Lord of Death: A Shan Tao Yun Investigation by Eliot Pattison Read Free Book Online

had, the wiry Tibetan insisted, centuries earlier been a junk in the emperor’s battle fleet. Half its forward gears were missing, its rear window was gone, and its seat had so many gaps in the vinyl they had to sit on burlap sacks. Shan did not ask what kind of wretched life the ship had led to justify such a rebirth.
    On the opposite side of Shan, Kypo gazed out the window with a dour expression. Tsipon had sent Jomo to show Shan how to drive the battered blue truck, but Kypo, Shan suspected, was there to watch over Shan.
    “Soldiers like ants crawling over the rocks,” Jomo explained when Shan asked about the day of the killing. “More soldiers than anyone has seen in years. Border commandos, knobs, military police. Everyone ran into holes, some so deep they probably are still buried.”
    “There were monks,” Shan reminded him, “from a monastery in one of the side valleys.”
    Jomo was silent so long Shan did not think he had heard. “It was like old times,” the Tibetan said in a tight voice. “Hunting red robes like they were wild game. The soldiers were angry, they had rifles with scopes like they use when they see people in the high border passes. One monk was brought back dead.”
    Shan found he could not speak for a long time. “Did any . . . did they find all the others?” he finally asked.
    “Who knows? The government won’t even officially say they raided the gompa in the first place. Once,” Jomo added after a moment, with a gesture to the high peaks, “there were hermits living in hidden caves above here.”
    The decrepit truck groaned and shuddered as Shan took over the wheel to climb the next slope, the gears slipping, the engine backfiring with each shift. He began to think of it not so much as a truck as a conveyance to some peculiar new form of hell. He couldn’t save his son without saving Colonel Tan, a man he reviled, a man who had overseen Shan’s prison camp, where so many old lamas had died.
    THE CRIME SCENE had been reincarnated as a dump site. Tire tracks and boot prints crisscrossed the clearing. Cigarette butts were scattered everywhere. Empty water bottles had been tossed on the side of the road. Candy wrappers and crumpled cigarette packs had been trapped by the wind under stones. There was no trace of where the bodies, the blood, or the car had been.
    Shan crouched at the edge of the clearing, trying to recall the terrible few minutes he had spent here, his gaze settling on the two rocks where the women had been leaning. He rose, then knelt by the rocks, sifting the oddly sandy soil in his fingers before surveying the murder scene in his mind again. There had been blood near the car, and shallow ruts scraped in the soil ending at their heels. The women had been dragged from beside the car and propped up. Before fleeing the killer had arranged them against the rocks, as if to make them comfortable. The Western woman had gazed at Everest with longing as she died.
    “You’re supposed to be getting Tenzin’s body back,” Kypo declared from over his shoulder. “I could have told you it wasn’t here.”
    Shan turned to meet the Tibetan’s challenging stare.
    “In the village people won’t talk with me,” Kypo said. “They blame me, because I helped persuade them that you should be the corpse carrier. It was a sacred trust, they say, and you broke it.”
    The words hit Shan hard. It was true. He had failed the sturdy, honest people of Tumkot village, had failed Tenzin himself. Of all the mysteries before him, the one he would have no time to address was why the old astrologer of the village had, after the first fatality of the season, abruptly declared that Shan was to be the carrier of corpses that year.
    “If Tenzin cannot be found,” Shan ventured, “it must mean the villagers tried to search for him after I was arrested.”
    “Up the trail, down the trail, along every side trail for a radius of two miles or more.”
    “Not the road.”
    “Not the road,” Kypo