Sam Arsenault’s DNA was not a match for either Godin or Boisfranc. But there was a clear match between the caretaker’s DNA off the glass and Fiona Arsenault.
There was no doubt. Claude Boisfranc was John Fleming. Fiona was his daughter.
CHAPTER 37
The worst had happened. Harriet was being eaten alive. Not by animals but from the inside out.
Fear, her lifelong companion, had finally consumed her.
Her body still functioned as she raced wildly through the woods, but she’d lost her mind. She’d become the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion, all rolled into one.
And now even her body was giving up. Soon she’d stop running, stop walking, stop crawling, and just lie still. Waiting for death.
She did not have to wait long. A moment later, Harriet Landers ran right into it.
She fell to the forest floor and stared up.
Death hung suspended above her, arms out, wrists bound. The man’s feet slowly swinging like some gigantic clock pendulum signifying that time was up.
From deep inside Harriet Landers came every shriek she’d ever swallowed. All the fear, the frustrations, the anger and buried resentments. The wounds, the pain, the losses and humiliations. The times she’d been ignored, marginalized, diminished. Judged and found wanting. The parties not invited to, the boys who’d mocked her. The girls who’d left her out.
All her insecurities, loneliness, hurts, and rage from birth to this, her last moment, came rushing out.
Amelia Choquet had parked the car so as not to alert anyone of her presence and was creeping carefully along the dirt road when she heard a scream. It was deep in the woods. She’d never heard anything like it and couldn’t figure out if it was human or not.
But she couldn’t take the chance.
Checking the compass on her phone so she could get back and putting on the flashlight, Amelia ran into the forest.
Harriet stopped screaming. She had none left. She had nothing left.
Harriet Landers was finally gone. The last sound that came out was a whimper.
A pathetic little moan as she lay in the fetal position on the forest floor.
In that moment she heard herself. She saw herself. Reduced to a tiny, filthy, weeping and sniveling mass. The world, her world, really would end with a whimper.
Numb. Silent. Paralyzed. Hollow.
As she’d lived, Harriet would die.
Though in that void, something stirred.
A small fuck-it. Then a fuckitfuckitfuckit. Louder and louder. Fuck it.
She got shakily to her feet. If death was coming for her, as it came for this man, she would not die sniveling on the ground.
She heard a sound. Something plunging through the forest toward her. The creature had finally found her. Harriet’s newfound courage withered.
She fell to her knees, and as she did, she felt beneath her torn palms a thick branch. Clasping it, she stood back up and turned to face it.
Fuck it.
The light in her hand swung wildly as Amelia ran, so that she only caught glimpses of something horrific up ahead. A nightmare image of a body suspended between trees, as though crucified.
All her instincts told her to stop, or at least slow down. But she kept running toward the creature.
Something equally horrible was standing in front of it. Holding a weapon. A rifle.
Now Amelia did slow down and brought out her gun.
“Drop it!”
The creature, who looked like a part of the deep forest come alive, raised the weapon further. It was not, as Amelia had first thought, a rifle. It was a tree branch.
She walked forward slowly, gun still out and pointed.
“Drop it,” she said, in French and then in English. “I’m with the Sûreté du Québec. Drop your weapon.”
And Harriet did.
Amelia recognized her now. “You’re Harriet Landers.”
“Yes.”
“Are you okay?”
Harriet didn’t know how to answer. She was hurt and bleeding. But …
“Oui.” Yes, she was okay.
“Who did this to you? To him?”
“I don’t know.”
Amelia shone the light on the body. It was eviscerated. Gutted. Amelia grimaced, then she lifted the light to the man’s face.
It was the caretaker, Claude Boisfranc.
Her tongue stud clicked out, Fuck me, while her mind worked fast. She had to get a message to Gamache. He thought that the caretaker was Fleming. The coroner had told them that. But clearly that was wrong. It was Godin, and he was still out there.
“Shit, shit, shit,” she muttered.
Finding the phone icon, she went to hit it, but her hands were trembling so badly she dropped the phone into the dead leaves. Falling to her knees, she scooped it up and, taking a deep breath, she steadied herself.
“You’ve seen worse, you’ve seen worse, you’ve seen worse,” she muttered to herself. Harriet wondered if that could possibly be true. It was also a strange, though oddly comforting, mantra. One she knew she could use for the rest of her life.
Nothing could ever be worse than this.
Though she was wrong.
Amelia hit the icon for the Chief Inspector’s number.
Nothing. Nothing.
“Fuck.” No signal. They were too deep into the woods.
She composed a text and hit send in the hopes that as soon as even a weak signal appeared, it would go.
“Come on,” she said, checking her compass. “We have to get out of here.”
“You think?” said Harriet, clutching the club and racing after her.
Armand stood in front of The Paston Treasure.
John Fleming was everywhere in this painting, a world not of curiosities but of grotesque bits and pieces of a madman’s mind.
Here were the carved faces of John Fleming’s seven victims. The Beast of Babylon.
Here was the reference to the Québec Bridge, the tragedy that formed and informed the engineer’s ring.
Here was the sheet music. “By the Waters of Babylon.” The song John Fleming used to hum.
And there was more. Things he hadn’t noted before. The small unicorn stickers, like Fiona had had as a child. Like those used in the terrible ledger. There was the model. Like the ones he’d mistakenly thought were Sam’s, but again were Fiona’s.
Were they put there not just to point him to Fiona, but to taunt him with earlier mistakes?
The clocks worried him. They were all set to the same time.
Eleven thirty. And the clock sent to the Mongeau home the day Sylvie died, and left at the Old Train Station by Boisfranc. It was also set to half past eleven.
He looked at his watch. It was ten past eleven.
Then his eyes went back to the painting. And the face, bright, almost illuminated, of the little girl. She looked familiar, but Armand didn’t know if it was just because he’d been staring at the painting for three days now.
Then he had it. He stepped back, as though shoved. The face was Reine-Marie, as a child. From the photograph taken at her first communion. She never looked at it, but he did, sometimes. Marveling at the resemblance between his wife and their granddaughters.
Then, like a building collapsing, everything fell. But instead of falling apart, it fell into place.
Les Puces. Lac Manitou. Mountweazel. The DNA. Sylvie. The God-fearing man. The Fallen Angel. The book. The blood, so much blood. The timing. Three years. The time.
Eleven thirty.
“Ohhh, no,” he whispered.
He dashed off a three-word text to his entire team. Just as he hit send, he heard the Incident Room door open. And a hum. A hymn.
“Armand?”
He turned so quickly he almost fell over the corner of his desk. Standing a few feet into the Old Train Station was Reine-Marie.