Page 137

“I’m not totally sure that’s a horse,” she confided in Lacoste.

“No,” said Isabelle, glancing over. “That’s Gloria. We think she might be a moose.”

Haniya snorted in some amusement and looked around. “What a strange place.”

“It grows on you,” said Lacoste.

“So does a mole.”

Putting down the brushes, Haniya traced the lattice of whip marks on the horse’s flank.

“We haven’t actually met. My name’s Isabelle Lacoste, I’m with the Sûreté. But you already knew that.”

“Yes, you work with Monsieur Gamache. I’ve seen you around.”

“Can we talk?”

Haniya looked behind her. “Monsieur Williams is just hitching up the sleigh to take the children out, but he’s offered to take me on a short ride first. I suppose you might as well come along.”

Not the most gracious invitation Lacoste had had, but far from the worst.

A few minutes later, a heavy blanket tucked around them, they were ensconced in the back seat of the big red sleigh looking at Gloria’s immense rump. Billy sat high in the driver’s seat, his back to them, muttering to Gloria, who seemed to understand his incantations. His invocations. And maybe his prayers.

She meandered across the road and into the woods. Away from the Auberge. Away from the crime scene.

Haniya tipped her head back, letting the huge flakes land on her face. She was almost smiling.

This close to the woman who would probably be named the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Isabelle could see two things. How young Haniya Daoud actually was, and the scars all over her face. It looked like a jigsaw puzzle, imperfectly assembled.

“I can’t get used to snow,” Haniya said, her eyes closed, her face tilted and moist.

The small bells on Gloria’s bridle jingled merrily. The rails of the sleigh slid along the snow making a soft sound. Shhhh.

“Tell me what happened to you in Sudan.”

“You don’t want to know,” she said to the sky.

“I do.”

“Why?” Haniya asked the snowflakes. Then lowered her face and opened her eyes and looked at the homicide investigator. “Oh. You want to know how damaged I am. And if I’ve killed before. Let me give you the shorthand. I am damaged, beyond repair, as your lunatic poet would say. And yes, I’ve killed.” She studied Isabelle. “I think you know how both feel.”

“I do.”

“So, I’ll make you a deal. I’ll tell you if you tell me.”

Isabelle sat quietly for a moment, looking into the naked woods. Only in the winter was it possible to see both the forest and the trees. Homicide, she thought, was a perpetual winter.

“Agreed.”

So with the swish of Gloria’s tail for accompaniment, and the shhhhh of the sleigh, Haniya told her.

About being kidnapped at the age of eight, when her village was attacked and destroyed. Her crime? Being a member of an ethnic minority. She was beaten and whipped and slashed with machetes. Staked naked in the dirt. And left there. Given just enough food and water to be kept alive. For the men to rape. Day after night after day.

To the tune of the sleigh bells, Haniya told her about giving birth at twelve. The baby taken from her.

Then again at thirteen, and fourteen. And every year until she’d escaped. Expelling babies from her body. Some dead. Some screaming. Never to be seen again.

“They told me that the meat I was eating was the flesh of my dead children,” she told the pine trees as they passed.