Chapter 12 #2
They were through the border with Reine-Marie driving when Myrna looked up from her phone. “Seems Jericho excels at odd names. Snowflake isn’t the only one. It was founded by a guy named Remember.”
“You’re kidding.” Clara sat forward from the back seat.
“No, look.” Myrna passed her phone over.
Sure enough, one of the first European surveyors back in 1773 was named Remember Baker. Clara scanned the rest of the history. There was a guffaw next to her.
“What’s so funny?” she asked Ruth, who was leaning on her shoulder and reading the entry.
“Look at that passage. Seems the good folks of Jericho lived in terror of invasion from Canada.”
“How times have changed,” said Reine-Marie.
“Well, you say that, but…”
“But what?” said Reine-Marie as they turned off the main road and reached the outskirts of the town.
“You haven’t seen the posts?” asked Ruth.
Of everyone in Three Pines, Ruth Zardo was the most connected on social media. It was, they figured, one of the reasons her wits were addled.
“Some people on social media are crazy,” said Ruth.
“Some people in this car are crazy,” murmured Clara, and got no argument.
“Here we are.” Reine-Marie turned into the Old Red Mill.
Even Ruth was reduced to silence as the four women, the only people in the museum, moved from photograph to tiny photograph, marveling at the images of snowflakes that Wilson Bentley managed to capture using an old, though state-of-the-art in the 1880s, camera and microscope.
At a time when photography was in its infancy, this rugged farmer, with almost no education, had developed a fascination bordering on, and occasionally crossing into, obsession with capturing the image of a single flake.
Eventually, on January 15, 1885, he did it.
Wilson Bentley became the first person in the world to photograph a snowflake. But that wasn’t the only surprise. The biggest was yet to come. Bentley discovered that no two were exactly alike.
When he announced his findings in the local paper, he was ignored. Those who did pay attention roundly mocked him. But when he showed them hundreds, then thousands of images of the stunning crystalline shapes, all different, he was finally believed.
Then forgotten.
Like his subjects, Snowflake Bentley melted away, disappearing as though he’d never existed. Until, decades later, his work was rediscovered. And now, more than a century on, four Canadian women stood in his former home, and marveled.
“They’re beautiful,” whispered Ruth. “I wish Rosa could see them.”
“He captured a moment, a split second, before the flake melted,” said Myrna. “My God, it’s incredible. He essentially froze the snowflakes in time.”
“Huh,” said Clara. “That’s true.”
It was a museum dedicated not just to the remarkable man’s life’s work, but to that moment just before something happened.
They each bought a poster reproducing the flakes. When it was Reine-Marie’s turn to pay, she casually asked the cashier if a young man, Québécois, had visited sometime in the summer.
“Kaybek?”
“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.
“Here? In the middle of nowhere?” The biologist looked around. She’d always thought of organized crime as an urban scourge, when she thought of it at all. Though she now remembered that gruesome scene from Goodfellas where De Niro and Pesci dig up the body in the woods.
When she’d agreed to Armand’s request to accompany Inspector Lacoste, she thought she’d be testing lakes, not re-creating that scene. And playing the part of Ray Liotta.
Isabelle went through Castonguay’s pockets without expecting to find anything. And sure enough, there was nothing. No ID. No phone. No money. Nothing.
She sat back on her heels and looked around.
Why was he here? How would Frederick Castonguay even know about this lake?
Why are you here?
Why are you here?
Why were you killed, here?
Then there was the most important question. Not Who did this to you? but—
“Who were you working for?” she asked, looking into that wretched face.