The Nature of the Beast: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel (8 page)

Brian said hello, but Antoinette turned away.

“Still mad, I see,” said Jean-Guy.

“And it’s only getting worse.”

“What’re you two talking about?” asked Reine-Marie, as Armand and Jean-Guy rejoined her.

“Antoinette,” said Jean-Guy.

“She looked at me with loathing,” said Myrna.

“Me too,” said Gabri, walking over with a plate filled with apple pie while Olivier’s was stacked with quinoa, cilantro, and apple salad.

“Play not going well?” asked Jean-Guy.

“Once they found out who wrote it, most of the other actors also quit,” said Gabri. “I think Antoinette was genuinely surprised.”

Myrna was looking at Antoinette and shaking her head. “She really doesn’t seem to understand why anyone would be upset.”

“So the play’s canceled?” asked Jean-Guy.

“No,” said Clara. “That’s the weird thing. She refuses to cancel it. I think Brian is now playing all the parts. She just can’t accept reality.”

“Seems to be going around,” said Armand.

“You mean Laurent?” asked Olivier. “Now there was someone whose understanding of reality was fluid.”

“Remember when he claimed there was a dinosaur in the pond?” said Gabri, laughing.

“He almost had you convinced,” said Olivier.

“Or the time he saw the three pines walking around?” asked Myrna.

“They walk all the time,” said Ruth, shoving in between Gabri and Olivier.

“Fueled by gin,” said Clara. “Funny how that works.”

“Speaking of which, there’s no gin. Someone must’ve drunk it all. Get some more,” she said to Myrna.

“Get your own—”

“Church,” Clara interrupted Myrna.

“We’re at a child’s funeral,” Olivier said to Ruth. “There is no alcohol.”

“If there ever was an occasion to drink, this is it,” said Ruth.

She was holding Rosa in much the same way Evelyn Lepage had held Laurent. To her chest. Protectively.

“He was a strange little kid,” said Ruth. “I liked him.”

And there was Laurent Lepage’s real eulogy. Stories of his stories. Of the funny little kid with the stick, causing havoc. Creating chaos and monsters and aliens and guns and bombs and walking trees.

That was the boy they were burying.

“How many times did we look out at the village green and see Laurent hiding behind the bench, firing his ‘rifle’ at invaders,” asked Clara as they left the church and wandered down the dirt road into the village.

“Lobbing pine cones like they were grenades,” said Gabri.

“Bambambam.” Olivier held an imaginary machine gun and made the sounds they’d heard as Laurent engaged the enemy.

Clara tossed an imaginary grenade. “Brrrrccch.” As it exploded.

“He was always prepared to defend the village,” said Reine-Marie.

“He was,” said Olivier.

Gamache remembered the pine cone seeds found in Laurent’s pocket. He’d been on a mission to save the world. Armed to the teeth. When he died.

“I actually thought his death was no accident,” Armand confided to Myrna as the others walked ahead, across the village green. “I thought it might be murder.”

Myrna stopped and looked at him.

“Really? Why?”

They sat on the bench in the afternoon sun.

“I’m wondering the same thing. Is it possible I’ve been around murder so long I see it when it doesn’t exist?”

“Creating monsters,” said Myrna. “Like Laurent.”

“Yes. Jean-Guy thinks part of me wanted it to be murder. To amuse myself.”

“I’m sure he didn’t put it that way.”

“No. It’s how I’m putting it.”

“And how are you answering that question?”

“I suppose there might be some truth in it. Not that I’m bored, and certainly not that homicide amuses me. It revolts me. But…”

“Go on.”

“Thérèse Brunel was down last week and offered me the job of Superintendent overseeing the Serious Crimes and Homicide divisions.”

Myrna raised her brows. “And?”

“The truth is, I’ve never felt so at peace, so at home as I do here. I don’t feel any need to go back. But I feel as though I should.”

Myrna laughed. “I know what you mean. When I quit my job as a psychologist, I felt guilty. This isn’t our parents’ generation, Armand. Now people have many chapters to their lives. When I stopped being a therapist I asked myself one question. What do I really want to do? Not for my friends, not for my family. Not for perfect strangers. But for me. Finally. It was my turn, my time. And this is yours, Armand. Yours and Reine-Marie’s. What do you really want?”

