Kingdom of the Blind (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #14) Read online

  And now he coaxed it out of young Benedict. He of the thick skull and big heart.

  Henri, lying between Armand and Benedict, rolled onto his back. His huge ears flopping flat on the floor like two small area rugs.

  Benedict bent down and rubbed Henri’s tummy. Not meeting anyone’s eyes.

  “I could hear the cracking,” he told Henri, who was listening closely. “I thought it was the frost getting into the wood. It happens with old places. I wasn’t afraid. At first. I thought I knew what it was. But then there was another, huger noise. I was in the kitchen. I could hear something, like a train coming, and the place started to shake.”

  His voice was rising, and Myrna reached over and held his hand. Not to stop him but to reassure him.

  Benedict looked at Myrna, then over at Armand.

  Though his own eyes were bleary, Armand could clearly see the boy’s terror.

  “I began to run for the door,” Benedict continued. “But a beam fell, right in front of me. I just managed to stop in time. And then—” He faltered.

  “Go on,” said Armand gently.

  “And then it just felt like explosions everywhere. I got confused and froze.”

  He looked around, his eyes wide, and settled on Jean-Guy, who was looking at the young man not with pity, or sympathy. Not even with understanding, though Jean-Guy understood.

  His expression held one thing. Reassurance. That what Benedict felt then, now, how he reacted, what he did or did not do, was natural and normal.

  Freeze. Run. Cry. Scream.

  Jean-Guy had done all those things himself. And he was trained. This boy was a carpenter. A builder.

  “I know,” said Myrna. “I froze too. When the place started to fall down. It was—”

  “I was alone.”

  Myrna’s mouth, open with the next words prepared, remained open. And silent.

  “I was alone,” Benedict repeated, in a whisper now.

  And there was the difference. The gulf. Between their horror and his. They’d also faced death, but together.

  He’d been alone.

  Benedict’s lower lip trembled, his chin puckering with the effort to hold it in.

  “I was so afraid,” he whispered. “When I finally did move, I saw the doorway and prayed it was under a support beam. I jumped in and got down. And waited. Everything fell around me.” As he spoke, he hunched his shoulders. “And then the crashing stopped, but I was trapped. I shouted and shouted, but there was nothing. And then it got really, really cold. And dark. I’d dropped my iPhone, so I couldn’t call or text. I didn’t have any light. And then it got real quiet.”

  He was hugging himself and staring into the fire.

  “But you had matches,” said Armand.

  Benedict nodded. “I’d forgotten about them. I made a little pile of wood. It was so old and dry that it burned easily. Every once in a while, there’d be more shifting, but I kinda got used to it, and once I had the fire, I felt better. I talked to myself. Telling myself how well I was doing. How great everything was. How smart I was. How lucky I was. And that someone would come find me.” He looked at Billy. At Myrna. At Armand. “And you did.”

  “You never heard another sound?” asked Jean-Guy. “A human sound?”

  “No. Not until you came.”

  They nodded, thinking. Imagining. Remembering.

  And in at least one case, wondering.

  “Why were you there?” Armand asked Benedict.

  “To get my truck.”

  “Yes. But you promised not to drive it without snow tires. You gave me your word. So why did you?”

  Benedict dropped his eyes from Armand. “I’m sorry.” He heaved a sigh. “It sounds so stupid now, but after a couple of beers it seemed such a good idea. It’s pathetic, I know, but there’re two things I really care about. My girlfriend and my truck. I miss her. And I was worried about it. When Billy here offered me a lift, I took it.”

  He raised his eyes to Armand.

  “I was going to call you in the morning. Tell you where I was. I’m sorry. I really am.”

  It was exactly the kind of reckless behavior a cop, and the father of a son, recognized. Armand nodded but kept his eyes on Benedict. Armand did not find it difficult to believe that this young man might have lapses in judgment. Witness the hair and sweater, the business card. Nor that he could be reckless. Witness trying to navigate a brutal Québec winter without snow tires.

