Hidden Path

by Miller, Melissa F.

  He held up his hands as if to ward off the lecture, but she was just getting warmed up.

  “And if you think—”

  She would have lit into him, but at that moment, Lindsey flew into the room, breathless and shaky. “Chief, Mark Olson’s fields are burning.”

  Bette’s heart leapt out of her chest and landed in her throat. For a moment, she couldn’t speak. When the initial surge of adrenaline waned, she barked out orders. “Call Kevin at the fire department. The Olsons probably already called, but do it just in case. Then call Supra Seed. Mark’s growing an experimental seed in one of his fields. They’ll want to protect their investment, so they might send someone over to help.”

  Lindsey nodded and hurried out of the room.

  “Put the volunteers on notice, too,” Bette called after her.

  Then she turned to Bodhi. “This conversation’s not over,” she warned.

  She dropped the leather bag, grabbed her gun, radio, and keys, and raced out the door.

  Chapter Ten

  After Bette Clark ran out and left him in her office, Bodhi took a moment to consider his next steps. He hadn’t expected the police chief to agree to call in the FBI the first time he made the suggestion. But he remained convinced it was the right choice. He’d just need to lead her to it obliquely.

  For now, he supposed he could find a ride to the hospital and check on the status of the John Doe’s blood and tissue samples. He scooped the bag up from the floor where Chief Clark had left it and started down the hallway to Lindsey’s desk to see if she could arrange a lift to the morgue.

  But Lindsey was nowhere in sight. Her chair was empty and her computer monitor’s screensaver danced across the screen. He lingered at her desk for a few moments but she didn’t return. He could walk, he knew, but that would take the better part of his morning. He stepped out into the parking lot and pulled out his phone to check whether any of the ride sharing startups operated in the greater Onatah area.

  He leaned against the brick exterior of the building and searched for his current zip code to see if there was a car available in the area. The hum of an engine caught his attention. A dark sedan turned off Main Street and drove into the lot, fast. Without slowing, the driver headed straight toward him and came to an abrupt stop just feet away.

  The driver was male, somewhere between thirty-five and forty, with close-cropped, almost military, hair. He wore mirrored sunglasses even though the day was overcast. A blonde woman, her straight hair pulled into a tight low bun, matching sunglasses covering her eyes, practically bolted from the passenger seat.

  “Dr. Bodhi King?” she called as she walked toward him at a rapid clip.

  “Um … yes.”

  “We’d like a word.” She gestured toward the still-idling car. The driver gave him a brisk nod.

  “And you are?”

  “Agent Clausen. That’s Agent Thurman behind the wheel.”

  Agents.

  “Are you guys from the FBI?” Maybe he wouldn’t have to convince Chief Clark to make any calls after all.

  Clausen cocked her head and frowned at him. “FBI? No. Sir, would you join us in the car, please?”

  Despite the interrogative sentence structure, she clearly wasn’t asking. He considered his options.

  “I’d be happy to, Agent Clausen. But I’d like to know what this is about—and what agency you and your friend are with—before I do so. Oh, and I’ll need a ride to the county hospital.”

  Her eyebrows shot up to her hairline. “Anything else? Shoe shine? Latte?”

  He pretended her sarcasm was lost on him. “Nope, that’s all.” He smiled warmly.

  She snorted.

  He waited.

  Her eyes shifted to the car. Bodhi didn’t imagine she and her partner could possibly be communicating nonverbally, what with the sunglasses, but after a few seconds, Agent Thurman raised his shoulders then let them fall.

  Apparently the shrug spoke volumes. Clausen pushed her sunglasses up to the top of her head and pierced him with cornflower blue eyes.

  “We’re ODNI, specifically we’re currently attached to the NCSC.”

  None of the letters meant anything to him. For a moment, he wondered if they worked for one of the so-called ‘shadow’ agencies. An old pal of his from Pittsburgh, a one-time member of the Department of Homeland Security, now worked for a mysterious agency that seemed not to officially exist.

