Bury Your Dead (33 page)

“Have you been on a cruise?” he asked Myrna.

“Was on one earlier in the week. Upgraded to the Princess Suites. Next time I think I might upgrade all the way.”

“I’m considering the owner’s suite.”

“Can you afford it?”

“True, I might go fake broke but I think it’s worth it.”

“God, I could use a cruise,” said Gabri, lowering his magazine.

“Tired?” Myna asked. Gabri looked it.

“Très fatigué.”

“It is true.” Ruth plopped down in the fourth chair, knocking everyone with her cane. “He is a fatty gay.”

The other two ignored her, but Beauvoir couldn’t hide a small laugh. Before long the other two left, Myrna back to her quiet bookstore and Gabri to tend to a couple customers.

“So, why’re you really here?” Ruth leaned forward.

“For your cheerful company, you old hag.”

“Besides that, numb nuts. You never liked it here. Gamache does, I can tell. But you? You despise us.”

Every hour of every day Jean-Guy Beauvoir searched for not just facts, but truth. He hadn’t appreciated, though, how terrifying it was being with someone who spoke it, all the time. Well, her truth anyway.

“I don’t,” he said.

“Bullshit. You hate the country, you hate nature, you think we’re hicks, idiots. Repressed, passive-aggressive and English.”

“I know you’re English,” he laughed. She didn’t.

“Don’t fuck with me. I don’t have that much time left and I refuse to waste it.”

“Then go away if you think I’m such a waste of time.”

They glared at each other. He’d opened up to her the other night, told her things few others knew. He’d been afraid that might lead to some awkwardness but sure enough, when they’d met the next morning she’d looked at him as though he was a stranger.

“I know why you’re here,” he said at last. “For the rest of the story. You just want to hear all the gory details. You feed on it, don’t you? Fear and pain. You don’t care about me or the Chief or Morin or anyone else, all you want from me is the rest of the story, you sick old crone.”

“And what do you want?”

What do I want? he thought.

I want to tell it.

Jean-Guy glanced round. The bistro was quiet. Placing his hands on the arms of his chair he hauled himself forward. The chair felt warm from the fire. In the grate the large logs popped, sending embers bouncing against the screen to glow on the stone hearth then slowly die away.

The maple logs smelled sweet, the coffee was strong and rich, the aromas from the kitchen familiar.

Not of home but of here.

He leaned forward and stared into the cold, blue eyes across from him. Winter eyes in a glacier face. Challenging, hard, impenetrable.

Perfect.

He paused and in an instant he was back there, since “there” was never far away.

“My favorite season is autumn, I think,” Gamache was saying.

“I’ve always loved winter,” came the young voice over the monitors. “I think because I can wear thick sweaters and coats and no one can really see how skinny I am.”

Morin laughed. Gamache laughed.

But that was all Inspector Beauvoir heard. He was out the door, through the Incident Room and into the stairwell. There he paused for a moment. Opening his fist he read the note Gamache had scrawled.

Find Agent Yvette Nichol. Give her this.

There was another note, folded, with Nichol’s name on it. He opened it and groaned. Was the Chief mad? Because Yvette Nichol
almost certainly was. She was the agent no one wanted. The agent who couldn’t be fired because she wasn’t quite incompetent or insubordinate enough. But she sure played around the cliff. And finally the chief had assigned her to telecommunications. Surrounded by things, not people. No interaction. Nothing major to screw up. No one to enrage. Just listening, monitoring, recording.

Any normal person would have quit. Any decent agent would have resigned. Like the witch trials of old. If she sank she was innocent, if she survived she was a witch.

Agent Nichol survived.

But still, he didn’t hesitate. Down the stairs he ran, two at a time, until he was finally in the sub-basement. Yanking open a door he looked in. The room was darkened, and it took him a moment to make out the outline of someone sitting in front of green lights. On oval screens lines burst into a frenzy as words were spoken.

Then a face was turned to him. A green face, and eyes glowing green. Agent Yvette Nichol. He hadn’t seen her in years and now he felt a tingling under his skin. A warning. Not to enter. This room. This person’s life.

But Chief Inspector Gamache had wanted him to. And so he did. On the speaker he was surprised to hear the Chief’s voice, talking now about various dog toys.

“Have you ever used a Chuck-it, sir?” Agent Morin asked.

“Never heard of it. What is it?”

“A stick thing with a cup on the end. It helps toss a tennis ball. Does Henri like balls?”

“Above all else,” laughed Gamache.

“Idiotic conversation,” came the female voice. A green voice. Young, ripe, filled with bile. “What do you want?”

“Have you been monitoring the conversation?” Inspector Beauvoir demanded. “It’s on a secure channel. No one’s supposed to have access to it.”

“And yet you were about to ask me to start monitoring it, weren’t you? Don’t look so surprised, Inspector. Doesn’t take a genius to figure that out. No one comes here unless they want something. What do you want?”

“Chief Inspector Gamache wants your help.” He almost gagged on the words.

“And what the Chief Inspector wants, he gets. Right?” But she’d turned back into the room. Beauvoir felt on the wall and found the light switch. He turned it on and the room was flooded with bright fluorescent lights. The woman, who had seemed so menacing, so otherworldly, suddenly became human.

Staring at him now was a short, slightly dumpy, young woman with sallow skin marked by old blemishes. Her hair was dull and mousy and her eyes squinted to adjust to the sudden light.

