The Nature of the Beast

He described how he’d wandered the back roads, pulling over now and then to consult maps and his GPS. But no village called Three Pines seemed to exist. He grew more and more anxious, turning, turning, turning at random, trying this road, that dead end.

“Three Pines,” said Rosenblatt. “Even the name sounds slightly ridiculous in an area thick with pines.”

But then, just as he was about to give up, he crested a hill, along a rutted dirt road, and put on the brakes.

There appeared below him, like an apparition, a small village. And in the very center were three tall pine trees. Waving.

He looked at his GPS. It showed him in the middle of nowhere. Literally. No where. No roads. No community. Not even a forest. Just blank. As though he’d driven off the face of the earth.

Professor Rosenblatt got out of his car. He needed to gather his thoughts, his wits, before meeting that disarming Sûreté officer. He walked over to a bench on the brow of the hill and was about to sit down when he noticed two phrases, one above the other, carved into the wood on the back.

A Brave Man in a Brave Country

Surprised by Joy

Professor Rosenblatt turned and looked at the village and noticed the people in their gardens, on their porches, walking their dogs. Stopping to chat with each other. It seemed both languid and purposeful.

He wondered who they were, that they should choose to live in the middle of nowhere. And that those phrases should mean so much to them that they were carved at the entrance to the village.

Now Michael Rosenblatt followed the Sûreté officer into the main body of the old train station, where men and women were on phones, at computers, conferring over documents. Chalkboards and corkboards were filling up with photographs and schematics. A huge map of the immediate area had been pinned to a wall.

Inspector Beauvoir walked over to a young woman at a desk.

“Chief Inspector Lacoste, this is the man I was telling you about. Professor Rosenblatt is a physicist. He specializes in ballistics and high altitude.”

“Professor Rosenblatt,” said Lacoste, getting up to greet the older man. “High altitude? An astrophysicist?”

“Well, not quite that high,” said Rosenblatt, shaking her hand. “Just a plain garden-variety physicist. And I’m afraid your colleague should have used the past tense. I’m an old academic.”

“Well, we have an old gun,” said Lacoste with a smile. But he could feel her assessing him. Wondering if he’d gone gaga yet. “Inspector, would you call the Chief Inspector and see if he’d like to join us?”

“I thought you were the Chief Inspector,” said Rosenblatt. He stood gripping his briefcase and willed himself to relax.

“I am. He’s the man I replaced. He retired down here.”

“So did I,” said Rosenblatt. “A peaceful place.”

“I guess it depends where you live,” said Lacoste, taking a seat and indicating one across from her. “There’s something you need to know before we head into the woods. The site of the gun is also a crime scene. A boy was murdered there. We think he was killed because he found the gun. Someone wanted to keep its location a secret.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, sitting down. Reluctantly. He was anxious to get going.

“But you don’t seem surprised,” she said, watching him closely.

“If this gun is what I think it is, it would not be the first death associated with it.”

“You’re not going to tell me it’s cursed,” said Isabelle Lacoste.

“No more than any gun.”

Well, he thought. Perhaps a little more. For a gun that had never been fired, it had caused a shocking number of deaths. Of which the boy was just the latest, but not, perhaps, the last.

“And what have we found?” she asked.

“I need to see it first,” he said. “To confirm.”

“What do you suspect it is?” she pressed.

Through the mullioned windows, Professor Rosenblatt saw a man in his fifties walking over the stone bridge, toward the old train station. He was tall and more sturdy than heavy. He wore a cap and slacks and rubber boots and a warm waxed coat against the chilly September morning.

And he looked familiar.

Isabelle Lacoste turned to see who the professor was staring at with such intensity.

“That’s Monsieur Gamache,” she said.

Gamache, thought Rosenblatt. Chief Inspector Gamache. Of the Sûreté.

Yes, now he placed him. From news reports.

Watching the man approach with a strong, determined step, Rosenblatt suspected Gamache was no more retired than he himself was.