The Nature of the Beast: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel

“Oh, right,” said Armand. “That’s probably true.”


He wished he’d thought of that but was glad the guys had.

“The police must’ve picked it up,” said Olivier. “Do you know when they’ll release it? Can we get it back now?”

Armand opened his mouth to say that he imagined all of Laurent’s possessions would have been returned already. But then he stopped himself. And thought, searching his memory of the S?reté report. It said nothing about a stick, but then even had the investigators seen it on the ground they probably wouldn’t have picked it up. It would look like any other tree limb.

But he also searched his own memory of the scene.

The hill, the gravel, the long grass, the bike with the helmet still tied to the handlebars. He scanned his memory but there was no stick. No limb. Just a gully and grass and a keening mother and cold child.

He got up. “The police didn’t find it. We need to go back there and look. Why don’t we all change and meet back here?”

Twenty minutes later they got out of the Gamaches’ car wearing slacks, sweaters, jackets and rubber boots. The four of them slid down the small embankment and started looking.

But Laurent’s stick wasn’t there.

Not in the gully. Not on the verge of the dirt road. It wasn’t in the tall grass, or the circle of flattened grass, or along the edge of the forest.

Armand walked up to the top of the hill and stood there, imagining Laurent hurtling down it on his bike. He retraced Laurent’s final moments.

Down, down, down. Laurent would have gained speed, his legs pumping, the stick almost certainly out in front. A lance in a heroic charge.

And then something happened. He’d hit a rut or a hole or a heave. What old townshippers called a cahoo.

Armand stood at a likely spot, a pothole. Had Laurent been frightened as he took flight? Gamache suspected not. The boy had probably been giddy with excitement. Maybe even shouting, “Caaaaah-hoooo.”

He was airborne. And then he wasn’t.

Blunt force trauma, it was called in the report. What the autopsy couldn’t show was the ongoing trauma to everyone who loved the child.

Armand stood on the pothole and lifted his body up on tiptoes, stretching his arms out in front of him. Mimicking taking off. He imagined sailing through the air. Up, up, and then down. Into the gully.

And where would the stick have landed? Perhaps quite a distance from Laurent, released from the little hand like a javelin slicing through the air.

Reine-Marie, Olivier and Gabri followed his actions and searched in the likeliest places. And then the least likely places.

“Nothing so far,” Reine-Marie said, then looking around she noticed her husband wasn’t with her. He was standing at the spot where Laurent had landed, looking at the ground. Then he turned and looked back up the hill.

“Find anything?” asked Olivier.

“No,” said Gabri, getting closer to the woods. “Just grass and mud.” He lifted his boots and there was a sucking sound as the ground reluctantly released him.

Armand had returned to the road and walked in the opposite direction of the hill. Reine-Marie, along with Gabri and Olivier, joined him.

“No stick?” Gamache asked.

They shook their heads.

“Maybe Al and Evie picked it up,” said Olivier.

But they doubted it. It was all Laurent’s parents could do to pick themselves up.

“Maybe he lost it,” said Gabri.

But they knew the only way Laurent would lose it was if he lost his hand. It was more than just a stick to Laurent.

*

Al Lepage came out of the barn when he heard their car drive up. He was back in his work clothes and was wiping his large hands.

“Armand.”

“Al.” The men shook hands and Reine-Marie gave him a quick embrace.

“Is Evie at home? I have a casserole.”

Al pointed to the house, and when Reine-Marie left he turned to Gamache.

“Is this a social call?”

“No, not really.”

They’d dropped Gabri and Olivier back in Three Pines and then driven to the farm. And now Armand contemplated the older man in front of him. Al Lepage looked like a paper bag that had been crumpled up before being thrown away. But for the first time, Armand really studied his face and noted not the beard or the leathered skin, but the blue, blue eyes, shaped like almonds. Laurent’s eyes. And his nose. Thin and slightly too long for the face. Laurent’s nose.

“I have a question for you.”

Al indicated a trough. The two men sat side by side.

“Do you have Laurent’s stick?”

Al looked at him as though he’d lost his mind. “His stick?”

“He always had it with him but we couldn’t find it. We just wondered if you might have it.”

It seemed an eternity before Al answered. Armand quietly prayed that he’d say, Yes, yes I do. And then Armand and Reine-Marie could go home, and start the long process of remembering the boy alive and letting go of the boy dead.