words were spoken.
Then a face was turned to him. A green face, and eyes glowing green. Agent Yvette Nichol. He hadn’t seen her in years and now he felt a tingling under his skin. A warning. Not to enter. This room. This person’s life.
But Chief Inspector Gamache had wanted him to. And so he did. On the speaker he was surprised to hear the Chief’s voice, talking now about various dog toys.
“Have you ever used a Chuck-it, sir?” Agent Morin asked.
“Never heard of it. What is it?”
“A stick thing with a cup on the end. It helps toss a tennis ball. Does Henri like balls?”
“Above all else,” laughed Gamache.
“Idiotic conversation,” came the female voice. A green voice. Young, ripe, filled with bile. “What do you want?”
“Have you been monitoring the conversation?” Inspector Beauvoir demanded. “It’s on a secure channel. No one’s supposed to have access to it.”
“And yet you were about to ask me to start monitoring it, weren’t you? Don’t look so surprised, Inspector. Doesn’t take a genius to figure that out. No one comes here unless they want something. What do you want?”
“Chief Inspector Gamache wants your help.” He almost gagged on the words.
“And what the Chief Inspector wants, he gets. Right?” But she’d turned back into the room. Beauvoir felt on the wall and found the light switch. He turned it on and the room was flooded with bright fluorescent lights. The woman, who had seemed so menacing, so otherworldly, suddenly became human.
Staring at him now was a short, slightly dumpy, young woman with sallow skin marked by old blemishes. Her hair was dull and mousy and her eyes squinted to adjust to the sudden light.
“Why’d you do that?” she demanded.
“Sir,” he snapped. “You’re a disgrace but you’re still a Sûreté officer. You’ll call me ‘sir’ and the Chief Inspector by his full rank. And you’ll do as you’re ordered. Here.”
He thrust the note at the agent who now looked very young, and very angry. Like a petulant child. Beauvoir smiled remembering his initial disquiet. She was pathetic. A sorry little person. Nothing more.
Then he remembered why he was there.
She might be a sorry little person, but Chief Inspector Gamache was risking his entire career in bringing her secretly into the investigation.
Why?
“Tell me what you know.” She lowered the note and stared Beauvoir in the eye. “Sir.”
It was a disconcerting look. Far smarter, far brighter, than he would have expected. A keen stare, and deep inside, still, a flash of green.
He bristled at her use of words. At that particular phrase. “Tell me what you know.” It’s what the Chief always asked when first arriving at a murder scene. Gamache would listen carefully, respectfully. Thoughtfully.
The antithesis of this willful, warped agent.
Surely she was mocking the Chief. But there were more important things than challenging her on that.
He told her what he knew.
The shooting, the kidnapping, the claims of the farmer to have attached a bomb. To go off the next morning at 11:18.
Instinctively they both glanced at the clock. Ten past six in the evening. Seventeen hours left.
“Chief Superintendent Francoeur believes the kidnapper’s a frightened backwoods farmer, probably with a small marijuana operation, who panicked. They think there’s no bomb and no other plan.”
“But Chief Inspector Gamache doesn’t agree,” said Agent Nichol, reading from the note. “He wants me to monitor closely.” She looked up after a moment digesting the Chief’s instructions. “They’re monitoring closely upstairs I presume?”
She was unable, or unwilling, to rid her voice of bitterness. It was an annoying and annoyed little voice.
At a curt nod from Beauvoir she smiled and carefully folded the note. “Well I guess the Chief Inspector thinks I’m better.”
Agent Nichol stared at Beauvoir, willing him to contradict her. He glared at her.
“Must be,” he finally managed.
“Well, he’s going to have to do more than talk about dog toys. Tell him to pause.”
“Haven’t you been listening? A pause and the bomb will go off.”
“Does anyone really believe there’s a bomb?”
“And you’d risk it?”
“Hey, I’m safe and warm here. Why not.”
At a glare from Beauvoir she continued. “Look, I’m not asking him to go make a cup of coffee. Just a second here and there. Lets me record the ambient sound. Got it? Sir?”
Agent Yvette Nichol had started in homicide. Been chosen by Chief Inspector Gamache. Mentored by him. And had been a near complete failure. Beauvoir had begged the Chief to fire her. Instead, after many chances, he’d transferred her. To do something she needed to learn.
The one thing she