And then something happened. He’d hit a rut or a hole or a heave. What old townshippers called a cahoo.

Armand stood at a likely spot, a pothole. Had Laurent been frightened as he took flight? Gamache suspected not. The boy had probably been giddy with excitement. Maybe even shouting, “Caaaaah-hoooo.”

He was airborne. And then he wasn’t.

Blunt force trauma, it was called in the report. What the autopsy couldn’t show was the ongoing trauma to everyone who loved the child.

Armand stood on the pothole and lifted his body up on tiptoes, stretching his arms out in front of him. Mimicking taking off. He imagined sailing through the air. Up, up, and then down. Into the gully.

And where would the stick have landed? Perhaps quite a distance from Laurent, released from the little hand like a javelin slicing through the air.

Reine-Marie, Olivier and Gabri followed his actions and searched in the likeliest places. And then the least likely places.

“Nothing so far,” Reine-Marie said, then looking around she noticed her husband wasn’t with her. He was standing at the spot where Laurent had landed, looking at the ground. Then he turned and looked back up the hill.

“Find anything?” asked Olivier.

“No,” said Gabri, getting closer to the woods. “Just grass and mud.” He lifted his boots and there was a sucking sound as the ground reluctantly released him.

Armand had returned to the road and walked in the opposite direction of the hill. Reine-Marie, along with Gabri and Olivier, joined him.

“No stick?” Gamache asked.

They shook their heads.

“Maybe Al and Evie picked it up,” said Olivier.

But they doubted it. It was all Laurent’s parents could do to pick themselves up.

“Maybe he lost it,” said Gabri.

But they knew the only way Laurent would lose it was if he lost his hand. It was more than just a stick to Laurent.

*   *   *

Al Lepage came out of the barn when he heard their car drive up. He was back in his work clothes and was wiping his large hands.

“Armand.”

“Al.” The men shook hands and Reine-Marie gave him a quick embrace.

“Is Evie at home? I have a casserole.”

Al pointed to the house, and when Reine-Marie left he turned to Gamache.

“Is this a social call?”

“No, not really.”

They’d dropped Gabri and Olivier back in Three Pines and then driven to the farm. And now Armand contemplated the older man in front of him. Al Lepage looked like a paper bag that had been crumpled up before being thrown away. But for the first time, Armand really studied his face and noted not the beard or the leathered skin, but the blue, blue eyes, shaped like almonds. Laurent’s eyes. And his nose. Thin and slightly too long for the face. Laurent’s nose.

“I have a question for you.”

Al indicated a trough. The two men sat side by side.