The Brutal Telling

SIX

“Chief Inspector? It’s Sharon Harris.”

“Oui, Dr. Harris,” said Gamache into the receiver.

“I haven’t done the complete autopsy but I have a couple of pieces of information from my preliminary work.”

“Go on.” Gamache leaned on the desk and brought his notebook closer.

“There were no identifying marks on the body, no tattoos, no operation scars. I’ve sent his dental work out.”

“What shape were his teeth in?”

“Now that’s an interesting point. They weren’t as bad as I expected. I bet he didn’t go to the dentist very often, and he’d lost a couple of molars to some gum disease, but overall, not bad.”

“Did he brush?”

There was a small laugh. “Unbelievably, he did. He also flossed. There’s some receding, some plaque and disease, but he took care of his teeth. There’s even evidence he once had quite a bit of work done. Cavities filled, root canal.”

“Expensive stuff.”

“Exactly. This man had money at one time.”

He wasn’t born a tramp, thought Gamache. But then no one was.

“Can you tell how long ago the work was done?”

“I’d say twenty years at least, judging by the wear and the materials used, but I’ve sent a sample along to the forensic dentist. Should hear by tomorrow.”

“Twenty years ago,” mused Gamache, doing the math, jotting figures in his notebook. “The man was in his seventies. That would mean he had the work done sometime in his fifties. Then something happened. He lost his job, drank, had a breakdown; something happened that pushed him over the edge.”

“Something happened,” agreed Dr. Harris, “but not in his fifties. Something happened in his late thirties or early forties.”

“That long ago?” Gamache looked down at his notes. He’d written 20 ans and circled it. He was confused.

“That’s what I wanted to tell you, Chief,” the coroner continued. “There’s something wrong about this body.”

Gamache sat up straighter and took his half-moon reading glasses off. Across the room Beauvoir saw this and walked over to the Chief’s desk.

“Go on,” said Gamache, nodding to Beauvoir to sit. Then he punched a button on the phone. “I’ve put you on the speaker. Inspector Beauvoir’s here.”

“Good. Well, it struck me as strange that this man who seemed a derelict should brush his teeth and even floss. But homeless people can do odd things. They’re often mentally unwell, as you know, and can be obsessive about certain things.”

“Though not often hygiene,” said Gamache.

“True. It was strange. Then when I undressed him I found he was clean. He’d had a bath or a shower recently. And his hair, while wild, was also clean.”

“There’re halfway homes,” said Gamache. “Maybe he was in one of those. Though an agent called all the local social services and he’s not known to them.”

“How d’you know?” The coroner rarely questioned Chief Inspector Gamache, but she was curious. “We don’t know his name and surely his description would sound like any number of homeless men.”

“That’s true,” admitted Gamache. “She described him as a slim, older man in his seventies with white hair, blue eyes and weathered skin. None of the men who match that description and use shelters in this area is missing. But we’re having someone take his photo around.”

There was a pause on the line.

“What is it?”

“Your description is wrong.”

“What do you mean?” Surely Gamache had seen him as clearly as everyone else.

“He wasn’t an elderly man. That’s what I called to tell you. His teeth were a clue; then I went looking. His arteries and blood vessels have very little plaque, and almost no atherosclerosis. His prostate isn’t particularly enlarged and there’s no sign of arthritis. I’d say he was in his mid-fifties.”

My age, thought Gamache. Was it possible that wreck on the floor was the same age?

“And I don’t think he was homeless.”

“Why not?”

“Too clean for one thing. He took care of himself. Not GQ material, it’s true, but not all of us can look like Inspector Beauvoir.”

Beauvoir preened slightly.

“On the outside he looked seventy but on the inside he was in good physical condition. Then I looked at his clothes. They were clean too. And mended. They were old and worn, but propres.”

She used the Québécois word that was rarely used anymore, except by elderly parents. But it seemed to fit here. Propre. Nothing fancy. Nothing fashionable. But sturdy and clean and presentable. There was a worn dignity about the word.

“I have to do more work, but that’s my preliminary finding. I’ll e-mail all this to you.”

“Bon. Can you guess what sort of work he did? How’d he keep himself in shape?”

