World of Curiosities

CHAPTER 10

“Are you insane?” Beauvoir seethed. “You’ll get us all killed.” He turned to Chernin, who was now off the phone. “He let them go.”

Chernin looked at the Chief Inspector with surprise but didn’t challenge him. Instead, she said, “The warrant for Dagenais’s property has come through.”

“Did you hear what I said?” Beauvoir demanded, looking from one to the other.

“Good,” said Gamache, ignoring him and replying to Chernin. “You’re in charge. Good luck, Linda.”

“And you, patron.” She watched as Gamache picked up one of the Glocks and loaded it.

“Agent Beauvoir,” said Gamache, fixing the gun to his belt, “do you know where Dagenais lives?”

“I don’t know the address, but I know how to get there.”

“Well, I know the address, but not how to get there. Come with me.”

At the door, Beauvoir looked back at Chernin. He needed reassurance that he wasn’t about to get into a car with a crazy man. An armed crazy man. But Inspector Chernin had already turned away.

As he drove, Jean-Guy was tempted to pepper the Chief Inspector with questions, but did not. He was afraid of the answers.

As they turned off the main road, Gamache asked, “Does Dagenais live alone?”

“Yes.”

“Let me know when we’re almost there.”

A few minutes later, Beauvoir said, “It’s down here a couple hundred meters.”

“Shut off your lights, please, and turn the car around in that cul-de-sac.”

The light rain of the early evening had turned to sleet. Once parked, Beauvoir reached for the door handle, but for the second time that endless day, Chief Inspector Gamache stopped him.

“Wait.”

Dear God, thought Jean-Guy. Not more poetry. Shoot me now.

But the Chief Inspector just sat, and stared out the window at the dark house, barely visible through the trees. One dim light shone in a downstairs window.

“Do you see any vehicles in the drive?”

Beauvoir squinted. “No. Dagenais’s car is at the station.”

Gamache would know that, thought Beauvoir. So why ask? And what were they waiting for? They had the warrant. None of this made sense.

A couple of minutes later a pickup truck drove by and turned into Dagenais’s driveway.

“Do you recognize it?”

Beauvoir did. His face, unseen in the dark, had gone pale.

“It’s the second-in-command. Dagenais’s man. The one who almost got us all killed. The one you released.”

Beauvoir expected some reaction from Gamache. An acknowledgment that he’d fucked up. The guy must be there for the same reason they were. To find the evidence. And Gamache was letting him do it.

“Oui,” said Gamache. “This’s why I released him.”

“You expected him to come here?”

“I hoped.”

It took Agent Beauvoir a few moments to adjust, and see the man beside him as not an incompetent lunatic.

“Holy shit, you expected him to come here.” The words were the same, but the tone and emphasis had changed. “You released him so he could do our work for us.”

“So he could find what we almost certainly never would,” said Gamache. “Dagenais would’ve hidden the evidence too well. But his second-in-command, also implicated, would know where.”

He reached for the door handle, as did Beauvoir. “Non. Stay here.”

“But—”

“I need you here. If he gets by me, if he tries to leave, stop him. Block the road. Assume he’s armed. Arrest him.”

“D’accord. And you?”

“When you have him secured, come find me. Got it? Whatever you hear, do not leave your post. Do you understand?”

Beauvoir knew what that meant. “Are you sure—”

“You’re the last line of defense, Agent Beauvoir. You have to stop him. We have to get that evidence. They’ll find other children. Might even be grooming some right now. You have to stop him. I’m counting on you, Jean-Guy.”

“Yessir.”

Beauvoir watched as the Chief Inspector disappeared into the swirling rain and snow.

The sleet hit Gamache’s face and made it difficult to see. But it also meant it would be difficult to be seen.

Crouching low, he approached the house slowly. Slowly.

Beauvoir was right, of course. In waiting, he’d allowed this man to get a head start on finding evidence. And maybe destroying it. This might’ve been a huge misjudgment.

He’d soon find out.

Going from window to window, he looked in. There was one light on, in the living room. But no one was there. Then Gamache noticed a dim glow in the woods.