He heard the thump of pine cones falling and stopped himself from turning to look for the funny little kid who’d thrown the “grenades.” Kaaa-pruuuchh.

Then another one fell. And another. It was as though the three huge pines were tapping the earth. Asking it to admit Laurent. The magical kid who’d made them walk.

Armand closed his eyes and smelled fresh-cut grass and felt the sun on his upturned face.

What do I want? Gamache asked himself.

He heard, on the breeze, the first thin notes. From Neil Young’s
Harvest
. Armand looked up to the small cemetery on the crest of the hill. Outlined against the clear blue afternoon sky was a large man with a guitar in his arms.

And down the hill the words drifted …
and there’s so much more.

CHAPTER 7

“There you are,” said Olivier, as he and Gabri sat down at the Gamaches’ table in the bistro. “We’ve been looking for you.”

“You can’t have been looking hard,” said Reine-Marie. “Where else would we be?”

“Home?” said Gabri.

“This isn’t our home?” Gamache whispered to Reine-Marie.

“Yes it is,
mon beau
,” she patted her husband’s leg reassuringly.

They were still in their clothes from the funeral, Reine-Marie in a navy blue dress and Armand in a dark gray suit, white shirt and tie. Tailored and classic.

They were not yet ready to remove the clothes, as though to do that was to remove their grief and leave Laurent behind.

Olivier and Gabri must have felt the same way. They too were still in their dark suits and ties.

Olivier waved to one of his servers and a couple of beers and a bowl of mixed nuts appeared.

Gabri and Olivier sipped their beers and stared at each other, goading each other on.

“Was there a reason you were looking for us?” Armand finally asked.

“You go,” said Gabri.

“No, you go,” said Olivier.

“It was your idea,” said Gabri.

“Please, one of you tell us,” said Armand, looking from one to the other. He was not really in the mood for twenty questions.

“It’s a small thing,” said Olivier.

“Hardly worth mentioning,” said Gabri. “We were just wondering.”

Gamache opened his eyes wide, inviting something more precise.

“It’s the stick,” said Olivier at last.

“Laurent’s stick,” said Gabri.

They stared at Gamache, but when he stared back blankly, Olivier took the plunge.

“At the reception when we were talking about Laurent we all remembered him with that stick of his.”

“His rifle,” said Reine-Marie.

“His rifle, his sword, his wand,” said Olivier. “How many times did we see him roaring down the hill on his bike into Three Pines holding that stick out in front of him like a knight in battle?”

“He was a menace,” said Gabri with a smile, remembering the fearless, fearsome boy tilting at God knew what, determined to save the village and the villagers.

The Gamaches stared at Olivier and Gabri, expecting more.

“He never went anywhere without it,” said Gabri. “We just thought maybe Al and Evie would want it back.”

“Oh, right,” said Armand. “That’s probably true.”

He wished he’d thought of that but was glad the guys had.

“The police must’ve picked it up,” said Olivier. “Do you know when they’ll release it? Can we get it back now?”

Armand opened his mouth to say that he imagined all of Laurent’s possessions would have been returned already. But then he stopped himself. And thought, searching his memory of the Sûreté report. It said nothing about a stick, but then even had the investigators seen it on the ground they probably wouldn’t have picked it up. It would look like any other tree limb.

But he also searched his own memory of the scene.

The hill, the gravel, the long grass, the bike with the helmet still tied to the handlebars. He scanned his memory but there was no stick. No limb. Just a gully and grass and a keening mother and cold child.

He got up. “The police didn’t find it. We need to go back there and look. Why don’t we all change and meet back here?”

Twenty minutes later they got out of the Gamaches’ car wearing slacks, sweaters, jackets and rubber boots. The four of them slid down the small embankment and started looking.

But Laurent’s stick wasn’t there.

Not in the gully. Not on the verge of the dirt road. It wasn’t in the tall grass, or the circle of flattened grass, or along the edge of the forest.

Armand walked up to the top of the hill and stood there, imagining Laurent hurtling down it on his bike. He retraced Laurent’s final moments.

Down, down, down. Laurent would have gained speed, his legs pumping, the stick almost certainly out in front. A lance in a heroic charge.

And then something happened. He’d hit a rut or a hole or a heave. What old townshippers called a cahoo.

