by Louise Penny
And perhaps, a slight warning voice suggested, for more than fun.
To his left, Superintendent Lacoste watched all this. Aware of the forces at work. Hoping for the best but half bracing for the collision.
Yet as the meeting went on, Jean-Guy Beauvoir was showing a side to himself she hadn’t seen before.
She’d seen him display incredible bravery. Fierce loyalty. Dogged, often brilliant commitment to finding killers.
What she’d never seen before, in this kinetic man, was restraint.
Until today.
Somewhere along the line, probably in that sunny Québec forest, Beauvoir had learned which battles needed to be fought. And which did not. What mattered and what did not. Who were true allies and who were not.
He’d entered the woods a second-in-command. He’d left it a leader.
It was a shame, Lacoste thought, that it should happen just as he was about to leave the Sûreté.
They went through the cases, one by one, each lead investigator speaking succinctly about the homicide they were heading up. Giving updates on forensics, interrogations. Motives. Suspects.
As always, cell phones had been turned off and put away, banned for the life of the meeting.
As the gathering went on, the investigators slowly stopped looking to Gamache. Stopped glancing toward Superintendent Lacoste. And turned their full attention to Chief Inspector Beauvoir. Who gave them his.
Where arrests had been made and they were going to court, Beauvoir wanted to know what the Crown Prosecutor thought of the case. Though the fact was, he already knew. No homicide went to trial without Chief Inspector Beauvoir’s being completely aware of the strengths and weaknesses of the case.
His questions were for the benefit of the team.
Beauvoir sat now with his elbows on the shiny table, hands clasped, leaning forward. Intent, focused. He hoped he gave off an aura of calm and steady leadership. The truth was, he gave off a sense of energy. Vitality. Extreme alertness.
As he glanced at his investigators, Jean-Guy Beauvoir’s eyes were bright and encouraging. His glasses gave the impression he was older than he actually was. In his late thirties, he was younger than many of the senior investigators in the room.
Twenty years younger than the man to his right.
Slender and well-groomed, Beauvoir had dark hair that was just beginning to show some gray. And his once-lithe frame was filling out slightly.
As he’d approached the conference room, he’d heard some of the comments. And knew who they came from. It was no surprise. These were the agents most likely to question.
When Gamache was the Chief Superintendent, Lacoste and Beauvoir had gone to him asking that these same troublesome agents be removed.
“Remember what happened before,” said Beauvoir.
There was, within the Sûreté du Québec, a before and after. A line drawn in their collective and institutional memory.
“Before” was a time of fear. Of distrust. Of enemies disguised as allies. It was a time of vast and rampant brutality. Of senior officers sanctioning beatings and even murders.
Gamache had led the resistance, at huge personal risk, and had eventually agreed to become Chief Superintendent himself.
No one left standing in the Sûreté who’d been through that could ever forget what had gone “before.”
“We have to get rid of these agents,” Lacoste had said. “They were transferred into homicide when things were out of control, just to cause trouble.”
Gamache nodded. He knew that was true.
But he also knew that few were more loyal than those who’d been given a chance.
“Keep them on,” Gamache had said. “And train them properly.”
They had. And now, under Chief Inspector Beauvoir, those agents had become leaders themselves. Battle-hardened and trusted.
Which wasn’t to say they didn’t have their own opinions, opinions they were keen to voice.
Those had been the very homicide agents Beauvoir had heard questioning Gamache, just before he had arrived in the conference room.
With the Monday-morning meeting about to wrap up, something caught Beauvoir’s attention, and he looked down the long conference table.
“Are we boring you?”
Agent Lysette Cloutier looked up, and her eyes grew round.
“Désolée,” she said, fumbling with her phone.
Chief Inspector Beauvoir continued to stare at her until she put it down.
The meeting continued, but only for another minute, before Beauvoir stopped it again.
“Agent Cloutier, what’re you doing?”
Though it was clear what she was doing. She was typing on her phone. Again.
She looked up, flustered.
“I’m sorry. So sorry, but—”
“Is it a personal emergency?” Beauvoir asked.
“No, not really. I don’t think—”
“Then put it away.”
She lowered the phone to the table, then picked it up again. “I’m sorry, sir, but there is something.”
“For us?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
The final report was wrapping up, and the others in the meeting wanted to finish and get out of there. Which meant they wanted her to put down the damned phone and shut up.
Feeling all eyes on her. Feeling her heart pounding in her chest. In her neck. In the vein at her temple. Agent Cloutier clutched the phone and spoke up.
“A friend has emailed me. His daughter is missing. Been gone since Saturday night.”
“Where?” asked Beauvoir, pulling a pad of paper toward him.
“In the Eastern Townships.”
“How old is she?”
“Twenty-five.”
His pen stopped. He was expecting a child. He was relieved, but also slightly annoyed. Agent Cloutier could see this and tried to get him onside.
“She was on her way to visit him up north but never arrived.”
“Is she married?”
“Yes.”
“What does her husband say?”
