Page 6 of Chosen Path
She’d looked him up. Bodhi King had an international reputation as a forensic pathologist who could see things others missed, who teased out patterns from noisy data that seemed meaningless, who solved unsolvable problems. He sounded like the answer to her prayers. She sure hoped he could see what she was missing before any more of her patients died.
She glanced at her watch. Two more appointments, and then she would close the office early to make the long trip to the airport to pick up her savior.
CHAPTERFOUR
Montréal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport
Quebec, Canada
Wednesday, mid-afternoon
Bodhi followed the pack of travelers from his plane as they flowed from the arrival gate to the border control inspection kiosk. He queued up behind a group of business people who had spent the flight from Pittsburgh tapping away on their laptops to create slide decks with colorful bar graphs and pie charts. He watched now as they pulled out their phones and found the QR codes that corresponded with the digital declaration cards the passengers had been instructed to fill out mid-flight.
The timesaving app was a marvel and a mystery. Sometimes he thought about the amount of technology that ran like invisible ribbons through daily life and was overcome with awe. Sometimes he had the same thought and was overcome by dread. There’s good and bad in everything, he reminded himself—even digital records.
He was roused from his musing by the woman behind him clearing her throat. “You’re up.”
He turned and smiled.“Merci.”
The French word had sprung unbidden from his lips. It was as if the loudspeaker announcements and signs in both French and English had already seeped into his bones to awaken the dormant language. The same thing had happened when he’d visited Quebec City several years ago.
He stepped forward and held his phone under the code reader until the kiosk spat out a slip of paper. Then he trailed behind the business travelers until he realized they were headed to the baggage carousel. He shifted his battered backpack on his shoulders and veered away, toward the exit. He showed his kiosk receipt to the border services officer, who waved him through to the ground transportation area.
He stepped outside and was met by a bracing early spring chill. He scanned the row of cars with blinkers flashing in search of Molly Hart’s blue SUV. He missed it the first time. On closer inspection, he thought he spotted it. It was possible, even likely, that the car in question was blue under all the mud, but he couldn’t be sure. He walked toward the mud-splattered vehicle and made eye contact with the driver.
She jumped out and waved her arms, calling, “Doctor King?”
He nodded. “That’s me. Bodhi.”
She hurried around the front of the car and pumped his outstretched hand with enthusiasm. “Molly Hart. Thank you so much for coming.”
“Your uncle’s a persuasive man.”
She laughed. It was a big, unbridled laugh. “That’s an understatement.” She dropped his hand and tilted her head, considering him with a small frown. “Did your bags get lost? Or do we need to go back for them?”
He patted one of the padded shoulder straps on his knapsack. “Neither. I have everything.”
She arched one eyebrow. “You travel light.”
“Less is more.”
“Did the Buddha say that?”
“Nope. It’s from a Robert Browning poem. Later, I think some modernist architect adopted it as his design aesthetic.”
She gestured toward the SUV. “I guess we better get on the road. It’s a long drive back.”
He settled himself in the passenger seat and tucked his bag between his feet while she buckled her seatbelt and punched a destination into her GPS device.
“Feel free to move your seat back and get comfortable. Oh, you’ll want to keep your passport handy for the border crossing.”
He took her invitation to rack the seat back and stretch out his long legs as she eased the SUV away from the curb and into the flow of departing traffic.
“So, is Montreal really closer to Scandia Bluff than one of the airports in Vermont?”
She turned onto an exit ramp before answering.
“No. It’s not closer, but it’s quicker—even with the border crossings. Scandia Bluff is high up in the mountains, very close to the border. So it’s an hour and a half drive, give or take, to this airport—almost entirely on a major Canadian highway. And it’s an hour and half drive, allegedly, to the airport in Burlington. But that’s ninety minutes of navigating poorly maintained back country roads. And if there’s a mudslide or snowstorm, a washed-out road, or a disabled car or tractor blocking the single lane, you can imagine how long the trip takes. I think that’s one reason the medical examiner’s office hasn’t opened investigations into any of the cases I’ve called about. They’re way down in Burlington. And, personally, I’ve never made the trip to Burlington in under two hours. It’s usually a lot longer.”
