Lonely Path

by Melissa F. Miller

  “Quite a bit more, I assure you,” Mrs. Viant said dryly.

  The police officer had the grace to look chagrined at his own inartful phrasing.

  “Of course, ma’am. I meant no offense.”

  “I’m sure you didn’t.”

  The officers edged toward the door. “Dr. King, a word before we go?”

  “Certainly. If you’ll excuse me,” he said to the Viants.

  He followed the pair out into the hall.

  The older of the two spoke first. “Our apologies for not involving you in the interview from the beginning. Inspector Commaire did say you might be helpful, but that nurse said you and the lady doctor had left the building. We didn’t know whether you’d be back.”

  “Do you guys have names?” Their jackets were covering their badges.

  “Right. Sorry. I’m McLord. This is Dixon.” He jerked his head toward his partner.

  “Great. Officer McLord, I’m not upset that you and Officer Dixon forged ahead without me and Dr. Rollins,” Bodhi assured him, placing strong emphasis on Eliza’s title and name to avoid a repeat of ‘lady doctor.’

  “Glad to hear you understand,” Dixon chimed in.

  “I do hope you’ll respect the family’s wishes about letting Tatiana recover a bit more before you press her for details. She’s not in any condition to give you anything useful at this point.”

  Dixon nodded.

  McLord said, “But you can.”

  Bodhi blinked. He’d expected he’d be asking the questions, not answering them. “I’m not so sure I can. Dr. Rollins and I haven’t come up with a hypothesis as to how Tatiana Viant came to be here,” he cautioned.

  “But you found her, right? Driving back to Quebec City from a dinner date?” Dixon asked.

  “We had a dinner, yes. It wasn’t a date. We’re old friends—medical school classmates.”

  “Okay, doc. Sure, whatever you say. We’re interested in the girl, not your love life.” Dixon snorted.

  Bodhi held his eyes for several seconds, and then said slowly, “I’ll be able to tell you whatever you like about how we found Tatiana. But it’s important to me that we’re clear about my relationship with Dr. Rollins. She’s involved with a Police Chief of her hometown back in Louisiana. I wouldn’t want some cross-border boys in blue grapevine to get the wrong impression.”

  “Dr. King, we’re law enforcement officers, not middle school students. We don’t have time to gossip.”

  It was Bodhi’s turn to laugh. “Officer Dixon, I worked for years in close cooperation with the police. I know exactly how much gossip flies around a squad room.”

  Officer McLord chuckled and covered it with a cough. “In any case, maybe you and Dr. Rollins can go for a drive with us when we’re finished here. Out to the spot where you found the Viant woman?”

  “I can’t speak for Dr. Rollins but I’d be happy to show you where we found her.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’m curious about the funeral home in Port Grey. How did they not realize she was alive when they were preparing her body for burial?”

  McLord nodded. “We had the same question. Dixon here interviewed the mortician over the phone this morning.” He nodded to his partner.

  Officer Dixon flipped his small notebook open and paged through it until he found the sheet of notes he was looking for.

  He began to read from them. “Charles Francis, the funeral director, wasn’t there. Out of town on a fishing expedition, I was told. But I spoke to his son and assistant, Ken Francis. According to Mr. Francis, the Viants did not want an open casket at the viewing, so they assigned her corpse to a junior person, a mortuary science student doing an internship. The kid ended up failing out of school. So in addition to being inexperienced, he apparently wasn’t very good at what he was supposed to do.”

  “So, they’re pleading incompetence?” Bodhi asked.

  “That’s their defense,” McLord confirmed.

  His partner went on. “The Port Grey authorities wanted to have an autopsy done but they don’t have a dedicated full-time coroner.”

  Bodhi nodded. That was a common enough reality of small towns throughout the United States; he wasn’t surprised to hear it held true to the north as well.