“Which gym did he belong to, you mean?” He could hear the smile in her voice.

“That’s right,” said Gamache. “Did he jog or lift weights? Was he in a spinning class or maybe Pilates?”

Now the coroner laughed. “At a guess I’d say it wasn’t much walking, but a lot of lifting. His upper body is slightly more toned than his lower. But I’ll keep that question in mind as I go.”

“Merci, docteur,” said Gamache.

“One more thing,” said Beauvoir. “The murder weapon. Any further clues? Any ideas?”

“I’m just about to do that part of the autopsy, but I’ve taken a quick look and my assessment stays the same. Blunt instrument.”

“A fireplace poker?” asked Beauvoir.

“Possibly. I did notice something white in the wound. Might be ash.”

“We’ll have the lab results from the pokers by tomorrow morning,” said Gamache.

“I’ll let you know when I have more to tell you.”

Dr. Harris rung off just as Agent Lacoste arrived back. “Clearing up outside. It’s going to be a nice sunset.”

Beauvoir looked at her, incredulous. She was supposed to be scouring Three Pines for clues, trying to find the murder weapon and the murderer, interviewing suspects, and the first thing out of her mouth was about the nice sunset?

He noticed the Chief drift over to a window, sipping his coffee. He turned round and smiled. “Beautiful.”

A conference table had been set up in the center of their Incident Room with desks and chairs placed in a semicircle at one end. On each desk was a computer and phone. It looked a little like Three Pines, with the conference table as the village green and their desks as the shops. It was an ancient and tested design.

A young Sûreté agent from the local detachment hovered, looking as if he wanted to say something.

“Can I help you?” Chief Inspector Gamache asked.

The other agents from the local detachment stopped and stared. Some exchanged knowing smiles.

The young man squared his shoulders.

“I’d like to help with your investigation.”

There was dead silence. Even the technicians stopped what they were doing, as people do when witnessing a terrible calamity.

“I’m sorry?” said Inspector Beauvoir, stepping forward. “What did you just say?”

“I’d like to help.” By now the young agent could see the truck hurtling toward him and could feel his vehicle spin out of control. Too late, he realized his mistake.

He saw all this, and stood firm, from either terror or courage. It was hard to tell. Behind him four or five large agents crossed their arms and did nothing to help.

“Aren’t you supposed to be setting up desks and telephone lines?” asked Beauvoir, stepping closer to the agent.

“I have. That’s all done.” He voice was smaller, weaker, but still there.

“And what makes you think you can help?”

Behind Beauvoir stood the Chief Inspector, quietly watching. The young agent looked at Inspector Beauvoir when answering his questions, but then his eyes returned to Gamache.

“I know the area. I know the people.”

“So do they.” Beauvoir waved at the wall of police behind the agent. “If we needed help why would we choose you?”

This seemed to throw him and he stood silent. Beauvoir waved his hand to dismiss the agent and walked away.

“Because,” the agent said to the Chief Inspector, “I asked.”

Beauvoir stopped and turned round, looking incredulous. “Pardon? Pardon? This is homicide, not a game of Mother May I. Are you even in the Sûreté?”

It wasn’t a bad question. The agent looked about sixteen and his uniform hung loosely on him, though an effort had obviously been made to make it fit. With him in the foreground and his confrères behind it looked like an evolutionary scale, with the young agent on the extinction track.

“If you have no more work to do, please leave.”

The young agent nodded, turned to get back to work, met the wall of other officers, and stopped. Then he walked around them, watched by Gamache and his homicide team. Their last view of the young officer before they turned away was of his back, and a furiously blushing neck.

“Join me please,” Gamache said to Beauvoir and Lacoste, who took their seats at the conference table.

“What do you think?” Gamache asked quietly.

“About the body?”

“About the boy.”

“Not again,” said Beauvoir, exasperated. “There are perfectly good officers already in homicide if we need someone. If they’re busy with cases there’s always the wait-list. Agents from other divisions are dying to get into homicide. Why choose an untested kid from the boonies? If we need another investigator let’s call one down from headquarters.”

It was their classic argument.

