Chapter 24 Chapter Twenty-Four

Inspector Garmash made himself a pot of coffee and sat down. There was no point in trying to go back to sleep now.He looked at the alarm clock on the table. It was 4:43, not long before he woke up. He puts the mug on top of a stack of papers and starts typing, typing some more before waiting for the message to pop up.He clicks, browses, peruses. The reading glasses he brought had turned out to be useful, and he wondered what would have happened had he been carrying a gun. It's easy enough to get a general idea of ​​the life of Chief Justice Thierry Pinault.Canadians enjoy an open society and take pride in it.They are thankful that this country is a model of a transparent society, where decisions are made in the public eye.Public and powerful figures are responsible for their actions and their lives are subject to public scrutiny.

It's an ego. And, as in most open societies, few people try to test where the boundaries really are, to figure out when and where openness becomes closed.But there is always a limit to everything, and Inspector Garmash had only figured it out a few minutes ago. Garmash had just checked the public records of Chief Justice Pinault's career.He started out as a public prosecutor, worked as a law professor at Laval University, and then rose to the position of judge.Finally, become Chief Justice. Widower, three children, four grandchildren.Three of them survived and the other died. Garmash had heard of it, Superintendent Brunel had told him.The child was run over by a truck driver.Gamache wanted to find out who the driver was, and he wondered if it was Pinault himself.

What could make this person so decadent that he hit rock bottom?Quit drinking?Totally turned your life around?The dead granddaughter who gave Thierry Pinault a second chance at life? This might explain the strange relationship between the Chief Justice and Bryan Jr.Both knew what it was like to hear that soft thud.That's when the car slowed down and stopped. Then know what that sound means. Gamash sat at the table, trying to imagine what that would be like.Imagine sitting behind the wheel of his Volvo, knowing what just happened, and getting out. But his thoughts stopped there.Some things are beyond imagination.

To clear his mind, Garmash went back to the keyboard and searched for information about the accident.but. The door to the open society is slowly closing, and locked. But in the quiet of the case room, as the first rays of morning sunlight stream in, Inspector Garmache dives beneath the surface life of Quebec's public face to explore where secrets hide.Private profiles of public figures. There the Inspector found information on Thierry Pinault.He drank heavily, behaved erratically at times, and argued with other judges.Then there was a gap, a three-month leave of absence. Then came his return.

Private files show that in the past two years, Thierry Pinault has had at least one case officially reviewed and a judgment quashed. There is another case.Not a Supreme Court case, which he didn't participate in, at least not as a judge.But the case was reviewed again and again by Chief Justice Pinault.The dossier described a very clear-cut case of a child being run over by a truck driver. But no more information.The archives were locked away, out of reach of even Garmash. He leaned back in the chair, took off his reading glasses, and tapped rhythmically on his knees. Detective Isabelle Lacoste wonders if anyone really dies of boredom.If there was one, she must have been the first.

She now knows a lot about the fine arts scene in Quebec, although she is not interested.Painters, curators, and exhibitions.critics.Themes, theory, and history. The famous painters of Quebec, such as Opel, Lemieux, and Molinari, and a large number of others she had never heard of and never would hear of.Those painters who were commented on by Lillian Dyson and then disappeared. She rubbed her eyes.With every comment, she has to remind herself why she's here.She thought of Lillian Dyson lying on the soft green grass in the Morrow garden.A woman who will never grow old again, a woman whose life stopped there, in that garden of beauty and peace, because someone took her life.

However, after reading all these offensive comments, Lacoste even wanted to take a stick to this woman himself.She felt dirty, as if she had been doused all over with a vat of feces. But someone had killed Lillian Dyson, ugly or not, and Lacoste was determined to find him.The more she read, the more convinced she was that someone was hiding here.Hidden in the reference room of the newspaper, hidden in these microfilms.The beginnings of this murder are so ancient that it is hidden only in these plastic files, seen only through dusty slide viewers.This antiquated technology records a murder.Or at least, the beginning of death.A thing from time immemorial is still alive in someone's heart.

No, not alive, but rotten, old and rotten. Lacoste knew that if she searched long enough and carefully enough, the killer would surface. For the next hour, as the sun rose higher and people rose, Inspector Garmash worked.Tired, he took off his reading glasses, wiped his face with his hands, leaned back in his chair, and looked at the sheets of paper nailed to the wall of the old railway station. On these sheets, marked with bold red marker, are the answers to the questions, like bloodstains, leading to the murderer. He looked at the pictures, especially two of them.One was given to him by the Dysons, Lillian alive, smiling.

The other, taken by a crime scene photographer, is of a dead Lillian. He thought about the two Lillians.the living, and the dead.Not only that.The happy, sober Lillian that Susan described was a far cry from the vicious and mean woman Clara had known. Do people change? Inspector Gamash steps away from the computer.Gathering information is over, now it's time to put it together. Agent Isabelle Lacoste stared at the screen, reading it over and over.This review even comes with a photo.In Lacoste's opinion, this was the most vicious attack Lillian Dyson reserved.It shows a young artist and a young Lillian standing on either side of a painting.The artist is smiling, grinning, and pointing at the work as if it were a prize-winning fish, as if it were something wonderful.

Where's Lillian? Lacoste pressed a button, and the figure leaped closer. Lillian is also smiling, with a smug look, inviting the reader to enjoy the joke. What about the reviews? Lacoste read it and got goosebumps all over her body, as if she was watching a murder movie and watched a person die.Because that's what this review is about: to kill a career, to kill the painter who lives inside that person. Lacoste tapped a key, and the printer began to growl, as if to spit out the stench in its mouth before it began to spit out the printout.