The Nature of the Beast

Had he left it too late?

He ripped and tore and clawed until a small opening appeared. Thrusting his hand in, he dropped the cassette.

It might never be found by those who needed it. But neither, he knew, would it be found by those about to kill for it.

“But I’m all alone at last,” he whispered. “Rolling home to you.”

Some glint inside the bramble caught his eye.

Something was in there. Something that hadn’t grown, but had been placed there. Other hands had been here before him.

Laurent Lepage, his pursuers forgotten, knelt closer and bringing both hands up, he grasped the vines and yanked them apart. The creepers clung to each other, bound together. Years, decades, eons worth of growth. And concealment.

Laurent ripped, and ripped, and tore. Until a shaft of sunlight penetrated the overgrowth, the undergrowth, and he saw what was in there. What had been hiding in there longer than Laurent had been alive.

His eyes widened.

“Wow.”

CHAPTER 2

“So?”

Isabelle Lacoste put her glass of apple cider on the worn wooden table and stared at the man across from her.

“You know I’m not going to answer that,” said Armand Gamache, picking up his beer and smiling at her.

“Well, now that you’re no longer my boss I can tell you what I really think.”

Gamache laughed. His wife, Reine-Marie, leaned toward Lacoste and whispered, “What do you really think, Isabelle?”

“I think your husband, Madame Gamache, would make a great Superintendent at the Sûreté.”

Reine-Marie leaned back in her armchair. Through the mullioned windows of the bistro she saw a ragtag mix of kids and adults, including her daughter Annie and Annie’s husband, Jean-Guy, playing soccer. It was mid-September. Summer was gone and autumn was on the doorstep. Leaves were just turning. Brilliant reds and yellows and amber maples dotted the gardens and forest. Some leaves had already fallen onto the grass of the village green. It was a perfect time of year, when late summer flowers were still blooming and the leaves were turning, and the grass was still green, but the nights were chilly and sweaters were out and fires were beginning to be lit. So that the hearths at night resembled the forests in the day, all giddy and bright and cheerful.

Soon everyone would head back to the city after the weekend, but for her and Armand there was no need to return. They were already there.

Reine-Marie nodded to Monsieur Béliveau, the grocer, who’d just taken a seat at a nearby table, then turned her attention back to the woman who had joined them for the weekend. Isabelle Lacoste. Chief Inspector Lacoste, acting head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec. The job Reine-Marie’s husband had held for more than twenty years.

Reine-Marie always thought of her as “young Isabelle.” Not, she hoped, in a patronizing, or matronizing, way, but because she’d been so young when Armand had found and recruited and trained her.

But now there were lines in Isabelle’s face, and gray just starting in her hair. It seemed to happen overnight. They’d met her fiancé, and been at her wedding, and attended the baptism of her two babies. She’d been young Agent Lacoste for so long, and now, suddenly it seemed, she was Chief Inspector Lacoste.

And Armand was retired. Early retirement, certainly, but retirement.

Reine-Marie glanced out the window again. They were in their amber years.

Or perhaps not.

Reine-Marie shifted her attention to Armand, sitting back in his wing chair in the bistro, sipping his microbrewery beer. Relaxed, comfortable, amused. His six-foot frame had filled out. He wasn’t heavy, but he was solid. The pillar in the storm.

But there was no storm, Reine-Marie reminded herself. They could, finally, stop being pillars and just be people. Armand and Reine-Marie. Two more villagers. That was all. That was enough.

For her.

And for him?

Armand’s hair was grayer than ever, and curling just around his ears and at his collar. It was longer, slightly, than when he was at the Sûreté. More from not noticing than not caring.

Here in Three Pines they noticed the migration of the geese, and the prickly chestnuts ripening on the trees, and the bobbing black-eyed Susans in bloom. They noticed the barrel of apples outside Monsieur Béliveau’s general store, free for the taking. They noticed the fresh harvest at the farmers market and the new arrivals at Myrna’s New and Used Bookstore. They noticed Olivier’s daily specials at the bistro.

Reine-Marie noticed that Armand was happy. And healthy.

And Armand noticed that Reine-Marie was happy and healthy too, here, in the little village in the valley. Three Pines couldn’t hide them from the woes of the world, but it could help heal the wounds.