The homicide division of the Sûreté du Québec was the most prestigious posting in the province. Perhaps in Canada. They worked on the worst of all crimes in the worst of all conditions. And they worked with the best, the most respected and famous, of all investigators. Chief Inspector Gamache.

So why pick the dregs?

“We could, certainly,” admitted the Chief.

But Beauvoir knew he wouldn’t. Gamache had found Isabelle Lacoste sitting outside her Superintendent’s office, about to be fired from traffic division. Gamache had asked her to join him, to the astonishment of everyone.

He’d found Beauvoir himself reduced to guarding evidence at the Sûreté outpost of Trois Rivières. Every day Beauvoir, Agent Beauvoir then, had suffered the ignominy of putting on his Sûreté uniform then stepping into the evidence cage. And staying there. Like an animal. He’d so pissed off his colleagues and bosses this was the only place left to put him. Alone. With inanimate objects. Silence all day, except when other agents came to put something in or take something out. They wouldn’t even meet his eye. He’d become untouchable. Unmentionable. Invisible.

But Chief Inspector Gamache saw. He’d come one day on a case, had himself gone to the cage with evidence, and there he’d found Jean Guy Beauvoir.

The agent, the man no one wanted, was now the second in command in homicide.

But Beauvoir couldn’t shake the certainty that Gamache had simply gotten lucky so far, with a few notable exceptions. The reality was, untested agents were dangerous. They made mistakes. And mistakes in homicide led to death.

He turned and looked at the slight young agent with loathing. Was this the one who’d finally make that blunder? The magnificent mistake that would lead to another death? It could be me who gets it, thought Beauvoir. Or worse. He glanced at Gamache beside him.

“Why him?” Beauvoir whispered.

“He seems nice,” said Lacoste.

“Like the sunset,” Beauvoir sneered.

“Like the sunset,” she repeated. “He was standing all alone.”

There was silence.

“That’s it?” asked Beauvoir.

“He doesn’t fit in. Look at him.”

“You’d choose the runt of the litter? For homicide detail? For God’s sake, sir,” he appealed to Gamache. “This isn’t the Humane Society.”

“You think not?” said Gamache with a small smile.

“We need the best for this team, for this case. We don’t have time to train people. And frankly, he looks as though he needs help tying his shoes.”

It was true, Gamache had to admit, the young agent was awkward. But he was something else as well.

“We’ll take him,” said the Chief to Beauvoir. “I know you don’t approve, and I understand your reasons.”

“Then why take him, sir?”

“Because he asked,” said Gamache, rising up. “And no one else did.”

“But they’d join us in a second,” Beauvoir argued, getting up as well. “Anyone would.”

“What do you look for in a member of our team?” asked Gamache.

Beauvoir thought. “I want someone smart and strong.”

Gamache tipped his head toward the young man. “And how much strength do you think that took? How much strength do you think it takes him to go to work every day? Almost as much as it took you, in Trois Rivières, or you,” he turned to Lacoste, “in traffic division. The others might want to join us, but they either didn’t have the brains or lacked the courage to ask. Our young man had both.”

Our, thought Beauvoir. Our young man. He looked at him across the room. Alone. Coiling wires carefully and placing them in a box.

“I value your judgment, you know that, Jean Guy. But I feel strongly about this.”

“I understand, sir.” And he did. “I know this is important to you. But you’re not always right.”

Gamache stared at his Inspector and Beauvoir recoiled, afraid he’d gone too far. Presumed too much on their personal relationship. But then the Chief smiled.

“Happily, I have you to tell me when I make a mistake.”

“I think you’re making one now.”

“Noted. Thank you. Will you please invite the young man to join us.”

Beauvoir walked purposefully across the room and stopped at the young agent.

“Come with me,” he said.

The agent straightened up. He looked concerned. “Yes, sir.”

Behind them an officer snickered. Beauvoir stopped and turned back to the young officer following him.

“What’s your name?”

“Paul Morin. I’m with the Cowansville detachment of the Sûreté, sir.”

“Agent Morin, will you please take a seat at the table. We’d like your thoughts on this murder investigation.”

Morin looked astonished. But not quite as astonished as the burly men behind him. Beauvoir turned back and walked slowly toward the conference table. It felt good.

