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While part of Gamache wished he could give these children a few more moments of blissful ignorance, a few more minutes when their mother might still be alive, the Chief Inspector knew that false hope was not a kindness.

If they were watching, and he suspected they were, they’d have seen the car drive up, and they’d know. They probably knew, deep down, when they’d made the missing person report.

Their mother was not coming home.

He needed to put them out of that misery, and into the next. A loss like this was a progression of miseries, like stepping-stones. Until they reached the other side. The new continent. Where the terrible reality lived, and the sun never fully came out again. But where, with time and help, they might find acceptance and, with that, peace.

He knew, from experience, that there was no avoiding this pain. In a sense, they were fortunate. Their mother had been found and, as horrific as that was, the not knowing would have been worse.

It was cold comfort at best.

Agent Beauvoir was not in as much of a hurry to get to the door. With each step forward, the realization of what was about to happen dawned. What had started as a career opportunity was mutating into a human tragedy.

The Chief Inspector had barely raised his fist to knock when the door opened.

“Oui?”

The girl stood there, small for her age, thin, her eyes wide and filled with a plea.

Don’t say it. Don’t say it.

And yet, thought Beauvoir, she’d opened the door. She could have hidden. Pretended they weren’t home. She could have lived in blissful, or semi-blissful, ignorance for a little while longer.

But instead, the girl had chosen to face the truth.

He wanted to grab the Chief Inspector’s arm and drag him away, muttering apologies to the girl. They had the wrong home. The wrong person.

Never mind …

But he didn’t, of course.

“Fiona?” said Gamache, his voice gentle and steady. “My name is Armand Gamache. I’m with the Sûreté. This is my colleague Jean-Guy Beauvoir.” He paused. “We have news.” Pause. “May we come in?”

She didn’t ask why. She didn’t say anything, just nodded and backed up.

The home was barely more than a trailer. Single-story, with junk on the front yard and a rusty wreck of a car on blocks in the drive. Shingles had blown off the roof, and the siding was chipped and dirty, with green mold growing in places. Some rotted boards had pulled away, some had fallen off. It could barely be described as a structure. It was the bricks-and-mortar version of Clotilde Arsenault.

And yet, it was not, Beauvoir noted, made of brick. In fact, there wasn’t a brick in sight.

His face opened in realization. That’s what the Chief had meant when he said it was clear that Clotilde had been killed somewhere else and dumped. Had she been killed at the lake, it would have been with a rock. Or a knife. Or a gun. Or a scarf. Or a piece of petrified driftwood. Not a brick.

No. She was murdered where her killer could grab a brick and smash her with it.

As he followed the Chief Inspector through the door, he picked up a scent. It wasn’t the odor Jean-Guy had expected. He’d braced for the reek of sweat and decay. Of cheap drugstore perfume and stale makeup.

The ghost of Clotilde Arsenault.

Instead, what met them was the familiar and soothing scent of lemon cleaner.

But the most obvious sensation was noise. There were bells and applause and people shouting. It was a game show on a television turned up full blast.

Gamache looked around, quickly taking in his surroundings. The sounds. The smells. The feel.

The walls were covered in faux-wood paneling. There were scratches and dents and holes the size and shape of fists in the walls.

To their left was an opening into the living room, where the sound was coming from.

Straight ahead, down a short, dim corridor, Gamache could see a sink and a stove. The counters uncluttered.