  But he found it difficult to believe that Benedict broke promises. And especially one he knew was being taken seriously.

  And yet he had.

  Which, Armand knew, meant he’d been wrong about the young man. In that. But in other things too?

  The sun was setting, and Annie quietly got up to turn on some lights.

  “Could anyone else use a drink?” she asked.

  “Yes, please,” said Myrna, getting up.

  “I’ll help,” said Clara.

  “Can we talk?” Jean-Guy asked Armand. “In your study?”

  Once there, Jean-Guy closed the door.

  “There’s more, patron. Something I can’t tell the others yet,” he said. “The medical examiner doesn’t think Anthony Baumgartner died in the collapse of the house.”

  “Then how?”

  “His skull was crushed. There was concrete and plaster dust on the wound, but none actually embedded there.”

  “Internal bleeding?”

  “None.”

  “Lungs?”

  “Clear.”

  Gamache gave a curt nod and waved Beauvoir to a chair, sitting down himself.

  “He was dead before the place collapsed,” said Gamache, grasping the implication immediately. “Could it have been a heart attack or a stroke?”

  “Dr. Harris considered both and doesn’t think so,” said Beauvoir. “She’s ready to say the cause of death was the wound on the head, before the house came down.”

  “That’s the phone call you made.”

  “Oui. I’ve classified it as a homicide and assigned Inspector Dufresne to the case. I’ll be leading the investigation.”

  “Good,” said Gamache.

  “What can you tell me about your meeting with Baumgartner yesterday?”

  Gamache thought. He’d already told Jean-Guy about it, and the will, but not in any detail. It had just been an odd event. He’d not seen it as a precursor to murder.

  But now he reconsidered.

  He described the gathering, the home, the others present. Their reactions to the will.

  “So he questioned why you were a liquidator?” said Beauvoir.

  “Yes. He’d thought he and his brother and sister were. They’d been led to believe that by their mother.”

  “Something must’ve happened, then, something must’ve changed, for her to take them off.”

  “But she still left everything to them,” said Gamache. “If there’d been a falling-out, you’d think she wouldn’t just take them off as liquidators but remove them completely.”

  Beauvoir was nodding. Thinking.

  “Anything else strike you as strange, patron?”

  Had it? Not at the time, but now? In retrospect?

  He could appreciate how easy it was, how tempting, for people to overinterpret things.

  Glances. Tones. Flare-ups. At the time they’d been guests and didn’t realize that they were also witnesses.

  He tried now to be accurate. Had something been said or done that had led, just hours later, to the death of Anthony Baumgartner?

  It was the question he’d always asked himself when kneeling beside a body.

  Why is this person dead?

  And he asked himself that now. Why was Anthony Baumgartner dead? What had happened?

  “It does seem too much of a coincidence,” he admitted. “That the will is read and a few hours later one of them is murdered. But for the life of me, I can’t remember anything happening at that meeting that could’ve sparked it. When we left, though, Hugo and the notary were still
there with Anthony. Something might’ve happened after I left.”

  “What do you make of the will, patron?”

  “I think from our perspective it was unexpected and even unhinged, but I have to say, her children, including Anthony, didn’t seem at all surprised by it. They’d have been more surprised if she hadn’t left all that money and property.”

  “Right,” said Beauvoir, getting up. “It begins. We’ll find out all we can about the Baumgartners.”

  “Including the Baroness,” said Gamache. “I can’t help but think if she were still alive, her son would be too.”

  He rose and went to the door but returned to his desk when the phone rang.

  “Oui, allô.”

  Gamache waved Beauvoir to a chair but remained standing himself.

  Jean-Guy saw Gamache’s expression change.

  “No, you did the right thing. She’s still in there?” He listened, sitting slowly back down. “Tell me again what happened. . . . I see. And you’re sure that’s what she said?”

  There was a pause during which Beauvoir could see Gamache’s lips thin and whiten.

