A Trick of the Light cig-7

by Penny, Louise

  He threw his arms around his legs and drew them violently to his chest, making himself as tiny as he could. A small globe. And he rocked himself.

  Back and forth. Back and forth.

  On the bed Clara stared. Silenced now not by rage, but by amazement.

  * * *

  Jean Guy Beauvoir picked up an armful of dirty laundry and threw it into a corner.

  “There,” he smiled, “make yourself at home.”

  “Merci,” said Gamache, sitting down. His knees immediately and alarmingly bounced up almost around his shoulders.

  “Watch out for the sofa,” Beauvoir called from the kitchen. “I think the springs are gone.”

  “That is possible,” said Gamache, trying to get comfortable. He wondered if this was what a Turkish prison felt like. While Beauvoir poured them each a drink, the Chief looked around the furnished efficiency apartment right in Montréal’s downtown core.

  The only personal touches seemed to be the stack of laundry now in the corner, and a stuffed animal, a lion, just visible on the unmade bed. It looked odd, infantile even. He’d not have taken Jean Guy for a man with a stuffed toy.

  They’d strolled the three blocks from the coffee shop to his apartment, comparing notes in the clear, cool night air.

  “Did you believe her?” Beauvoir had asked.

  “When Suzanne said she couldn’t remember Lillian’s secrets?” Gamache considered. The trees lining the downtown street were in leaf, just turning from bright, young green to a deeper more mature color. “Did you?”

  “Not for a minute.”

  “Neither did I,” said the Chief. “But the question is, did she lie to us intentionally, to hide something, or did she just need time to gather her thoughts?”

  “I think it was intentional.”

  “You always do.”

  That was true. Inspector Beauvoir always thought the worst. It was safer that way.

  Suzanne had explained that she had a number of sponsees, that each told her everything about their lives.

  “It’s step five in the AA program,” she’d said, then quoted. “Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. I’m the ‘other human being.’”

  She laughed again and made a face.

  “You don’t enjoy it?” Gamache asked, interpreting the grimace.

  “At first I did, with my first few sponsees. I was honestly kinda curious to find out what sort of shenanigans they’d gotten up to in their drinking careers and if they were at all like mine. It was exciting to have someone trust me like that. Hadn’t happened much when I was drinking, I’ll tell ya. You’d have had to be nuts to trust me then. But it actually gets boring after a while. Everyone thinks their secrets are so horrible, but they’re all pretty much the same.”

  “Like what?” asked the Chief Inspector.

  “Oh, affairs. Being a closeted gay. Stealing. Thinking horrible thoughts. Getting drunk and missing big family events. Letting down loved ones. Hurting loved ones. Sometimes it’s abuse. I’m not saying what they did was right. It’s clearly not. That’s why we buried it for so long. But it’s not unique. They’re not alone. You know the toughest part of step five?”

  “‘Admitted to ourselves’?” asked Gamache.

  Beauvoir was amazed the Chief had remembered the wording. It seemed just a big whine to him. A bunch of alcoholics feeling sorry for themselves and looking for instant forgiveness.

  Beauvoir believed in forgiveness, but only after punishment.

  Suzanne smiled. “That’s it. You’d think it’d be easy to admit these things to ourselves. After all, we were there when it happened. But of course, we couldn’t admit what we’d done was so bad. We’d spent years justifying and denying our behavior.”

  Gamache had nodded, thinking.

  “Are the secrets often as bad as Brian’s?”

  “You mean killing a child? Sometimes.”

  “Have any of your sponsees killed someone?”

  “I’ve had some sponsees admit to killing,” she finally said. “Never intentionally. Never murder. But some accident. Mostly drunk driving.”

  “Including Lillian?” Gamache asked quietly.

  “I can’t remember.”

  “I don’t believe you.” Gamache’s voice was so low it was hard to hear. Or perhaps it was the words Suzanne found so difficult to hear. “No one listens to a confession like that and forgets.”

  “Believe what you want, Chief Inspector.”

