How the Light Gets In: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel (7 page)

Chief Inspector Gamache held her cold hand and looked into her eyes. They were wide. Staring. Very blue. Very dead. Not surprised. Not pained. Not fearful.

Empty. As though her life had simply run out. Drained, like a battery. It would have been a peaceful scene, except for the blood under her head and the broken lamp, its base covered in blood, beside her body.

“Looks unpremeditated,” said one of the investigators. “Whoever did this didn’t bring a weapon. The lamp came from there.” She pointed to the bedside table.

Gamache nodded. But that didn’t make it unpremeditated. It only meant the killer knew where a weapon could be found.

He looked back down at the woman at his feet and wondered if her murderer had any idea who she was.

*   *   *

“Are you sure?” Clara asked.

“Pretty sure,” said Myrna, and tried not to smile.

“Why didn’t you tell us?”

“Constance didn’t want anyone to know. She’s very private.”

“I thought they were all dead,” said Clara, her voice low.

“I hope not.”

*   *   *

“Frankly,” Marc Brault admitted as they prepared to leave the Ouellet home, “this couldn’t come at a worse time. Every Christmas husbands kill wives, employees kill employers. And some people kill themselves. Now this. Most of my squad is going on holiday.”

Gamache nodded. “I’m off to Paris in a week. Reine-Marie’s already there.”

“I’m heading to our chalet in Sainte-Agathe on Friday.” Brault gave his colleague an appraising look. They were out on the sidewalk now. Neighbors had begun to gather and stare. “I don’t suppose…” Marc Brault rubbed his gloved hands together for warmth. “I know you have plenty of your own cases, Armand…”

Brault knew more than that. Not because Chief Inspector Gamache had told him, but because every senior cop in Québec, and probably Canada, knew. The homicide department of the Sûreté was being “restructured.” Gamache, while publicly lauded, was being privately and professionally marginalized. It was humiliating, or would be except that Chief Inspector Gamache continued to behave as though he hadn’t noticed.

“I’ll be happy to take it over.”

“Merci,”
said Brault, clearly relieved.

“Bon.”
The Chief Inspector signaled to Lacoste. It was time to leave. “If your team can complete the interviews and forensics, we’ll take over in the morning.”

They walked to the car. Some of the neighbors asked for information. Chief Inspector Brault was vague, but reassuring.

“We can’t keep her death quiet, of course,” he said to Gamache, his voice low. “But we won’t announce her real name. We’ll call her Constance Pineault, if the press asks.” Brault looked at the worried faces of the neighbors. “I wonder if they knew who she was?”

“I doubt it,” said Gamache. “She wouldn’t have erased all evidence of who she was, including her name, just to tell her neighborhood.”

“Maybe they guessed,” said Brault. But, like Gamache, he thought not. Who would guess that their elderly neighbor was once one of the most famous people not just in Québec, or Canada, or even North America, but in the world?

Lacoste had started the car and put the heat on to defrost the windshield. The two men stood outside the vehicle. Instead of walking away, Marc Brault lingered.

“Just say it,” said Gamache.

“Are you going to resign, Armand?”

“I’ve been on the case for two minutes and you’re already asking for my resignation?” Gamache laughed.

Brault smiled and continued to watch his colleague. Gamache took a deep breath and adjusted his gloves.

“Would you?” he finally asked.

“At my age? I have my pension in place, and so do you. If my bosses wanted me out that badly, I’d be gone like a shot.”

“If your bosses wanted you out that badly,” said Gamache, “don’t you think you’d wonder why?”

Behind Brault, Gamache could see the snowman across the street, its arms raised like the bones of an ill-formed creature. Beckoning.

“Take retirement,
mon ami,
” said Brault. “Go to Paris, enjoy the holidays, then retire. But first, solve this case.”

SIX

“Where to?” Isabelle Lacoste asked.

Gamache checked the dashboard clock. Almost seven.

“I need to get home for Henri, then back to headquarters for a few minutes.”

He knew he could ask his daughter Annie to feed and walk Henri, but she had other things on her mind.

“And Madame Landers?” Lacoste asked, as she turned the car toward the Chief’s home in Outremont.

Gamache had been wondering about that too.

“I’ll head down later tonight, and tell her in person.”

“I’ll come with you,” she said.

