Glass Houses (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #13)(57)

Jean-Guy Beauvoir made himself comfortable in the study at the Gamache home and waited for the Internet to connect.

Few could find Three Pines, hidden in the valley, and that included the satellites that provided Internet coverage for most of the planet. The village was civilization adjacent. The information superhighway zoomed overhead. And Three Pines was a pothole.

But having witnessed untold brutality in cities and towns, Jean-Guy Beauvoir had come to believe that “civilization” might be overrated. Except for pizza delivery, of course.

But it was possible to get a book from Myrna’s shop, take it into Olivier’s bistro, and read it in peace, while drinking rich café au lait and eating a buttery croissant from Sarah’s Boulangerie.

Did that make up for no iPhone or pizza delivery?

“Non,” he muttered as he shifted impatiently in his chair and yearned for high-speed wireless and a large all-dressed.

The dial-up, primitive, maddening, noisy and unreliable, had reached the shrieking stage, as though it was afraid to connect to the outside world.

“It’s still better than what we’ve had in some places,” the chief always reminded Beauvoir when he grumbled about the wood-burning modem.

While Beauvoir waited, he looked out the window. He could see technicians taking equipment off vans and lugging it into St. Thomas’s. He marveled at Lacoste’s luck. To have such an Incident Room right next to the crime scene. Warm, dry, with running water, a fridge. A toilet.

“A coffeemaker, for chrissake,” he mumbled.

She didn’t even have to go outside, which, in Beauvoir’s opinion, was always an advantage.

It was a far cry from some of the places he and his father-in-law had been forced to use as they’d investigated murders across Québec.

The tents, the bobbing and corkscrewing fishing boats, the shacks, the caves.

He’d told Annie about the outhouse that’d once been their headquarters, but she’d refused to believe him.

“Ask your dad,” he’d said.

“I will not.” She laughed in her easy way. “You’re just trying to set me up. Entrapment, monsieur. I’ll have you up on charges.”

“You’d punish me?” he asked in a mock-hopeful voice. “I’m a bad, bad boy.”

“No, you’re a silly, silly boy. And, God help us, you’re a father now. There’re all sorts of new punishments I have lined up for you. I gave Honoré prunes for the first time. He liked them.”

But he’d been telling the truth. He and then–Chief Inspector Gamache had been investigating the murder of a survivalist in the Saguenay. The body had been found in a burned-out cabin, and the only structure left was the outhouse.

“A two-holer,” Gamache had pointed out, as though that was luxury.

“I’ll just sit out here,” Beauvoir had said, pulling a rock up to a stump and setting out his notebook.

At two in the morning, the rains came, and Beauvoir had knocked on the outhouse door.

“Who is it?” Gamache had asked, politely.

Jean-Guy had peered through the half moon cut into the rickety door. “Let me in.”

“It’s unlocked. But wipe your feet first.”

They’d spent a day and a half there, sifting through evidence in the charred rubble. And interviewing “neighbors” scattered through the forest. Most were trappers or fellow survivalists. The investigators were trying to find someone, anyone, who admitted to knowing the victim. But these people barely admitted to knowing themselves.

There’d been no Internet there at all. No laptops. No dial-up. No telephones. No nothing. Except, thankfully, toilet paper. And the sleeping bags, water, food packets and matches they’d marched in with.

They’d tacked up notepaper on the weathered walls of the outhouse and made flowcharts of suspects. It became almost cozy.

“Did you catch whoever did it?” Annie had asked. She’d been seduced by the story, and her lawyer mind had reluctantly told her that he was telling the truth.

She listened, rapt. As he listened, rapt, to her stories.

“We did. Through cunning, finely honed reasoning, animal—”

“He gave himself up, didn’t he?”

“No.” Though Jean-Guy couldn’t help but smile at the memory. “He came back looking for the water filtration system the dead man had. You should’ve seen his face when your father and I strolled out of the outhouse.”

Annie had laughed until she almost wet herself.

The Internet connected and Jean-Guy swung around, his hands hovering over the keyboard.

He had a bunch of competing priorities. But the first was obvious.

He fired off a quick email to Annie, to let her know what had happened and that he’d be spending at least the night, perhaps longer, at her parents’ place.

As he wrote, he ached for her. For Honoré. For the feel and scent of them.

“Miss you,” Annie wrote back. “Hope it’s not a two-holer.”

It had become their code for big shit.

And then he typed in Lord of the Flies, and hit enter.

*

“Clara?” Myrna called.

The cottage was in near darkness, just a lamp on in the living room.

Myrna switched on the lights and the cheerful kitchen appeared. Empty.