They wanted to get back to the distractions, to the devil they knew. So they’d headed to the inner city.
Though Gamache was not convinced. He thought there was another reason. Leaning forward, he repeated, “Why did you run away?”
“I told you,” said Fiona, clearly annoyed at being doubted.
“You didn’t take any clothes with you. You didn’t pack.” His voice remained calm, kindly even. But his eyes were steady. “You didn’t leave. You ran away. Why?”
Fiona looked at Sam.
“Tell us.” Beauvoir spoke gently, looking at the boy. “It’s okay. We won’t be mad.”
“We heard that you were coming over.” Sam’s eyes shifted now, landing on Gamache. “We didn’t want to see you.”
“Why not?” he asked, though he could have provided the answer.
He’d have been partly right, but mostly wrong. The answer, when it came, stunned him.
“Because we don’t like you, okay?” snapped Sam. That much Gamache expected. The rest he did not. “We’ve seen men like you. We know what you really want.”
Then the thin, bruised child made an obscene gesture.
Gamache was prepared for some sort of verbal abuse, but he had not expected this. Even though he knew that Sam did not believe what he said. Even though he knew no one at that table believed it. Even though he knew it was a calculated, perhaps even rehearsed, attack designed to inflict maximum damage, still it left him shaken.
He stared into Sam’s eyes. And there he saw not fear, not pain, but triumph. The boy knew he’d scored a direct hit. Somehow this child had recognized the very worst thing this grown man could be accused of. And then accused him.
But along with the triumph, there was something else lurking in those eyes. It was relief. Like an addict getting a hit. Or a starving creature that fed on someone else’s pain, enjoying a meal.
This was a child whose only feelings involved agony.
The slap, the punch, the kick, the burn, the penetration. The betrayal. And sometimes it was the spoken word. It was all he knew. So why wouldn’t he inflict all that on others?
Armand looked at Sam and his heart broke. And out of that wound came the words from the Zardo poem.
Who hurt you once, so far beyond repair / That you would greet each overture with curling lip.
But he knew the answer. They had the names. And addresses. They had them in custody. They had the body in the morgue.
The question now was, were Fiona and Sam beyond repair?
He turned to Fiona. She seemed surprised by what Sam had said, had implied. Though he couldn’t really tell. Was she? Maybe not. Maybe it was part of the act.
Maybe that was their game, their unnatural connection.
Armand realized with a jolt that while the accusation was patently false, it had, against all odds, succeeded. Sam Arsenault had done something the very worst, the most brutal criminals had failed to do, though God knew they’d tried.
The boy had found a way into Gamache’s head and left the Chief Inspector foundering. Unsure. Questioning his judgment, his perceptions.
The way in had not been the insult. Armand Gamache’s extreme empathy for them had left him vulnerable. The way in was through his heart.
And that was why, he now realized, he hadn’t told them about his own loss. It was too personal. He’d sensed even then the danger of opening up too much.
Fortunately, Gamache didn’t have to rely on judgment when he had facts.
“We’ve arrested the men who visited your home—”
The counselor had advised Gamache and the other agents not to ask Fiona and Sam about the abuse. They’d need a lot of therapy, a lot of help, before they could talk about it. And for now there was no need. There was more than enough evidence to charge the men.
“One of them was found to have your mother’s car.”
“Did he do it?” Fiona asked.
Gamache hated every moment of this. Only Chernin and the counselor knew what was coming next, and he could sense their discomfort. But he pressed forward. Deeper into the cave.
“No. He didn’t kill your mother.”
“How do you know?” demanded Sam.
“Because we know how he got her car. He told us.”
“He could be lying,” said Fiona. “Don’t murderers lie?”
“All the time,” said Gamache, his voice soft. “We also found the record book and video camera.” Now he paused, looking at them. “We know.”
“You know what they did to us,” said Sam, his chin dimpling, his lower lip quivering. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I’m not asking you about what you both went through. I wouldn’t make you talk about it. But there is something I do need to talk to you about.”
His voice was neutral. As though the subject, the next words, were not going to explode their lives. It was vital not to feed any hysteria. To remain, and invite, calm.
“The writing in the record book started off as your mother’s, but then, about six months ago, it changed. Two more people took over. You two.”
“That’s a lie,” Sam shouted. His small face crumpled and his eyes filled with tears. He looked at Beauvoir. “It’s a lie.” His voice was high now, barely more than a squeak.
Agent Beauvoir was so surprised by what Chief Inspector Gamache had just said, had just implied, that he sat there, openmouthed.
“It isn’t,” said Gamache. “We gave your exercise books with your homework to our expert. There’s no doubt.”
They were staring, eyes wide. But he pressed on.
“We found your mother’s blood in the trunk of her car. The man who bought it said you”—he turned to Fiona—“threatened to expose him if he told anyone who sold it to him. He tried to burn it, but we still found enough DNA.”
“No!” Fiona looked terrified. “It never happened. He’s lying. He killed her and stole it.”
Gamache’s heart ached, but still he had to do this.
“I think you killed your mother, Fiona. I think you did it in self-defense, after years of abuse. I’m not sure you meant to, or that you even really knew what you were doing. And I think Sam helped you.”
There it was.
Armand stood in the darkest cavern in the deepest cave with these two children, surrounded by dripping nightmarish stalactites. Sharp, slimy spikes of undeniable facts that had snagged and caught these children.
At that moment Armand Gamache hated his job.
Sam had thrown himself into Jean-Guy’s arms, burying his head in his chest. Clinging to the young Sûreté agent and sobbing that he didn’t do it. That it was a lie.
Then he looked up and whispered something.
Jean-Guy bent down, and Sam, slobbering and shuddering, repeated it.
No one else heard, but when Beauvoir looked over at Fiona, they could guess what Sam had just confided. And Beauvoir confirmed it.
Sam had told him that it had been his sister’s idea. She’d killed their mother, then forced him to help. He was afraid of her. She’d tried to kill him too. In the alley.
Fiona’s eyes widened. But she did not deny it.
Jean-Guy missed the look in Sam’s eyes as he turned to the Chief Inspector. But Gamache did not.
He saw satisfaction. Almost amusement. He saw a challenge.
CHAPTER 12
The Reverend Robert Mongeau stared at Armand.
“Are you saying that that young woman is a murderer? She killed her mother?”
“She was found guilty, yes.”
They were sitting in one of the pews in the tiny St. Thomas’s church in Three Pines. It was early on Sunday afternoon, the day after the graduation and the party.
While the Gamaches rarely attended services, they had asked the minister and his wife to their home afterward for Sunday lunch. Then Armand had walked back up to the church with Robert, leaving Sylvie and Reine-Marie to have a lemonade in the sun-trap of their back garden.