“Nothing. Homer, her father, has called him over and over, but Carl just says there’s nothing wrong and to stop calling.”
“But she isn’t at home?”
“Apparently not. Carl won’t say where she is. He just hangs up on Homer. Now he isn’t answering at all.” She was talking rapidly, trying to get it all in. Searching the Chief Inspector’s face for some sign of concern. Some sign she was getting through to him.
“Where does the father live?”
“North of Montréal. In the Laurentians. Ste.-Agathe.”
“Has he gone down?”
“No. He wanted to give it until today.”
Beauvoir considered the woman at the far end of the table. This was, as far as he could remember, the first time Agent Cloutier had spoken in a meeting.
“I can see why you’d be concerned, but this is a local issue. Let the local detachment handle it.”
Beauvoir returned his attention to the inspector, who was just wrapping up her report.
“Homer called the local Sûreté. They sent a car but didn’t find anything. That was yesterday. She’s still missing. He’s getting really worried.”
“Then he needs to file a missing-persons report. You can help him with that.”
He didn’t mean to sound callous, but there were clear delineations of duties, and best not to step into someone else’s lane.
“Please, patron,” said Cloutier. “Can I go down? Take a look around?” She could see that Chief Inspector Beauvoir was undecided. Teetering. “She’s pregnant.”
Cloutier felt everyone turn to her. Flushing wildly, she kept her eyes on the Chief Inspector.
Beauvoir considered her again and weighed his options.
The fact this woman was pregnant shouldn’t change anything. And yet, for Beauvoir, it did.
Missing. Pregnant. Unhelpful husband.
These were worrying signs. Warning signs.
Lysette Cloutier was not an experienced or, let’s face it, effective criminal investigator. If he freed her up to look into it, just for the day, she’d come back with nothing. Probably because there was nothing to find.
The missing woman had probably just gone away for the weekend. Told her husband she was visiting her family but was really with girlfriends. Or a lover.
Far from the first person to do that.
“What do I tell her father?” Cloutier pressed. “He’s really worried. It’s not like her.”
“He might not know her as well as he thinks he does.”
“But he knows his son-in-law.”
“What does that mean?”
“He’s never said it outright, but I know he doesn’t like him.”
“That’s not a reason to engage the resources of the homicide department, Agent Cloutier.”
“He thinks something bad’s happened.” She could see she was losing him. She racked her brains for something else to say. “How would you feel, sir? If your child didn’t come home?”
She could see that the words had hit home, but not in the way she’d hoped.
Chief Inspector Beauvoir now looked angry.
Beside him, Superintendent Lacoste watched and braced. There’d be a collision after all, but not with Gamache. Chief Inspector Beauvoir was about to run over Agent Cloutier.
“My son is an infant,” Beauvoir said, his voice cold. “There’s a difference.”
“But if you love them, age doesn’t matter, does it? Really?” she persisted, barely believing she was doing this. “They’re still our children.”
Beauvoir stared at her, the whole room holding its breath while the Chief Inspector weighed the options.
“What’s the name?”
“Vivienne. Vivienne Godin.”
Beauvoir wrote that down. “And husband?”
“Carl Tracey.”
If this Vivienne Godin really was missing, then something bad had happened, and time counted.
Unfortunately, Cloutier was pretty much their Clouseau. She would not find the woman, even if standing next to her in line for a Double Double at Tim Hortons.
It wasn’t that Cloutier was an idiot, just that this was not her strength. It wasn’t why she was brought into homicide.
In a swift glance, Beauvoir took in the officers around the table. All had their hands full with active murder investigations. Where murders had indeed been committed and killers needed to be found. Urgently.
His eyes came to rest on the one officer as yet unassigned.
Jeez, thought Beauvoir, am I really going to do this to him?
“Would you work with Agent Cloutier and see if there’s anything there? Just for the day?”
“With pleasure,” said Chief Inspector Gamache.
CHAPTER FOUR
“I’m sorry,” Beauvoir said under his breath as they left the meeting.
“Why?” asked Gamache.
“You know why.” Beauvoir cocked his head toward Cloutier, who was at her desk. “She stapled her transfer papers to her thigh the first day here.”
“She isn’t armed, is she?” asked Gamache.
“Are you kidding?”
“Is she working out?” Gamache asked. After all, it had been his decision to transfer this desk agent into homicide.
“Actually, if kept off the streets and away from any citizens or anything sharp, yes.”
“Good to know.”
Gamache watched Agent Cloutier sitting at her desk, staring into space. He tried to believe she was thinking, but the look on her face said that she was paralyzed by indecision.
“Noli timere,” said Beauvoir with a grin.
“Huh. Well, maybe just a little timere,” admitted Gamache. As he considered Agent Cloutier, he thought about her question.
How would you feel…?
How would he feel if his daughter, a grown woman, a married woman, had been missing for a day and a half?
He’d be frantic. He’d hope and pray that someone would pay attention. Someone would help.
