Page 26 of A Better Man

He took another deep breath, but with less pleasure.

All sorts of things woke up in the spring. With the warmer weather. Bears. Chipmunks. Skunks and racoons. And rivers.

They came to life.

There were few things more powerful, or destructive, or terrifying, than a hungry bear or a river in full flood.

Gamache knew exactly where the river was heading. While he’d never been along this road before, he knew the area. They weren’t all that far from his own village.

Which meant the roar they heard was the Rivière Bella Bella, heading straight into Three Pines.

He took out his phone to call Reine-Marie, to warn her and find out how things were, but Cameron was right. There was no signal.

He clicked the phone off, put it back in his pocket, and turned to look up the muddy road.

“Come on,” he said, and started the climb.

“The lottery ticket,” said Isabelle Lacoste, looking over the file at Jean-Guy Beauvoir.

“What?”

Lacoste was between meetings. She’d dropped by to chat, and instead he’d put her to work, tossing her files and saying, “Take a look at these and tell me what you think.”

The two sat in companionable silence, reading about sometimes gruesome, sometimes straightforward, always tragic murders. Every now and then, Superintendent Lacoste had asked a question. Or made a note. Or a comment.

“In the Anderson case,” she said. “The victim was found with a lottery ticket in her pocket.”

“Oui. A group of co-workers were in a pool.”

“Which she organized.”

“Yes.” He leaned over so he could read the file she was holding. “But it was a losing ticket.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Then what does?”

“Everyone in her section was in the lottery pool, right? Ten people?”

“Yes.”

“But it says here there’re eleven in that division. One was left out. Which one?”

Beauvoir sat back and thought. It seemed a tiny detail, but that was the thing about murders. And murderers. They hid in the details. The small things easily overlooked.

“You think whoever was left out killed her for the lottery ticket? But why not take it?”

“Non.” Isabelle was shaking her head. Then she suddenly looked at her watch. “I’m going to be late for the next meeting.”

“But wait, why leave the ticket behind if that was the motive?” asked Beauvoir, calling after Lacoste as she made for the door.

“Because the ticket wasn’t the motive. Being left out was. And it probably wasn’t the first time. What happens when someone is shunned, over and over?”

He grabbed the dossier and scanned it, muttering, “Merde. She might be right.”

Chief Inspector Beauvoir called the lead investigator and suggested he find out all he could about the co-worker who had not been included.

Then he sat back down and continued to go over the files.