How the Light Gets In: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel (37 page)

“They stole the therapist’s records,” said Gamache, approaching the younger man, who looked so much older. “They know how to get into our heads. Yours, mine. Lacoste’s. Everyone’s.”

“They? Who’re ‘they’? Wait, don’t tell me. ‘They’ aren’t ‘you.’ That’s all that matters, isn’t it? The great Armand Gamache is blameless. It’s ‘their’ fault. It always is. Well, take your fucking perfect life, your perfect record and get the fuck out. I’m just a piece of shit to you, something stuck to your shoe. Not good enough for your department, not good enough for your daughter. Not good enough to save.”

The last words barely made it from Beauvoir’s mouth. His throat had constricted and they just scraped by. Beauvoir stood up, his thin body shaking.

“I tried…” Gamache began.

“You left me. You left me to die in that factory.”

Gamache opened his mouth to speak. But what could he say? That he’d saved Beauvoir? Dragged him to safety. Staunched his wound. Called for help.

That it wasn’t his fault?

As long as Armand Gamache lived he’d see not Jean-Guy’s wound, but his face. The terror in those eyes. So afraid of dying. So suddenly. So unexpectedly. Pleading with Gamache to at least not let him die alone. Begging him to stay.

He’d clung to Gamache’s hands, and to this day Gamache could feel them, sticky and warm. Jean-Guy had said nothing, but his eyes had shrieked.

Armand had kissed Jean-Guy on the forehead, and smoothed his bedraggled hair. And whispered in his ear. And left. To help the others. He was their leader. Had led them into what proved to be an ambush. He couldn’t stay behind with one fallen agent, no matter how beloved.

He’d been shot down himself. Almost died. Had looked up to see Isabelle Lacoste. She’d held his eyes, and his hand, and heard him whisper. Reine-Marie.

She hadn’t left him. He’d known the unspeakable comfort of not being alone in the final moments. And he’d known then the unspeakable loneliness Beauvoir must have felt.

Armand Gamache knew he’d changed. A different man was lifted from the concrete floor than had hit it. But he also knew that Jean-Guy Beauvoir had never really gotten up. He was tethered to that bloody factory floor, by pain and painkillers, by addiction and cruelty and the bondage of despair.

Gamache looked into those eyes again.

They were empty now. Even the anger seemed just an exercise, an echo. Not really felt anymore. Twilight eyes.

“Come with me now,” said Gamache. “Let me get you help. It’s not too late. Please.”

“Annie kicked me out because you told her to.”

“You know her, Jean-Guy. Better than I ever will or could. You know she can’t be made to do anything. It almost killed her, but what she did was an act of love. She sent you away because she wanted you to get help for your addiction.”

“They’re painkillers,” Beauvoir snapped. This too was an old argument. A grim dance between the men. “Prescription.”

“And these?” Gamache leaned forward and took the anti-anxiety pills from Beauvoir’s desk.

“They’re mine.” Beauvoir slapped the bottle out of Gamache’s hand and the pills fell to the desk, scattering. “You’ve taken everything from me and left me with these.” In one fluid gesture, Jean-Guy picked up the pill bottle and threw it at the Chief. “That’s it. All I have left. And now you want to take them too.”

Beauvoir was emaciated, trembling. But he faced the larger man.

“Did you know the other agents used to call me your bitch, because I scurried around after you?”

“They never called you that. You had their complete respect.”

“Had. Had. But not anymore?” Beauvoir demanded. “I was your bitch. I kissed your ass and your ring. I was a laughingstock. And after the raid, you told everyone I was a coward—”

“Never!”

“—told them I was broken. Was useless—”

“Never!”

“Sent me to a shrink, then to rehab, like I was some fucking weakling. You humiliated me.”

As he spoke, he shoved Gamache back. With each statement he pushed. Then pushed again. Until the Chief Inspector’s back hit the thin wall of Beauvoir’s office.

And when there was nowhere else to go, not forward, not back, Jean-Guy Beauvoir reached under the Chief’s jacket and took his gun.

And the Chief Inspector, though he could have stopped him, did nothing.

“You left me to die, then made me a joke.”

Gamache felt the muzzle of the Glock in his abdomen and took a sharp breath as it pressed deeper.

“I suspended you.” His voice was strangled. “I ordered you back to rehab, to help you.”

“Annie left me,” said Beauvoir, his eyes watering now.

