Page 32

“Anything else?”

Beauvoir raised his brows. He’d only been looking for the murder weapon. He thought that was the purpose.

“Well”—he searched his mind—“there’s a lot of junk. Old tires. Boxes. Plastic containers. It’s basically a garbage dump. They just tossed the shit out the back door.”

“Show me, please.”

Gamache accompanied Beauvoir around the overgrown yard. It was indeed clogged with garbage. Including something interesting. Putting on gloves, Gamache yanked an unwieldy shipping box from the pile.

It was what the television had come in. Replacing it, he called over a senior agent and had a word with him before walking back to the house.

But his footsteps slowed as he approached the back door. Reluctant, he admitted, to return inside. He stood in the cold and dark and stared at the small house. It looked so plain. So much like all the other houses on the street, on so many Québec streets. Modest homes with decent men and women inside. And some who were not so decent.

How to tell them apart? It was impossible, from the outside. You had to go in, and even then, you had to look closely. And even then …

There is always another story, there is more than meets the eye.

That was part of the horror, and the price, of his job. Paying close attention as warped minds tried to pass as normal.

Wondering, always wondering, what was really happening on all the quiet streets. In all those homes. In all those heads. And whether, despite looking and listening closely, he was still missing something.

Through a lit window he saw his IT specialist hunched over the computer keyboard.

Then his eyes dropped to the base of the house. Turning on his flashlight, he let it play over the cinder block foundation. Then he began to walk around the building, following his light.

He hadn’t gone far before he saw it. What so many of these older rural homes had. On so many roads just like this.

A root cellar. Accessed from the outside.

Calling several agents over, one of whom turned out to be Beauvoir, he instructed the Scene of Crime officer to video what was happening, and the forensics agent to swab the handle and check for prints. Then he nodded to Agent Beauvoir, who stepped forward and gave the door a mighty yank.

It opened so easily, he stumbled backward into the Chief, who held him upright in a grip far stronger than Beauvoir expected.

They stared at the opening. A black hole. This door had been opened often. And recently.

Gamache went in first. There was silence behind him as the agents followed. Alert. Watchful. Tense.

No one liked going into a dark, enclosed space, least of all cops.

Gamache instinctively held his flashlight away from him as he played it around the walls. If there was a gunman hiding there, he’d aim for the light. Best not to have it in front of his chest or face.

He saw cinder block walls, a dirt floor. The ceiling was beamed. At slightly taller than six feet, Gamache could just stand upright.

The cellar was colder than the outside. It smelled of dirt and decay. Something played against his face and he batted it away before realizing it was a string. Pulling it, a single bulb came on, revealing a cot shoved against the far wall.

There was nothing else in the open space.

No root vegetables were stored there for the winter. No mason jars of preserves. No wood stacked up for the woodstove. This was a space used for only one thing.

The lightbulb swung lazily, playing off their faces.

Beauvoir stood in the low, dark room and could feel the walls closing in. He’d never been fond of enclosed spaces, but now he could feel panic welling up. Unaware of what had been found on the computer, he still knew this was not a place he wanted to linger in.

But he also realized he would have to. He took a step forward, but Gamache stopped him and gestured to the dirt floor. When Beauvoir still didn’t see it, Gamache knelt and pointed his flashlight.

There were three small holes. The indents made by a tripod, which would have been pointed toward the cot.

“You know what you have to do,” he said to the officers, then turned to Beauvoir. “Come with me.”