  But after a moment, Clausen clarified, “We’re career agents with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence working on a matter for the National Counterintelligence Security Center, Dr. King.”

  Well that all sounded very official—and important. “I see. What about the lift?”

  “Does it look like we’re running a taxi service?”

  “Look, presumably you want to talk about the dead body I found, right?”

  She whipped her head around as if someone might overhear. He didn’t want to be the one to break it to her, but there wasn’t a breathing soul in Onatah, Elm, or any of the adjacent towns who hadn’t already heard that some doctor from Pittsburgh stumbled over a murder victim while taking a walk at The Prairie Center.

  “Yes,” she hissed.

  “Great. If you drive me to the morgue, I’ll show him to you.”

  She let out a breath that sounded like air escaping from a balloon. “Fine. Now will you please get in the car?”

  “Sure.”

  “Your chariot awaits.”

  He followed her to the car’s rear passenger side door. She yanked it open and ushered him inside with an exaggerated flourish.

  He settled himself in the back seat. The interior was overheated and smelled strongly of some woodsy scent.

  Thurman twisted in the seat and offered Bodhi his hand.

  “Charlie Thurman.” His booming voice was cheery, and his handshake was efficient.

  “Bodhi King.”

  “We’re taking Dr. King to the hospital,” Clausen told him.

  “The morgue?”

  “Yes.”

  Thurman nodded. “Great. We can go over the preliminaries en route.”

  “Unless the aroma of your hair wax overtakes us all,” Clausen responded.

  “Pomade, Elise. It’s called pomade.” He looked over the tops of his sunglasses and caught Bodhi’s eye in the rearview mirror. “And it’s melting because, despite her Scandinavian roots, Agent Clausen over here insists on cranking the heat.”

  “Scandinavian roots,” Clausen muttered. “As if we all lived in ice houses.”

  Bodhi observed the banter between the two. Their ribbing was good natured, and it seemed they’d been partners for a while.

  After a moment, Clausen cleared her throat. “As you’ve surmised, Dr. King, we’re interested in your John Doe.”

  “Just out of curiosity, who told you about him? I mean, I know Chief Clark didn’t reach out to you. And I doubt very much the monks at The Prairie Center called you.”

  “You’re right. It wasn’t the monks, and it sure wasn’t Bette Clark,” Thurman laughed.

  “So …”

  “Supra Seed called the NCSC.”

  “Charlie,” his partner said in a voice that held a warning.

  “The man’s a forensic pathologist. We’re going to ask him questions about the corpse. It’s only fair to give him some background.”

  She clicked her tongue and turned around to glare at Bodhi. “Do you have any federal clearances?”

  “Uh, no.” He shook his head, too confused by what Thurman had said to focus on her question. “I’m sorry—the seed company called you about a murder?”

  “Yes,” Thurman said.

  At the same time, Clausen said, “No.”

  Bodhi shifted in his seat. “I’m getting a vibe that you two aren’t on the same page about how much to share with me. And, that’s fine. But I’m working this case with Chief Clark, and I’m starting to think we should wrap her into this conversation.”

  “That’s
not necessary,” Clausen said.

  At the same time, Thurman said, “I think that’s a good idea.”

  “Do you two ever talk to each other?” Bodhi asked.

  The agents in the front seat exchanged frustrated glares from behind their matching sunglasses. After a long silence, Clausen sighed. “Fine. Sure. Let’s invite Chief Clark to the party. Any idea where she is?”

  “She left in a hurry. There’s a fire at a farm … let me think for a second … it was the Olson farm.”

  Thurman swung the car around in the middle of the road. The tires squealed and the rear end of the car fishtailed.

  “What the heck, Charlie!” Clausen gripped the handle on the car’s door.

  “I guess your people weren’t into luging either, huh?” Thurman grinned at her. “Didn’t you see all that black smoke when we were driving in to get the doc? Assuming there’s only one field currently burning, we drove right past it earlier.”

  “She’s probably kind of busy,” Bodhi noted. “It’s an active fire.”