“She loves you, but couldn’t live with an addict. You’re an addict, Jean-Guy.”

As the Chief spoke, Jean-Guy leaned in further, shoving the gun deeper into Gamache’s abdomen, so that he could barely breathe. But still he didn’t fight back.

“She loves you,” he repeated, his voice a rasp. “You have to get help.”

“You left me to die,” Beauvoir said, gasping for breath. “On the floor. On the fucking dirty floor.”

He was crying now, leaning into Gamache, their bodies pressed together. Beauvoir felt the fabric of Gamache’s jacket against his unshaven face and smelled sandalwood. And a hint of roses.

“I’ve come back for you now, Jean-Guy.” Gamache’s mouth was against Beauvoir’s ear, his words barely audible. “Come with me.”

He felt Beauvoir’s hand shift and the finger on the trigger tighten. But still he didn’t fight back. Didn’t struggle.

Then shall forgiven and forgiving meet again.

“I’m sorry,” said Gamache. “I’d give my life to save you.”

Or will it be, as always was, / too late?

“Too late.” Beauvoir’s words were muffled, spoken into Gamache’s shoulder.

“I love you,” Armand whispered.

Jean-Guy Beauvoir leapt back and swung the gun, catching Gamache on the side of the face. He stumbled sideways against a filing cabinet, putting his arm out against the wall to stop himself from falling. Gamache turned to see Beauvoir pointing the Glock at him, his hand wavering madly.

Gamache knew there were agents on the other side of the door who could have come in. Who could have stopped this. Could stop it still. But didn’t.

He straightened and held out his hand, now covered with his own blood.

“I could kill you,” said Beauvoir.

“
Oui.
And maybe I deserve it.”

“No one would blame me. No one would arrest me.”

And Gamache knew that was true. He’d thought if he was ever gunned down, it wouldn’t be in Sûreté headquarters, or at the hands of Jean-Guy Beauvoir.

“I know,” the Chief said, his voice low and soft. He took a step closer to Beauvoir, who didn’t retreat. “How lonely you must be.”

He held Jean-Guy’s eyes and his heart broke for this boy he’d left behind.

“I could kill you,” Beauvoir repeated, his voice weaker.

“Yes.”

Armand Gamache was face to face with Jean-Guy. The gun almost touching his white shirt, now flecked with blood.

He held out his right hand, a hand that no longer trembled, and he felt the metal.

Gamache closed his hand over Jean-Guy’s hand. It felt cold. Like the gun. The two men stared at each other for a moment, before Jean-Guy released the gun.

“Leave me,” Beauvoir said, all fight and most of the life gone from him.

“Come with me.”

“Go.”

Gamache put the gun back in his holster and walked to the door. There he hesitated.

“I’m sorry.”

Beauvoir stood in the center of his office, too tired to even turn away.

Chief Inspector Gamache left, walking into a cluster of Sûreté agents, some of whom he’d taught at the academy.

Armand Gamache had always held unfashionable beliefs. He believed that light would banish the shadows. That kindness was more powerful than cruelty, and that goodness existed, even in the most desperate places. He believed that evil had its limits. But looking at the young men and women staring at him now, who’d seen something terrible about to happen and had done nothing, Chief Inspector Gamache wondered if he could have been wrong all this time.

Maybe the darkness sometimes won. Maybe evil had no limits.

He walked alone back down the corridor, pressed the down button, and in the privacy of the elevator he covered his face with his hands.

*   *   *

“You sure you don’t need a doctor?”

André Pineault stood at the door to the washroom, arms folded across his broad chest.

“No, I’ll be fine.” Gamache splashed more water on his face, feeling the sting as it hit the wound. Pink liquid swirled around the drain, then disappeared. He lifted his head and saw his reflection, with the jagged cut on his cheekbone, and the bruise just beginning to show.

But it would heal.

“Slipped on the ice, you say?” Monsieur Pineault handed Gamache a clean towel, which the Chief pressed to the side of his face. “I’ve slipped like that. Mostly in bars, after a few drinks. Other guys were slipping too. All over the place. Sometimes we’re arrested for slipping.”

Gamache smiled, then winced. Then smiled again.

“That ice is pretty treacherous,” agreed the Chief.

“
Maudit tabarnac,
you speak the truth,” said Pineault, leading the way down the hall into the kitchen. “Beer?”

“Non, merci.”

“Coffee?” It was offered without enthusiasm.

