Chapter ThirteenHe had been feeling so much better lately. The long winter runs, the relative calm in Castillac, his dates with Marie-Claire…Dufort had not even been to see his herbalist in over a month. Anxiety was so low he had stopped noticing it.
And now, another death, and he was patting his pants pocket for his vial of tincture and feeling disappointed when it was not there. This death—it was nothing like the others. Not a young woman cut down and brutalized in her prime, not related to the unsolved Boutillier and Martin cases, but an elderly woman whom nobody liked. Nevertheless, the thought of her lying on her side on the tile bathroom of La Métairie made him feel queasy.
He had to wonder, even after so many years: am I in the wrong job? He knew other gendarmes with his experienc