  “This is more important.” Any trace of humor had left Thurman’s voice. It was suddenly as grim as his partner’s face.

  Bodhi looked at the cornfields whizzing by outside the window and marveled that the humblest of foods was at the center of this maelstrom.

  Chapter Eleven

  To say that Chief Clark wasn’t happy to see Bodhi and a pair of federal agents arrive at the scene of the fire was to vastly understate her mood.

  She turned toward them as they trudged up the rutted path to the hill where she stood. Behind her, the sky was red and thick with smoke. As far as Bodhi could see, fields were burning. The heat hung heavy on the air, and a sweet, burning smell filled Bodhi’s nose.

  A pump truck was parked at the crest of the hill. A pair of firefighters trained a hose on the burning crops, and several men in street clothes passed buckets of sloshing water in an assembly line and returned them. A woman in running clothes filled them from the hose attached to the farmhouse.

  Chief Clark’s eyes flashed. “You can’t be serious. You called the FBI?”

  “They’re not FBI. And I didn’t call them. They came looking for me at your office.”

  She shifted her attention to the pair of agents. “I don’t have time for this right now. I’m a little busy,” she snapped.

  “Chief, respectfully, we’re here on a matter of national security. And it looks as though the fire professionals have this situation under control. We need to speak with you.” Agent Thurman was polite and respectful, but insistent.

  The police chief’s face clouded. “The situation is not under control. Not to diminish your national security concerns,” she said with a barely suppressed sneer, “but Mark Olsen’s about to lose his livelihood.”

  She gestured toward a man in jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. His face was streaked with dirt. His jaw was set. And his bloodshot eyes were clouded with disbelief and pain.

  Agents Clausen and Thurman directed their attention elsewhere. They spotted two suited men standing just to the side of the farmer.

  The men shared a military bearing, close-cropped hair, and broad shoulders. Bodhi thought they could have been brothers. He also thought they had to be law enforcement.

  Clausen nudged Thurman.

  Was the fire about to devolve into an interagency jurisdictional squabble? Bodhi’d seen it happen before, under equally grim conditions.

  “Excuse us,” Clausen said to Bodhi and Chief Clark.

  She and her partner strode over to Mark Olson and the two men.

  “Get a load of those two,” Chief Clark said out of the side of her mouth as they watched the agents walk away. “They forgot about their national security interest pretty fast once they saw who’s here.”

  She seemed to have redirected her ire from Bodhi to the agents, which suited him fine.

  “Who is here? What agency are they from?”

  She laughed shortly. “Those two are former state police. Now they work for Supra Seed as private security. Better pay, better pension, better working conditions.”

  “They’re security guards?”

  Another bark of a laugh. “No. They’re members of an elite security force that includes former Navy SEALs, Army Rangers, Green Berets, undercover drug enforcement officers, SWAT members, and Lord knows what else.”

  “For a seed company?”

  “For a seed company. You’d be hard pressed to wrap your mind around how big Supra Seed’s business is, Dr. King. They provide something like half the world’s corn. Most of which is destined for cattle feed. No cattle feed, no beef. They pretty much control the global food supply—or a large portion of it, at least.”

  Bodhi’s eyes widened. “I had no idea.”

  “Most folks don’t. Frick and Frack over there are here to try to save Mark’s Maize46 fields. It’s an experimental corn hybrid that has a much greater yield and consumes less water, fewer nitrates. It’s supposed to be the next big thing. And it’s going up in flames.”

  “They don’t seem to be doing much,” he observed.

  “They’ve called in a tanker plane to come drop some water on the fields.”

  “Your county has a firefighting airplane?”

  “Are you kidding? The cost would exceed our entire public safety budget. But Supra Seed has one—or maybe two. The folks here on the ground are just trying to keep the fire under control until the plane gets here. Shouldn’t be long now.”

  They lapsed into silence and watched the conversation between the NCSC agents, the security officers, and Mark Olson play out.

  The farmer was pointing his finger emphatically. The four suits were all nodding somberly. The entire cluster turned as one and glanced at the police chief.

