Lonely Path

by Miller, Melissa F.

  Yes, Côte-des-Neiges would work just fine. The sterile, charmless apartment would work just fine.

  Another hysterical laugh bubbled up in his throat. He surged with power, and he wanted to fling his arms wide and declare himself master of all he surveyed. Instead he bit down hard on the inside of his cheek, until he tasted coppery blood.

  “Shall we sign the papers?” he suggested in a strangled voice.

  “Oh, monsieur, I’m so sorry. We will need to run the credit check first.” Her voice was mournful.

  He exhaled slowly through flared nostrils. “I think not.”

  She opened her expertly lipsticked mouth to protest. The words died in her throat when he pulled out his billfold.

  He peeled off a dozen one-hundred-dollar bills. “Here’s the deposit.”

  Another dozen followed. “And the first month’s rent.”

  Her eyes followed the bills as they fluttered to the kitchen counter.

  “What do you think would be a fair thank you gift for your assistance in expediting this process for me, Ms. Wells? Another twelve hundred?”

  “Oh, no, sir ... Oh, I couldn’t.”

  “Couldn’t you though? It would be such a help if Michael and his friends could move in early—this weekend.”

  He added twelve bills to the pile.

  Her eyes flicked between the counter and his face. “Well, yes ... I suppose I could see to that.”

  “I’d be most grateful.” He smiled. He hoped his grin wasn’t too toothy.

  She scooped the money into her pocketbook and pressed a ring of keys into his hands. “The silver one is for the lobby door. The larger gold one opens the apartment; and, of course, the tiny one is for the mailbox. If your son would just stop by the leasing office on Monday to register his name and get his building identification, that would be very good.”

  “Excellent.” He’d work with Mike until the kid could master that task.

  Now that he had the keys, he was desperate to be rid of her. After all, he did have an illegally parked van full of street drugs and dead-eyed zombies down by the river to attend to. The image of himself forcing her out of the apartment sprang into his mind in glorious technicolor. He gritted his teeth and steeled himself to resist it.

  She started toward the door. “Shall we walk out together?”

  “I need to measure ... for curtains,” he managed through clenched teeth. “Good day.”

  She threw a bewildered look at the windows, which were covered with perfectly serviceable blinds. The she fled out into the hall. He listened until he heard the elevator bell and then counted to twenty.

  When he was sure she’d left, he opened the door and ran down the stairs and out onto the street as quickly as he could.

  By the time he reached the van, he was panting hard. He rested one hand against the van and caught his breath. Then he plucked the parking ticket off his windshield and muttered a few oaths. He unlocked then lifted the handles to open the back doors of the van and looked inside.

  Three workers looked back at him vacantly.

  The case of drugs rested on the floor where he’d left it.

  Mike was gone.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Eliza was still flushed with pride when the Black Swan panel wrapped up. She’d presented her findings without passing out, throwing up, or forgetting every word. Bodhi’s smiling countenance beside her had been her touchstone for the first few minutes. But to her surprise, she’d hit her stride pretty early in her talk.

  The entire panel had been well-received. Felix had proved to be a genuinely funny moderator. Some of his jokes had left the audience breathless with laughter. And the group had peppered all the panelists with a barrage of thought-provoking, well-reasoned questions and comments.

  “I’d say that was a success, yes?” Claude Ripple said, giving Felix an enthusiastic handshake.

  “Quite, quite,” Felix agreed.

  Seizing on the bonhomie and borderline giddiness, Jon announced to the group, “I say we skip ‘Developments in Computer-Generated Modeling of Skin Necrotization Rates’ and toast ourselves at the bar.”

  “I’m in,” Claude said instantly.

  “I suppose I could have a gimlet,” Felix mused.

  The idea sounded like a good one to Eliza. She was enjoying the camaraderie. And skin necrosis didn’t hold a great deal of appeal.

  But if they were planning to look into Tatiana’s background, perhaps they should beg off? She threw Bodhi a questioning look.