  “Keep on it. . . . No, no. Do nothing. . . . Of course I know it’s illegal,” he snapped, then reined himself in. Taking a deep breath. When he spoke again, his voice was even. “Use your judgment, but understand that you’re there simply as observers. Do not interfere.”

  When he hung up, Jean-Guy asked, “That was about Cadet Choquet?”

  Gamache had told him what had happened the day before at the academy, and he knew the Chief was having Choquet followed.

  “Former cadet,” said Gamache, but he nodded. “Oui.”

  “She’s on the streets?”

  “Oui.”

  The Chief Superintendent seemed reluctant to speak. Not because he didn’t want Beauvoir to know what was happening but because he himself seemed unsure.

  “Her friend found her passed out in an alley and took her back to his place.”

  “Merde,” said Beauvoir, shaking his head. “Stupid, stupid girl.” Then he looked more closely at Gamache. “But really, you can’t be surprised, patron.”

  He stopped just short of saying, I told you so.

  Beauvoir had been warning Gamache about the young cadet since she’d been admitted to the academy by Gamache himself.

  This was the one great divide between them. This was the Chief’s weak spot. His soft spot.

  Gamache believed people could change. For the worse, yes. But also for the better.

  But Jean-Guy Beauvoir knew better. People did not, in his experience, fundamentally change. All that changed was their ability to better hide their worst thoughts. To put on the civilized face. But behind the smiles and polite conversation, unseen in the gloom, the rot grew and grew, and when the time was right, when the conditions were right, those terrible thoughts turned into horrific actions.

  “What’re you going to do?” asked Beauvoir. When Gamache didn’t answer, Jean-Guy studied his boss and mentor. And got it.

  “You’re following her. Not to protect her but to see if she finds the opioids.”

  “Oui.”

  Not so soft after all, Beauvoir thought, and tried not to let his shock show.

  “The Montréal police have assigned two undercover agents to monitor her and report to me,” said Gamache.

  “You’d sacrifice her?”

  “I’d sacrifice myself if I could,” said Gamache. “But I’m not the one, the only one, who can lead us to the shipment.”

  Jean-Guy tried to keep his civilized face in place, but still, he suspected his feelings showed through.

  Chief Superintendent Gamache had asked great sacrifices of his people before. Had placed himself in danger, many times.

  But it had always been with knowledge and consent. They knew what they were in for.

  This was different. Very different. The man in front of Beauvoir was using a troubled young cadet, without her consent. Placing her in danger. Without her consent.

  It showed Beauvoir two things.

  Just how desperate the Chief was to stop those drugs from hitting the streets.

  And just how far he was willing to go to do it. But Jean-Guy could see something else.

  The toll it was taking on this decent man.

  Beauvoir wondered if he himself would be able to do something so horrific.

  * * *

  “David?” said the junkie. “No, no David.”

  Amelia pressed on. She didn’t even know if this David was French or English. Was she looking for Day-vid. Or Dah-veed?

  It seemed a small point, but in the underbelly of this world small points mattered. Like the tiny tear of the skin a needle made. Yes, this was a universe of small points. And big pricks.

  She was pretty sure this David had tagged her because she was asking questions, about the new shit. It was a warning. That he could get that close.

  But Amelia wasn’t going to be scared off.

  In fact, just the opposite. She knew he’d made a mistake. Shown himself. And she now had a focus for the search.

  Find David. Find the drug. And then her worries would be over. Then she’d show Gamache exactly what she was capable of.

  Her feet, in running shoes, were wet through and caked in slush. Why hadn’t she brought her boots when she left the academy? All she’d grabbed were her books.

  She hadn’t been back to the rooming house since leaving the day before, but she’d have to go back later that night. Marc needed his room. For business.

  And she had her own business to do.

  “I’m looking for David,” she said to a prostitute.

  “Unless you’re looking for pussy, I can’t help you, little man.”

  Amelia bristled, then realized that in her coat and tuque and jeans she did look a bit like a little man.

