A Great Reckoning (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #12) - Louise Penny Page 0,79

The stranded cow, the elated snowman.

The three small but vibrant pines.

And the smears. Of mud. Or blood.

Yes, the map said it all.

She looked up. Heavenward, but not all the way to the heavens. Her thoughts stopped at the second floor of her home. Where a young man, who just that morning had found one of his professors murdered, lay dead to the world.

A thing like that would scar a person. Invade his waking and sleeping mind.

And yet young Nathaniel slept, apparently undisturbed by what had happened.

* * *

Jacques Laurin’s heart pounded in his chest, his temples, his throat.

The gunmen were dead. And Sûreté agents were also dead or wounded. But, incredibly, a few had escaped unhurt. Because of the calm and the tactics, on the fly, of their commander. Who’d led them through the factory and beaten the unbeatable scenario and now lay unconscious on the concrete floor. Paramedics working on him. Blood seeping from his head.

An agent, a woman, knelt beside him, holding his bloody hand.

Cadet Laurin turned off the laptop and pushed away from the desk.

CHAPTER 24

“Café?”

Mayor Florent tipped the carafe toward the two investigators.

Paul Gélinas, out of his RCMP uniform and into civilian clothing, shook his head but Isabelle Lacoste nodded.

The mayor’s office in the town hall was infused with the scent of stale and slightly burnt coffee. She suspected the glass pot, stained with decades of caffeine, sat on the hotplate all day. If nothing else, this man could give his constituents a coffee.

At seven thirty on a cold March morning, it was no mean offering.

He added milk and sugar, at her request, and handed Lacoste the mug.

This was not an office made to impress. Once, perhaps, but not anymore. The laminate wood paneling on the walls was coming loose in spots and there was more than one dark mark on the acoustic tiles of the ceiling. The carpet had seen better days, and God only knew what else it had seen.

And yet, for all that, the room was cheerful, with mismatched fabric on the chairs and a desk recycled from some old convent school, Lacoste suspected. The walls were crammed with photographs of local sports teams, smiling and holding up pennants proclaiming they’d come in third, or second, or fifth in some tournament.

Among the young athletes was the mayor. Beaming proudly from each picture.

Some of the photos were quite faded, and as they progressed around the office walls, the mayor had grown more and more rotund, as his hair had thinned. And grayed.

Many of these girls and boys would have children of their own now.

On Mayor Florent’s desk were smaller framed pictures of his own family. Children, grandchildren. Hugging dogs and cats and a horse.

The mayor took his seat and leaned toward them, a look of concern on his face.

He was not at all what Chief Inspector Lacoste had expected. Given Monsieur Gamache’s description, she was prepared to meet some wiry whip of a man, worn thin by disappointment and worry and the north wind.

But as she looked into those mild, expectant eyes, the eyes of her grandfather, she realized that Monsieur Gamache had never described him physically, but had only said the mayor had a keen sense of right and wrong. And held on to resentments.

She had filled in the rest.

He’d also said he liked the man. And Lacoste could see why. She liked him too. Beside her, the RCMP officer had relaxed and crossed his legs.

Mayor Florent might very well have murdered Serge Leduc, but he did not seem a threat to anyone else.

Isabelle Lacoste decided to take a tack she rarely used.

“Did you kill Serge Leduc, Your Honor?”

Mostly because it was almost never successful.

His bushy gray eyebrows rose in surprise, and Deputy Commissioner Gélinas turned in his seat to stare at her.

Then the mayor laughed. Not long, not loud, but with what seemed genuine amusement.

“Oh my dear, I can understand why you’d think that.”

Not many could get away with calling Chief Inspector Lacoste “my dear,” but she felt absolutely no annoyance with him. It was so obviously said without wanting to belittle her.

“I’d think that too,” he went on. “If I was you. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t laugh. You weren’t joking. A man’s been killed, and I should be sad. Upset. But I’m not.”

The mayor interlocked his fingers. His jovial eyes grew sharp.

“I despised Serge Leduc. If I was ever going to commit murder, it would be him. If anyone deserved to be killed, it was him. I go to church every