A Great Reckoning

CHAPTER 13

Dr. Sharon Harris had seen worse in her time as coroner. Far worse. Horrible, horrific things. As far as disfigurement went, this was fairly tame. If she didn’t turn him over and look at his full head. And if she didn’t turn her own head, to see where the rest of his had gone.

Which, of course, she did.

Dr. Harris got to her feet and, peeling off the latex gloves, stepped away from the body of Serge Leduc and joined Jean-Guy Beauvoir and Isabelle Lacoste.

“He was dead before he hit the ground. Probably just before midnight. Single shot to the temple and no other wounds. Looks like the bullet was a hollow-point. What used to be called a man stopper, for obvious reasons.”

They did not need to refer to the body to know the reason.

“Have they found the bullet yet?” Dr. Harris asked.

“No,” said Beauvoir. He waved toward the opposite wall. “They’re looking.”

Just then there was a knock on the door and Armand Gamache entered. He and Dr. Harris greeted each other as old friends, having consulted on many cases in the past.

“I was just saying that the cause of death is not in doubt,” she said. “And his death was fast, almost merciful.”

“It seems Professor Leduc just stood there and let it happen,” said Isabelle Lacoste. “No sign of a struggle at all. Now why was that?”

“Because he didn’t believe the murderer would actually pull the trigger?” asked the coroner.

“Maybe he didn’t think the gun was loaded,” said Lacoste. “Maybe the murderer had no intention of killing Leduc and ran away, terrified at what he’d done.”

Beauvoir walked over to the Scene of Crime investigators, happy to get away from all the maybes and talk facts.

He knew that motive was important, but often they never really got to the heart of the matter. Never learned the real reasons someone took a life. Those were often too shrouded, too complex for even the killer to understand.

But good, solid evidence? That’s where a murderer was found and trapped. In lies and DNA. In secrets revealed and in fingerprints found.

Still, years of working with Chief Inspector Gamache had rubbed off on him, and he grudgingly admitted that feelings played a role in creating a murderer. And could, perhaps, play a role in finding him. Just not as big a role as the facts.

Isabelle Lacoste now joined him in discussing progress with the Scene of Crime agent in charge, leaving the coroner and the Commander with the body.

Dr. Harris looked from Gamache to the homicide victim, then back to Gamache. And on her face there grew a look of surprise, even wonderment.

“You didn’t like him, did you?” she said.

“Is it that obvious?”

She nodded. It was more what wasn’t in his expression than what was. Compassion was missing.

“I kept him on,” said Gamache, almost under his breath. “I could have fired him.”

“Then you didn’t dislike him?” asked Sharon Harris, having difficulty following. But she, more than most, knew that emotions were far from linear. They were circles and waves and dots and triangles. But they were rarely a straight line.

Every day she dissected the end result of some untamed emotion.

Gamache knelt beside the body, staring at the wound on Leduc’s temple. And the much larger exit wound. Then he followed the remains of Serge Leduc, which were fanned across the room, to where agents were combing for the bullet.

“Found it.”

But the voice didn’t come from one of the Sûreté agents Gamache was watching. And the find was not the bullet.

They turned and saw an agent standing at the door to the bedroom.

“In the bottom drawer, under some dress shirts,” she said as she led Chief Inspector Lacoste and the others into the bedroom.

There, under the neatly folded and laundered shirts, was a leather box. The agent had opened it, and inside was red velvet covering a precise mold. Of a revolver. There was another space for the silencer, and empty slots for six bullets.

“So it was his,” said Lacoste, and straightened up.

They looked from the empty case through the door into the living room, each trying to figure out how the revolver got from one place to the other. Had it been taken there by Leduc, or his killer?

“Excusez-moi,” said an agent, looking into the room. “You called the Saint-Alphonse police chief, I understand, sir.”

The agent was speaking to Gamache, who nodded. “And the mayor.”

“They’re both here,” said the agent. “We’ve put them in your office.”

“Merci. I’ll join them in a few minutes.”

“Fucking Leduc,” muttered Beauvoir. “Keeping a loaded gun in his rooms. Unlocked. In a school. Stupid, stupid man.”

“Either Leduc brought the gun out, or the murderer did,” said Lacoste. “In which case, the murderer must have known Leduc well enough to know there was a gun and where it was kept.”

“There’s something I need to show you,” said Commander Gamache.

Amelia Choquet sat at the long table, empty chairs between herself and the cadets on either side.

