Page 51 of Hard Heart

“Tim’s car went into a ravine. They didn’t find him until three days later. The cops said there was nobody else involved, but one of the photos of the wreck shows red paint on his bumper.”

“And I’m guessing his car wasn’t red?”

“It was black. Someone ran him off the road, and the police didn’t even look for a suspect. Winston was shot on the street—a robbery, allegedly—and they didn’t arrest anyone for that either.”

I hardly dared to ask. “How about Christine?”

“A brain tumour. Poisoned by her work in the chemical industry before she saw the light and switched to renewables, or so they claimed.”

“You don’t think that’s what happened?” I asked because he seemed to expect me to. Bodhi clearly enjoyed having an audience.

“Susumber berries.”

“Uh… Is that a menu item?” I glanced at the card in front of me. There were blueberries and raspberries and strawberries, but I didn’t see any susumber berries.

Bliss began giggling. “Nooooo. They’re poisonous.”

“And the neurological symptoms resemble a brain tumour,” Bodhi said triumphantly.

“But why would you think she ingested susumber berries?” I wrote down the name to google it later.

“She was a big fan of Jamaican food.”

I assumed that meant susumber berries were also Jamaican, but the link appeared tenuous at best.

“I spoke with Levi Sykes, and he said the project he and Professor Groveland were working on still had a ways to go.”

Bliss goggled at me. “Ohmigosh, you spoke with him? We’ve been trying to do that for, like, years, but the drones at the jail just obstruct, obstruct, obstruct.”

“There are procedures they have to follow. You can’t meet with an inmate without first being on their visitor list.”

“So how did you get on the list?” Bodhi asked.

A fair question, and one I didn’t intend to answer. How was I supposed to explain a chance meeting with several members of a motorcycle club?

“There are different rules for lawyers.”

Bliss muttered something about Big Brother while Bodhi went off on his next tangent.

“The deep state silenced Levi, don’t you get it? First, they put him behind bars, and then they scared him into submission.”

Levi hadn’t seemed scared. More…resigned. “I’m not sure that’s quite what happened.”

“You think they can’t get to people inside? Any idea how many people die from ‘accidents’ in the prison system each year?”

“I don’t have those figures to hand, but⁠—”

“One of our members was convicted of vandalism last year, and do you know where he is now?”

“Uh, no?”

“Precisely!” Bodhi said it as if that were some big gotcha. “Neither do we. He vanished from federal prison.”

“What were the circumstances?”

“His release date came and went, and he didn’t show up at home.”

“Maybe he decided to go somewhere else?”