  She trudged along rue Ste.-Catherine, a street named for the patron saint of illness. Peering into the dark alleyways, she saw the dregs, the detritus, the sick, the addicted, the whores, the near-dead and dying.

  All kids. Most younger than herself. What had happened in the two years she’d been gone?

  But she knew the answer. Opioids had happened. Fentanyl had happened. And worse was coming.

  Amelia stared down a dark alley and thought she saw a child. In a bright red tuque. But it was just a hallucination, she was sure. An echo from the drugs she’d taken the night before.

  * * *

  Armand turned off all the lights in the house but didn’t go to bed, though he was longing, after that horrible day, to crawl under the warm duvet and hold Reine-Marie close. In the curve of his body.

  Instead he settled into an armchair in the living room, with a pillow and blankets.

  Just down the dark hallway were the bedrooms where Billy and Benedict slept. Peacefully, he hoped.

  But if one should wake up with night terrors, Armand needed to be there.

  * * *

  Clara turned off the lights in the loft above the bookstore. She’d made sure that Myrna was fast asleep and was about to leave when she paused at the top of the stairs and looked back.

  And thought of all the times Myrna had stayed with her. After Peter. To be there when the nightmares began.

  Clara put on the kettle, made herself a strong cup of Red Rose tea. And settled into the large armchair by the fireplace.

  * * *

  Armand sat up with a start. Some sound had awoken him, but as he listened, the house was silent.

  And then it came again. A cry.

  He threw off the blanket and walked swiftly down the hallway.

  “Benedict?” he whispered, knocking on the young man’s door and listening. There was the sound again. More like a whimper now.

  Armand went in, and, pulling a chair up to the bed, he found Benedict’s hand. And held it. Repeating, softly, over and over, that he was safe. And when that didn’t work, he began to quietly sing. The first song that came to mind.

  “‘Edelweiss, edelweiss . . .’�
�� Until the boy stopped crying and his breathing relaxed. And he fell asleep.

  * * *

  In the next room, Billy Williams lay awake staring at the ceiling. In the darkness it seemed to be dropping, plunging toward him. He gripped the sides of the bed and repeated to himself it was just a hallucination.

  I’m safe. I’m safe.

  But he could barely breathe for the debris on his chest, and still the ceiling kept collapsing.

  He heard a cry and felt his adrenaline spike. It was that very same sound he’d heard in the shrieking house. Inhuman.

  And then he heard whispering. Murmuring. And then something else. Unintelligible but familiar.

  His grip loosened, and his lids closed, and he fell asleep to someone softly singing.

  * * *

  Amelia pounded on the door to the landlady’s room. It opened just enough for the ferret eyes to see who was there.

  “What the fuck do you want?” the old woman demanded.

  Her stained bathrobe was open, revealing more than Amelia wanted to see.

  “I want my room. Someone else’s in it.”

  “Yeah, someone who pays.” The landlady’s anger was replaced by satisfaction. “You had that room in exchange for cleaning. But you didn’t, did you? You kicked over the bucket. I had to clean it up.”

  It was a lie, Amelia knew. She’d found the overturned bucket and mop still lying in the hallway outside her room.

  The tiny eyes looked at Amelia through the crack in the door.

  “Get out, before I call the cops,” she said, and went to close the door, but Amelia’s body stopped her.

  “My things, give me my things, you filthy old slut.”

  “Don’t have them.”

  “Where are they?”

  “You feel that heat?” The old woman paused. Then smiled. “That’s your stuff.”

  Amelia relaxed her pressure on the door as the landlady’s words, and what they meant, hit her. In that moment the door banged shut and the dead bolt was pushed into place.

  “You bitch,” she screamed, and threw herself against the door. Over and over, until her voice was raw and her shoulder was so bruised she had to stop. Until she slid to the floor, exhausted.

  She felt the carpet, crusty beneath her. She smelled the stale tobacco, and shit, and sweat, and piss. And she felt the warmth.

  Her head dropped into her hands. And Amelia wept. For her life in ruins and her books in flames.