Page 77 of Chosen Path
“Any idea what they’re talking about?” Molly whispered back.
“No. All I know is they’re fighting like a couple of alpha wolves in there. Twice I thought I was gonna have to go in and pull them apart.”
“Great. I’m sure they’ll be very reasonable and open to hearing what we have to say,” she deadpanned.
Perth puffed out his chest. “I can go in there with you if you want protection. Booth said to leave it up to you.”
Bodhi and Molly exchanged a look.
“It’s your call,” she said.
He shook his head. “I don’t think it’s going to go well no matter what. But the less adversarial we make it, the better off we’ll be.”
“Okay.”
He turned to the police officer. “We’ll go in alone. But please stay handy.”
“Are they dangerous, though? I mean, those two? Really?” Perth made a skeptical face.
He had to make the officer understand. He chose his words with care. “We believe they’ve killed at least two people, but the number may be as high as eight. So yes, Officer Perth, I’d consider that dangerous. I hope you would, too.”
Perth gulped. “Holy sh—crap. I’ve got you.”
“Thank you.”
Bodhi nodded to the police officer, then walked to the door that Perth had indicated and rapped sharply on the small window. He didn’t wait for a response before pushing the door open and striding inside. Molly was a half-step behind him, fiddling with the recording app on her phone.
Greg Rockman and Kimberly Dickerson sat in the center two seats at a long table, side by side. It was, Bodhi thought, a strange way to have a conversation. But he supposed they were accustomed to sitting in those seats for their council meetings. In his experience, people were creatures of habit always, but especially during moments of stress.
Greg leaped to his feet. “This is a private meeting. You can’t be in here.”
Molly moved ahead of Bodhi, and he fell back. This was, after all, her home. She should take the lead.
“Actually, we’re here with the support of the county police. And you should know that the folks next door just voted to hold an emergency village meeting. It’s over, Greg.” She leveled him with her gaze.
“What on earth are you going on about?” Kimberly blustered.
“If I asked you to empty your purse right now, would I find the three vials of insulin that were stolen from my clinic this morning?” Molly countered.
Greg’s face crumpled. “You didn’t. Please tell me you didn’t.”
Kimberly turned her anger on him. “I had no choice. I came to you and you told me to fix it myself.”
He dropped back into his seat and cradled his head in his hands. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Well, what did you mean? Did you want me to go back in time and not agree with you about Laura?”
“I wasn’t the one who said let’s throw out unanimity. I wasn’t the one who got some sort of sick rush out of—”
“Shut it, Greg,” Kimberly warned.
“Here’s what we know,” Molly said slowly, enunciating every word. “Corrine and Nikolas were murdered. Someone injected each of them with a lethal dose of insulin. In Nikolas’ case, two doses.”
“You can’t possibly prove that,” Kimberly shot back.
Molly nodded to Bodhi and he stepped forward to explain that, in fact, they could.
“We examined both bodies this morning. There’s visual evidence of the injection sites—the puncture wounds. Confirming that the substance that was injected was insulin will be trivially easy. Your eyeballs, for example, contain a jelly-like fluid called vitreous humor. If you were to, say, jab Greg with a syringe filled with insulin from one of the vials in your purse, he’d die. The insulin would concentrate in his eyeball jelly, among other places. A post-mortem analysis of that fluid would confirm that he had an elevated level of insulin in his body at the time of death.”
