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Children now orphaned.

“Photographs?” he asked, looking across at his second-in-command.

“Taken,” said Inspector Linda Chernin. “Scene of Crime has searched the immediate area. Teams are on the lake and moving along the shoreline, looking for where she might’ve gone in. We’re waiting for the coroner before we move her, patron.”

Behind him there was a pfffft and a muttered “Patron. Kiss-ass.”

Inspector Chernin’s lips thinned, her eyes hardened, and she made to get up to confront the agent, but a look from Gamache stopped her.

Just.

Harriet ran through the bright, cool June morning, keeping to the center of the dirt road out of Three Pines.

She glanced this way and that, always aware of her surroundings. Aware of the thick forest, and what might be hiding in there. Bears. Moose. Rabid foxes. Bloodsucking ticks with Lyme disease.

Bigfoot. The murdered kid who now murders other kids.

She smiled, remembering the silly ghost stories told around the village bonfires. But still, she picked up her pace. Harriet had spent much of her life running. And now, in her early twenties, she was running faster and faster. Further and further. Away.

“Injuries?” Gamache asked.

From his vantage point he could see none, though the coroner would be able to tell them more. He hoped.

“Here.” Inspector Chernin pointed to the side of the victim’s head.

Gamache leaned across the body for a closer look. As he did, a shadow blocked out what little sunlight penetrated the pewter clouds.

“Do you mind?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder. When the shadow withdrew, he bent closer.

A crushing blow had caved in that side of the woman’s head.

“It could’ve been postmortem,” said Chernin. “From what her kids told the local cops, she’d been drinking and was depressed.”

“You’re thinking suicide?” asked Gamache, sitting back on his heels, aware that his legs were growing numb from a combination of the kneeling and the cold.

A gust of wind blew spray from the lake onto his face. He turned his back, protecting not himself but the dead woman. It was not necessary. It was instinct.

Behind him he heard another snort, this time of amusement.

“Suicide? Are you kidding? She was a drunk and whored around from what I hear, but she didn’t kill herself. That’s obvious. Though who’d have blamed her? I’d off myself too, if I were her. Fucking waste of space.”

Gamache had a few quiet words with Inspector Chernin, then rose. He slowly, deliberately, turned to face the unfortunate young man.

Had the agent been more astute, had his head not been quite so far up his own derrière, had he not been so intent on self-destruction, he might have noticed the look in Chief Inspector Gamache’s eyes.

“Come with me, please.”

Gamache reached out, and the agent braced for the inevitable shove. But it didn’t happen. Instead, the Chief Inspector simply indicated a rocky outcropping, away from the activity.

Once there, Gamache stopped, turned, and after regarding the young man for a moment, he finally spoke. His voice was deep, calm. Quiet. But it held more force than any screaming the agent had heard his entire life. And he’d heard a lot.

“Agent Beauvoir, don’t you ever—”

“—wonder what would’ve happened if your father and I had never met?” asked Jean-Guy Beauvoir.

He looked across the tub at his wife, Annie, who was bathing their infant daughter, Idola. Then he went back to trying to put a sweater on a squirming Honoré, who was eager to get out to play on the village green with his friends.

The fact the child’s best friend seemed to be the deranged old poet Ruth Zardo both amused and slightly worried his parents.