Bury Your Dead (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #6) - Louise Penny Page 0,84

porn,” whispered Gabri. “Complete with rubber suits.” He flashed an image of a muscular man wearing a tight scuba outfit.

Beauvoir gave himself a fictional budget of five thousand dollars then lost himself in Bali, in Bora-Bora, in St. Lucia.

“Have you been on a cruise?” he asked Myrna.

“Was on one earlier in the week. Upgraded to the Princess Suites. Next time I think I might upgrade all the way.”

“I’m considering the owner’s suite.”

“Can you afford it?”

“True, I might go fake broke but I think it’s worth it.”

“God, I could use a cruise,” said Gabri, lowering his magazine.

“Tired?” Myna asked. Gabri looked it.

“Très fatigué.”

“It is true.” Ruth plopped down in the fourth chair, knocking everyone with her cane. “He is a fatty gay.”

The other two ignored her, but Beauvoir couldn’t hide a small laugh. Before long the other two left, Myrna back to her quiet bookstore and Gabri to tend to a couple customers.

“So, why’re you really here?” Ruth leaned forward.

“For your cheerful company, you old hag.”

“Besides that, numb nuts. You never liked it here. Gamache does, I can tell. But you? You despise us.”

Every hour of every day Jean-Guy Beauvoir searched for not just facts, but truth. He hadn’t appreciated, though, how terrifying it was being with someone who spoke it, all the time. Well, her truth anyway.

“I don’t,” he said.

“Bullshit. You hate the country, you hate nature, you think we’re hicks, idiots. Repressed, passive-aggressive and English.”

“I know you’re English,” he laughed. She didn’t.

“Don’t fuck with me. I don’t have that much time left and I refuse to waste it.”

“Then go away if you think I’m such a waste of time.”

They glared at each other. He’d opened up to her the other night, told her things few others knew. He’d been afraid that might lead to some awkwardness but sure enough, when they’d met the next morning she’d looked at him as though he was a stranger.

“I know why you’re here,” he said at last. “For the rest of the story. You just want to hear all the gory details. You feed on it, don’t you? Fear and pain. You don’t care about me or the Chief or Morin or anyone else, all you want from me is the rest of the story, you sick old crone.”

“And what do you want?”

What do I want? he thought.

I want to tell it.

SIXTEEN

Jean-Guy glanced round. The bistro was quiet. Placing his hands on the arms of his chair he hauled himself forward. The chair felt warm from the fire. In the grate the large logs popped, sending embers bouncing against the screen to glow on the stone hearth then slowly die away.

The maple logs smelled sweet, the coffee was strong and rich, the aromas from the kitchen familiar.

Not of home but of here.

He leaned forward and stared into the cold, blue eyes across from him. Winter eyes in a glacier face. Challenging, hard, impenetrable.

Perfect.

He paused and in an instant he was back there, since “there” was never far away.

“My favorite season is autumn, I think,” Gamache was saying.

“I’ve always loved winter,” came the young voice over the monitors. “I think because I can wear thick sweaters and coats and no one can really see how skinny I am.”

Morin laughed. Gamache laughed.

But that was all Inspector Beauvoir heard. He was out the door, through the Incident Room and into the stairwell. There he paused for a moment. Opening his fist he read the note Gamache had scrawled.

Find Agent Yvette Nichol. Give her this.

There was another note, folded, with Nichol’s name on it. He opened it and groaned. Was the Chief mad? Because Yvette Nichol almost certainly was. She was the agent no one wanted. The agent who couldn’t be fired because she wasn’t quite incompetent or insubordinate enough. But she sure played around the cliff. And finally the chief had assigned her to telecommunications. Surrounded by things, not people. No interaction. Nothing major to screw up. No one to enrage. Just listening, monitoring, recording.

Any normal person would have quit. Any decent agent would have resigned. Like the witch trials of old. If she sank she was innocent, if she survived she was a witch.

Agent Nichol survived.

But still, he didn’t hesitate. Down the stairs he ran, two at a time, until he was finally in the sub-basement. Yanking open a door he looked in. The room was darkened, and it took him a moment to make out the outline of someone sitting in front of green lights. On oval screens lines burst into a frenzy as