The Nature of the Beast: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel (11 page)

Agents pointed flashlights at it, like weapons. More floodlights were turned on. Playing over it, but not altogether capturing the enormity of it.

“He was telling the truth,” said Lacoste beneath her breath. “My God, Laurent wasn’t lying after all.”

Before them was a massive gun, a cannon, its long barrel stretching beyond the reach of their lights to disappear into the darkness.

Jean-Guy Beauvoir lowered his light until it hit the base. And there they saw a monster etched onto the metal, twisting, writhing out of the ground. Its wings were extended. Its many serpent heads coiling, entwining like the vines that had hidden it for decades.

“We’re going to need more light,” said Isabelle Lacoste. “And longer ladders.”

CHAPTER 9

The Lepages had parked their truck on the road by the bistro and Gamache walked them back to it.

“I’ll make sure you’re told everything,” he said, leaning into the window as Al started it up.

“So far we haven’t been told anything,” said Evie. “Except that they found Laurent’s stick inside that thing. What was it doing there?”

“We know what it was doing there, Evie,” said Al. “Laurent was killed there, and moved, wasn’t he?”

Gamache nodded. “Chief Inspector Lacoste and her team will know more in a few hours, but it looks that way.”

“But what was Laurent doing there?” asked Evie. “Did he surprise someone? What’s in there? Is that a meth lab or a grow op? Did he stumble into some drug operation? Why did they kill him, Armand?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you do know what’s in there,” said Al. “What Laurent found.”

“I can’t tell you anything more right now,” said Armand.

“You can,” said Al. “You just choose not to. You know you’re making it worse by not telling us.”

“I’m sorry,” said Armand, stepping back as Al hit the gas.

He watched the battered pickup drive around the village green, then up the road out of the village. Then he walked back home, deep in thought.

He did know all those things. But he also knew something else.

As he’d leaned into the open window of the Lepages’ truck he’d seen, scattered on the console between the seats, a pile of cassette tapes.

*   *   *

“Where’s Ruth?” Myrna never thought she’d hear herself asking that question.

“Don’t know,” said Clara, looking around the crowded bistro. “She’s normally here by now.”

It was five thirty, and every chair in the place was taken. They could barely hear themselves think for the hubbub.

Clara saw Monsieur Béliveau at the door connecting Sarah’s boulangerie with the bistro. He was scanning the room.

“I’ll ask him if he’s seen her,” said Clara, getting up and weaving her way gracefully through the room.

As she passed the tables, she caught snippets of conversation. The words were slightly different, the language changing depending on the grouping. But the sense was the same.

“
Meurtre
,” she heard in hushed tones. “Murder.”

And then, even lower, “
Mais qui?
”

“But who?”

And then the look, the furtive scan. Taking in friends, acquaintances, neighbors, strangers. Who would suspicion, like an ax, fall on?

Clara had always found comfort in the bistro, never more so than after losing Peter. But while still soothing, the atmosphere was closing in on her. Words she’d worked hard to exorcise from her mind appeared again. Fresh and new and powerful. “Murder,” “blame,” “killing” crowded out the comfort.

Laurent was dead, and there was a good chance one of them did it.

“Have you seen Ruth?” Clara asked the grocer.

“
Non
, not yet. She isn’t here?”

“No.”

“I have some groceries for her. I’ll take them over and check on her.”

On her way back to the table Clara caught more bits of conversation.

“… drugs. A cartel…”

“… booze, left from Prohibition…”

One table was listening as a passionate man told them about Area 51, and the irrefutable evidence that aliens had landed decades ago in New Mexico. And, according to him, Québec.

“Mark my words, it’s an alien spacecraft in there,” he said. “Wasn’t the kid always warning us about an invasion?”

Incredibly, the others at the table, whom Clara knew to be sensible and thoughtful people, were nodding. It seemed a more comforting explanation than that one of them had suddenly become alien, and killed a little boy.

Clara sat down next to Myrna, grim-faced.

“Have you been listening to what people are saying?” Clara asked.

