The Nature Of The Beast Part 7

She turned her back on him and so did Brian, but not before giving Armand a slightly apologetic grimace.

As he drove down the dirt road toward Three Pines, feeling the familiar and almost comforting washboard b.u.mps, Armand Gamache came to a realization. One he'd probably known since he'd discovered who'd written She Sat Down and Wept.

He would have to read the play.

Armand walked up the path and onto the rickety front stoop. And then he knocked.

"What do you want?" Ruth demanded through the closed door.

"To read the play."

"What play?"

"For G.o.d's sake, Ruth, just open the door."

Something in his tone, perhaps the weariness, must have gotten through to her. A bolt slid back and the door opened a crack.

"Since when have you locked your door?" he asked, squeezing in.

She shut it so quickly behind him the corner of his jacket caught in the doorjamb and he had to yank it free.

"Since when have you cared?" she asked. "What makes you think I have the play?"

"I saw you take it when you left last night."

"Why do you want to read it?"

"I might ask you the same thing."

"It's none of your business," she snapped.

"And I might say the same thing."

He saw the briefest flicker of a smile. "All right, Clouseau. If you can find it, you can have the G.o.dd.a.m.ned play."

He shook his head and sighed. "Just give it to me."

"It's not here."

"Then where is it?"

Ruth and Rosa limped to the kitchen door and pointed to her back garden. The flower beds held late-blooming roses and creamy, pink-tinged hydrangeas, and trellises on which grew bindweed.

"Blows over from your garden," she complained. "It's a weed, you know."

"Invasive, rude, demanding. Soaks up all the nutrients." He looked down at the old poet. "Yes, we know. But we like it anyway."

And again the smile flickered, but didn't catch. Her eyes had dropped to a large planter in the middle of the lawn.

Gamache followed her gaze, then he stepped off the porch and walked over to the planter. It was empty. Without a word, he dragged it a few paces away, then looked down at the square of fresh-turned earth. Rich and dark.

"Here." Ruth handed him the spade.

Sinking to his knees, he dug.

Ruth and Rosa watched from their back porch.

It was a deeper hole than Gamache had expected. He turned to look at Ruth, thin and frail. And yet, she'd dug, and dug. Deep. As deep as she could. He put the shovelful of dirt on the pile behind him, and jabbed it back in.

Eventually it hit something. Brus.h.i.+ng away the dirt, he leaned in and saw the dark printing on the bone-white page.

She Sat Down and Wept.

He stared and from the ground came the audio recording played at the trial. Screams for help. Begging. Pleading with him to stop.

"Armand?"

Reine-Marie's voice cut through the sounds, but even before he turned he knew something had happened. Something was wrong.

Holding the filthy script in one hand and the spade in the other, he stood up and saw Reine-Marie outlined in the light of Ruth's back door.

"What is it?" he asked.

"It's Laurent. He didn't come home for dinner tonight. Evie just called to ask if he was with us."

Gamache felt the weight of the play in his hand, drawn back to the ground. Dirt to dirt.

Laurent didn't come home.

He dropped the play.

CHAPTER 6.

After a night of searching, his mother and father found Laurent early the next morning. In a gully. Where he'd been thrown, his bicycle nearby. The polished handlebars had caught the morning sun and the glint guided his parents to him.

The other searchers, from villages all over the Towns.h.i.+ps, were alerted by the wail.

Armand, Reine-Marie, and Henri stopped their search. Stopped calling Laurent's name. Stopped struggling through the thick brush on the side of the roads. Stopped urging Henri even deeper, ever deeper, through the brambles and burrs.

Reine-Marie turned to Armand, stricken, as though a fist had formed out of the cries. She walked into Armand's arms and held on to him, burying her face in his body. His clothing, his shoulder, his arms almost m.u.f.fled her sobs.

She smelled his scent of sandalwood, mixed with a hint of rosewater. And for the first time, it didn't comfort her. So overwhelming was the sorrow. So shattering was the wail.

Henri, covered in burrs and upset by the sounds, paced the dirt road, whining and looking up at them.

Reine-Marie pulled back and wiped her face with a handkerchief. Then, on seeing the gleam in Armand's eyes, she grabbed him again. This time holding him, as he'd held her.

"I need to-" he said.

"Go," she said. "I'm right behind you."

She took Henri's leash and started to run. Armand was already halfway to the corner. Sprinting, following the grief.

And then the wailing stopped.

As Armand rounded the corner, he saw Al Lepage at the bottom of the hill standing in the middle of the dirt road, staring into s.p.a.ce.

Armand ran down the steep hill, skidding a little on the loose gravel. In the distance he saw Gabri and Olivier arriving from the opposite direction. Converging on the man.