  “That sounds great,” he said to Jon.

  “Sure thing,” Eliza chimed in.

  As the group floated toward the exit, Bodhi caught up with Eliza and whispered near her ear, “Maybe we can try to get a little more detail out of Felix about the psych experiment Tatiana took part in.”

  She nodded her agreement, although she suspected Felix had already told them all he knew. He didn’t seem like the type to hold back the good parts of a story. Or the boring parts. Or any parts, for that matter.

  Two gimlets later, Felix was regaling her with a story about a cross-border body broker who trafficked in severed heads. She smiled grimly and sipped her mimosa.

  On the other side of the table, Bodhi nursed his beer and made a chopping motion with his hand across his neck when Felix wasn’t looking. She wasn’t sure whether he was acting out the decapitations or signaling that it was time to cut short the drinks.

  Then a medical school memory popped into her mind, and she realized Bodhi must’ve been miming decapitation, not signaling that it was time to abort their fact-finding mission.

  She’d briefly shared an apartment with a woman whom Bodhi had nicknamed ‘The Talker.’ Olivia made Felix look terse; she somehow managed to stretch a two-minute story into a twenty-minute monologue. Out of desperation, Eliza and Bodhi had developed a code to signal that one of them needed to be extricated from one of Olivia’s epic tales. The captive would raise his or her hands then cross them at the wrists and make a quick ‘X’ motion. Olivia had never seemed to catch on.

  Eliza laughed softly at the recollection.

  “What are you thinking about?” Bodhi asked in a low voice.

  Startled, she met his eyes. “Olivia—that woman I lived with during our second year.”

  “The Talker.” His voice was warm with amusement.

  They smiled at each other, savoring the shared moment.

  Then Jon said something to Claude that made Eliza’s ears perk up and thoughts of their private joke vanish from her mind.

  “I’m sorry. Could you say that again?” she leaned across the table and interrupted Jon.

  Jon blinked at her. “Uh, I was just telling Claude that my office might have made a breakthrough in identifying that designer drug plaguing our provinces.”

  “Did you say it contains saxitoxin?” Her voice shook with excitement.

  “Yes. It’s a—”

  “It’s a paralytic shellfish poison. A thousand times more toxic than sarin nerve gas. I think the lethal dose for humans is somewhere in the 0.2 milligram range,” she said.

  “That’s right,” he said slowly.

  “Don’t look so surprised, Jon. There are no flies on the lady from Louisiana,” Felix told him.

  Claude roared with laughter. Jon’s ears turned pink, and Eliza took pity on him. “I only know because an oyster farm in my parish had an outbreak of STX back in 2015. I autopsied a pregnant twenty-four-year old who died from paralytic shellfish poison. Callie Jackson,” she finished in a soft voice.

  The silence that descended on the table was laden with understanding. Bodhi squeezed her hand.

  After a moment, she cleared her throat. “Immediately after consuming the oysters, she complained that her lips and face were tingling. By the time she presented at a walk-in clinic, her boyfriend was carrying her because her limbs were stiff and she was unable to coordinate her movement. She had a rapid pulse and heart rate and difficulty breathing. Within minutes of arrival, she experien
ced respiratory paralysis. It just happened too fast. There was no time to get her on a ventilator.”

  Jon made a sympathetic noise in the back of his throat. Claude studied his drink.

  “Taking a recreational drug that contains saxitoxin seems an awful lot like playing Russian roulette. And I’m not sure what the payoff is. Feeling tingly?” Bodhi posited.

  “These folks aren’t just gambling with STX. We think this drug combines it with TTX and CDX,” Jon said in bleak voice.

  “Tetrodoxin—puffer fish poison? That one’s a thousand times more toxic than cyanide. And very similar to saxitoxin. Tingling, numbness, eventual paralysis. And to answer Bodhi’s question, people who eat fugu are seeking that tingle. But I’m told it also comes with a peaceful, light-headed feeling,” Felix said.