“Yes. It’s getting ugly. That table is ordering more and more drinks and talking about going into the woods and forcing their way into that thing we found.”

Myrna pushed her glass of red wine away. Nature, she knew, abhorred a vacuum, and these people, faced with an information vacuum, had filled it with their fears.

The line between fact and fiction, between real and imagined, was blurring. The tether holding people to civil behavior was fraying. They could see it, and hear it, and feel it coming apart.

Most of these people knew Laurent. Had children of their own. Were tired, and cold, and filled with fear and booze and not enough facts. These were good people, frightened people. Justifiably so.

Olivier bent down and placed a bowl of mixed nuts on the table. He whispered to them, “I’m going to start cutting people off.”

“I think that’s a good idea,” said Myrna.

Clara got up. “I think Armand needs to come over. I think he’s stayed away because he doesn’t want to create a difficult situation, but it’s beyond that now.”

Voices were raised at a table in the corner, where Gabri was explaining that they could not have more drinks.

Clara went to the bar and called the Gamache home.

*   *   *

“Is it true what I’m hearing, Clément?” Ruth asked, as the old grocer took a seat in her living room.

“What are you hearing?” he asked.

“That the child was murdered.”

She said the word as though it had no emotional load, contained nothing more than any other word. But her thin hands trembled and she made small, powerful fists.

“Yes.”

“And that they found something in the woods, where Laurent was killed.”

“Yes. I showed them the way in,” he said. “The path. No one else could see it, of course. It was overgrown.”

Ruth nodded. She’d thought the memories had also been obscured, hidden under so many other events. Poems written, books published, awards won. Dinners and discussions. New neighbors. New friends. Rosa.

Years and years of rich and fertile topsoil.

But now it was back, clawing its way to the surface. The dark thing.

“What’s in there, Clément? What did they do?”

*   *   *

The moment Armand and Reine-Marie stepped into the bistro, the turmoil died out.

A hush fell over the cheerful room, with its beamed ceiling and fieldstone fireplaces lit and welcoming, so at odds with the angry faces.

“Is there a problem?” Armand asked, his steady gaze going from familiar face to familiar face.

“Yes,” said a man standing at the back. “We want to know what you found in the woods.”

Gabri, Olivier and their servers took advantage of the distraction to clear away drinks from the tables and put out boards of bread and cheese.

“We have a right to know,” said another patron. “This’s our home. We have kids. We need to know.”

“You’re right,” said Gamache. “You do have a right to know. You need to know. You have children and grandchildren who need protecting. One child has already been killed, we need to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

Anger dissipated as they realized he agreed with them.

“The problem is, you see,” said Armand, stepping further into the room, his voice calm and reasonable, “it’s possible one of you killed Laurent.”

Beside him, Reine-Marie whispered, “Armand?”

But she saw his face in profile, determined. His eyes unwavering, as he looked out at the faces of his neighbors. He radiated certainty and calm.

Her gaze shifted to the patrons of the bistro. They were sober now. Quiet. His words had slammed into them, knocking the booze, knocking the anger, knocking the stuffing out of them.

A few sat down. Then more. Until they were all sitting.

Gamache took a long, deep breath. “I’m not saying anything you haven’t already figured out for yourselves. That you haven’t already said to each other. You’ve almost certainly looked around and wondered who did it. Which of you killed a nine-year-old boy.”

And now they looked around again, lowering their eyes as they met a friend, a neighbor staring back at them.

“I know what’s in those woods,” he said. “And I could tell you, but I won’t. Not because I want to hide it from you. I don’t. But because it would compromise the hunt for the killer. Laurent’s murderer is counting on your help. He’s sitting, perhaps among us now, hoping you’ll storm into the woods. He’s praying you trample evidence and disrupt the investigation. A killer hides in chaos. You need to not give him that.”

“Then what should we do?” a woman asked.

“You should stay out of the woods. You should keep your children out of the woods. You should be absolutely open and honest when the investigators ask you questions. The more light thrown onto an investigation, the fewer places he can hide. Laurent was not killed by some serial killer, or some errant madman. There was purpose to this. You need to make sure you and your children don’t get in his way, or in the investigators’ way.”

