Dead Cold (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #2)(37)

He picked up the small engraved wooden box and opened it, staring at the strange assortment of letters. Homeless people weren’t famous for their good sense, but even so, why would she have cut out all those letters? C, B, L, K and M. Turning it over he saw again the letters taped to the bottom. B KLM.

Maybe the C fell off. Maybe it sat in that hole between the B and K.

He picked up the autopsy report. Elle had been strangled. Alcohol was found in her bloodstream and there were signs of chronic alcoholism. No drugs. Some bruising round her neck, of course.

Why kill a bag lady?

The murderer was almost certainly another homeless person. Like any sub-culture, this one interacted mostly with itself. A regular pedestrian would probably not care enough about Elle to kill her.

He opened the craft paper envelope which held the crime scene photographs. Her face was smudged and surprised. Her legs were splayed and wrapped in layers of clothing and newspapers. He lowered the picture and peered into the box. There they were. Some yellowing newspaper, some fresher, curled into the shape of Elle’s legs and arms and torso, like a dismembered ghost.

There were pictures of Elle’s filthy hands, her nails grotesque. Long and twisted and discolored with God knew what beneath them. Actually, the coroner knew what. Gamache consulted the report. Dirt. Food. Excrement.

One hand had some blood on it, her own blood according to the report, and a few fresh cuts in the center of the palm, like stigmata. Whoever had killed her might have gotten some blood on him. Even if the clothes were washed there would still be some DNA left. Blood was the new albatross.

Gamache made a note of that and turned to the final photograph. It was of Elle naked on the coroner’s cold gurney. He stared at it for a moment, wondering when he’d get used to seeing dead bodies. Murder still shocked him.

Then he picked up his magnifying glass and slowly examined her body. He was looking for letters. Had she written or taped K L C B and M onto her body? Perhaps the letters were some obsessive talisman. Some madmen drew crucifixes all over their bodies and all round their homes, to ward off evil. Maybe these letters were Elle’s crucifix.

He lowered the magnifying glass. Her body, while free of consonants, was thick with dirt. Years of it. Even the occasional bath or shower at the Old Brewery Mission couldn’t lift it off. It was engraved on her body, like a tattoo. And like a tattoo it told a story. It was as eloquent as a Ruth Zardo poem.



I understand. You can’t spare



anything, a hand, a piece of bread, a shawl



against the cold,



a good word. Lord



knows there isn’t much



to go around. You need it all.





A good word. That reminded him of something else. Crie. Like Elle, she longed for a good word. Begged for it as surely as Elle had begged for food.

The tattoo of filth spoke of Elle’s external life, but was mute about what happened inside, beneath the layers of fetid clothing and dirt and alcohol-shriveled skin. Staring at the picture of the body on the gurney Gamache wondered what this woman had thought and felt. Gamache knew those things had probably died with her. Knew he might find her name, might even find her killer, but he would probably never find her. This woman had been lost years ago.

Like Crie, only further down the road?

And then he saw it. A small discoloration different from the rest. It was dark and circular, too even to be random filth. It was on her chest, on her breastbone.

Lifting his magnifying glass again he spent some time looking at it. He wanted to be certain. And when he looked up Armand Gamache was.

He took out the other pictures again and stared at one in particular. Then he rooted through the evidence box, looking for one small thing. Something that would be easy to overlook. But it wasn’t there.

He carefully replaced everything in the box and put it by the door. Then he returned to his warm chair by the fire and sat a moment watching Reine-Marie reading, her lips moving ever so slightly now and then and her brows rising and lowering in a way only he, who knew her so well, could see.

Then he picked up Be Calm and started reading.





FOURTEEN




Jean Guy Beauvoir reached for his Tim Horton’s Double Double coffee, cradling it in his hands to keep them warm. The huge black wood stove in the center of the room was trying its best, but so far it hadn’t managed to throw much heat.

It was ten o’clock on a snowy morning, almost exactly twenty-four hours after the murder, and the S?reté team had assembled in their situation room in Three Pines. They shared it with a large red fire truck. The white walls above the dark wood wainscoting were plastered with detailed maps of the area, diagrams of firefighting strategies and a huge poster commemorating past winners of the Governor-General’s Awards for Literature.

This was the home of the Three Pines Volunteer Fire Department, under the baton of Ruth Zardo.

‘Tabernacle. She’s a senile old hag. Won’t let us move that out.’ Beauvoir shoved his thumb toward the truck taking up half the room.

‘Did Madame Zardo give you a reason?’ Gamache asked.

‘Something about needing to make sure the truck doesn’t freeze up in case there’s a fire,’ said Beauvoir. ‘I asked her when the last fire was and she told me it was confidential. Confidential? Since when was there a secret fire?’