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“Patron? Désolé.”

Agent Gendron was standing at the door to the living room.

“Excusez-moi.”

Gamache got up and took the IT agent aside. “What is it, Pierre?”

“Someone tried to wipe files from the hard drive. They got most of it, but some images, while corrupted, remained. Only a few frames. Here’s a screen grab.”

Armand Gamache stared at the photograph and knew he had now seen the worst.

But still he was wrong.

He was right, though, in one respect. He knew it was no longer possible to separate his feelings from his thoughts.

Seeing the look on the Chief’s face, Agent Gendron asked, “Do you know this man, patron?”

Gamache didn’t answer. His hand hung loose at his side, the photo still in it, as he searched the horizon. Putting pieces together.

The children’s lying. The brick. The computer images. The big box behind the house. The hikers. The fact no one had been found to look after Clotilde’s children.

This photograph.

“Get everything you can off that hard drive. I want it all emailed back to Sûreté headquarters and copied to my address. Then secure the computer.”

“I’ll send it to the evidence room.”

“No. Keep everything here for now. Prepare to fly back to Montréal with it.”

“D’accord, patron.” The order contradicted what they’d been told earlier. Before the screen grab.

“Bon. Alors, there must be records too. Either on the hard drive or a notebook. Names, addresses. Accounts. Dates and times. Look for it. Take this place apart if you have to.”

Though Gamache suspected they wouldn’t find it. It would be the first thing destroyed by the killer. He adjusted that. The second thing destroyed. The video was the first.

“Someone tried to erase or destroy at least one, maybe more, of the videos, but others he left untouched,” said Gamache.

“Looks like he only tried to erase his own.”

“Yes. I want to know if he tried to destroy any others.”

“Yessir.” Gendron left.

Folding up the picture, Gamache placed it in his jacket pocket. He thought for a moment, then had a word with the head of forensics, who looked at him, astonished, but nodded assent.

As he headed back down the hall toward the living room, Gamache saw Fiona staring at her feet. But her brother was staring at him.

It was a look the Chief Inspector had seen before. Rarely, but it was unmistakable. It was the look of someone who’d done something spectacularly wrong and would keep doing it until stopped.

It was the look of someone who knew they would not be stopped.

It was the look of someone unhinged.

CHAPTER 7

“Fiona Arsenault.”

The name was read out, and a woman, older than most of the other graduates, walked across the stage to accept her degree.