He let that sink in, making eye contact with many of the people there.

“Reine-Marie and I are proud to be your neighbors. And your friends. We could’ve lived anywhere, but we chose here. Because of you.”

He took her hand and together they walked further into the silent bistro.

“May we?” he asked Clara and Myrna.

“Please,” said Clara, indicating the empty seats.

Slowly a murmur of conversation grew around them, the voices a moderate level as reason was restored. For now.

Across from her, Clara saw Armand close his eyes briefly, and take a deep breath.

“Bet you thought you left all the talk of murder behind when Armand retired from the Sûreté,” said Myrna.

“Well, we did move to Three Pines,” said Reine-Marie. “We had our doubts.”

“
Patron,
” said Olivier, bending down to speak into Gamache’s ear. “Isabelle called from the old railway station. She’d like to speak to you.”

“Do you mind?” he asked Reine-Marie.

As he left, he heard Clara ask his wife, “So, did he tell you what they found?”

*   *   *

Ruth opened her worn and dog-eared notebook to the page she’d been reading before Monsieur Béliveau arrived.

He’d gone now, back to the bistro. She’d promised to join him there later. To put on a show of normalcy, if such a thing existed for Ruth. For Three Pines. For anyone.

She smoothed the page, thought for a moment, then read.

Well, all children are sad

but some get over it.

Count your blessings. Better than that,

buy a hat. Buy a coat or pet.

Ruth looked over at Rosa, snoring in her flannel nest. It sounded like
merdemerdemerde
. Ruth smiled.

Take up dancing to forget.

CHAPTER 10

The Sûreté Incident Room had once again been set up in what had been the railway station, before it was abandoned and put to other use. The long, low brick building across the Rivière Bella Bella from the village was the home of the Three Pines Volunteer Fire Brigade, of which Ruth Zardo was the chief, being familiar, everyone figured, with hellfire.

And now it was being put to an even more dire use.

The old railway station was alive with activity as technicians and agents set up the equipment necessary to investigate a modern murder. Desks, computers, printers, scanners. Telephone lines. Lots of those. Since the village was so deep in the valley, no high-speed Internet, or even satellite signal, reached it. They had to resort to dial-up.

It was infuriating, frustrating, grindingly slow. But it was better than nothing.

Armand Gamache had just arrived and was standing in the disarray. In his late fifties now, he’d started at the Sûreté when there weren’t even faxes, just teletype machines.

Isabelle Lacoste watched him and remembered being with Gamache on one of her first murder investigations. They found themselves in a hunting camp, with a body and fingerprints, and no way to transmit the information.

Chief Inspector Gamache had taken the old telephone receiver off its cradle, unscrewed the lower section, removed the voice disc, and hooked directly into the line.

“You hot-wired the phone?” she’d asked.

“Kind of,” he’d said. And then he’d taught her how to do it.

“It must’ve been tough back then,” she’d said. “When this was all you had.”

“It gave us more time to think,” he’d explained.

And then they’d sat by the woodstove, and they’d thought. And by the time the information had chugged its way back down the phone line, they’d all but solved the case.

And now she was the Chief Inspector. And she looked at all the technology being installed, in the absolute certainty it was crucial to solving the case.

But she knew differently. And Jean-Guy Beauvoir knew differently.

And the man who’d just arrived knew differently.

“Thank you for coming, sir,” she said, walking with them through the boxes and wires.

“Anytime,” said Gamache. “How can I help?”

She indicated the conference table, set up at the far end of the old railway station.

“It’s time for a think,” she said, and saw him smile.

She hesitated by the chair at the head of the conference table. This was awkward. Every other time they’d sat there, Chief Inspector Gamache had assumed that seat.

This time, though, he walked right by it and sat to her left. Leaving Inspector Beauvoir to sit on her right-hand side.

Armand Gamache knew his place. Had, in fact, chosen it.