He crept over, careful, careful not to step on any twigs. Not to lose his footing on the dead leaves, made slick by the sleet. Getting to a nearby tree, Gamache watched as the man knelt and brushed away a pile of leaves, revealing a large log half buried in the wet ground. Reaching into the rotten tree trunk, he withdrew first one package, then another. Gamache couldn’t see what they were. The objects were wrapped in something. The man shoved them into a knapsack and got up.

Then he stopped. And looked around.

Had he heard something? Sensed something? The man reached into his coat and brought out a gun.

The moment stretched on. The sleet kept falling, dribbling through Gamache’s hair and down his face. It tickled and he almost wiped it away. It was instinctive, but he stopped himself. Staying absolutely still. Barely breathing. Finally, the man lowered his weapon and started forward. He was approaching Gamache, who considered taking his own gun out now but decided against it. There was no way to do it without making a sound. Besides, he needed both hands free.

Wait. Wait.

The man was within a foot of him. One more step and Gamache would make his move. But now there was a hesitation, a change in the man’s body.

He was turning toward the tree. Toward Gamache. Lifting his weapon.

Gamache leapt. His hand, slick from the sleet, grabbed the man’s wrist. Groping for the hand, the gun.

It went off.

Beauvoir heard the shot and scrambled out of the car. Taking his gun from its holster, he started forward.

Then slid to a stop on the muddy road.

Breathing heavily, he stared into the snow and rain and darkness.

There were no more shots. Had that been the Chief? Or …

His heart pounding, Beauvoir stood frozen in place. Every instinct told him to run forward. To do something. Something.

Anything. But he knew the Chief was right.

If Dagenais’s man had shot, maybe killed Gamache, then he was the last line of defense. He had to use the car to block the road. The agent would assume Gamache was on his own, and not be expecting it.

Keeping his eyes on the forest, Beauvoir got back into the car and prepared himself.

Will this day never end?

It was over in a matter of moments.

“Fuck you,” the man shouted, spitting rotten leaves out of his mouth as Gamache turned him over. “I should’ve killed you when I had the chance.”

“Probably. You’re under arrest.”

“On what charge. I haven’t done anything wrong. You’ve assaulted me, you fuck-head.”

Gamache scooped up the gun and put it in his pocket, then he grabbed the knapsack and looked inside.

There they were. The video camera and an exercise book, with butterflies on the cover. And monstrosities inside.

“Looks like stealing to me.” Gamache took off his coat and wrapped it around the items for extra protection against the sleet, now pouring down. “Unless these belong to you.”

The agent was silent.

“I thought not.” He hauled the man to his feet and pushed him forward. “Walk.”

When he saw the two figures appear out of the swirling sleet, Beauvoir leapt out of the car and ran forward, meeting them halfway. “You got him. I thought … I wondered…”

Gamache handed the man over. “Secure him in the back seat.”

“Yessir. With pleasure.”

The man who’d been his supervisor until a few hours ago was letting rip with a string of abuse and threats. That gave Beauvoir even more pleasure, as did the rotting maple leaf plastered to the side of the man’s face. Which Beauvoir left there.

“I heard a shot. You okay?” he asked when he got back into the driver’s seat.

“I am. You heard the shot, but stayed here? You didn’t leave your post?”

“You sound surprised. The truth is, I was getting caught up on emails. I’d have gone eventually.”

Gamache gave a small grunt of amusement. He’d seen Beauvoir’s dark hair, dripping wet. He’d obviously heard the shot, gotten out of the car, and stood there for a while. Tempted.

But he’d followed orders.

“You got them.” Beauvoir nodded toward the items the Chief Inspector was placing in evidence bags. A video camera and an exercise book.

“He got them.”

Gamache was soaked through and shivering. He leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes. Not to sleep, not to rest. Time for that later. He was trying to see the next step.

It wasn’t over yet. But almost. Almost.

Beauvoir, cold and wet himself, turned the heat up full blast, pointing the vents toward Gamache, and drove back to the station in silence. His questions answered. Or most of them.

