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“You’re getting nothing. Step back before you contaminate the scene.”

“Hey, look, this was a murder,” he said, taking a few steps away. “I told Gamache to look closer at the wound.”

“For this?” Inspector Chernin held up a small evidence bag. In it were tiny chunks of red. Almost as red as Agent Beauvoir’s face became. “We saw it right away.”

“Then what was that talk about accident or suicide?”

“Just examining every possibility. But yes, before he took you aside, the Chief Inspector and I conferred about the shape of the wound, the sharp indent, and the red material embedded in her skull. Almost certainly a brick.” She looked around at the lake. “Where would someone get a brick out here?”

When Beauvoir opened his mouth, she held up her hand. “It was a rhetorical question, Agent Beauvoir. Thank you for your help. I’m sure the Chief was grateful.”

She watched as he seethed, his brilliance having gone unrecognized and unrewarded. With, perhaps, the dawning suspicion that in this company he might not actually be the brightest light. It was a new and unpleasant thought for Jean-Guy Beauvoir.

The Inspector smiled. She’d been this young agent once, a lifetime ago. Linda Chernin almost envied him his ignorance. He had no idea what he was in for.

“Inspector?” one of the agents called. He was walking along the shore in waders and holding an evidence bag.

In it was a sodden purse.

“Well done,” said Chernin.

Opening the purse, she brought out a wallet. It was wet and worn but had been pretty once. A rose, needlepointed onto it, was now scuffed and dirty, and threads had been pulled loose.

There was no money in it, but there was ID.

Gamache returned from seeing the coroner off and joined them, motioning Beauvoir to step into the scrum.

“It’s her. The missing woman.” Chernin handed the plasticized driver’s license to Gamache.

Clotilde Arsenault stared out at them. Her hair was blond. Straggly and stringy. It looked unwashed and uncombed. Unkempt.

Her cheeks were sunken. Her blue eyes were glassy. She stared at the lens as though trying to figure out what it was.

Her face was thin, almost emaciated, and her complexion sallow. The photograph more resembled one of the thousands of mug shots Gamache and Chernin had seen in their careers than a driver’s license photo.

Gamache looked at the woman on the rocky shore. Then back to the picture.

In life Clotilde Arsenault had looked eerily as she did in death. She lived, it seemed, at the place where the river Styx narrowed. It had not been a long journey for the ferryman.

The woman in the picture was only thirty-six, but life had not been easy, or kind. And neither had death.

There was one other photograph in her wallet, in the sleeve where the money would have been. It too was plasticized. A studio portrait of a girl and boy. Sister and brother, he assumed. Clotilde’s children. The boy, striking in his good looks, was smiling. The girl wore a school uniform and her hair was in pigtails. Looking closer, Gamache realized she was young, but not the little girl she appeared to be in the picture.

His brows drew together and he took a deep breath. “Have it checked for prints,” he said. “When you’re done, return it to me, please.”

“Yessir,” said the agent.

Gamache looked over at one of the Sûreté vehicles. When they’d arrived, he’d noticed a man and woman sitting in the back seat. Watching them.

“Those the two who found her?” he asked.

“Oui,” said Chernin. “Hikers. Not from around here. They’re up from Montréal.”

“Hikers?” said Gamache. “Out here? Today?”

He already had that information. It was in the short report the captain had given him. But seeing this lake, these surroundings, raised all sorts of questions. Ones he would ask in time. But first—

Kneeling once more beside the body, Armand did something the coroner had not thought to do. He pushed up Clotilde Arsenault’s sleeve to reveal the tracks. Then he looked down the length of her body. Her shoes were missing, having probably come off in the water, but her jeans were still on. The movement of the waves hadn’t tugged them off. And her killers hadn’t ripped them off. But that didn’t mean there’d been no sexual assault.