  “So this drug of yours contains two sodium channel blockers and a snake venom,” Bodhi mused. “CDX or candotoxin is also a neurotoxin that produces numbness, tingling, and can result in respiratory paralysis but it’s also said to enhance sensation. Cobra venom pills are big on the party scene in parts of India and Southeast Asia.”

  “If we’re right, someone’s selling a drug that makes people feel electrified, which is probably a pretty big rush,” Claude noted. “And in trace quantities, the effects would be temporary. But controlling the dosage of any one of the three—let alone all three together, not to mention whatever filler ingredients are used—has got to be impossible.”

  “Hence, your overdose epidemic,” Eliza noted.

  “I never thought I’d say this, but fatal overdosing is probably better than the alternative outcome—prolonged coma. With all that damage to the glia, combined with the suppression of the sodium channels, I imagine a non-fatal overdose would leave the user a zombie, for lack of a better word.”

  Eliza met Bodhi’s eyes across the table. They knew a zombie.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Bodhi tracked down Guillaume Loomis in between sessions. He found him in the business center, helping a speaker print a slide presentation that had been requested by audience members as a handout.

  “Could I interrupt for just a moment?” Bodhi tilted his head toward a small room in the back of the center that was set up for guests to make and receive private phone calls.

  “Of course.” Guillaume waved over a young woman wearing a hotel uniform and handed off the doctor and his printouts. “Please have fifty copies of this made for Dr. Borlotta.”

  Then he followed Bodhi into the telephone room. “I heard the panel was a smash. But I suspect that’s not what this is about, is it?” He tapped his foot nervously.

  “The talk was well-received. But you’re right; that’s not what this is about. After our presentation, the four of us and Felix had a drink together. Jon Malvern’s lab in Montreal has isolated three components of some new street drug that’s been causing a lot overdoses.”

  “Ah, yes. Solo.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The name of the drug is Solo—at least according to the Quebec City police, but they haven’t confiscated any samples yet.”

  Bodhi blinked. “It sounds like they should coordinate with their colleagues in Montreal and Toronto. Jon and Claude say the authorities there don’t know what the drug is.”

  Guillaume frowned. “Typical lack of information sharing. I’ll talk to Inspector Commaire. So, Malvern has a sample?”

  “No. They were stymied, so the toxicologist asked him to culture some glial cells. They ran a battery of tests on the cultures. She’s certain the drug contains at least three potent neurotoxins—tetrodoxin, saxitoxin, and candotoxin.”

  Guillaume let out a long, low whistle. “Nasty stuff.”

  “Very,” Bodhi agreed. “Nasty stuff that could paralyze a person, cause them to cease breathing and arrest brain function—at least temporarily.”

  Guillaume stared at him. “You think Tatiana Viant took Solo?”

  “I think she may have. And I think whoever gave it to her knew she wasn’t really dead.”

  “And the corpses in Sainte-Anne?”

  “I’d test their hair and tissue for the trio of neurotoxins if I were you.”

  “Hot damn!” Guillaume fumbled for his cell phone.

  “Before you call, I want to tell you that I know you didn’t want everyone involved. I understand your concerns about bureaucratic wrangling and infighting. Believe me. But if you want me and Eliza to help you, we need to be able to share information with Jon, Claude, and Felix. Jon and Felix each hold a piece of this puzzle. And Claude has access to any information that comes out of Toronto.”

  Guillaume scrunched up his nose as if he smelled something unpleasant. He bobbed his head from side to side, engaged in some internal debate. He sighed.

  Bodhi stared at him impassively.

  “Fine. Yes, of course. But I must insist that you and Dr. Rollins are in charge. You’re the consultants we’ve asked to look into this. You have to make that clear to the Montreal and Toronto labs, as well as to Felix and the folks at McAllen. You two are running a multi-province, multi-agency investigation at the behest of the Quebec City police and coroner. After all, Tatiana Viant is here.” Guillaume laid out his conditions in a voice that suggested the entire idea pained him.

  “That’s fair. We’ll do that.”

