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“French.”
“Oh.” She thought for a moment. “Don’t know. Maybe.”
As they walked to the car, Myrna used her rolled-up poster to point to a metal sign, dented by buckshot. “Look, Ethan Allen Camp. I wonder if that’s where the furniture comes from.”
Clara laughed. “Can you imagine sending your kid to furniture camp?”
“Can you imagine being that kid?” asked Myrna. “Maybe they have a showroom. Let’s look.”
A few minutes later the car stopped in front of a gate with a high fence, and barbed wire, and a sign that shouted, Restricted. Stay Out.
“Wow, those Ethan Allen people are a little paranoid,” said Clara. “Do you think they’re afraid Ikea will come snooping?”
“I think it’s Camp Ethan Allen,” said Myrna, looking out the car window. “Not Ethan Allen Camp. It’s a military base.”
“Not just any military base.” Reine-Marie had her phone out and was looking it up. “Listen to this: Camp Ethan Allen provides elite training unlike anywhere else in the nation.” She lowered the phone. “It’s a commando base.”
“Jeez,” said Clara. “I hope the Swedes know that.”
Reine-Marie now pulled up Charles’s map and was going between it and the GPS. If continued, his line would go straight through Camp Ethan Allen.
Ruth, who could see what she was doing and was familiar with the original map hanging in the basement of the Three Pines church, brought out her own phone, then said, “Go further.”
“Who are you talking to?” said Clara. “We can’t go further, there’s a gate, and barbed wire.”
But Ruth didn’t answer. Instead, she held Reine-Marie’s eyes in the rearview mirror.
Reine-Marie dropped her gaze back to her phone and widened the GPS map, and continued to draw the imaginary line, the one Charles Langlois might have drawn, might have followed. From Québec, into Vermont, and …
“Further,” said Ruth.
Reine-Marie followed it down, down, down until it could go no further. Until it hit the Atlantic Ocean. But just before it did, the young biologist’s line went straight through the heart of Washington, DC.
Then back up. From DC, to the commando camp, and into Québec.
“From the Public school to the private hell / of the family masquerade,” whispered Ruth as she stared at the line. “Where could a boy on a bicycle go / when the straight road splayed?”
“Oh, shit,” muttered Lacoste.
“What now?” asked Vivienne.
The biologist had left Inspector Lacoste behind. Recoiling from the find, she’d slipped and slid through the muck and slush and made it to the lake, where she’d splashed cold, fresh water on her face and brushed her teeth. Then, after taking a few deep breaths and steeling herself, she’d returned to the kneeling homicide officer and the poor boy in the bag.
“His hands are zip-tied behind his back,” said Isabelle.
“Which means?”
There was silence, and a squelching sound that Vivienne tried not to think about. She blocked it out by humming, Hooray for Captain Spaulding, the African explorer …
Isabelle, breathing through her mouth, sat up straight and turned to Vivienne. “He’s been executed. Single bullet to the back of the head. Then another to be sure.”
This was what they’d planned for Gamache.
What those last few moments must have been like … for both of them. The terror …
Armand had survived. This young man had no one to save him.
“This was a mob hit,” she said.