  Gamache nodded and gave her his card. “I’ll be staying in Montréal tonight but we’ll be back in Three Pines after that. We’ll be there until we find out who killed Lillian Dyson. Call me when you’ve remembered.”

  “Three Pines?” Suzanne asked, taking the card.

  “The village where Lillian was killed.”

  He rose, and Beauvoir rose with him.

  “You said your lives depend on the truth,” he said. “I’d hate for you to forget that now.”

  Fifteen minutes later they were in Beauvoir’s new apartment. While Jean Guy opened and closed cupboards and mumbled, Gamache hauled himself out of the torturous sofa and strolled around the living room, looking out the window to the pizza place across the way advertising the Super Slice, then he turned back into the room, looking at the gray walls and Ikea furniture. His gaze drifted over to the phone and the pad of paper.

  “You’re not just eating at the pizza place, then,” said Gamache.

  “What d’you mean?” Beauvoir called from the kitchen.

  “Restaurant Milos,” Gamache read from the pad of paper by the phone. “Very chic.”

  Beauvoir looked into the room, his eyes directly on the desk and the pad, then up to the Chief.

  “I was thinking of taking you and Madame Gamache there.”

  For a moment, the way the bare light in the room caught his face, Beauvoir looked like Brian. Not the defiant, swaggering young man at the beginning of his share. But the bowed boy. Humbled. Perplexed. Flawed. Human.

  Guarded.

  “To thank you for all your support,” said Beauvoir. “This separation from Enid, and the other stuff. It’s been a difficult few months.”

  Chief Inspector Gamache looked at the younger man, astonished. Milos was one of the finest seafood restaurants in Canada. And certainly one of the most expensive. It was a favorite of his and Reine-Marie’s, though they only went on very special occasions.

  “Merci,” he said at last. “But you know we’d be just as happy with pizza.”

  Jean Guy smiled and taking the pad from the desk he slid it into a drawer. “So no Milos. But I will spring for the Super Slice, and no arguments.”

  “Madame Gamache will be pleased,” laughed Gamache.

  Beauvoir walked into the kitchen and returned with their drinks. A micro-brewery beer for the Chief and water for himself.

  “No beer?” asked the Chief, raising his glass.

  “All this talk of booze turned me off it. Water’s fine.”

  They sat again, Gamache this time choosing one of the hard chairs around the small glass dining table. He took a sip.

  “Does it work, do you think?” Beauvoir asked.

  It took a moment for the Chief to figure out what his Inspector was talking about.

  “AA?”

  Beauvoir nodded. “Seems pretty self-indulgent to me. And why would spilling their secrets stop them from drinking? Wouldn’t it be better to just forget instead of dredging all that stuff up? And none of these people are trained. That Suzanne’s a mess. You can’t tell me she’s much help to anyone.”

  The Chief stared at his haggard deputy. “I think AA works because no one, no matter how well-meaning, understands what an experience is like except someone who’s been through the same thing,” Gamache said, quietly. He was careful not to lean forward, not to get into his Inspector’s space. “Like the factory. The raid. No one knows what it was like except those of us who were there. The therapists help, a lot. But it’s no
t the same as talking to one of us.” Gamache looked at Beauvoir. Who seemed to be collapsing into himself. “Do you often think about what happened in the factory?”

  Now it was Beauvoir’s turn to pause. “Sometimes.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “What good would it do? I’ve already told the investigators, the therapists. You and I’ve been over it. I think it’s time to stop talking about it and just get on with it, don’t you?”

  Gamache cocked his head to one side and examined Jean Guy. “No, I don’t. I think we need to keep talking until it’s all out, until there’s no unfinished business.”

  “What happened in the factory’s over,” snapped Beauvoir, then restrained himself. “I’m sorry. I just think it’s self-indulgent. I just want to get on with my life. The only unfinished business, the only thing still bothering me, if you really want to know, is who leaked the video of the raid. How’d it get onto the Internet?”

  “The internal investigation said it was a hacker.”

