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Jean-Guy spent the next hour reading about the victims of Ewen Cameron. Their stories. How they showed up in his office complaining they couldn’t sleep and returned home months later unable to speak.
Unable to recognize their husbands and wives and children.
Unable to hold a job, or hold their bladders, or hold their babies.
He read about how Cameron would strap them down and send electricity through them so strong they could smell their flesh burning.
How he kept them awake for days at a time, or put them into comas for months and filled them with drugs.
Until their brains were so washed they’d lost their minds.
And then he sent them home, addled. Clutching bills for the treatments. Then Dr. Ewen Cameron went on to the next, and the next.
“And Vincent Gilbert knew about it?” said Beauvoir. “Helped him?”
“We don’t know that,” said Myrna. “All we know is that the receipt for the animals, sent care of Dr. Vincent Gilbert, is authorized by Cameron. It’s from the mid-sixties. Gilbert must’ve been young, just starting out.”
“Come on,” said Beauvoir. “He must have known.”
Reine-Marie saw Vincent Gilbert sitting at the old pine table in their kitchen after dinner, as they’d had coffee and cognac and swapped stories.
Had the same hands that had held her grandchildren held men and women down while Cameron tortured them?
Jean-Guy Beauvoir asked for copies of some of the more damning documents, including the receipt for the animals. They thanked Mary Hague-Yearl, then left for home.
The car was quiet, everyone lost in their own thoughts. The wipers lazily, rhythmically, sweeping the freshly fallen snow from the windshield.
As the city disappeared into the rearview mirror and the peaceful countryside slipped by, Reine-Marie opened the file on her lap and looked again at the damning receipt for the rats and monkeys and actual guinea pigs.
There would be people still alive who’d suffered Cameron’s torture. And the silence of his colleagues.
She leaned her head against the cold window and stared out at the acres and acres of snow. At the lights just beginning to show in homes. At the forests and fields and mountains. At the wilderness. And Reine-Marie Gamache longed to get home to Three Pines.
Isabelle Lacoste found Haniya Daoud in the stables.
She had a currycomb in one hand and a brush in the other.
Lacoste stood in the wide aisle and watched as Haniya, a borrowed parka over her long abaya, made slow circular motions with the curry-comb, then brushed the horse’s flank down.
Then did it again, and again. In long, flowing, rhythmic movements.
And as she did it, Haniya muttered something Isabelle couldn’t make out, though she knew if she could, she probably wouldn’t understand the words. But she would understand the meaning.
It was a prayer. A meditation. An invocation.
It was, Isabelle felt, very calming. Between the whispered words, the fluid motions, the occasional toss of the horse’s mane and tail, the musky scent of horse and hay, the warmth of the barn, Lacoste could feel herself relax.
“Do you know horses, Inspector?” asked Haniya, without stopping.
“A bit. I rode as a child, but I could never figure out the bridle.”
“It is complicated.” Haniya moved to the other side of the horse and could now see Lacoste. “The leather and metal bit and straps. The means of control.”
The horse was leaning against Haniya Daoud. Not in a threatening way. It seemed to like the contact. As did she.
“Billy Williams tells me the owners of the Auberge saved these animals from the abattoir,” said Haniya. “This one’s a former racehorse who was no longer useful. So it was going to be killed and ground up. Turned into dog food and sweet treats for children.”
She looked over to another stall, where Billy was just putting a large harness on an immense animal.
