As they drove toward the scene of crime, the Chief Inspector gave the young agent instructions. What to do. What not to do.
“Do you understand?” he asked when his words were met with silence.
“I do. It’s all pretty obvious.”
Beauvoir waited for the rebuke for this insolence, and when none came, he smiled. He had the measure of this man. While he was certainly senior, there was nothing remarkable about Chief Inspector Gamache. Beauvoir suspected he was in the presence of a product created by the Sûreté PR machine. A solid, dull, trustworthy figure designed to win the confidence of a gullible public. Nothing more.
Beauvoir had heard rumors while in the Academy that this man didn’t even wear a gun. What sort of cop wasn’t armed?
A coward, that’s who. A weak man who depended on others to do the dangerous work.
A few minutes later they turned off the secondary highway onto a rutted and potholed dirt road. A few jarring kilometers down they finally arrived at the lake.
It was, even to Gamache, who had seen a lot of wilderness, a desolate place.
Low clouds clung to the thick forest. There were no homes, no cabins, no lights. No docks or canoes. Few came here, except bears and deer and moose. And murderers.
Agent Beauvoir went to get out of the car, but the Chief Inspector stopped him.
“There’s something you need to know.”
“Yes, I know. Don’t disturb the evidence. Don’t touch the body. You’ve told me all that.”
Pathetic dumbass.
“There are,” said the Chief, unbothered by what he’d just heard, “four statements that lead to wisdom. Do with them as you will.”
Beauvoir sat back in his seat and stared at the Chief Inspector. Do with them as you will? Who talks like that?
But, more than that oddly formal phrase, no one in Beauvoir’s experience had ever strung together more than three words without saying “fuck,” or “tabarnak,” or “merde.” Including, especially, his father. And his mother, for that matter. And they sure had never mentioned sagesse.
Wisdom.
He stared at this older man, not far off his father’s age, but as unlike his father as humanly possible. This man spoke so softly that Jean-Guy Beauvoir found himself leaning forward. Listening.
“I’m sorry. I was wrong. I don’t know.” As he listed them, Chief Inspector Gamache raised a finger, until his palm was open. “I need help.”
Beauvoir looked into Gamache’s eyes, and in them he saw something else that was new. That was unexpected.
It took him a moment to place what it was. To find the word to describe the look. And when he had it, the blood drained from Beauvoir’s face, from his extremities. He felt his hands grow cold, and was suddenly light-headed.
What he saw in those eyes was kindness.
It was terrifying.
He practically fell out of the car in his haste to get away from this assault on his defenses. He didn’t understand this man, those words, that look, that threatened his carefully constructed fortress.
Though he wasn’t the only one surprised by the encounter.
Armand Gamache had gone down to the basement because he knew that was where the outliers were kept. He needed a local cop, and who better than one who was either the instigator of the trouble at the detachment, or who was not involved at all? An agent banished to the basement because the others did not trust him.
Once down there, he had not expected to recognize this wretched young agent. He’d never met the man before, Gamache was certain of that. And yet, there was a familiarity. Like unexpectedly running into someone from the distant past.
But Captain Dagenais was almost certainly right. There was a meanness about this Agent Beauvoir. Something lean and feral. Something dangerous.
This young man was trouble and troubled.
And yet, Gamache recognized him. And that had shocked the Chief Inspector.
Later, on the side of the lake, when Agent Beauvoir had let fly that barrage of insults, loudly enough for every other living human and most wildlife to hear, Gamache was forced to rethink.
He must have been wrong. Had made a mistake. It was a trick of the mind. A déjà vu. Without the déjà. Or the vu.
On that rocky shore, the spray hitting his face, Armand Gamache stared at Jean-Guy Beauvoir and was faced with a choice. One that would decide both their fates, their futures. Though at that moment Armand Gamache had no idea just how profoundly.
Should he do what was obvious, sensible, and rational and send this insolent young agent, surely a liability to the Sûreté and a danger to the public, back to the detachment? Where he would soon be fired. And good riddance.
Or.
“You’re incompetent,” Beauvoir was shouting, his voice rising above the crashing waves. “Stupid. And stupid is dangerous. You’ll get them all”—his arm swooped around, his finger pointing toward the men and women on the shore—“killed, if you’re not careful.”
Over Beauvoir’s shoulder Gamache saw Inspector Chernin step toward them, her face filled with fury. But a look from him stopped her. Barely.
His eyes returned to Beauvoir. He’d had enough. He was about to tell this ridiculous agent to go back to the station. Hand in his weapon and badge. He was done.
But instead, Armand Gamache found himself saying, “Behind the corpse in the reservoir, behind the ghost on the links / Behind the lady who dances and the man who madly drinks.”
His voice was so soft Agent Beauvoir wondered if he’d really heard it, or if it was an illusion. Some trick of the wind and waves.
This was the Chief Inspector’s response to a verbal attack? To being called a coward in front of his own team? Instead of lashing out, the man was quoting some poem? He really was weak, a coward.
And yet, this response was far more terrifying than any insults the Chief might have hurled back.
Agent Beauvoir stood there, at a loss. Lost. Petrified. With force of will, he turned away and faced the lake that had just coughed up a corpse.
“Under the look of fatigue, the attack of migraine and the sigh.” The voice, now seeming to come from inside Beauvoir’s head, continued. Unrelenting.
“There is always another story / There is more than meets the eye.”
Chief Inspector Armand Gamache reached for Beauvoir’s sleeve, holding his arm firmly. Not painfully, but as one might hold a drowning man to prevent him from going under.
“It’s all right,” he said. “Things aren’t always as they seem. It’ll be all right, son.”
Then he smiled.
The cold water pelting Jean-Guy’s face tasted inexplicably salty. With those words and that grip on his arm, Beauvoir felt something shift inside him. It was as though in that instant Armand Gamache had not just breached but shattered his defenses. And stood now in the wreckage of Jean-Guy’s young life.
But instead of recoiling, Jean-Guy felt drawn to this man, this stranger. Felt his DNA attach itself to him, like a mariner lashed to the mast in a ferocious storm, to keep from being swept overboard.
Jean-Guy Beauvoir felt totally vulnerable, but he also felt safe for the first time in his life.
Though he also recognized, in that moment, that it came at a price. If the ship should founder, he would go down with it. That was the deal. His life and future were now bound, inexorably, to this man. And probably always had been.
As he looked out across the lake, Jean-Guy Beauvoir sensed something else.
The approach of a ferocious storm.
CHAPTER 3
After hosing down Honoré and finishing a Saturday morning breakfast of banana-filled crepes with crispy bacon and maple syrup, Annie, Jean-Guy, and the children headed to the car for the drive back to Montréal.