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“Long dead?”

“I don’t know.” Now Gamache gave the man his full attention. “Why do you ask?”

“Well, I know where the bodies are buried.”

Gamache’s brows rose. He also knew where the bodies were buried, though his were metaphoric. And one of the reasons his superiors in the Sûreté, as well as senior government officials, were afraid of him.

Armand was pretty sure Chef Takacs’s bodies were real.

“What do you mean?”

“There’s a cemetery. It’s all that’s left of Lost Nation.”

Gamache turned once more to the dense forest. “In there?”

“Somewhere, yes. I’m pretty sure.”

People had died being “pretty sure” they knew their way around a Canadian forest.

Takacs crossed the road, jumped over the ditch, and stood at the edge of the forest. There was no path. No opening into the woods that Armand could see.

Takacs held out his hand, inviting the Sûreté officers to join him.

Beauvoir and Lacoste took a step forward, but Gamache stopped them. “Stay here and wait for the others, then follow us in. I’ll call you if we find a body.”

“It could be anywhere.”

“Or nowhere,” said Lacoste. “This could be a setup, a trap. Whoever called might be waiting for us.”

It would not be the first time a lunatic had called emergency services, only to lie in wait and shoot whoever showed up.

“If it is, they’re being very cryptic,” said Gamache. “And quiet.”

Most, if not all, snipers were very specific about the location of an ambush, leaving nothing to chance. And they would have made themselves known by now.

Still, Jean-Guy indicated the gun on his hip.

Gamache shook his head and instead picked up a long sturdy stick and brandished it.

“En garde.”

As he smiled, cracks appeared down his face, radiating from the corners of his eyes. Creases dug deep by the stress of leadership, by having to make life-and-death decisions. By worry. Grief. By mistakes.

By solemnly following flag-draped coffins down a long aisle. To stop at waiting mothers and fathers, husbands and wives. Children.

By having so much blood on his hands.

And then there was the scar at his temple that told of other wounds.

Yet for all that, the deepest of the creases were laugh lines. Here was a happy, content man who knew what a gift life was because he’d seen so much death.

Now he waved the stick and suddenly looked like a little boy. “In case there’re bears.”

“Good thinking, patron,” said Jean-Guy. “It can use that as a toothpick after it eats you.”

Armand gave one grunt of laughter, lifted the stick in a small wave, then slid down into the ditch to land, plop, in six inches of water. He grimaced as the water flowed into his boot.

Takacs held out his hand and helped haul him up the other side. Together they entered the woods as Beauvoir and Lacoste watched.