She had reason, he knew, to be worried. She even had reason to be afraid.
Her map was missing. Either she gave it to the dead man, or someone took it and planted it there. Either way, attention was focusing on her. Cadet Choquet was in the crosshairs. He knew it. And clearly she knew it too.
“Pack up a few things, please. You’ll be going away for a few nights. An agent will escort you out.”
“Why? Because of the map?” Amelia called after him, but got no response.
*
“May I come in?” Lacoste asked, knocking once and opening the door. “You’ve had your meeting with the mayor and the police chief?”
Gamache got up from behind his desk and greeted her, motioning to a chair by the sofa, while he took the other one.
“Oui. That poor man. I feel for him. I’ve tried for the last few months to regain the mayor’s trust. He finally, against the wishes of his councilors, endorsed the volunteer program with the academy at the last town meeting, only to have this happen.”
“But the two aren’t connected,” said Lacoste.
“No, but it puts the academy in a very bad light, wouldn’t you say? When one of our own professors is murdered? How can the mayor now say it’s safe for kids to come and use our pool or the hockey rink?”
“I see,” she said, and saw that Gamache was genuinely saddened. But not, she suspected, by the brutal murder of one of his colleagues. He was saddened that a good man like the mayor, and the children of the community, were being hurt, once again, by Serge Leduc.
“The chief of police was more sanguine,” he said. “Offering to help.”
Isabelle Lacoste straightened the crease in her slacks, then looked up at Armand Gamache.
“I had no idea this was such a hostile environment, patron.”
He smiled. “Nor did I, to be honest. I expected resistance when I first arrived, and God knows, I found it. I expected Serge Leduc to try to contaminate and control the feeling on campus. Which he did. I expected that the third-year students would be a lost generation. Which they are. Almost.”
He looked at her and considered for a moment.
“Do you know why the armed forces recruit eighteen-year-olds?”
“Because they’re young and healthy?” she asked.
“Healthier than a twenty-three-year-old? No. It’s because they’re malleable. You can get an eighteen-year-old to believe almost anything. To do almost anything.”
“The same could be said for street gangs and terrorist organizations,” said Lacoste. “Get them young.”
The thought set her back. The words had come out casually, but their meaning took a moment to sink in. Serge Leduc had essentially turned the S?reté Academy into a terrorist training ground.
Within a few short years, he’d soured a once fine institution. Not just the academy—from here his cadets would become S?reté agents. And rise through the ranks. No, not would. Had. They were already inside the S?reté.
And worst of all, these young men and women wouldn’t see anything wrong with what they did. Or were about to do. Because they’d been told it was right.
Armand Gamache had chosen this post for a reason. To right the balance. And to do that he had to stop Serge Leduc.
She watched as Commander Gamache got up and walked to his desk.
An alertness stole over her. The sort that came to highly trained, finely attuned officers.
Serge Leduc had been stopped. Utterly and completely.
But it wasn’t Monsieur Gamache’s doing, she told herself. He had nothing to do with it. He had nothing to do with it. Nothing.
She watched as Gamache picked up a dossier and returned to his chair.
“You could’ve fired him, patron,” she said. “You might not have been able to arrest him for corruption, but at least that would stop him from doing more damage.”
“Firing Leduc would solve nothing. The problem would simply be shifted onto someone else. The Leducs of this world will always find fertile ground. If not with the S?reté, then with another police force. Or a private security firm. No. Enough was enough. It had to end, and the people he’d already corrupted, here and in the S?reté, had to see that his philosophy would no longer be tolerated.”
“And how did you intend to do that, sir?”
He looked at her closely now, quizzically. “Are you saying what I think you are? Are you suggesting I might have stopped him with a bullet in the small hours of this morning?”
“I need to ask,” she said. “And you need to answer. I’m not making small talk.”
“No, and neither am I,” he said, sitting back in his chair. “You think I’m capable of cold-blooded murder?”
She paused, holding his eyes. “I do.”
That sat between them for a very long moment.
“For what it’s worth, I think I am too,” she said.
“Under the right circumstances,” Gamache said, nodding slowly.
“Oui.”
“The question is, what are the right circumstances?” said Gamache.
“It must have become clear to you, patron, that Serge Leduc was winning. He’d already polluted the third-year cadets. You yourself said they were beyond redemption—”
“I said almost beyond. I haven’t given up on them.”
“Then why not teach a third-year class yourself? You only take the freshmen.”
“True. I gave the seniors someone better. Someone with more to teach them than I ever could.”
“Jean-Guy?” she asked, not even trying to disguise her doubt.
“Michel Brébeuf.”
Isabelle Lacoste sat very still. As though something horrible had entered the room and she didn’t want to attract its notice.
Finally she spoke.
“A known traitor?”
“An example,” said Gamache. “A powerful example of what corruption will do. It robbed Michel Brébeuf of everything he cared about. His colleagues, his friends, his self-respect. His career. His family. He lost everything. Serge Leduc was promising the cadets power and rewards. Michel Brébeuf is the reality check. What really happens to corrupt S?reté officers.”
“Does he know that?”
“He knows he’s been given this chance to redeem himself. To close the gate.”
Isabelle Lacoste cocked her head slightly, missing the allusion.
“And suppose he doesn’t try to redeem himself?” she asked. “Suppose he sees this as his chance to get back in? Suppose he’s gone back to his old ways and has found his own fertile ground. Aren’t you worried that putting Michel Brébeuf, Serge Leduc, and a school full of impressionable cadets together will be a disaster?”
“Of course I am,” he snapped, then quickly reined himself in. He looked at her, his eyes sharp and the anger just below the surface. “You can’t possibly think I don’t worry about that every moment of every day. But how do you put out a wildfire? With another fire.”
“A controlled burn,” said Isabelle Lacoste, then lowered her voice. “Controlled.”
“You think I’ve lost control?”
“There’s a body being taken to a morgue, and you were heckled by the cadets.” She sighed. “I do think you’ve lost control. And please know, I say that with the greatest respect. If anyone could have solved this problem, it would’ve been you.”
“But you think I’ve made it worse?”
She opened her mouth, then closed it.
“I’m not going to sit here and tell you the murder of Serge Leduc was part of my plan,” said Gamache. “Or anything I thought remotely possible. But I won’t back down. You’ve never run away, Isabelle. Even when you could have. Even when you should have, to save yourself.”
He smiled at her now, with those same deep brown eyes that had looked up at her as he lay dying on a factory floor and she was desperate to stanch the blood. As automatic weapons fire hissed overhead and the walls around them exploded with bullets and the air was thick with dust and shouting and the screams of mortally wounded men and women.
She’d stayed with him. Held his hand. Listened to what they both knew would be his last words. Reine-Marie.
He’d placed those words into Isabelle Lacoste. And with them all his heart and soul. All his happiness, and an apology. Reine-Marie.