Jean-Guy Beauvoir did not return the greeting, preferring to stare straight ahead. If Isabelle Lacoste didn’t already believe in things like energy and vibes when she entered the elevator, she would have when she left. Inspector Beauvoir was throbbing, radiating strong emotion.
But what emotion? She stared at the numbers—2 … 3 … 4—and tried to analyze the waves pounding out of Jean-Guy Beauvoir.
Shame? Embarrassment? She knew she’d certainly be feeling both of those if she was him. But she wasn’t. And she suspected what Beauvoir felt and radiated was baser. Coarser. Simpler.
What poured out of him was rage.
6 … 7 …
Lacoste glanced at Beauvoir’s reflection in the pocked and dented door. She’d barely seen him since he’d transferred out of homicide and into Chief Superintendent Francoeur’s department.
Isabelle Lacoste remembered her mentor as lithe, energetic, frenetic at times. Slender to Gamache’s more robust frame. Rational to the Chief’s intuitive. He was action to Gamache’s contemplation.
Beauvoir liked lists. Gamache liked thoughts, ideas.
Beauvoir liked to question, Gamache liked to listen.
And yet there was a bond between the older man and the younger that seemed to reach through time. They held a natural, almost ancient, place in each other’s lives. Made all the more profound when Jean-Guy Beauvoir fell in love with Annie, the Chief’s daughter.
It had surprised Lacoste slightly that Beauvoir would fall for Annie. She wasn’t anything like Beauvoir’s ex-wife, or the parade of gorgeous Québécoise he’d dated. Annie Gamache chose comfort over fashion. She was neither pretty nor ugly. Not slender, but neither was she fat. Annie Gamache would never be the most attractive woman in the room. She never turned heads.
Until she laughed. And spoke.
To Lacoste’s amazement, Jean-Guy Beauvoir had figured out something many men never got. How very beautiful, how very attractive, happiness was.
Annie Gamache was happy, and Beauvoir fell in love with her.
Isabelle Lacoste admired that in him. In fact, she admired many things about her mentor, but what she most admired were his passion for the job and his unquestioned loyalty to Chief Inspector Gamache.
Until a few months ago. Though, if she was being honest, fissures had begun to appear before that.
Now she shifted her glance to Gamache’s reflection. He seemed relaxed, holding Henri’s leash loosely in his hands. She noticed the scar at his graying temple.
Nothing had been the same since the day that had happened. It couldn’t be. It shouldn’t be. But it had taken Lacoste a while to realize just how much everything had changed.
She was standing in the ruins now, amid the rubble, and most of it had fallen from Beauvoir. His clean-shaven face was sallow, haggard. He looked much older than his thirty-eight years. Not simply tired, or even exhausted, but hollowed out. And into that hole he’d placed, for safekeeping, the last thing he possessed. His rage.
9 … 10 …
The faint hope she’d held, that the Chief and Inspector Beauvoir were just pretending to this rift, vanished. There was no harbor. No hope. No doubt.
Jean-Guy Beauvoir despised Armand Gamache.
This wasn’t an act.
Isabelle Lacoste wondered what would have happened if she hadn’t been in the elevator with them. Two armed men. And one with the advantage, if it could be called that, of near bottomless rage.
Here was a man with a gun and nothing more to lose.
If Jean-Guy Beauvoir loathed Gamache, Lacoste wondered how the Chief felt.
She studied him again in the scratched and dented elevator door. He seemed perfectly at ease.
Henri chose, if such a thing is a choice, to hand out another great compliment at that moment. Lacoste brought her hand to her face, in an involuntary survival instinct.
The dog, oblivious to the curdled air, looked around, his tags clinking cheerily together. His huge brown eyes glanced up at the man beside him. Not the one who held his leash. But the other man.
A familiar man.
14 … 15.
The elevator stopped and the door opened, bringing with it oxygen. Isabelle wondered if she’d have to burn her clothes.
Gamache held it open for Lacoste and she left as quickly as possible, desperate to get out of that stink, only part of which could be blamed on Henri. But before Gamache could step out, Henri turned to Beauvoir, and licked his hand.
Beauvoir pulled it back, as though scalded.
The German shepherd followed the Chief from the elevator. And the doors closed behind them. As the three walked toward the glass doors into the homicide division, Lacoste noticed that the hand that held the leash trembled.
It was slight, but it was there.
And Lacoste realized that Gamache had perfect control over Henri, if not Henri’s bowels. He could have held the leash tight, preventing the German shepherd from getting anywhere close to Beauvoir.
But Gamache hadn’t. He’d allowed the lick. Allowed the small kiss.
*
The elevator reached the top floor of S?reté headquarters and the doors clunked open to reveal a couple of men standing in the corridor.
“Holy shit, Beauvoir, what a stink.” One of them scowled.