’t know. But after I puked in the observation theater as a med student, a resident gave me the ginger tip. And I’ve been sure to have some every time. It’s probably more of a superstition than anything at this point.”

  Bodhi considered how a man who’d vomited at the sight of an autopsy would choose a path that focused on corpses to the exclusion of everything else.

  “Wait—those candies will keep my stomach from getting upset?” Detective Williams demanded.

  “Ginger is known to settle the stomach,” Bodhi explained.

  She reached over and plucked a candy from the dish. “Doc here never mentioned that. I thought he was just a candy-loving weirdo.”

  “That, too,” Dr. Ashland said with a laugh. He tucked his file under his arm and gestured toward the door. “Well, shall we?”

  As they walked into the hallway, he turned to Bodhi. “Do you want to lend a hand?”

  So much for the egotistical medical examiner.

  Bodhi glanced at Detective Williams, who had stationed herself against the wall in the corner of the room closest to the door. It was a well-chosen spot: she’d be out of the way, and she had a solid surface to lean against if she started to feel faint. She was covered head-to-toe in a paper cap, paper mask, surgical gown, and booties over her shoes. Her pupils were dilated, but her skin color—what little he could see between her forehead and cheekbones—was good.

  He turned his attention back to the body on the metal tray. It had been four years since he’d performed his
last autopsy. When he looked down at the corpse, he saw twenty-two-year-old Jasmine Courtland, the third of five young women to die after drinking a popular energy drink. He pictured her long, flame-red curly hair and her porcelain, freckle-dotted skin.

  He blinked his eyes behind the protective visor, and Jasmine Courtland dematerialized. Carlos Garcia, age eighty and still dressed in his striped pajamas, came into focus.

  Dr. Ashland turned on his digital camera and photographed Carlos Garcia, taking care to get a close up of the identifying toe tag dangling from the left big toe. He moved up the body slowly from the feet to the head, taking a series of close up shots.

  Then he nodded to Bodhi, who slid his double-gloved hands under the old man’s thin shoulder and hip and turned the corpse onto its stomach. Dr. Ashland took another dozen photographs of the back, working his way from head to feet. When the medical examiner finished documenting the corpse’s condition, Bodhi returned it to a face up position.

  He helped the medical examiner ease off the blue-and-white pajamas. Dr. Ashland bagged the clothing in a pre-labeled evidence bag and sealed it then resumed his picture taking. Bodhi eased the naked body from front to back and then back to front.

  “No visible signs of trauma,” Dr. Ashland remarked.

  “Unless you count that grimace,” Bodhi countered.

  They stared down in mutual silence at the rictus of horror, etched forever on Carlos Garcia’s face. It was a grotesque death mask. His lips were pulled back to reveal pale gums and a partial set of teeth. His brow was furrowed and his sightless eyes were wide.

  “Get a good closeup of that, would you, Doc?” Detective Williams said in a muffled voice from behind her mask.

  Dr. Ashland nodded and aimed his camera at Carlos Garcia’s face.

  “It’s the same expression as the others. Have you ever seen anything like it?”

  Bodhi shook his head. “No, never. I did once see a corpse that had been infected with Clostridium tetani. Tetanus,” he added for Detective Williams’s benefit. “It had a somewhat similar expression. But it was more of an exaggerated grin. And, of course, the entire body was contorted and rigid.”