  “They contacted the provincial authorities and were told the backlog was several weeks.” Dixon paused here and looked up from his notes. “It seems Port Grey’s one of those places where everybody knows everybody else. And the Chief of Police is on a bowling team with Mr. Viant. He decided it would be cruel to make the Viants wait to bury their daughter, so he signed off on closing the investigation without an autopsy.”

  “Does he have that authority?” Bodhi asked.

  McLord shrugged. “He did it.”

  “Does Francis blame the coffin full of sand on his erstwhile intern, too?”

  The police officers exchanged glances.

  “Well?” Bodhi prompted.

  “See, here’s the thing. The body was stolen. He does blame that on the intern—apparently, the kid had a habit of leaving the delivery dock door open while he sneaked a cigarette. Someone must’ve slipped in and swiped the body while he was outside smoking,” McLord explained.

  “Or Tatiana came to and walked out of there,” Dixon offered.

  “Whatever happened, the intern panicked and called Francis. The son, not the father. Young Ken didn’t want daddy to find out, so he came up with the sandbag plan.”

  Bodhi tried to believe his ears and failed. “You’re not serious.”

  “Oh, I’m serious. You should have heard the way he blubbered about it on the phone,” Dixon told him. “He asked us not to tell the Viants until he comes clean to his father. I agreed to delay, but eventually those people up in Port Grey are going to have to get their act together.”

  “Any idea why the service was closed casket? Her body wasn’t mangled.”

  Dixon made a face that suggested he found the question distasteful, but he answered it. “Her mother insisted that Tatiana be remembered as vibrant and full of life. Seeing a waxy statue—her words—would blot out her memories of the living Tatiana.”

  Bodhi raised his shoulders. It made as much sense as the alternative. “Okay.”

  “So, that is where we are. We need to find out if Tatiana left Port Grey under her own power or if someone abducted her and took her to Île d’Orléans—and if so, who and why,” McLord said.

  He brushed my teeth. Bodhi remembered Tatiana’s words. “You two wait here for a few minutes. I need to find Dr. Rollins.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Eliza bumped into Bodhi as she was leaving Tatiana’s room. She pulled the door shut slowly and silently behind her.

  “I was just coming to find you,” he said in a soft voice. “Is she sleeping?”

  “Yes, she’s out cold. What did you find out from the police?”

  “Not much. Other than the fact that Port Grey is apparently amateur hour. Did you get any information from the medical team?”

  She threw him a dark look. “It’s not the big leagues here either, evidently. You won’t believe this, but they haven’t performed any cognitive assessments. They haven’t even tested her blood.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing. I gave Nurse Grace a list of tests I recommended they order and hinted they should do something proactive so the cops don’t take charge. That’s all I could really do.”

  They looked at one another for a long moment, stymied and stuck, but not yet defeated. Eliza remembered that Bodhi shared her indefatigable nature.

  “Okay.” He accepted the news with complete calm.

  She went on. “I just spoke with her parents. They think she was involved in a romance.”

  “Oh?”

  She nodded. “The mother said Tatiana was painfully shy and introverted. Mom and Dad were nervous about her going so far away to such a big school for college. And for most of her freshman year, it looked as if their concerns were well-founded.”

/>   “Homesick?” he guessed.

  “Homesick to the nth degree. And not just homesick. Mom said she was depressed, lethargic, and weepy when she came home for the winter break that first year. But then in the spring, things changed.”

  “They think she got herself a boyfriend—or girlfriend?”

  “Yeah. Could be either. But he brushed her teeth, so my money’s on a dude,” Eliza mused.

  “She never talked about a partner?”

  “No. And she never brought one home. But both parents said her entire demeanor flipped from sad and sullen to confident, cheery, and outgoing.”

  “That does sound like love,” he agreed.

  “That’s what I thought, too. But they have no idea who the mystery person was.”

  “Nobody came to Port Grey for the funeral?”

  “Oh, a whole group of college kids made the trip. They all came up together, but aside from Tatiana’s roommate, the parents had never met any of them before.”

