The Nature of the Beast: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel

“No.”


The large man didn’t meet Armand’s eyes, couldn’t. He stared straight ahead, his almond eyes hard with the effort of not going soft. But his lips trembled and his chin dimpled.

“It would be nice to have it back,” he managed to say.

“We’ll try to get it for you.”

“I made it for his birthday.”

“Oui.”

“Worked on it every night after he went to bed. He wanted an iPhone.”

“No he didn’t,” said Armand.

“He’s nine.”

Gamache nodded.

“Nine,” whispered Al Lepage.

And both men stared off, in opposite directions. Laurent’s father viewing a world where nine-year-old boys died in accidents. Gamache seeing a world where even worse things happened.

“It must be there,” Al said at last. “Where we found him. Or the cops picked it up.”

“No. We looked. And the police didn’t find it either. If it isn’t here at home, and it isn’t where Laurent was found, then we have to find it.”

“Why?”

Gamache didn’t hesitate. He knew there was never a good time for this.

“It could mean that Laurent might’ve been killed somewhere else, and put in that ditch.”

Al’s mouth formed the beginning of a word. Why, perhaps. Or, what. But it died there. And Gamache saw Laurent’s father pack up his home, take all his possessions, and move. To that other world. Where nine-year-old boys were killed. A world where nine-year-old boys were murdered.

Armand Gamache was the moving man, the ferryman, who took him there.

And once across there was no going back.

*

“A stick, patron?” Jean-Guy Beauvoir’s voice had grown shrill on the phone.

“Oui,” said Gamache. He stood in his living room and looked out the window, past their front porch to the village green.

He could see Clara and Myrna sitting on the bench chatting with Monsieur Béliveau.

“You want me to go to Chief Inspector Lacoste and say we have to reopen the investigation into Laurent Lepage’s death—an investigation we only did as a personal favor to you—because a stick is missing?”

“Oui.”

Armand Gamache understood how Laurent must have felt when trying to convince people he’d seen a monster. Gamache hadn’t yet seen the monster, but he knew it was out there. He just had to convince others.

“I know how ridiculous it sounds, Jean-Guy.”

“I don’t think you do, patron, or you’d never have said it.”

“Please, just do it.”

“But what are we supposed to do? We’ve already done a thorough investigation. It was an accident.”

“It was not,” said Gamache, his voice gruff. “And it’s not just the stick. We went to the site yesterday afternoon and searched, but something else struck me. How his body was lying. If you assume, as we have, that he was riding his bike down the hill and hit a bump, he’d have flown headfirst, right?”

“Which he did. Hit his head. I’m sorry, Chief, but where’s this going?”

“He was pointed in the wrong direction, Jean-Guy. Your own photos confirm it.”

“What?”

Gamache could hear Jean-Guy scrambling, and tapping on his computer to bring up the file and the photos.

Then there was silence.

“Christ,” he finally said, exhaling the word like a sigh. “Are you sure?”

“If you go to the site you’ll see immediately. Laurent could not have been heading down the hill when he fell.”

“And the other direction?”

“Is flat. He might’ve hit his wheel against a rock or a pothole and fallen, but at worst he’d have skinned a knee, maybe broken an arm. He could never have flown that far.”

“Jeez, you might be on to something. But now what?”

“If he was killed, the murderer made a huge mistake. He moved the body but left the stick. If we can find the stick, we might know where Laurent was killed.”

“And who did it,” said Beauvoir. “But even if all this is true, how in the world are you going to find a stick in the forest?”

Gamache looked out the window and raised his eyes past the village green, past the old homes. To the woods. The forest. Hundreds of square miles radiated out from the village. With millions of sticks on the ground.

But Laurent was nine years old, and nine-year-olds, even with bicycles, didn’t travel hundreds of square miles. And they sure didn’t go all that far into the forest.

If he was murdered, it was close by.

“You were playing soccer on the village green when Laurent came running into the village a few days ago.”

“Right,” said Jean-Guy.

“Which direction did he come from?”

“He came past the old train station,” said Beauvoir.

“Over the bridge,” said Gamache. “Yes, I remember him saying that. We’ll start there.”

“Why there?”

“You asked me the other day why anyone would kill a nine-year-old boy,” said Armand. “And there’re only two things I can think of. It was either for no reason except the pleasure of the killer. A psychopath. Or there was a reason.”