Armand stood at a likely spot, a pothole. Had Laurent been frightened as he took flight? Gamache suspected not. The boy had probably been giddy with excitement. Maybe even shouting, “Caaaaah-hoooo.”

He was airborne. And then he wasn’t.

Blunt force trauma, it was called in the report. What the autopsy couldn’t show was the ongoing trauma to everyone who loved the child.

Armand stood on the pothole and lifted his body up on tiptoes, stretching his arms out in front of him. Mimicking taking off. He imagined sailing through the air. Up, up, and then down. Into the gully.

And where would the stick have landed? Perhaps quite a distance from Laurent, released from the little hand like a javelin slicing through the air.

Reine-Marie, Olivier and Gabri followed his actions and searched in the likeliest places. And then the least likely places.

“Nothing so far,” Reine-Marie said, then looking around she noticed her husband wasn’t with her. He was standing at the spot where Laurent had landed, looking at the ground. Then he turned and looked back up the hill.

“Find anything?” asked Olivier.

“No,” said Gabri, getting closer to the woods. “Just grass and mud.” He lifted his boots and there was a sucking sound as the ground reluctantly released him.

Armand had returned to the road and walked in the opposite direction of the hill. Reine-Marie, along with Gabri and Olivier, joined him.

“No stick?” Gamache asked.

They shook their heads.

“Maybe Al and Evie picked it up,” said Olivier.

But they doubted it. It was all Laurent’s parents could do to pick themselves up.

“Maybe he lost it,” said Gabri.

But they knew the only way Laurent would lose it was if he lost his hand. It was more than just a stick to Laurent.

*   *   *

Al Lepage came out of the barn when he heard their car drive up. He was back in his work clothes and was wiping his large hands.

“Armand.”

“Al.” The men shook hands and Reine-Marie gave him a quick embrace.

“Is Evie at home? I have a casserole.”

Al pointed to the house, and when Reine-Marie left he turned to Gamache.

“Is this a social call?”

“No, not really.”

They’d dropped Gabri and Olivier back in Three Pines and then driven to the farm. And now Armand contemplated the older man in front of him. Al Lepage looked like a paper bag that had been crumpled up before being thrown away. But for the first time, Armand really studied his face and noted not the beard or the leathered skin, but the blue, blue eyes, shaped like almonds. Laurent’s eyes. And his nose. Thin and slightly too long for the face. Laurent’s nose.

“I have a question for you.”

Al indicated a trough. The two men sat side by side.

“Do you have Laurent’s stick?”

Al looked at him as though he’d lost his mind. “His stick?”

“He always had it with him but we couldn’t find it. We just wondered if you might have it.”

It seemed an eternity before Al answered. Armand quietly prayed that he’d say,
Yes, yes I do
. And then Armand and Reine-Marie could go home, and start the long process of remembering the boy alive and letting go of the boy dead.

“No.”

The large man didn’t meet Armand’s eyes, couldn’t. He stared straight ahead, his almond eyes hard with the effort of not going soft. But his lips trembled and his chin dimpled.

“It would be nice to have it back,” he managed to say.

“We’ll try to get it for you.”

“I made it for his birthday.”

“
Oui
.”

“Worked on it every night after he went to bed. He wanted an iPhone.”

“No he didn’t,” said Armand.

“He’s nine.”

Gamache nodded.

“Nine,” whispered Al Lepage.

And both men stared off, in opposite directions. Laurent’s father viewing a world where nine-year-old boys died in accidents. Gamache seeing a world where even worse things happened.

“It must be there,” Al said at last. “Where we found him. Or the cops picked it up.”

“No. We looked. And the police didn’t find it either. If it isn’t here at home, and it isn’t where Laurent was found, then we have to find it.”

“Why?”

Gamache didn’t hesitate. He knew there was never a good time for this.

“It could mean that Laurent might’ve been killed somewhere else, and put in that ditch.”

Al’s mouth formed the beginning of a word.
Why
, perhaps. Or,
what
. But it died there. And Gamache saw Laurent’s father pack up his home, take all his possessions, and move. To that other world. Where nine-year-old boys were killed. A world where nine-year-old boys were murdered.

Armand Gamache was the moving man, the ferryman, who took him there.