“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.

*   *   *

They walked through the woods, following bright yellow ribbons tied to the trees. Like crumbs leading to Grandma’s great big gun.

Professor Rosenblatt was not used to forests. Or fields. Or lakes. Or nature of any kind. They’d walked for a few minutes and he was already tired. He skidded off another moss-covered rock and hugged a tree trunk to stop himself from falling.

“All right?” Gamache asked, reaching out to steady the older man and to pick up his briefcase, again. He’d offered to carry it but the professor had politely, but firmly, declined and took it back, again.

And so their progress through the forest became a sort of minuet, with Professor Rosenblatt lunging from tree to tree, like a drunk groping his way across a dance floor.

Lacoste and Beauvoir were now a distance ahead, almost swallowed up by the trees.

“This is not my natural habitat,” said the professor, unnecessarily. “I prefer four walls, a computer and a plate of madeleines.”

Gamache smiled. “Chocolatines for me.”

“Oui. They’d do, in an emergency. I don’t suppose…”

“Sadly, no,” said Gamache with a smile.

Far up ahead Rosenblatt could hear, between his raspy gasping breaths, the two officers talking. Words familiar from television shows drifted back to him.

DNA. Forensics. Blood work.

He wondered how the boy had died, though at that moment he was concentrating on not dying himself, as he huffed and wheezed and stumbled through the forest.

And then, in the gloom, Rosenblatt saw something that made his heart leap. One of the trees moved. He stopped and removed his glasses, wiping sweat from his eyes with the back of his hand.

Being a scientist, Professor Rosenblatt knew it could not possibly be a tree, walking. But he also knew that this forest contained other unbelievable things.