  Light sparked in Bodhi’s eyes. “Maybe that social worker who recognized her would know. You know, the guy who worked at McAllen’s counseling center.”

  She beamed. “That’s a great lead. We should call Guillaume and ask him to put us in touch with the social worker. And then we ought to stop by the school to see if any of her friends can tell us anything about her personal life.”

  “It’s not a plan, but we’ve got the seed of a plan. I like it. But I have to do something else first.”

  “What’s that?” she frowned.

  “The police officers want us to show them where we found Tatiana. I told them I’d take them. Do you want to join us?”

  She hesitated. She’d been hoping they could make the trip to the university in Montreal and be back to the hotel by dinner time. She had big plans to order in room service, put on her pajamas, pour herself a glass of wine, and curl up for a leisurely phone call with Fred.

  But she didn’t want to miss out on any developments. Not knowing what Bodhi was learning with the police would be maddening—an unscratchable itch.

  After a moment, she said, “I’ll come along. Just let me make a quick call first.”

  “I’ll tell Nurse Grace we’re heading out and then let McLord and Dixon know you’re joining us.” He started down the hallway then turned and grinned at her over his shoulder. “Tell the Chief I said hi.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Tuesday evening

  Jon packed up his briefcase, checked the outside pocket of the bag to confirm he had his chimerism materials for tomorrow’s panel discussion, and clicked off his desk lamp. He was walking out the door when Lucy came racing down the corridor toward his office. Her white lab coat flapped behind her like tail feathers.

  “I’m so glad I caught you,” she breathed as she skidded to a stop.

  “Why don’t we pretend you didn’t?” His tone was light, but he was only half-joking.

  She pulled a face. “Come on, Malvern. You’ll be sorry if you miss this.” She waved a printout in the air.

  “Are the results back on the glial cells?”

  She nodded and arranged her face into an expression of satisfaction—a suppressed grin and an arched eyebrow communicated her excitement. “And I think we have something.” Her grin wobbled. “At least I hope we have.”

  His eyes widened. He pushed his office door open and flicked on the overhead light.

  “What’ve we got?” he asked as they walked inside.

  She spread the results out on his desk, and they stood shoulder to shoulder studying the reports in silence. Jon could feel his brow furrowing and smoothed it.

  “There’s evidence of inflammation and neurodegeneration,” he muttered.

  “Consistent across all your cultures.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t tell from the gene expressions what might be causing it.”

  She flashed a bright smile. “That’s because you’re the biologist. Let the toxicologist walk you through it. After the team in the lab confirmed that all the victims’ glial cells had the same pattern of damage and deterioration, I started applying toxins. Because we know sodium channels have been implicated in neurodegenerative diseases, I started from the hypothesis that the drug that killed these folks may have contained a sodium channel blocker.”

  He may not have been a toxicologist, but he knew enough to ask the right questions. “Couldn’t it also have been a calcium channel blocker or a potassium channel blocker?”

  “It could have. And if these first toxins hadn’t shown the results they did, I’d have moved on to those ion channels and then to the glutamate receptors. But we don’t have to do any of that because these suckers exhibited time-dependent, delayed cell death.” The triumph in her voice was unmistakable.

  “Across all the culture populations?”

  “Yes, sir. We have a winner!”

  “What’s the drug?”

  Her giddiness was contagious. For a moment, he dared to hope they’d found the scourge that had been killing large swaths of the drug-using community.

  Then her face dropped. “So here’s the thing. It’s not a street drug. It’s not even a component of any street drug I’ve ever run across. I think it’s a completely novel designer drug.”

  “Right, a synthetic.”

  They’d talked about this at length. Black market chemists loved creating new synthetic drugs. They usually stayed half a step ahead of Health Canada. Once the agency studied a new drug and declared it illegal—which could take months, if not years—the street chemists would slightly alter the substance’s molecular structure. This resulted in an entirely new drug, which was legal until it came to Health Canada’s attention, and the whole cycle repeated. From what he understood, the United States system suffered from the same loophole. It was maddening, but it was hardly a secret.

