“I can’t tell you.” The voice sounded middle-aged, perhaps late middle-aged, with a thick country accent. A backwoods voice. Gamache had to strain to understand the words.
“I didn’t mean to do it. I just got scared.” And the man sounded scared, his voice rising to near hysterics.
“Easy, softly. Calm down. Tell me what this is about.”
But in the pit of his stomach he knew what this was about.
An agent injured. An agent missing.
Paul Morin had been seconded to the Ste-Agathe detachment the day before, to fill in for a week. Morin was the missing agent.
At least he was alive.
“I didn’t mean to shoot him, but he surprised me. Stopped behind my truck.” The man seemed to be losing it. Gamache forced himself to speak slowly, reasonably.
“Is Agent Morin hurt?”
“No. I just didn’t know what to do. So I took him.”
“You need to let him go now. You need to turn yourself in.”
“Are you nuts?” The last word was shrieked. “Turn myself in? You’ll kill me. And if you didn’t I’d spend the rest of my life in jail. No way.”
Gamache’s secretary appeared at the door, giving him the “stretch it out” sign.
“I understand. You want to get away, is that right?”
“Yes,” the man sounded uncertain, surprised at Gamache’s response. “Can I?”
“Well, let’s just talk about it. Tell me what happened.”
“I was parked. My truck had broken down. Blown tire. I’d just replaced it when the police car pulled up behind.”
“Why would that be upsetting?” Gamache kept his voice conversational and he could hear the stress, the panic, on the other end subside a bit. He also stared at his secretary who was looking into the large outer room where there was sudden, frantic, activity.
Still no trace.
“Never you mind. It just was.”
“I understand,” said Gamache. And he did. There were two big crops in the backwoods of Québec. Maple syrup and marijuana. Chances were the truck wasn’t loaded with syrup. “Go on.”
“My gun was sitting on the seat and I just knew what would happen. He’d see the gun, arrest me and you’d find … what I had in the truck.”
The man, thought Gamache, had just shot, perhaps killed a Sûreté officer, kidnapped another, and yet his main concern still seemed to be concealing that he either had or worked for a marijuana plantation. But it was so instinctive, this need to hide, to be secretive. To lie. Hundreds of thousands of dollars could be at stake.
Liberty was at stake.
For a woodsman, the idea of years behind bars must seem like murder.
“What happened?”
Still no trace? It was inconceivable it should take this long.
“I didn’t mean to,” the man’s voice rose again, almost to a squeal. He was pleading now. “It was a mistake. But then it happened and I saw there was another one, so I pointed my gun at him. By then I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t just shoot him. Not in cold blood like that. But I couldn’t let him go either. So I brought him here.”
“You must let him go, you know,” said the Chief Inspector. “Just untie him and leave him there. You can take your truck and go, disappear. Just don’t hurt Paul Morin.”
Vaguely, in the back of Gamache’s mind, he wondered why the hostage-taker hadn’t asked about the condition of the officer he’d shot. He’d seemed so upset, and yet never asked. Perhaps, thought the Chief, he didn’t want to know. He seemed a man best suited to hiding from the truth.
There was a pause and Gamache thought maybe the man would do as he’d asked. If he could just get Agent Morin safely away they would find this man. Gamache had no doubt of that.
But Armand Gamache had already made his first mistake.
Beauvoir drifted back to sleep and in his sleep he replaced the receiver, got in the car with the Chief and raced up to Ste-Agathe. They found where Morin was being held and rescued him. Safe and sound. No one hurt, no one killed.
That was Beauvoir’s dream. That was always his dream.
Armand Gamache picked up the ball and chucked it for Henri. He knew the dog would happily do this all day and all night, and it held its attractions for Gamache. A simple, repetitive activity.
His feet crunched on the pathway and his breath puffed in the crisp, dark air. He could just see Henri ahead and hear the slight wind knocking the bare branches together, like the fingers of skeletons. And he could hear the young voice talking, always talking.
Paul Morin told him about his first swimming lesson in the cold Rivière Yamaska and losing his trunks to some bullies. He heard about the summer the family went whale watching in Tadoussac and how much Morin loved fishing, about the death of Morin’s grandmother, about the new apartment in Granby he and Suzanne had rented and the paint colors she’d chosen. He heard about the minutiae of the young agent’s life.
And as Morin talked Gamache saw again what had happened. All the images he kept locked away during the day he let out at night. He had to. He’d tried to keep them in, behind the groaning door but they’d pounded and pressed, hammering away until he had no choice.
And so every night he and Henri and Agent Morin went for a walk. Henri chasing his ball, Gamache being chased. At the end of the hour Gamache, Henri, the Chuck-it and Agent Morin walked back along Grande Allée, the bars and restaurants closed. Even the drunk college students gone. All gone. All quiet.
And Gamache invited, asked, begged Agent Morin to be quiet too. Now. Please. But while he became a whisper, the young voice was never totally hushed.
EIGHT
Gamache awoke to the welcome smell of strong coffee. After showering he joined Émile for breakfast.
The elderly man poured Gamache a cup as they sat at the long wooden table. In the center was a plate of flaky croissants, honey and jams and some sliced fruit.
“Did you see this?” Émile put the morning copy of Le Soleil in front of Gamache. The Chief sipped and read the headline.
AUGUSTIN RENAUD MURDERED WHILE DIGGING FOR CHAMPLAIN
He skimmed the story. He knew enough not to be dismissive of media reports. They often got hold of people and information the police themselves might not have found. But there was nothing new there. Mostly a recap of Renaud’s startling hobby of looking for Champlain and the ancillary benefits of pissing people off. There were quotes from the Chief Archeologist of Québec, Serge Croix, speaking glowingly of Renaud’s achievements which, everyone knew, amounted to putting holes in the old city and perhaps spoiling some legitimate digs. There was no respect lost between Croix and Renaud, though you’d never know it by the tribute in today’s paper.
Except the reporter had been smart enough to also gather Croix’s previous comments about Renaud. And not just Croix but a host of other Champlain experts, historians and archeologists. All dismissive of Renaud, all derisive, all mocking his amateur status, while he was alive.
Without a doubt, Augustin Renaud alive had become a bit of a buffoon. And yet, reading the papers, there emerged today another Augustin Renaud. Not just dead, but something else. There seemed an affection for him as for a beloved, but nutty, uncle. Renaud was misguided, perhaps, but passionate. A man who loved his home, loved his city, loved his country. Québec. Loved and lived history, to the exclusion of all else, including it seemed, his sanity.