Glass Houses (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #13)(106)

Lacoste and Beauvoir nodded. Coincidences were not uncommon in murder investigations. Just as they weren’t uncommon in life. It would be foolish to read too much into it. But it would be equally foolish not to wonder.

“We need to go back to the B&B and see if they did recognize Anton,” said Lacoste.

“Though that wouldn’t make them responsible for the cobrador,” said Gamache. “The cobrador didn’t just show up. It must’ve been months in the planning, maybe longer. Madame Evans and the others would have only just recognized Anton in the last few days.”

“And how does Katie Evans’s murder fit into this?” Lacoste asked.

The cobrador, the Conscience, had rattled this secret loose from Anton, about his role in Edouard’s death fifteen years earlier. But it was possible someone there had an even bigger, nastier secret.

Lacoste looked over toward the root cellar. “We need to seal up the hidden door so no one can use it.”

Gamache, deep in thought, watched them head across the room. “Wait,” he called and got up. “I think we should leave it.”

“But whoever used it could come back,” said Lacoste.

“And do what?” he asked, joining them at the door to the root cellar.

“Well,” she said, feeling instinctively that an intruder must do harm, but now that she thought about it, she couldn’t come up with anything, at least not anything serious.

They had all the samples, all the photos.

“Our computers,” said Beauvoir.

“You have a password,” said Gamache. “Besides, if the murderer comes back, it probably won’t be to take anything. He wouldn’t risk being found with laptops stolen from the S?reté.”

He’d met killers who were that stupid, but they were unfortunately quite rare.

“Let’s at least take our notes and erase the board,” said Lacoste, pointing to the whiteboard, on which were written flowcharts and suspects and ideas.

“No, leave that too.”

“But he’ll know where we’re at,” said Beauvoir.

“And he’ll discover that we’re lost,” said Gamache.

“We’re not lost.”

“No. But he wouldn’t know that, would he, if he read your reports, or looked at that.” Gamache pointed to the board.

“Non,” she admitted.

“There’s something to be said for appearing to be lost,” said Gamache, almost to himself. “For appearing incompetent. To even appear to have given up. Puts criminals at ease. Lowers their defenses. Makes them overconfident.” He looked at them with a touch of wonderment. “And then they make mistakes.”

“You’re not suggesting we give up, patron?” said Lacoste.

“Just the opposite,” he said, distracted. “I think.”

And he did appear to be thinking, hard.

Beauvoir caught Lacoste’s eye with a questioning glance.

“I think,” said Gamache, turning to face them, “that we should keep what we found tonight to ourselves. In fact, I know we should. We tell no one about the hidden door. Not even other members of the team.”

“Pardon?” they both asked at once. It was unprecedented, to keep a valuable piece of evidence from their own investigation team.

“Just for now,” said Gamache. “Give me tonight. I need time.”

“I’m going to put a camera up in the corner of the room,” said Beauvoir. “If anyone does come in, we’ll at least see who it is.”

While he did that, Lacoste checked her messages.

“The lab says we won’t get results from the cobrador costume until tomorrow morning. There’re multiple DNA samples on it.”

“Probably rented,” came Beauvoir’s voice from the root cellar. “God knows when it was last cleaned.” His voice carried all the disgust of a well-groomed man.

“But,” said Lacoste, reading further down the report, “we do have the results from the bat.”

She spoke slowly, reading as she went.

Gamache stood behind her, his expert eyes finding the pertinent lines buried in among the scientific jargon.

Lacoste swung around in her chair and looked up at him.

“What do you make of that?” she asked.

“What?” asked Jean-Guy, striding across the Incident Room to join them.

He read in silence, then he too straightened up, his brows deeply furrowed.

“It’s not enough to make an arrest,” said Lacoste. “Not yet. But at least now we know who handled the murder weapon, and who almost certainly killed Katie Evans.”

“But what do you make of that?” asked Gamache, pointing to another line on the report.

“That’s just a trace,” said Lacoste. “The lab says that it’s probably incidental.”

“It’s slightly more than a trace,” said Gamache. Though not much more. And Lacoste was right, the technicians, expert in the field, concluded it was a bit of DNA that had probably fallen from the murderer, but did not belong to the killer.

The other two results were clear. One belonged to Katie Evans. The other to her killer.

And yet.

“Why was the bat removed from the scene?” he asked. “And then replaced? At great risk.”