“Okay,” said Beauvoir. “We ran James Hill’s fingerprints and licence plate. He lived and worked in Ottawa. With the government. In the Department of Records.”

Armand Gamache shifted a bit on the bench. The Department of Records. It was huge, of course. It kept track of Canada’s official documents. Not people’s private lives, but their public ones. Taxes, passports, court papers. Any time a Canadian came in contact with the government, the records ended up in James Hill’s department.

“He took the job fifteen years ago. Before that, he was living in Thunder Bay.”

“In northwestern Ontario?”

“Exactly. With his wife and daughter. But they were killed twenty years ago. Their car was hit by a pickup truck filled with kids.”

Gamache looked down briefly. He could not imagine surviving the loss of his own wife and daughter. How had James Hill coped?

“Here’s a picture of them.”

From a file folder Beauvoir pulled a printout of a newspaper article. It showed a young James Hill, smiling. His pretty wife, also beaming. And their daughter. Debbie. She looked like her mother. Dark hair, laughing.

Gone, in a moment.

Gamache felt an almost physical pain. A terrible loss.

He scanned the article.

Mrs. Hill and Debbie had been returning from a birthday party when their car was side-swiped. They slid off the road, down a cliff. Both died at the scene.

The other vehicle had four kids in it. Two boys. Two girls. Three were sixteen years old. One was fifteen. None seriously injured.

The chief inspector looked at Beauvoir.

“What happened?”

“The cops investigated, of course. It was clear that the kids had hit the Hill car. What wasn’t clear was who was driving.”

Gamache nodded. He could see that coming.

“By the time help arrived, the kids had gotten out of the truck. They had minor injuries, but that was all. One of them had wiped the steering wheel. To get the blood off, he said, but everyone suspected that he did it to protect whoever was driving.”

“Fingerprints,” said Gamache. “No convictions?”

“Not even an arrest. Hill spent years trying to get someone to take the blame. But the kids’ lawyers wouldn’t even let them say they were sorry. They just stopped talking.”

Gamache was silent for a moment, thinking.

“So finally James Hill moved away,” said the chief. “To Ottawa.”

“To the Department of Records,” said Beauvoir. He held up another file. “Hill was a busy man.”

Beauvoir handed the file to Gamache. In it were more reports, of more deaths. A young man killed ten years ago in Victoria. A young woman killed seven years ago in Halifax.

Both hanged.

“Arthur Ellis,” said Gamache. Beauvoir nodded.

The official executioner, alive again. And passing death sentences.

“The victims were two of the people in the truck that night,” said Beauvoir.