They’d been moved into the dining hall so that a search of their rooms could be conducted. Around her conversation buzzed, and far from dying down after the first flush of news, it had grown as speculation spread.

Rumor was loose in the air,

hunting for some neck to land on.

The cadets were shocked. And excited. Some were frightened and trying to hide it inside bravado.

Every now and then, there was a glance in her direction. She could tell what they were thinking. If there had to be a killer, let it be the weird one.

The easiest target. The one no one would defend.

Amelia shoved the sleeves of her uniform up to her elbows. Showing them the images and words etched into her skin, like a birthmark.

Their pink and perfect faces frowned in disapproval.

She was sticking her neck out, she knew.

Professor Leduc was dead. Murdered.

And she wondered how long it would be before they came for her.

“Can I sit down?”

She looked up, and there was Nathaniel, a soft white hand on the back of the chair next to her.

A fuck off caught in her throat, but instead she nodded.

“No one wants to sit with me,” he said. “Once I told them everything I knew. I think they think I did it and sitting close to me would make them look guilty too.”

“They’re afraid,” said Amelia.

“I’m afraid,” said Nathaniel. “Aren’t you? Look at what happened. How it happened—”

“Be quiet,” she warned, and deeply regretted letting him join her.

“Commander Gamache was asking about the map,” he whispered, leaning close to her. “He wanted me to find mine.”

He brought out a piece of paper and smoothed it on the table, but she swept it off.

“Get away from me.”

But it was too late.

With him joining her, the hunt for a neck to land on was over. She could tell. Not by the way the other students looked at her, but the way they looked away.

Gamache reached out and, using a pen, he pulled open the drawer of the bedside table.

“This was almost certainly already seen by your agents,” he said, replacing the pen in his breast pocket and putting his hands behind his back. “But the Scene of Crime team couldn’t know its significance.”

“And what is its significance?” asked Lacoste.

“I’ve seen it before,” said Beauvoir, bending closer. “It’s a map.”

Like Gamache, he held his hands behind his back.

For years, he’d assumed it was a mannerism of the older man, but as the investigations piled up, Inspector Beauvoir came to appreciate it for what it really was.

In holding his hands behind his back, Chief Inspector Gamache was less likely to instinctively reach out and touch something that should not be touched. From there, it became a mannerism. But the root of it was practical.

There was, Beauvoir was beginning in his late thirties to understand, a purpose for every action. From the blaring act of murder to the subtle grasp of one hand in the other.

Now Beauvoir turned to Gamache.

His mentor, his boss, his father-in-law. But still, in so many ways, a mystery.

“You saw it when we first found the body,” he said. No use hiding that fact, even if he’d wanted to. “When I opened the drawer. You suggested we leave, and so I closed it without even looking. But you saw. That’s why you hustled me out. Why didn’t you say something then?”

“I needed to think,” said Gamache.

“About what?” asked Lacoste. She too was surprised that Armand Gamache should conceal evidence. That might be overstating it, she knew. He didn’t so much hide the map as fail to point it out as soon as he himself had seen it.

“This is a copy.” Gamache waved toward the paper. “I have the original, here in my rooms.”

“You do?” asked Lacoste. “Then why … how?”

“Yes,” said Gamache. “Why. How. Jean-Guy is right. I saw the map when he opened the drawer, but it was fleeting and from a distance. I needed to make sure.”

“You didn’t touch it?” asked Lacoste.

“Non.”

“But why didn’t you tell us right away?”

“I used the map as an assignment for four of the cadets,” he explained. “I gave them each a copy. Nathaniel Smythe was one of the cadets.”

“And you thought—?” she asked.

“I wondered if he’d given his to Leduc,” said Gamache. “But he claims to still have it. He went back to his dorm to look for it.”

“So four copies were made?” asked Lacoste.

“Five. I made one for myself.”

“Do you have yours?”

“It’s in Three Pines.”

“Three Pines,” said Lacoste, staring down at the map in the drawer. “That’s what the map is of.” She looked closer. “Huh. I’ve never seen a map of the village.”

“That was the assignment. To find out why this one was made. But also to try to find out why Three Pines disappeared from every other map of the area.”

“And?”

“Nathaniel says they put the assignment on hold,” said Gamache. “It wasn’t for credit, just to hone their investigative skills. They were overwhelmed with actual coursework.”

“And do you believe him?” asked Lacoste.

Armand Gamache looked at her, then at the map, and sighed. “I don’t know.”

“You want to, though.”