Agent Cloutier’s persistence had shown courage. Her question had shown empathy.
Both were extremely valuable, he told himself, even as he watched her knock her phone off the desk. Into the garbage.
She was nervous, that much was obvious. About the missing young woman? About working with him? About failing? Or was there something else?
“I’ve arranged for another desk to be put into the office,” said Beauvoir. He’d almost said “my office” but had stopped himself.
“Merci. I appreciate the thought, but I’d like to sit out here.”
“Really?” Beauvoir looked around.
Desks were placed together, facing each other, two by two. Some neat, some with documents piled high. Some personalized, with family photos and memorabilia. Others antiseptic.
Gamache followed Beauvoir’s gaze. It had been years, decades, since he’d sat in an open bullpen. At a desk like any other.
An investigator like any other.
Far from the humiliation it was meant to be, this actually felt comfortable. Comforting, even. Someone else was in charge, and he could just concentrate on the job at hand.
“If it’s all right with you, I’ll take that desk.” He pointed to the empty one across from Cloutier.
“It’s all yours.” Putting his hand on Gamache’s back, Beauvoir said, “If you need anything, or just want to talk, my door’s always open.”
Gamache recognized it as something he said to raw recruits. “When’s your last day again?”
Beauvoir laughed. “It’s good to have you back. Sir.”
Gamache took a deep breath. The place smelled of sweat. Of coffee burned to the bottom of the glass pot. Every day. For years.
For intelligent people, no one in homicide, it seemed, ever learned to turn the thing off. Or make a fresh pot.
It smelled of paper and files, and feet.
It smelled familiar.
When a nervous Agent Gamache had walked in, his first day at homicide, the place had been a riot of noise. Of agents yelling to each other. Phones ringing. Typewriters clacking.
Now there was a murmur of voices, the soft buzz of cell phones, and the tippity-tap of laptops.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
While the technology had changed, the job had not.
Killers were still killing, and Sûreté agents were still hunting them down.
Only then did Gamache realize how much, deep in his core, he’d missed this.
* * *
They left the island of Montréal, driving over the Champlain Bridge to the south shore.
He was in the passenger seat while Cloutier drove. Below them, the St. Lawrence River was packed with broken ice, as the spring melt took hold. Rivers across Québec were freezing and thawing, then freezing again. Creating massive ice jams. The rivers, swollen with melting snow and April showers, had nowhere to go. Except to burst their banks.
It happened every spring, the flooding. But this, he could see, was different.
Gamache hated heights, preferring to look straight ahead whenever he drove across the impressive bridge. But now he forced himself to look down. Feeling light-headed and slightly dizzy, he gripped the door handle and stared over the edge, at the huge, jagged columns of ice thrusting toward him out of the river.
As far down the St. Lawrence as he could see, there was ice. Cracked and heaved. And heading their way.
Turning to the front, he began breathing again, and with each breath he prayed to God the warm weather would take hold and melt the jams. Melt the dams. Relieve the rivers before they burst free.
But it didn’t look promising, he thought as the wipers of their vehicle swept wet snow off the windshield. And the sky ahead was choked with cloud.
“Tell me what you know,” he said to Agent Cloutier.
“Vivienne Godin and Carl Tracey live on a farm in the countryside not far from Cowansville. Before we left, I did a bit of digging. The local Sûreté detachment sent someone to her place yesterday, after Homer called them. They searched but found nothing. No evidence of violence.”
“And no Madame Godin.”
“Non. They’d been called to the home three times in the past, all for domestic violence. But each time they arrived, Madame Godin withdrew the complaint and refused to let them in.”
So her father had been right, thought Gamache. Something bad was happening.
“Officers no longer need a formal complaint,” he said. “They can make an arrest if they themselves see evidence of abuse.”
“Yes, but I guess there wasn’t enough evidence.”
“So no arrests?”
“Non.”
They rode in silence, each looking out at the gray, damp day. Thinking.
Gamache about this young woman, Vivienne Godin.
Cloutier about Vivienne’s father, Homer.
When she went to turn off the highway, Gamache instructed her to continue on.
“We need to get as much information as possible before visiting her home and speaking to her husband. We’ll get one shot at that before he kicks us off the property. We have to make each question count. Take the next turnoff, please, and head for the local detachment. They’re the ones who took the calls, right?”
“Yes, but I’ve already spoken to them.”
“Speaking on the phone and doing it in person are two different things. There’s also the issue of respect. This’s their territory. We shouldn’t just barge in and start questioning people. Besides, we’ll probably need their help.”
A few minutes later they turned in to the town.
“Down here, please,” said Gamache, pointing to a side street and then at a low building with the Sûreté emblem out front.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Bonjour. I’m Chief Inspector Gamache, this is Agent Cloutier.” He slipped his Sûreté ID under the glass partition, and the receptionist took it. “We’d like to see Commander Flaubert, s’il vous plait.”
The man behind the glass, a civilian, glanced at the ID, then at them, and pointed to a hard bench where a drunk was slumped.
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