Gamache’s mind went to the hikers. A man and woman. About the right ages.
“Did your mother have any visitors just before she disappeared?”
“No,” said Fiona. “No one visited.”
Gamache leaned forward. “That isn’t true, is it? You can tell me. You need to tell me. We’ll find out eventually.”
“Just the usual,” mumbled Fiona.
“Do you know their names?” He kept his voice neutral, matter-of-fact.
Fiona shook her head. “Just nicknames. Mr. Smells Like Shit. Mr. Fat-ass. Mr. Garbage Breath.”
Gamache suspected there were other, less juvenile, names they called these men. He certainly had some himself.
Beauvoir listened to this, perplexed. It seemed the Chief Inspector knew something he did not. He looked over at Sam, whose expressive face had gone blank. Jean-Guy had never seen a face so devoid of thought or human emotion. It was like the boy had turned into a waxwork.
“Did your mother have a special friend?” Gamache asked.
“Is that supposed to be code?” Fiona demanded.
“Just a question. But an important one.”
“No. No one special,” said Sam, his voice as flat as his expression. “You’ll never find out who did this, will you.”
“Why do you say that?” Gamache asked.
“I just know. We know cops. They don’t care.”
“I do. Agent Beauvoir here does. Agent Moel does.”
“Right.” Sam turned away and stared at the blank television screen.
Gamache did too. “That’s a nice television. Is it new?”
“We’ve had it for a while,” said Fiona.
“When was the last time you saw your mother?” he asked, returning his attention to the girl.
“That morning, when we went to school. She was in bed.”
He had to ask. “Alone?”
“Yes, alone.”
He wasn’t convinced. But there was time to get at that truth. The autopsy and DNA samples would help.
“Did she take the car when she left?” he asked.
“Well, it’s not there, is it?” said Sam. “What do you think?”
Just then Inspector Chernin arrived with the warrant.
“We’re going to have to search your home,” Gamache told the children. “We’ll be as quick as we can and return everything to the way it was.”
Agent Moel said to Fiona, “Is that all right?”
Beauvoir wondered what would happen if Fiona said no. But she didn’t. She just nodded.
Agent Moel looked at Gamache. “We’ll be fine. I’ll make more tea.”
Again with the tea, thought Beauvoir. Was there something about that drink he’d missed? Unless it was brewed from marijuana, he doubted it would do what Agent Moel hoped.
Inspector Chernin coordinated the search, assigning Beauvoir to join the officers outside and leaving Agent Moel with the kids.
Gamache pulled Chernin and Pierre Gendron, the IT specialist, aside, and told them what Clotilde had been doing.
“Oh, shit,” said Chernin, and shook her head. “What mother, what monster, does that?”
There was no answer to that question, so they focused on the ones they could answer. “I’ll check her computer and phone,” said Gendron. He headed off to find them.
“The hikers now admit they’re members of the environmental group Assez,” said Chernin. “They came to investigate the old-growth forest. Apparently logging rights at the lake have been sold and a protest is planned. They’re the advance team.”
“Why not tell us that to begin with?”
“Well, they’re more than a little paranoid, given that their group isn’t often welcomed with open arms by the locals. What they’re planning is probably illegal. There were reports in the local paper that they’d be in the area, though they say they just arrived this morning.”
“You believe them?”
“Reserving judgment, patron. But that’s their story. By the way, their vehicle is clean, and yes, it belongs to the man.”
Gamache found it interesting that it was known around town that someone from the radical environmental group would be at the lake.
Jean-Guy Beauvoir was still in the living room. He found he was reluctant now to leave the boy, who clung to his hand.
“It’ll be okay, Sam.” He knelt at eye level and held the boy’s bony shoulders. “Do you trust me?”
Sam held his eyes. Held. Held. Then nodded and whispered through hiccups and caught breath, “Oui.”
“Bon,” said Jean-Guy. He found a Kleenex and wiped Sam’s face, then got him to blow his nose, as though he were four years old and not ten. “When I get back, we’ll talk. Okay?”
He looked down at the slimy tissue, then at Sam, and made an exaggerated grimace.
Sam gave a grunt of laughter.
It took less time than Chief Inspector Gamache expected.
The old desktop computer was on a crate in Clotilde’s bedroom, her passwords “hidden” in one of her dresser drawers in a jumble of underwear.
The keyboard yielded no prints. Any that had been there were wiped.
Gamache stood behind his agent. It took slightly over a minute to find what Gamache had known, from the moment he’d looked at the photograph in Clotilde’s wallet, would be there.
But still, it was a shock. Was always a shock when he and his agents came face-to-face with how truly abhorrent some people were.
He tasted bile and felt a burning in the stomach, and wanted to turn away. Seeing the images felt itself like a violation.
Gendron went from file to saved file. Clicking. Resting just long enough to know what was happening on the videos. Then moving on to the next, and the next. And …
Gamache’s jaw tightened, and he took a ragged breath. He leaned forward and hit pause. He couldn’t take any more.
“That’s enough. Get a copy of everything. And I want names. I want to know who these…” He gestured to the screen, trying to find the word. But no appropriate one existed. “… are.”
Gamache forced himself to stare at the picture frozen on the screen. Then he looked toward the living room. His heart pounded. He was overcome with the need to act. To do something, to burn off this surge of rage. He felt, for a moment, unable to breathe. As though he’d fallen into a cesspool and was drowning.
Who did this to children? To their own children?
He forced himself to stay calm. He needed to keep his eye on the long view. If he was going to help Fiona and Sam, he had to shove his own feelings, his revulsion, down. When he’d made sure the children were safe and would get the help they needed, then he’d go after each and every one of these … these … creatures.
He was about to leave when he turned to the unfortunate Agent Gendron. “Someone was here after Clotilde disappeared and before we arrived. Otherwise, we’d have found her prints on the keys. If that person wasn’t here to erase that”—he gestured toward the image on the screen—“then why?”
“I’ll find out,” said Gendron.
“Merci.” He held the agent’s eyes for a moment. “I’m sorry, Pierre.”
He’d have to get this man counseling. And time off, after this. Of all the caves they had to enter, this one was the darkest.
He turned to another agent in the room. “Find out, please, where in the house those videos were shot.”
“Oui, patron.”
“Still no sign of her car?” he asked Chernin when he found her.
“We’re looking. If it was used to move her body, then the killer must’ve ditched it.”
“And walked back?” said Gamache, more to himself than anyone there. This crime had all the markings of a two-person job.
“The videos could’ve been shot somewhere else,” said Chernin.