Agent Paul Morin had arrived before Lacoste and was standing outside the railway station, making notes.
“I was thinking about the case last night,” he said, watching her unlock the door then following her into the chilly, dark room. She flipped on the lights and walked over to her desk. “I think the murderer must’ve turned on the lights of the bistro, don’t you? I tried walking around my house at two o’clock this morning, and I couldn’t see anything. It was pitch-black. In the city you might get streetlights through the window, but not out here. How’d he know who he was killing?”
“I suppose if he’d invited the victim there, then it was pretty clear. He’d kill the only other person in the bistro.”
“I realize that,” said Morin, drawing his chair up to her desk. “But murder’s a serious business. You don’t want to get it wrong. It was a massive hit to the head, right?”
Lacoste typed her password into her computer. Her husband’s name. Morin was so busy consulting his notes and talking she was sure he hadn’t noticed.
“I don’t think that’s as easy as it looks,” he continued, earnestly. “I tried it last night too. Hit a cantaloupe with a hammer.”
Now he had her full attention. Not only because she wanted to know what had happened, but because anyone who’d get up at two in the morning to smack a melon in the dark deserved attention. Perhaps even medical attention.
“And?”
“The first time I just grazed it. Had to hit it a few times before I got it just right. Pretty messy.”
Morin wondered, briefly, what his girlfriend would think when she got up and noticed the fruit with holes smashed in it. He’d left a note, but wasn’t sure that helped.
I did this, he’d written. Experimenting.
He perhaps should have been more explicit.
But the significance wasn’t lost on Agent Lacoste. She leaned back in her chair and thought. Morin had the brains to be quiet.
“So what do you think?” she finally asked.
“I think he must have turned the lights on. But it’d be risky.” Morin seemed dissatisfied. “It doesn’t make sense to me. Why kill him in the bistro when you have thick forests just feet away? You could slaughter tons of people in there and no one would notice. Why do it where the body would be found and you could be seen?”
“You’re right,” said Lacoste. “It doesn’t make sense. The Chief thinks it might have something to do with Olivier. Maybe the murderer chose the bistro on purpose.”
“To implicate him?”
“Or to ruin his business.”
“Maybe it was Olivier himself,” said Morin. “Why not? He’d be just about the only one who could find his way around without lights. He had a key to the place—”
“Everyone had a key to the place. Seems there were sets floating all over the township, and Olivier kept one under the urn at the front door,” said Lacoste.
Morin nodded and didn’t seem surprised. It was still the country way, at least in the smaller villages.
“He’s certainly a main suspect,” said Lacoste. “But why would he kill someone in his own bistro?”
“Maybe he surprised the guy. Maybe the tramp broke in and Olivier found him and killed him in a fight,” said Morin.
Lacoste was silent, waiting to see if he’d work it all the way through. Morin steepled his hands and leaned his face into them, staring into space. “But it was the middle of the night. If he saw someone in the bistro wouldn’t he have called the cops, or at least woken his partner? Olivier Brulé doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who’d grab a baseball bat and rush off alone.”
Lacoste exhaled and looked at Agent Morin. If the light was just right, catching this slight young man’s face just so, he looked like an idiot. But he clearly wasn’t.
“I know Olivier,” said Lacoste, “and I’d swear he was stunned by what he’d found. He was in shock. Hard to fake and I’m pretty sure he wasn’t faking it. No. When Olivier Brulé woke up yesterday morning he didn’t expect to find a body in his bistro. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t involved somehow. Even unwittingly. The Chief wants us to find out more about Olivier. Where he was born, his background, his family, his schools, what he did before coming here. Anyone who might have a grudge against him. Someone he pissed off.”
“This is more than being pissed off.”
“How do you know?” asked Lacoste.
“Well, I get pissed off, and I don’t kill people.”
“No, you don’t. But I presume you’re fairly well balanced, except for that melon incident.” She smiled and he reddened. “Look, it’s a huge mistake to judge others by ourselves. One of the first things you learn with Chief Inspector Gamache is that other people’s reactions aren’t ours. And a murderer’s are even more foreign. This case didn’t begin with the blow to the head. It started years ago, with another sort of blow. Something happened to our murderer, something we might consider insignificant, trivial even, but was devastating to him. An event, a snub, an argument that most people would shrug off. Murderers don’t. They ruminate; they gather and guard resentments. And those resentments grow. Murders are about emotions. Emotions gone bad and gone wild. Remember that. And don’t ever think you know what someone else is thinking, never mind feeling.”
It was the first lesson she’d been taught by Chief Inspector Gamache, and the first one she’d now passed on to her own protégé. To find a murderer you followed clues, yes. But you also followed emotions. The ones that stank, the foul and putrid ones. You followed the slime. And there, cornered, you’d find your quarry.
There were other lessons, lots of others. And she’d teach him them as well.
That’s what she’d been thinking on the bridge. Thinking and worrying about. Hoping she’d be able to pass to this young man enough wisdom, enough of the tools necessary to catch a killer.
“Nathaniel,” said Morin, getting up and going over to his own computer. “Your husband’s name or your son’s?”
“Husband,” said Lacoste, a little nonplussed. He’d seen after all.
The phone rang. It was the coroner. She had to speak to Chief Inspector Gamache urgently.