An hour later all three of the agents Gamache had released, and two of the off-duty officers, had been arrested. Their names found in the careful records in the exercise book. Forensics had taken prints and DNA off the video camera and the tape still inside, as well as the ledger, then handed it back to Gamache and Chernin for closer study.

Clotilde had been, among other things, a businesswoman. She’d kept detailed records. There were names and dates and addresses. And amounts paid. As well as stickers beside certain names. Unicorns for some. Roses. Fairies. Puppies.

“Code?” Chernin asked.

“Seems so.” It was far from clear what those cheerful appliqués meant. Gamache wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

No, he was sure. He didn’t want to know. And wished he didn’t have to think about it. But he did.

Between these records and the videos, there was more than enough evidence to charge everyone involved.

“I want photographs taken of every page and emailed to Serious Crimes,” said Gamache as he closed the book. Squeezing it shut as though it would trap the rot in. “And copies made of the videos.”

If anything happened to them, if somehow this evidence was destroyed, there would be a record of it.

Once he’d issued assignments, Gamache went to the bathroom to splash warm water on his face and disinfect his hands. He changed into the clean and dry clothes he’d packed, knowing they’d probably have to stay at least a few days.

He gripped the side of the sink and closed his eyes. Then, opening them, he stared at himself in the mirror. There was a middle-aged man, with graying hair, gray stubble, and deep lines down his face. How quickly this happened.

He longed to call Reine-Marie. To speak to Daniel and Annie. To hear about their day at school. About Reine-Marie’s day. She worked at Québec’s National Library and Archives, but her hobby was tracking down lost documents from Montréal in the 1600s.

There was one book in particular she was desperate to find.

“It’s called a grimoire,” she’d told him one night, when the kids were asleep and they were relaxing on the back balcony of their apartment in the Outremont quartier of Montréal. “Most of my colleagues think it’s a myth, but I’m not so sure. I found a reference to it in Mother Catherine’s writings.”

“The mystic?” asked Armand, who was an avid, though amateur, student of Québec history.

“Well, mystic or lunatic,” said Reine-Marie. “She was an Augustinian. Helped found one of the first orders in Québec, back in the mid-1600s.”

“What’s a grimoire?”

“It’s a book to summon demons.”

Armand turned in his seat to look at her. “Demons?”

Reine-Marie nodded. “It was an age of demons and witchcraft. Mother Catherine was obsessed with them. A woman in Montréal, accused of being a witch, was said to have a grimoire. But if she did, it was lost.”

“And you think you can find it?” he asked.

“I think we might have it somewhere in the archives.”

“Wouldn’t the clerics have destroyed it?” asked Armand.

“Not necessarily. Mother Catherine was a powerful figure. My theory is, she’d have asked to keep it. To study it.”

“Know your enemy.”

“Yes. We have her papers and books in the archives.”

“Then wouldn’t this grimoire have already been found among them?”

Reine-Marie gave him a pitying look. “And what do the Sûreté archives look like?”

“Archives? You mean the piles of old papers going back a hundred years, dumped into containers in the basement?”

“That’s pretty much what the basement of the Bibliothèque et Archives nationale du Québec looks like.”

He envied her her job. Had he not been a cop, he’d have loved to be a historian or archivist. Going over old papers, finding curiosities buried in obscure libraries.

Now, as he stared at himself in the mirror, Armand wondered if he hadn’t just found a grimoire. Not the same as Reine-Marie described. Not an ancient book to summon demons. This one simply named the ones already here.

It was late, well past midnight, and he could not wake her up to tell her about his own grim discovery. Instead, he dried his face with a rough paper towel and willed himself to go back out.

As he returned to the open office, he half expected to see four horsemen. But instead, he saw his officers hard at work and, among them, Agent Jean-Guy Beauvoir.

The young man in the basement. Who’d refused to be corrupted. Who’d stood his ground.

And Armand knew there was hope.

Jean-Guy Beauvoir looked up from booking one of his former colleagues and watched Chief Inspector Gamache surrounded by his officers. He looked tired and rubbed his forehead as he listened closely to each report. Each person vying for his attention.

Under the look of fatigue, thought Jean-Guy, the attack of migraine and the sigh / There is always another story, there is more than meets the eye.