  “I know. I read the report. But you don’t really believe it, do you?”

  “I have no choice,” said Gamache. “And neither do you.”

  There was no mistaking the warning in the Chief’s voice. A warning Beauvoir chose not to hear, or to heed.

  “It wasn’t a hacker,” he said. “No one even knows those tapes exist except other Sûreté officers. A hacker didn’t pirate that recording.”

  “That’s enough, Jean Guy.” They’d been down this road before. The video of the raid on the factory had been uploaded onto the Internet, where it had gone viral. Millions around the world had watched the edited video.

  Seen what had happened.

  To them. And to others. Millions had watched as though it was a TV show. Entertainment.

  The Sûreté, after months of investigation, had concluded it was a hacker.

  “Why didn’t they find the guy?” Beauvoir persisted. “We have an entire department that only investigates cyber crime. And they couldn’t find an asshole who, by their own report, just got lucky?”

  “Let it be, Jean Guy,” said Gamache, sternly.

  “We have to find the truth, sir,” said Beauvoir, leaning forward.

  “We know the truth,” said Gamache. “What we have to do is learn to live with it.”

  “You’re not going to look further? You’re just going to accept it?”

  “I am. And so are you. Promise me, Jean Guy. This is someone else’s problem. Not ours.”

  The two men stared at each other for a moment until Beauvoir gave one curt nod.

  “Bon,” said Gamache, emptying his glass and walking with it into the kitchen. “Time to go. We need to be back in Three Pines early.”

  Armand Gamache said good night and walked slowly through the night streets. It was chilly and he was glad for his coat. He’d planned to wave down a cab, but found himself walking all the way up Ste-Urbain to avenue Laurier.

  And as he walked he thought about AA, and Lillian, and Suzanne. About the Chief Justice. About the artists and dealers, asleep in their beds in Three Pines.

  But mostly he thought about the corrosive effect of secrets. Including his own.

  He’d lied to Beauvoir. It wasn’t over. And he hadn’t let it go.

  * * *

  Jean Guy Beauvoir washed the beer glass then headed toward his bedroom.

  Keep going, just keep going, he begged himself. Just a few more steps.

  But he stopped, of course. As he’d done every night since that video had appeared.

  Once on the Net it could never, ever be taken off. It was there forever. Forgotten, perhaps, but still there, waiting to be found again. To surface again.

  Like a secret. Never really hidden completely. Never totally forgotten.

  And this video was far from forgotten. Not yet.

  Beauvoir sat heavily into the chair and brought his computer out of sleep. The link was on his favorites list, but intentionally mislabeled.

  His eyes heavy with sleep and his body aching, Jean Guy clicked on it.

  And up came the video.

  He hit play. Then play again. And again.

  Over and over he watched the video. The picture was clear, as were the sounds. The explosions, the shooting, the shouting, “Officer down, officer down.”

  And Gamache’s voice, steady, commanding. Issuing clear orders, holding them together, keeping the chaos at bay as the tactical team had pressed deeper and deeper into the factory. Cornering the gunmen. So many more gunmen than they’d expected.

  And over and over and over Beauvoir watched himself get shot in the abdomen. And over and over and over he watched something worse. Chief Inspector Gamache. Arms thrown out, back arching. Lifting off, then falling. Hitting the ground. Still.

  And then the chaos closing in.

  Finally exhausted, he pushed himself away from the screen and got ready for bed. Washing, brushing his teeth. Taking out the prescription medication he popped an OxyContin.

  Then he slipped the other small bottle of pills under his pillow. In case he needed it in the night. It was safe there. Out of sight. Like a weapon. A last resort.

  A bottle of Percocet.

  In case the OxyContin wasn’t enough.

  In his bed, in the dark, he waited for the painkiller to kick in. He could feel the day slip away. The worries, the anxieties, the images receded. As he hugged his stuffed lion and drifted toward oblivion one image drifted along with him. Not of himself being shot. Not even of seeing the Chief hit, and fall.