“Nathaniel Smythe was one of the applicants who’d been rejected by Leduc. I accepted him. I thought he showed promise. It is, I have to admit, disappointing to know he’d grown close to Serge Leduc.”

“The question,” said Lacoste, “is how close.”

“Oui.”

She called a technician over and asked that the map be sent to the lab and given special attention.

They watched as the agent placed it in an evidence bag.

“The question isn’t just who gave Leduc the map,” said Beauvoir, following it out of the bedroom. “But why Serge Leduc wanted it, and chose to keep it.”

“And keep it so close,” said Lacoste. “There’s something intimate about a bedside table.”

Beauvoir was fidgeting. Another nettle had dug into his skin. Perhaps not the largest of thorns, but an irritant nonetheless.

“You’ve had time to think,” said Lacoste to Gamache. “Any conclusions?”

“No, but something strange did happen. Shortly after I gave the cadets the maps and the assignment, someone followed me home.”

“To Three Pines? Why didn’t you say something?” asked Beauvoir, immediately alarmed.

“Because I didn’t want to alarm anyone,” said Gamache with a smile. “And I don’t know who it was, or why. Nothing came of it.”

“You think it was Leduc?” asked Lacoste. “And that the map has something to do with all this?”

“I don’t see how,” Gamache admitted. “The murderer couldn’t have been looking for it, since Leduc didn’t exactly hide it and the place doesn’t seem to have been searched. I don’t think the map has anything to do with his death.”

“But it worries you?” said Jean-Guy.

Armand Gamache nodded, very slowly.

“It worries me because one of my students must’ve given him the map, and it worries me because Serge Leduc kept it. Which leads me to believe he valued it for some reason.”

Gamache turned to Isabelle Lacoste.

“Please believe me. If I thought for a moment that map had anything to do with the murder, I’d have said something immediately.”

“I do believe you, patron,” she said. “But we still have to make sure. Can you give me the names of the other cadets who had copies?”

“Besides Nathaniel Smythe, there were two seniors, Huifen Cloutier and Jacques Laurin. He’s the head cadet. And another freshman, Amelia Choquet.”

“The other cadet who served him coffee in the morning?” Lacoste glanced down at the dead man.

“Yes. When you analyze the paper, can you tell me what you find?” asked Gamache.

“Of course,” said Lacoste.

“With your permission, I’d like to invite those four down to Three Pines.”

“Now?”

“Yes, immediately,” said Gamache.

“Why? If the map’s of no real importance?”

“What it does tell us is that one of those four had a close relationship with Professor Leduc. Close enough for them to give him the map, and close enough for him to keep it. For whatever reason. Whoever that was might know more than they realize about his death.”

“Or might know more about his death, period,” said Lacoste.

“Yes.”

“Are you taking them away to protect them, or to protect the rest of the academy?”

“I’m taking them away because I can’t answer that question,” said Gamache. “There’s a killer here. Someone who put a gun to the head of an unarmed man, and shot. Do you think that person would hesitate to do the same thing to a student, if that young man or woman became a threat? The sooner they get out of here, the better.”

Isabelle Lacoste nodded but was far from certain if, in removing the cadets to Three Pines, Gamache wasn’t also removing the murderer. To Three Pines.

“I’ll tell them the map might figure in Professor Leduc’s death and ask them to restart their investigation,” said Gamache. “That’ll explain it.”

“I have no objection. Inspector?”

Jean-Guy Beauvoir also shook his head.

“I’ve spoken with Cadet Smythe,” said Lacoste. “We’ll need to interview the other three before they can leave. The students’ rooms are being searched now.”

“I’ll get the agents to be extra thorough with those four,” said Beauvoir, and stepped away to speak to one of the investigators, who left the room.

“I’m going to address the school,” said Gamache, looking at his watch. It was only ten in the morning, though it felt like midafternoon. “Can you assemble the students and staff in the auditorium?”

One of the agents nodded and left.

“Bon. While he does that, I’ll go to my office to see the mayor and the police chief.” Gamache turned to Chief Inspector Lacoste. “There’s something else we need to discuss. Can you come by my office in an hour?”

“Of course.”

“Let me walk you out,” said Beauvoir to Gamache. Once in the corridor he asked, “Do you really think that map has nothing to do with Leduc’s murder?”

“I don’t see how it could.”

But he looked uncertain, and as Beauvoir watched Gamache walk purposefully down the corridor, he squirmed slightly, rolling his shoulders to relieve the tension and the prickling sensation between his blades.