From the underbrush he heard moaning and rhythmic rustling.

"Al?" Armand said, slowing down to stop a few paces from the large, immobile man.

Lepage gestured behind him but kept his face turned away.

Even before he looked, Gamache knew what he'd see.

Behind him he heard Reine-Marie's footsteps slow to a stop. And then he heard her moan. As one mother looked at another's nightmare. At every mother's nightmare.

And Armand looked at Al. Every father's nightmare.

In a swift, practiced glance, Armand took in the position of the bike, the ruts in the road, the broken bushes and bent gra.s.s. The placement of rocks. The stark detail imprinted itself forever in his mind.

Then Armand slid down the ditch, through the long gra.s.s and bushes that had hidden Laurent and his bike. Behind him he could hear Olivier and Gabri speaking to Al. Offering comfort.

But Laurent's father was beyond comfort. Beyond hearing or seeing. He was senseless in a senseless world.

Evie was clinging to Laurent, her body enfolding his. Rocking him. Her mousy brown hair had escaped the elastic and fell in strands in front of her face, forming a veil. Hiding her face. Hiding his.

"Evie?" Armand whispered, kneeling beside her. "Evelyn?"

He gently, slowly, pulled back the curtain.

Gamache had been at the scene of enough accidents to know when someone was beyond help. But still he reached out and felt the boy's cold neck.

Evie's keening turned into a hum, and for a moment he thought it was Laurent. It was the same tune the boy had hummed two days earlier when Armand had driven him home.

Old man look at my life, twenty-four and there's so much more.

From behind them, up the embankment and on the road, came a gasp so loud it drowned out the humming.

One gasp, then a heave. And another heave. As Al Lepage fought for breath through a throat clogged with grief.

Under the wretched sounds, Armand heard Olivier calling for an ambulance. Others had arrived, forming a semicircle around Al. Unsure what to do with such overwhelming grief.

And then Al dropped to his knees and slowly lowered his forehead to the dirt. He brought his thick arms up over his gray head and locked his hands together until he looked like a stone, a boulder in the road.

Armand turned back to Evie. The rocking had stopped. She too had petrified. She looked like one of the bodies excavated from the ruins of Pompeii, trapped forever in the moment of horror.

There was nothing Armand could do for either of them. So he did something for himself. He reached out and took Laurent's hand, holding it in both of his, unconsciously trying to warm it. He stayed with them until the ambulance came. It arrived with haste and a siren. And drove off slowly. Silently.

A little while later Reine-Marie and Armand drew the curtains of their home, to keep out the suns.h.i.+ne. They unplugged the phone. They carefully took the burrs off a patient Henri. Then in the dark and quiet of their living room they sat down and wept.

"I'm sorry, patron," said Jean-Guy. "I know how much you cared for him."

"You didn't have to come down," said Gamache, turning from the front door to walk back into their home. "We could've spoken on the phone."

"I wanted to bring you this personally, rather than email it."

Gamache looked at what Jean-Guy held in his hand.

"Merci."

Jean-Guy placed the manila file on the coffee table in front of the sofa.

"According to the local Srete, it was an accident. Laurent was riding his bike home, down the hill, and he hit a rut. You know what that road's like. They figure he was going at a good clip and the impact must've thrown him over his handlebars and into the ditch. I'm not sure if you saw the rocks nearby."

Gamache nodded and rubbed his large hand over his face, trying to wipe away the weariness. He and Reine-Marie had caught a few hours' sleep then gotten up to the sound of rain pelting against the windowpanes.

It was now late afternoon and Jean-Guy had driven down from Montreal with the preliminary report on Laurent's death.

"I did see them. This's fast work," said Gamache, putting on his reading gla.s.ses and opening the file.

"Preliminary," Jean-Guy said, joining him on the sofa.

It was pouring outside now. A chilly rain that got into the bones. A fire was lit in the hearth and embers popped and burst from the logs. But the men, heads together, were oblivious to the cheerfulness nearby.

"If you look here." Beauvoir leaned in and pointed to a line in the police report. "The coroner says he was gone as soon as he hit the ground. He didn't..."

He didn't lie there, in pain. As it got darker. And colder.

Laurent, all of nine years of age, didn't die frightened, wondering where they were.

Jean-Guy saw Gamache give one curt nod, his lips tightening. There wasn't much comfort to be found in what had happened. He'd take what he could get. As would Evie and Al, eventually. The only thing worse than losing a child was thinking that child had suffered.

"His injuries are consistent with what the police found," said Jean-Guy. He sat back on the sofa and looked at his father-in-law. "Why do you think it might be more than that?"