  “No, Jon. We’ve all been wrong about that. It’s not a synthetic. At least, I don’t think so. I think it’s a composite of three naturally occurring neurotoxins: TTX; STX; and CDX.”

  He searched his memory then shook his head. “Sorry, Luce. That’s nothing but alphabet soup to me.”

  “That’s fair. TTX is tetrodoxin, most commonly known as puffer fish or Japanese fugu fish poison. STX, or saxitoxin, is a paralytic shellfish poison, which operates in a very similar fashion as TTX. It’s another voltage-gated sodium channel blocker.”

  “What about CDX?”

  “That’s a weird one. It’s candotoxin, an atypical alpha-neurotoxin from the blue krait, a venomous elapid snake found in the tropics and subtropics.”

  “Wait. Hang on. Your theory is someone is combining two marine toxins and a snake venom and selling the concoction to people looking for a buzz?”

  She shot him a sidelong glance. “Well, when you say it like that it sounds farfetched.”

  “Lucy, that’s because it is farfetched. It’s so far past farfetched as to be … not possible.”

  “I’m telling you, Jon. That deadly trinity is the cocktail of chemicals that’s killing these people. I’m certain of it.”

  She crossed her arms and challenged him to disagree.

  “You’re not just grasping at straws here, are you?” he said after studying her confident posture.

  “Come down to the lab. I’ll show you.”

  Jon sighed and dropped his briefcase to the floor. Then he grabbed his lab coat from the hook on his door and followed Lucy out into the hallway.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Officers McLord and Dixon trailed the rental car out of the city and past Montmorency Falls. Bodhi drove slowly, both so the police cruiser could follow him easily and so that he wouldn’t miss the spot where they had encountered Tatiana. The perspective would be different coming upon it from the opposite direction.

  In his concentration, he missed what Eliza was saying.

  “I’m sorry. Could you say that again?”

  She shifted in the passenger seat. “I was just thinking that it seems like a lifetime ago when we cross
ed that bridge across the falls with the spray in our faces and no living dead to worry about.”

  He nodded his agreement. So much had happened since their driving tour of the island. The puzzles and stress were crowding out the memories of exploring the small towns with Eliza and repairing the rift between them.

  “Did you get ahold of your boyfriend?” he asked.

  She narrowed her eyes as if she might object to the personal question, but after a moment, she simply answered it. “I did.”

  They lapsed back into silence, and he returned his attention to scanning the roadside as the car crept along the ribbon of road.

  “You don’t date?” she asked after several moments.

  “I haven’t.” It wasn’t so much that he had a blanket ban on dating. He just hadn’t made finding romantic companionship a priority. Reconciling a relationship with the precepts he followed would require care.

  “And you’re not lonely? Because I didn’t date for several years. And I was lonely.” Her chin jutted out as if she dared him to judge her.

  He didn’t. Instead he examined her question.

  Was he lonely? Loneliness seemed to imply something or someone was lacking in his life. Was there an absence?

  “Bodhi?” she promoted.

  “I’m thinking. I don’t know if I’m lonely. I’m alone. But I’m not sure those are the same.”

  She made a small noise in the back of her throat. Before she could say whatever words she was forming, he turned on his flashers and brought the car to a stop at the side of the road.

  “It’s over there, isn’t it?” He pointed across the narrow lane to a clearing just before the bend in the road. Behind the spot where they’d seen Tatiana, a copse of dense trees stretched back as far as he could see.

  Eliza followed the line of his finger and looked hard at the spot. “Yeah, that’s it.”

  They crossed the road and waited for McLord and Dixon to join them.

  “This is where we found her,” Bodhi announced as the two officers approached. “Eliza saw her.”

  “What caught your attention, Dr. Rollins?” McLord asked. Dixon took out his notebook and waited, pen poised over a clean page, for Eliza’s answer.