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"Oui"

Ar to convince people he’d seen a monster Gamache hadn’t yet seen the monster, but he kneas out there He just had to convince others

"I kno ridiculous it sounds, Jean-Guy"

"I don’t think you do, patron, or you’d never have said it"

"Please, just do it"

"But what are we supposed to do? We’ve already done a thorough investigation It was an accident"

"It was not," said Garuff "And it’s not just the stick We went to the site yesterday afternoon and searched, but so If you assu his bike down the hill and hit a buht?"

"Which he did Hit his head I’?"

"He was pointed in the wrong direction, Jean-Guy Your own photos confir, and tapping on his co up the file and the photos

Then there was silence

"Christ," he finally said, exhaling the word like a sigh "Are you sure?"

"If you go to the site you’ll see i down the hill when he fell"

"And the other direction?"

"Is flat He ainst a rock or a pothole and fallen, but at worst he’d have skinned a knee, maybe broken an arht be on to so But nohat?"

"If he was killed, the e mistake He moved the body but left the stick If we can find the stick, we ht knohere Laurent was killed"

"And who did it," said Beauvoir "But even if all this is true, how in the world are you going to find a stick in the forest?"

Gamache looked out theand raised his eyes past the village green, past the old homes To the woods The forest Hundreds of square e With round

But Laurent was nine years old, and nine-year-olds, even with bicycles, didn’t travel hundreds of square o all that far into the forest