  She muttered something inaudible as the federal agents returned.

  “Mr. Olson believes he knows who started the fire,” Clausen announced.

  Chief Clark set her lips in a thin line. “I know what he thinks.”

  “When do you plan to pay a visit to Mr. Durbin, then?” Thurman asked.

  “What happened to your national security issue?” she shot back.

  “The John Doe’s not going anywhere. He’ll still be dead tomorrow. But if Jason Durbin destroyed Supra Seed’s research crop, you need to bring him in. Now.” Clausen’s voice rang with urgency.

  “Listen here, Agent …”

  “Clausen.” she supplied.

  “Agent Clausen, Mark’s in a state. It’s understandable. And he and Jason have a history. There’s bad blood between them. But there’s no evidence Jason set this fire, and frankly, I don’t believe he did. Mark’s grasping at straws for someone to blame.”

  “So you’re not going to investigate?” Thurman pressed.

  She shot him a sour look. “I don’t know how your agency operates, but around here we don’t haul people in for questioning without a reason. If and when the fire chief tells me that this fire was arson, I’ll talk to Jason—among others. But not before.”

  Clausen frowned. “At a minimum, you need to sit on this Durbin guy. If he did set the fire, he might run. Send a squad car over to his place to park at the end of his driveway.”

  Bodhi could tell she was trying to compromise. Chief Clark either didn’t realize or didn’t care.

  She threw her head back and laughed. “As if I had a car to spare. I can’t have one of my three officers sit there twiddling his thumbs all day. And the notion that Jason Durbin’s a flight risk …” She wiped her eyes before continuing. “He has a ten-acre organic vegetable farm and a flock of free-range layers. And a bunch of bee hives to tend. Not to mention a teenaged daughter and a ten-year-old son. He’s not going anywhere. And he’s too busy working his tail off to be sneaking around, setting fires.”

  “All the same—”

  “His wife was over here earlier. She brought a thermos of coffee and a pitcher of ice water for the volunteers. Sure, the Durbins and the Olsons have had their differences. But they’re neig
hbors. I don’t know where you’re from, but around here, we all know each other. Jason Durbin didn’t set this fire. If you want to have someone watch his house, ask the fellas from the seed company. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m busy.”

  Chief Clark walked away from the agents. They exchanged glances, and Thurman ran after her.

  Clausen turned to Bodhi and sighed. “This fire changes things. We’re going to need to go talk to the executives at Supra Seed. But don’t leave town. The unidentified murder victim is still on our list.”

  “I’m not going anywhere, other than to the hospital morgue, eventually. I’m staying at The Prairie Center, which I bet you already knew. Chief Clark has my cell phone number. You can reach me through her.”

  “Or you could just give me the number,” Clausen said coolly.

  “I could. But you should think of me as a neutral player—I don’t have any allegiance to either you or her. All the same, I’m not interested in being party to any end runs around local law enforcement. You and Agent Thurman need to hammer out some ground rules with Chief Clark before you come looking for me again.”

  Her nostrils flared, but she gave no other outward sign of anger.

  He smiled at her. “I’m not trying to make your job more difficult. I just have no desire to find myself in the middle of a morass.”

  “Too late,” she called after him as he walked back down the hill.

  Chapter Twelve

  Bodhi walked back to The Prairie Center. The smell of burnt hair—the corn silks, he figured—followed him all the way, like a puppy nipping at his heels. Not a single plant pathologist with a black belt happened by to offer him a ride.

  By the time he reached the main house, the students were eating lunch. He washed his hands at the kitchen sink and carried a bowl of vegetable stew and brown rice from the kitchen to the long communal table. He found an empty seat and joined the silent meal already in progress.

  Despite the clunky awkwardness of sharing a meal without conversation, he’d always enjoyed the mindful meals at retreats. The lack of chatter enabled him to truly concentrate on the food in his bowl, but the presence of other people lent a convivial, if quiet, atmosphere. He picked up his spoon and studied the colorful stew.