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It seemed a leap of logic. And yet the biologist had to agree, a river rock didn’t get this far from the shore without help.

Isabelle put on latex gloves and now carefully picked it up, brushing dirt off its underside.

But the rock was just that. A rock. Not a message from a dead young man.

Could they be wrong? If this place was so important, why didn’t Charles tell Chief Inspector Gamache about it when they’d met at Open Da Night?

After taking a photo of the stone and the area where it was found, Isabelle placed it in an evidence bag, then into her knapsack.

“Great,” muttered Vivienne. “Now we’re putting rocks in them.”

While she set up camp, Isabelle walked an ever-widening perimeter around the site, looking for whatever the young biologist might have found. And might have left behind.

There must, Isabelle thought, be something.

But she found nothing. It might not even be his campsite. For all they knew it could have been hunters, or fishers, or tourists on a wilderness adventure.

Isabelle picked up a rock by the shore and skipped it across the calm water while in the distance a loon called.

Welcome to Jericho.

Reine-Marie sat in her car and stared at the sign.

Charles Langlois’s dotted line, if it had continued, would have gone straight through this small Vermont town.

Population 5,101.

It seemed oddly precise. She liked that. It felt as though the townspeople valued each and every person, young and old. They were all counted. They all counted.

And yet, as she stared at the pockmarked sign, she was reluctant to enter Jericho. The only thing she could remember, from her days studying to be confirmed, was that it was on the road between Jericho and Jerusalem where the parable of the Good Samaritan occurred.

The traveler who helped his fellow, despite their differences.

Reine-Marie looked back down the road she’d just traveled. And she thought of Armand, meeting with that woman.

“Jeanne Caron.” She said the name aloud for the first time in decades.

Jeanne Caron. Who’d almost killed Daniel, and who had saved Armand.

Reine-Marie took a deep breath; then, turning the car around, she headed home along the road between Jericho and Three Pines.

“Thank you for coming.”

“Last time I was here…” Jeanne Caron glanced up to the ceiling. To the altar above them, where her uncle had been killed and she herself had been wounded.

Then she turned back to Gamache. “How are you?”

He seemed older. And there was that strained look on his face as he fought to understand what was being said. Was it just his hearing, or had more been blown away by that explosion?

He looked unsure. Perplexed. Slightly lost.

“I’m doing well. You?”

“To be honest, I’m a bit confused. Why did you bring me here?”

Armand motioned to one of the plastic garden chairs, but Caron had seen the map on the wall and was walking toward it.

She stood studying it, while Jean-Guy and Armand studied her.