“Perhaps some water.”

Had Gamache asked for piss, Pineault could not have been less enthusiastic. But he poured a glass and got out ice cubes. He plopped one in the water and wrapped the rest in a tea towel. He gave both to the Chief.

Gamache traded the hand towel for the ice, and pressed that to his face. It felt immediately better. Clearly André Pineault had done this before.

The older man popped a beer open, pulled out a chair, and joined Gamache at the laminate table.

“So,
patron,
” he said, “you wanted to talk about Isidore and Marie-Harriette? Or the girls?”

When Gamache had rung the doorbell, he’d introduced himself and explained he wanted to ask some questions about Monsieur et Madame Ouellet. His authority, however, was undermined by the fact he looked like he’d just lost a bar brawl.

But André Pineault didn’t seem to find that at all unusual. Gamache had tried to clean himself up in the car, but hadn’t done a very good job of it. Normally he’d have gone home to change, but time was short.

Now, sitting in the kitchen, sipping cool water, with half his face numb, he was beginning to feel human, and competent, again.

Monsieur Pineault sat back in his chair, his chest and belly protruding. Strong, vigorous, weathered. He might be over seventy by the calendar, but he seemed ageless, almost immortal. Gamache couldn’t imagine anyone or anything felling this man.

Gamache had met many Québécois like this. Sturdy men and women, raised to look after farms and forests and animals, and themselves. Robust, rugged, self-sufficient. A breed now looked down upon by more refined city types.

Fortunately men like André Pineault didn’t much care. Or, if they did, they simply slipped on ice, and took the city man down with them.

“You remember the Quints?” Gamache asked, and lowered the ice pack to the kitchen table.

“Hard to forget, but I didn’t see much of them. They lived in that theme park place the government built for them in Montréal, but they came back for Christmas and for a week or so in the summer.”

“Must’ve been exciting, having local celebrities.”

“I guess. No one really thought of them as local, though. The town sold souvenirs of the Ouellet Quints and named their motels and cafés after them. The Quint Diner, that sort of thing. But they weren’t local. Not really.”

“Did they have any friends close by? Local kids they hung out with?”

“Hung out?” asked Pineault with a snort. “Those girls didn’t ‘hang out.’ Everything they did was planned. You’d have thought they were the queens of England.”

“So no friends?”

“Only the ones the film people paid to play with them.”

“Did the girls know that?”

“That the kids were bribed? Probably.”

Gamache remembered what Myrna had said about Constance. How she ached for company. Not her ever-present sisters, but just one friend, who didn’t have to be paid. Even Myrna had been paid to listen. But then Constance had stopped paying Myrna. And Myrna hadn’t left her.

“What were they like?”

“OK, I guess. Stuck to themselves.”

“Stuck up?” Gamache asked.

Pineault shifted in his chair. “Can’t say.”

“Did you like them?”

Pineault seemed flummoxed by the question.

“You must’ve been about their age…” Gamache tried again.

“A little younger.” He grinned. “I’m not that old, though I might look it.”

“Did you play with them?”

“Hockey, sometimes. Isidore would get up a team when the girls were home for Christmas. Everyone wanted to be Rocket Richard,” said Pineault. “Even the girls.”

Gamache saw the slight change in the man.

“You liked Isidore, didn’t you?”

André grunted. “He was a brute. You’d have thought he was pulled from the ground, like a big dirty old stump. Had huge hands.”

Pineault spread his own considerable hands on the kitchen table and looked down, smiling. Like Isidore, André’s smile was missing some teeth, but none of the sincerity.

He shook his head. “Not one for conversation. If I got five words out of him the last ten years of his life, I’d be surprised.”

“You lived with him, I understand.”

“Who told you that?”

“The parish priest.”

“Antoine? Fucking old lady, always gossiping, just like when he was a kid. Played goalie, you know. Too lazy to move. Just sat there like a spider in a web. Gave us the willies. And now he lords it over that church and practically charges to show tourists where the Quints were baptized. Even shows them the Ouellet grave. ’Course, nobody much cares anymore.”

“After they were grown up they never came back to visit their father?”

“Antoine tell you that as well?”

Gamache nodded.

“Well, he’s right. But that was OK. Isidore and I were just fine. He milked the cows the day he died, you know. Almost ninety and practically dropped dead in the milk bucket.” He laughed, realizing what he’d said. “Kicked the bucket.”