“
Merci,
Isabelle, but that isn’t necessary. I might stay over at the B and B. Chief Inspector Brault said he’d send over what files he has. I’d like you to download them tomorrow morning. I’ll find out what I can in Three Pines.”

They didn’t stay long at his home, only long enough for the Chief to pack an overnight bag for himself and Henri. Gamache beckoned the large German shepherd into the backseat of the car and Henri, his satellite ears forward, received this command with delight. He leapt in, then, fearing Gamache might change his mind, immediately curled into as tight a ball as he could manage.

You can’t see me. Yoooou can’t seeeee meeee.

But in his excitement, and having eaten too fast, Henri gave himself away in an all-too-familiar fashion.

In the front seat, both the Chief Inspector and Isabelle Lacoste cracked open their windows, preferring the bitter cold outside to what threatened to melt the upholstery inside.

“Does he do that often?” she gasped.

“It’s a sign of affection, I’m told,” said the Chief, not meeting her eyes. “A compliment.” Gamache paused, turning his head to the window. “A great compliment.”

Isabelle Lacoste smiled. She was used to similar “compliments” from her husband and now their young son. She wondered why the Y chromosome was so smelly.

At Sûreté headquarters, Gamache clipped Henri on the leather leash and the three of them entered the building.

“Hold it, please!” Lacoste called as a man got into the elevator at the far end of the corridor. She walked rapidly toward it, Gamache and Henri a pace behind, then she suddenly slowed. And stopped.

The man in the elevator hit a button. And hit it again. And again.

Lacoste stopped a foot from the elevator. Willing the doors to close so they could take the next one.

But Chief Inspector Gamache didn’t hesitate. He and Henri walked past Lacoste and into the elevator, apparently oblivious to the man with his finger pressed hard against the close button. As the doors began to close Gamache put his arm out to stop them and looked at Lacoste.

“Coming?”

Lacoste stepped inside to join Armand Gamache and Henri. And Jean-Guy Beauvoir.

Gamache acknowledged his former second in command with a small nod.

Jean-Guy Beauvoir did not return the greeting, preferring to stare straight ahead. If Isabelle Lacoste didn’t already believe in things like energy and vibes when she entered the elevator, she would have when she left. Inspector Beauvoir was throbbing, radiating strong emotion.

But what emotion? She stared at the numbers—2 … 3 … 4—and tried to analyze the waves pounding out of Jean-Guy Beauvoir.

Shame? Embarrassment? She knew she’d certainly be feeling both of those if she was him. But she wasn’t. And she suspected what Beauvoir felt and radiated was baser. Coarser. Simpler.

What poured out of him was rage.

6 … 7 …

Lacoste glanced at Beauvoir’s reflection in the pocked and dented door. She’d barely seen him since he’d transferred out of homicide and into Chief Superintendent Francoeur’s department.

Isabelle Lacoste remembered her mentor as lithe, energetic, frenetic at times. Slender to Gamache’s more robust frame. Rational to the Chief’s intuitive. He was action to Gamache’s contemplation.

Beauvoir liked lists. Gamache liked thoughts, ideas.

Beauvoir liked to question, Gamache liked to listen.

And yet there was a bond between the older man and the younger that seemed to reach through time. They held a natural, almost ancient, place in each other’s lives. Made all the more profound when Jean-Guy Beauvoir fell in love with Annie, the Chief’s daughter.

It had surprised Lacoste slightly that Beauvoir would fall for Annie. She wasn’t anything like Beauvoir’s ex-wife, or the parade of gorgeous Québécoise he’d dated. Annie Gamache chose comfort over fashion. She was neither pretty nor ugly. Not slender, but neither was she fat. Annie Gamache would never be the most attractive woman in the room. She never turned heads.

Until she laughed. And spoke.

To Lacoste’s amazement, Jean-Guy Beauvoir had figured out something many men never got. How very beautiful, how very attractive, happiness was.

Annie Gamache was happy, and Beauvoir fell in love with her.

Isabelle Lacoste admired that in him. In fact, she admired many things about her mentor, but what she most admired were his passion for the job and his unquestioned loyalty to Chief Inspector Gamache.

Until a few months ago. Though, if she was being honest, fissures had begun to appear before that.

Now she shifted her glance to Gamache’s reflection. He seemed relaxed, holding Henri’s leash loosely in his hands. She noticed the scar at his graying temple.

