Free Mandarin Gate by Eliot Pattison Page B

he laid them on a rock and tried to reassemble them. A camera. Someone had smashed a camera against the rocks. A very expensive camera, judging from the pieces he saw. It had not been done by the monk, who had inadvertently stepped on the plastic. Had this too been the work of the killer?
    He returned to the compound, hugging the shadows now, moving from one building to the next, pausing often to watch behind him. Yellow tape had been hung near the chorten, cordoning off where the rectangle of red paint, still faintly visible, showed where the bodies had lain. Shan paced around the tape, oddly loath to step over it, then headed to the prayer wheel station where the nun had been killed. Without conscious thought he pushed the wheel, then paused, watching it. It was a reflex he had acquired during his years with Lokesh, something most Tibetans would do whenever they were near such a wheel.
    The nun had probably been the last to push the wheel. Now, as Lokesh would say, Shan had picked up the chain of prayer, adding his link to the dead woman’s, as nuns and pilgrims had done at this spot, with this very wheel, for centuries.
    He kept the wheel moving, the low grinding sound his accompaniment as he pictured the nun at work. She had been shot in the back, though at an angle. There had been a separate pool of blood. The Westerner had been with her, helping. The killer had shot him in the neck, then quickly shot the nun as she had begun to turn.
    Shan spun the wheel again, watching it with a forlorn expression before facing the courtyard, forgetting for the moment that it was a murder scene. He had visited many such places with Lokesh, and the old Tibetan always somehow gave him a sense of their former grandeur, of the elegant reverence that had dwelt there for so many years. But today, alone, Shan felt small and empty, just another wandering pilgrim who had lost his path.
    He hesitantly stepped toward the chorten. Only a few weeks earlier there had been much laughter in the dawn as Shan had helped Lokesh and Jamyang whitewash the shrine. Its loose stones had been relaid, and a fresh coat of stucco applied, and as they prepared their brushes the two Tibetans had described to Shan the many types of chortens in the old teachings. Marking in the sand with sticks they had drawn images, naming each for him. The enlightenment chorten, the lotus chorten, the wheel chorten, the miracle chorten, the descent from heaven chorten, the victory chorten, the nirvana chorten. Shan recalled now how Lokesh had paused as he had discovered a stone at the base that had pushed through the new stucco, as if something had forced its way out from inside. The old Tibetan had not said anything then, simply jammed the stone back and painted over it, but Shan had seen the worry on his face. He knew there were other chortens that were constructed to trap and subdue demons.
    Shan stepped now to the far side. The new stucco was cracked. The stone had fallen out again.
    He found himself backing away, staring uneasily at the dislodged stone, then turned and moved to the front gate. The smudge of color marking another pool of blood was clearly visible at a corner of the building closest to the gate, where the third victim had been nearly decapitated. He looked inside the little alcove near the front gate where the Tibetans had been storing tools. Meng had reported that a woodcutter’s ax had been discovered there and was being held as the likely butcher’s tool. But surely such a long-handled tool was too clumsy. It seemed unlikely to Shan that an ax had been responsible for the broad, clean slices that had cleaved away the flesh from the foreigner’s skull, but the meager inventory of tools presented few alternatives. A crude spade. Two hoes. A rake. A small and very dull sickle. He paused, remembering now a crew of farmers who had begun clearing brush from along the back wall.
    It took him several minutes to locate the farmers’ store of equipment, inside the