“Why’d you do that?” she demanded.

“Sir,” he snapped. “You’re a disgrace but you’re still a Sûreté officer. You’ll call me ‘sir’ and the Chief Inspector by his full rank. And you’ll do as you’re ordered. Here.”

He thrust the note at the agent who now looked very young, and very angry. Like a petulant child. Beauvoir smiled remembering his initial disquiet. She was pathetic. A sorry little person. Nothing more.

Then he remembered why he was there.

She might be a sorry little person, but Chief Inspector Gamache was risking his entire career in bringing her secretly into the investigation.

Why?

“Tell me what you know.” She lowered the note and stared Beauvoir in the eye. “Sir.”

It was a disconcerting look. Far smarter, far brighter, than he would have expected. A keen stare, and deep inside, still, a flash of green.

He bristled at her use of words. At that particular phrase. “Tell me what you know.” It’s what the Chief always asked when first arriving at a murder scene. Gamache would listen carefully, respectfully. Thoughtfully.

The antithesis of this willful, warped agent.

Surely she was mocking the Chief. But there were more important things than challenging her on that.

He told her what he knew.

The shooting, the kidnapping, the claims of the farmer to have attached a bomb. To go off the next morning at 11:18.

Instinctively they both glanced at the clock. Ten past six in the evening. Seventeen hours left.

“Chief Superintendent Francoeur believes the kidnapper’s a
frightened backwoods farmer, probably with a small marijuana operation, who panicked. They think there’s no bomb and no other plan.”

“But Chief Inspector Gamache doesn’t agree,” said Agent Nichol, reading from the note. “He wants me to monitor closely.” She looked up after a moment digesting the Chief’s instructions. “They’re monitoring closely upstairs I presume?”

She was unable, or unwilling, to rid her voice of bitterness. It was an annoying and annoyed little voice.

At a curt nod from Beauvoir she smiled and carefully folded the note. “Well I guess the Chief Inspector thinks I’m better.”

Agent Nichol stared at Beauvoir, willing him to contradict her. He glared at her.

“Must be,” he finally managed.

“Well, he’s going to have to do more than talk about dog toys. Tell him to pause.”

“Haven’t you been listening? A pause and the bomb will go off.”

“Does anyone really believe there’s a bomb?”

“And you’d risk it?”

“Hey, I’m safe and warm here. Why not.”

At a glare from Beauvoir she continued. “Look, I’m not asking him to go make a cup of coffee. Just a second here and there. Lets me record the ambient sound. Got it? Sir?”

Agent Yvette Nichol had started in homicide. Been chosen by Chief Inspector Gamache. Mentored by him. And had been a near complete failure. Beauvoir had begged the Chief to fire her. Instead, after many chances, he’d transferred her. To do something she needed to learn.

The one thing she clearly could not do.

Listen.

That was her job now. Her only job. And now Chief Inspector Gamache was putting his whole career, and perhaps Agent Morin’s life, into these incompetent hands.

“Why haven’t they traced the call yet?” Agent Nichol asked, swinging her seat back to the monitors and hitting some keys on her computer. The Chief’s voice was crisper now, clear. As though he was standing with them.

“They can’t seem to get a fix,” said Beauvoir, leaning over her chair,
staring almost mesmerized at the dancing waves on the screens. “When they do it shows Morin in a different place as though he’s moving.”

“Maybe he is.”

“One moment he’s by the U.S. border the next he’s in the Arctic. No, he’s not moving. The signal is.”

Nichol made a face. “I think the Chief Inspector might be right. This doesn’t sound like something rigged up by a panicked farmer.” She turned to Beauvoir. “What does the Chief think it is?”

“He doesn’t know.”

“It would have to be something big,” Nichol mumbled as she focused on the screen and the voices. “To kill an agent and kidnap another then to call the Chief Inspector.”

“He needs to be able to communicate with us without Chief Superintendent Francoeur knowing,” said Inspector Beauvoir. “Right now all his messages are monitored.”

“No problem. Get me the code to his computer and I can set up a secure channel.”

Beauvoir hesitated, examining her.

“What?” she demanded, then smiled. It was unattractive, and again Beauvoir felt a warning tingle. “You came to me remember. Do you want help or not? Sir?”

“. . . Zora’s a handful, apparently,” came Gamache’s voice. “Teething now. She loves the blanket you and Suzanne sent.”

“I’m glad,” said Morin. “I wanted to send a drum set but Suzanne said maybe later.”

“Marvelous. Perhaps you could also send some caffeine and a puppy,” laughed Gamache.

“You must miss them, sir. Your son and grandchildren.”

“And our daughter-in-law,” Gamache said. “Yes, but they’re enjoying Paris. Hard to begrudge them that.”

“Damn it. He needs to slow down,” snapped Nichol, annoyed. “He has to give me pauses.”

“I’ll tell him.”

“Well, hurry up,” said Nichol. “And get that code.” She turned her back on Inspector Beauvoir as he strode out the door.

“Sir,” he muttered as he bounded back up the stairs. “Sir. Shit-head.”

At the eighth floor he wheezed to a stop and gasped for breath. Opening the door a little he could see Chief Superintendent Francoeur not far away. Over the monitors came the familiar voices.

“Has anybody spoken to my parents?” the young man asked.

“We’re giving them regular updates. I’ve sent an agent to be with your family and Suzanne.”