  “Thank you.” His shoulders sagged—whether from relief or disappointment, Bodhi couldn’t tell.

  “One more thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “As much as we hate to miss any of the presentations, Eliza and I are going to go to Montreal with Felix and Jon this afternoon. After that, we’ll see whether we can attend the rest of the symposium, but—”

  “Please. Don’t concern yourself with the programming. It sounds like the two of you—the five of you—are making progress. Do what you need to do. I’ll tell the inspector to have Officers McLord and Dixon contact you directly with any status updates. If we can get a handle on this drug problem and pinpoint a cause of death for the four new bodies … mon Dieu, it will be nothing short of a miracle.” He managed a brittle smile.

  A miracle.

  As Bodhi left the business center, Guillaume’s final words rang in his ears like a prayer or a chant.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Plaza Côte-des-Neiges

  Virgil found Mike at the mall. He was standing, transfixed, outside a music store listening to some employees who were playing electric guitars and drums in what appeared to be an impromptu jam session. Virgil observed him for a moment. His head bobbed in time with the music and he clapped his hands. None of the shoppers passing by gave him a second look. He more or less fit in.

  Virgil’s high was long gone, but now his agitation and worry were fading away, too. He waited until the song ended then approached Mike. He placed a hand on the younger man’s arm and said his name softly.

  “Mike.”

  Mike turned to face him. He scrunched up his face in concentration and studied Virgil. Then he said in a definite tone, “Dad.”

  Virgil almost corrected him but quickly realized that having Mike identify him as—and believe him to be—his father could be beneficial. So he just smiled.

  “You like music, Mike?”

  Mike nodded. It seemed to Virgil that his response time was speeding up, as if his processing rate was improving. This was both good, because it made him more useful, and bad, because he’d managed to get out of the van and wander into the mall. If he regained more abilities, he’d be much harder to control.

  Virgil would have to devise a way to keep Mike corralled. But, at the moment, his priority was to get back to the van to retrieve the other workers and his supplies and get everyone and everything settled in the apartment. The undertaking overwhelmed him. He suddenly, deep in his bones, understood how single parents of young, helpless children must feel.

  Parents. Parents have to keep track of their children.

  “Come on, Mike.”

  He led Mike to the directory of
stores and scanned the list. But nothing looked promising. He huffed out a breath. He imagined he could find what he needed online, but he needed it now. Then he spotted the mobile phone store on the other side of the promenade. It wasn’t what he had in mind, but he’d make it work.

  Twenty minutes and several hundred dollars later, he and Mike emerged with a bag laden with wearable GPS trackers. The features made them perfect for his needs. The small, thin rectangular devices clipped to the inside of a pocket or a waistband and would enable him to locate his workers through his mobile phone. He would have real-time access to their locations if they wandered off. He couldn’t afford a repeat of the Tatiana situation, especially not in an urban environment.

  Having a solution to his worst fear lifted his spirits. Losing Tatiana and having to leave Sainte-Anne were just setbacks, nothing more. Solo would continue to grow. And, one day, in the not-too-distant future, it would move from the back alleys and parking lots to the chain pharmacies and doctors’ offices. He just had to stay the course he’d set.

  He started humming a lighthearted piece—Gustav Holt’s “Jupiter.” Beside him, Mike began to hum along.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  After a lengthy and unnecessary debate about how many cars to take to Montreal—which Eliza finally put an end to by pointing out that the four of them planned to return to Chateau Frontenac that evening and the environment would thank them for carpooling—they said goodbye to Claude and piled into Jon’s station wagon for the three-hour drive to Montreal.

  Waving off Felix’s insistence that he take the front passenger seat because he had the longest legs, Bodhi climbed into the back seat beside Eliza and situated himself. Assuming no traffic, they’d reach McAllen University sometime between two-thirty and three o’clock.

  Bodhi was about to ask Felix to call ahead to arrange a meeting with his colleague from the Department of Psychiatry when his own cell phone rang.