  All that had faded, gobbled up by the OxyContin.

  But one thought remained. Followed him to the edge.

  Restaurant Milos. The phone number, now hidden in the desk drawer. Every week for the past three months he’d called the Restaurant Milos and made a reservation. For two. For Saturday night. The table at the back, by the whitewashed wall.

  And every Saturday afternoon he canceled it. He wondered if they even bothered to take down his name anymore. Maybe they just pretended. As he did.

  But tomorrow, he felt certain, would be different.

  He’d definitely call her then. And she’d say yes. And he’d take Annie Gamache to Milos, with its crystal and white linen. She’d have the Dover sole, he’d have the lobster.

  And she’d listen to him, and look at him with those intense eyes. He’d ask her all about her day, her life, her likes, her feelings. Everything. He wanted to know everything.

  Every night he drifted off to sleep with the same image. Annie looking at him across the table. And then, he’d reach out and place his hand on hers. And she’d let him.

  As he sank into sleep he placed one hand over the other. That was how it would feel.

  And then, the OxyContin took everything. And Jean Guy Beauvoir had no more feelings.

  FIFTEEN

  Clara came down to breakfast. The place smelled of coffee and toasted English muffins.

  When Clara had woken up, surprised she’d even fallen asleep, the bed was empty. It had taken her a moment to remember what had happened the night before.

  Their fight.

  How close she’d come to getting dressed and leaving him. Taking the car, driving to Montréal. Checking into a cheap hotel.

  And then?

  And then, something. The rest of her life, she supposed. She hadn’t cared.

  But then Peter had finally told her the truth.

  They’d talked into the night, and fallen asleep. Not touching, not yet. They were both too bruised for that. It was as though they’d been skinned and dissected. Deboned. Their innards brought out. Examined. And found to be rotten.

  They didn’t have a marriage, they had a parody of a partnership.

  But they’d also found that maybe, maybe, they could put themselves together again.

  It would be different. Would it be better?

  Clara didn’t know.

  “Morning,” said Peter when she appeared, her hair sticking up on one side, a crust of sleep
on her face.

  “Morning,” she said.

  He poured her a mug of coffee.

  Once Clara had fallen asleep, and he’d heard the heavy breathing and a snort, he’d gone down to the living room. He found the newspaper. He found the glossy catalog for her show.

  And he’d sat there all night. Memorizing the New York Times review. Memorizing the London Times review. So that he knew them by heart.

  So that he too would have a choice of what to believe.

  And then he’d stared at the reproductions of her paintings in the catalog.

  They were brilliant. But then he already knew that. In the past, though, he’d looked at her portraits and seen flaws. Real or imagined. A brush stroke slightly off. The hands that could have been better. He’d deliberately concentrated on the minutiae so that he wouldn’t have to see the whole.

  Now he looked at the whole.

  To say he was happy about it would be a lie, and Peter Morrow was determined not to lie anymore. Not to himself. Not to Clara.

  The truth was, it still hurt to see such talent. But for the first time since he’d met Clara he was no longer looking for the flaws.

  But there was something else he’d struggled with all night. He’d told her everything. Every stinking thing he’d done and thought. So she’d know it all. So there was nothing hidden, to surprise either of them.

  Except one thing.

  Lillian. And what he’d said to her at the student art show so many years ago. The number of words he could count on his fingers. But each had been a bullet. And each had hit its target. Clara.

  “Thanks,” said Clara, accepting the mug of rich, strong coffee. “Smells good.”

  She too was determined not to lie, not to pretend everything was fine in the hope that fantasy might become reality. The truth was, the coffee did smell good. That at least was safe to say.

  Peter sat down, screwing up his courage to tell her about what he’d done. He took a breath, closed his eyes briefly, then opened his mouth to speak.

  “They’re back early.” Clara nodded out the window, where she’d been staring.

  Peter watched as a Volvo pulled up and parked. Chief Inspector Gamache and Jean Guy Beauvoir got out and walked toward the bistro.