Nothing had been the same since the day that had happened. It couldn’t be. It shouldn’t be. But it had taken Lacoste a while to realize just how much everything had changed.

She was standing in the ruins now, amid the rubble, and most of it had fallen from Beauvoir. His clean-shaven face was sallow, haggard. He looked much older than his thirty-eight years. Not simply tired, or even exhausted, but hollowed out. And into that hole he’d placed, for safekeeping, the last thing he possessed. His rage.

9 … 10 …

The faint hope she’d held, that the Chief and Inspector Beauvoir were just pretending to this rift, vanished. There was no harbor. No hope. No doubt.

Jean-Guy Beauvoir despised Armand Gamache.

This wasn’t an act.

Isabelle Lacoste wondered what would have happened if she hadn’t been in the elevator with them. Two armed men. And one with the advantage, if it could be called that, of near bottomless rage.

Here was a man with a gun and nothing more to lose.

If Jean-Guy Beauvoir loathed Gamache, Lacoste wondered how the Chief felt.

She studied him again in the scratched and dented elevator door. He seemed perfectly at ease.

Henri chose, if such a thing is a choice, to hand out another great compliment at that moment. Lacoste brought her hand to her face, in an involuntary survival instinct.

The dog, oblivious to the curdled air, looked around, his tags clinking cheerily together. His huge brown eyes glanced up at the man beside him. Not the one who held his leash. But the other man.

A familiar man.

14 … 15.

The elevator stopped and the door opened, bringing with it oxygen. Isabelle wondered if she’d have to burn her clothes.

Gamache held it open for Lacoste and she left as quickly as possible, desperate to get out of that stink, only part of which could be blamed on Henri. But before Gamache could step out, Henri turned to Beauvoir, and licked his hand.

Beauvoir pulled it back, as though scalded.

The German shepherd followed the Chief from the elevator. And the doors closed behind them. As the three walked toward the glass doors into the homicide division, Lacoste noticed that the hand that held the leash trembled.

It was slight, but it was there.

And Lacoste realized that Gamache had perfect control over Henri, if not Henri’s bowels. He could have held the leash tight, preventing the German shepherd from getting anywhere close to Beauvoir.

But Gamache hadn’t. He’d allowed the lick. Allowed the small kiss.

*   *   *

The elevator reached the top floor of Sûreté headquarters and the doors clunked open to reveal a couple of men standing in the corridor.

“Holy shit, Beauvoir, what a stink.” One of them scowled.

“It wasn’t me.” Beauvoir could feel Henri’s lick, moist and warm on his hand.

“Right,” said the man, and caught the eye of the other agent.

“Fuck you,” Beauvoir mumbled as he pushed between them and into the office.

*   *   *

Chief Inspector Gamache looked at his homicide department. Where busy agents would once have sat into the night, the desks were now empty.

He wished the tranquillity was because all the murders had been solved. Or, better yet, there were no more murders. No more pain so great it made a person take a life. Someone else’s, or his own.

Like Constance Ouellet. Like the body below the bridge. Like he’d felt in the elevator just now.

But Armand Gamache was a realist, and knew the long list of homicides would only grow. What had diminished was his capacity to solve them.

*   *   *

Chief Superintendent Francoeur didn’t get up. Didn’t look up. He ignored Beauvoir and the others as they took seats in his large private office.

Beauvoir was used to that now. Chief Superintendent Francoeur was the most senior cop in Québec and he looked it. Distinguished, with gray hair and a confident bearing, he exuded authority. This was a man not to be trifled with. Chief Superintendent Francoeur associated with the Premier, had meals with the Public Security Minister. He was on a first-name basis with the Cardinal of Québec.

Unlike Gamache, Francoeur gave his agents freedom. He didn’t worry about how they got results.
Just get it done,
was what he said.

The only real law was Chief Superintendent Francoeur. The only line not to be crossed was drawn around him. His power was absolute and unquestioned.

Working with Gamache was always so complicated. So many gray areas. Always debating what was right, as though that was a difficult question.

Working with Chief Superintendent Francoeur was easy.

Law-abiding citizens were safe, criminals weren’t. Francoeur trusted his people to decide who was who, and to know what to do about it. And when a mistake was made? They looked out for each other. Defended each other. Protected each other.