“Reports, please,” said Gamache and glanced at his watch. It was five thirty.

“Results are beginning to come in on some of the evidence we collected this morning in the bistro,” said Beauvoir. “The victim’s blood was found on the floor and between some of the floorboards, though there wasn’t much.”

“Dr. Harris will have a fuller report soon,” said Gamache. “She thinks the lack of blood is explained by internal bleeding.”

Beauvoir nodded. “We do have a report on his clothing. Still nothing to identify him. His clothes were old but clean and of good quality once. Merino wool sweater, cotton shirt, corduroy pants.”

“I wonder if he’d put on his best clothes,” said Agent Lacoste.

“Go on,” said Gamache, leaning forward and taking off his glasses.

“Well.” She picked her way through her thoughts. “Suppose he was going to meet someone important. He’d have a shower, shave, clip his nails even.”

“And he might pick up clean clothes,” said Beauvoir, following her thoughts. “Maybe at a used clothing store, or a Goodwill depot.”

“There’s one in Cowansville,” said Agent Morin. “And another in Granby. I can check them.”

“Good,” said the Chief Inspector.

Agent Morin looked over at Inspector Beauvoir, who nodded his approval.

“Dr. Harris doesn’t think this man was a vagrant, not in the classic sense of the word,” said Chief Inspector Gamache. “He appeared in his seventies, but she’s convinced he was closer to fifty.”

“You’re kidding,” said Agent Lacoste. “What happened to him?”

That was the question, of course, thought Gamache. What happened to him? In life, to age him two decades. And in death.

Beauvoir stood up and walked to the fresh, clean sheets of paper pinned to the wall. He picked out a new felt pen, took off the cap and instinctively wafted it under his nose. “Let’s go through the events of last night.”

Isabelle Lacoste consulted her notes and told them about her interviews with the bistro staff.

They were beginning to see what had happened the night before. As he listened Armand Gamache could see the cheerful bistro, filled with villagers having a meal or drinks on Labor Day weekend. Talking about the Brume County Fair, the horse trials, the judging of livestock, the crafts tent. Celebrating the end of summer and saying good-bye to family and friends. He could see the stragglers leaving and the young waiters clearing up, banking the fires, washing the dishes. Then the door opening and Old Mundin stepping in. Gamache had no idea what Old Mundin looked like, so he placed in his mind a character from a painting by Bruegel the Elder. A stooped and cheery peasant. Walking through the bistro door, a young waiter perhaps helping to bring in the repaired chairs. Mundin and Olivier would have conferred. Money would have changed hands and Mundin would have left with new items needing fixing.

Then what?

According to Lacoste’s interviews the waiters had left shortly before Olivier and Mundin. Leaving just one person in the bistro.

“What did you think of Havoc Parra?” Gamache asked.

“He seemed surprised by what had happened,” said Lacoste. “It might’ve been an act, of course. Hard to tell. His father told me something interesting, though. He confirmed what we heard earlier. He saw someone in the woods.”

“When?”

“Earlier in the summer. He’s working at the old Hadley house for the new owners and thinks he saw someone up there.”

“Thinks? Or did?” asked Beauvoir.

“Thinks. He chased him, but the guy disappeared.”

They were silent for a moment, then Gamache spoke. “Havoc Parra says he locked up and left by one in the morning. Six hours later the man’s body was found by Myrna Landers, who was out for a walk. Why would a stranger be murdered in Three Pines, and in the bistro?”

“If Havoc really did lock up, then the murderer had to be someone who knew where to find a key,” said Lacoste.

“Or already had one,” said Beauvoir. “Do you know what I wonder? I wonder why the murderer left him there.”

“What do you mean?” asked Lacoste.

“Well, no one was there. It was dark. Why not pick up the body and take it into the forest? You wouldn’t have to take him far, just a few hundred feet. The animals would do the rest and chances are he’d never be found. We’d never know a murder had been committed.”

“Why do you think the body was left?” asked Gamache.

Beauvoir thought for a minute. “I think someone wanted him to be found.”

“In the bistro?” asked Gamache.

“In the bistro.”