The Nature of the Beast

“Why?” asked Jean-Guy.

“Because I need to be sure. They need to be sure.”

“No, I mean, let’s assume for a moment this wasn’t an accident. He was a kid. He wasn’t violated. He wasn’t tortured. Thank God. Why would someone kill him?”

“I don’t know.”

Gamache did not look at the pile of dirty pages on the table by the back door where they’d sat since he’d dug them up. But he felt them there. Felt John Fleming squatting there, listening, watching.

“Sometimes there’s a clear motive, sometimes it’s just bad luck,” he said. “The murderer has a plan of his own and the victim is chosen at random.”

“You think a serial killer murdered Laurent?” asked Jean-Guy, incredulous now. “A regular murderer isn’t enough?”

“Enough?” Gamache glared at the younger man. “What do you mean by that?”

His voice, explosive at first, had dropped to a dangerous whisper, and then he recovered himself.

“I’m sorry, Jean-Guy. I know you’re trying to help. I’m not making this up. I have no idea why anyone would murder Laurent. All I’m saying is that I’m not sure it was simply an accident. It might have been a hit-and-run. But there’s something off.”

Gamache reopened the dossier. At the list of items found in Laurent’s pocket. A small stone with a line of pyrite through it. Fool’s gold. A chocolate bar. Broken. There were pine cone shards and dirt and a dog biscuit.

Then Gamache looked at the report on the boy’s hands. They were scratched, dirty. The coroner found pine resin and bits of plant matter under his nails. No flesh. No blood.

No fight. If Laurent was murdered, he didn’t have a chance to defend himself. Gamache was relieved by this at least. It spoke of a boy doing boy things in the last hours, minutes, of his life. Not fighting for that life, but apparently enjoying it. Right up until the end.

Gamache raised his brown eyes to Jean-Guy.

“Would you look into it?”

“Of course, patron. I’ll come back down for the funeral and try to have some definite answers by then.”

Beauvoir thought about where to start. But there wasn’t much to think about. When a child dies, where do you look first?

“You said his father wouldn’t look at the boy, at his body. Is it possible…?”

Gamache considered for a moment. Remembering the weathered, beaten face of Al Lepage. His back turned to his dead son and wailing wife. “It’s possible.”

“But?”

“If he killed Laurent in a fit of rage he might try to hide it, but it would be simpler, I think. He’d bury the boy somewhere. Or take the body into the woods and leave it there. Let nature do the rest. If it was murder, then someone put some thought and effort into making it look like an accident.”

“People do, of course,” said Jean-Guy. “The best way to get away with murder is to make sure no one knows it’s murder.”

They’d wandered into the kitchen and were pouring coffees. They sat at the pine table, hands cupped around the mugs.

Beauvoir missed this. The hours and hours with Chief Inspector Gamache. Poring over evidence, talking with suspects. Talking about suspects. Comparing notes. Sitting across from each other in diners and cars and crappy hotel rooms. Picking apart a case.

And now, sitting at the kitchen table in Three Pines, Inspector Beauvoir wondered if he was humoring the Chief by agreeing to investigate a case that almost certainly only existed in Gamache’s imagination. Or maybe he was humoring himself.

“If it was murder, why not just bury him in the forest?” asked Jean-Guy. “It would be almost impossible to find him. And as you said, the wolves and bears…”

Gamache nodded.

He looked across at Jean-Guy, the younger man’s brows furrowed, thinking. Following a line of reason. How often, Gamache wondered, in small fishing villages, in farmers’ fields, in snowed-in cabins in the wilderness, had the two of them struggled through the intricacies of a case? Trying to find a murderer, who was desperately trying to hide?

He missed this.

Was that why he was doing it? Had he turned a little boy’s tragic death into murder, for his own selfish reasons? Had he bullied Jean-Guy into seeing what didn’t exist? Because he was bored? Because he missed being the great Chief Inspector Gamache?

Because he missed the applause?

Still, Jean-Guy had asked a good question. If someone had in fact murdered Laurent, why not just hide the body in the deep, dark forest? Why go through the “accident” charade?