He’d acted instinctively, and now something was done that could never be undone.
But there was something he could do, now that he was out here, and Gamache was in there. And that was to make sure the lie was worth it. That it achieved what they all hoped.
The S?reté, under Chief Superintendent Gamache, would hit hard and fast and decisively. The target would never see the blow coming, shrouded as it was in lies and apparent incompetence. And all tied to a macabre murder in a tiny border village.
And a root cellar with a secret.
But as he headed along the cobbled streets of Old Montréal toward S?reté headquarters, Jean-Guy couldn’t shake the thought that they’d risked everything on this one maneuver. This coup de grace. That might not work.
There was no fallback plan. No alternate route. No plan B.
Not for Gamache. Not for Beauvoir. Not for any of them.
Chief Superintendent Gamache had just set their ship aflame. There was no going back now.
CHAPTER 22
Chief Superintendent Gamache looked at the closed doors of the courtroom, then he wiped his eyes again, and shifted his attention back to the Crown Prosecutor.
He watched Zalmanowitz, and saw what he thought was the tiniest of acknowledgments.
Both men knew what Gamache had just done. And what Zalmanowitz had helped orchestrate.
It was, potentially, a huge step toward their goal. And it was almost certainly the end to both of their careers. And yet, the waving of papers in the courtroom continued. The hum of the little fan continued. The jury continued to listen, semi-attentively, unaware of what they’d just witnessed. Of what had just happened.
All quiet on the western front, thought Gamache.
“So the defendant was responsible for Katie Evans being in the costume?”
“Yes.”
“It was an act of revenge?”
“Yes.”
“As was her murder.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why any of it. Why the costume? Why the root cellar? Why the baiting and tormenting? And why kill her? I’m sure you’ve heard of the concept of motive. Did you not look for one?”
“Tone, please,” said Judge Corriveau.
Had she really just seen that look of understanding pass between these men? And then just heard the unmistakable goading on the part of the Crown? Her senses were in conflict.
“My apologies.” Though Zalmanowitz did not sound contrite.
“We did,” said Gamache. “All that you describe is accurate, and yet it’s also misleading. It’s all too easy in a homicide investigation to be drawn off course. To follow great screaming leads and miss the subtler, smaller clues. What seemed the stalking and eventual murder of Madame Evans only appeared macabre because we didn’t understand. But once it was clear, then all that fell away. These were trappings of a murder, but the murder itself was simple. Most are. It was committed by a human being. For human reasons.”
“And what were those? And please don’t recite the Seven Deadly Sins.”
Gamache smiled and rivulets of perspiration coursed into the crevices in his face.
“Oh, it was one of them.”
“All right,” said Zalmanowitz, apparently too drained to spar anymore. “Which one? Greed? Lust? Wrath?”
Gamache raised his hand and pointed a finger.
Got it.
Wrath. That had become a wraith. That had consumed its human host, and gone out into the world. To kill.
It had started, as these things did, naturally enough. As steps in the grieving process.
But where the final step should have been toward acceptance, the person had veered off. Stepped away from the path and walked deeper and deeper into sorrow and rage. Fueled by guilt. Until they’d gotten themselves all turned around. And when they were well and truly lost, they’d found refuge. In revenge.
Comforting, consoling. They’d warmed themselves by that fire, for years.
Justifiable anger had shot right past rage, and become wrath, that became revenge. And made them do something unjustifiable. And led them all to where they were now. In this hellhole of a courtroom, trying Katie Evans’s murderer.
But there was more to it than that. Gamache knew it. The melting Crown Prosecutor knew it.
Gamache looked out at the crowd. He hoped and prayed that no one in the courtroom figured out what the police had discovered. In that church basement.
And what Chief Superintendent Gamache had just done.
Though he knew that someone was listening very, very closely to his every word. And reporting back.
*
“We need to talk,” said Inspector Beauvoir, standing in the doorway of the office at S?reté headquarters.
“Bon,” said Superintendent Toussaint, rising from her chair. Everyone else in the room also got up. “The meeting is over.”
“But—”
“We can discuss this later, Fran?ois,” she said, nodding toward her tablet and putting a sympathetic hand on his arm.
“I have your word?” he asked, then dropped his voice. “We’ll do something?”
“You have my word.”
She walked her agents to the door as Beauvoir stepped back to let them through.
“Patron,” they said to Beauvoir, examining him closely as they filed past for any hint as to why he was there. And why their own boss had abruptly ended their meeting to meet with him.
They knew Jean-Guy Beauvoir was second-in-command at the S?reté. And they knew he was a formidable investigator in his own right. Not simply an adjunct to Chief Superintendent Gamache.
Inspector Beauvoir had been offered the promotion to chief inspector when he’d taken the job, but refused, saying inspector was fine with him. He was proud to be one of the troops.
All the agents and inspectors in the S?reté, upon hearing that, turned their respect for the man into near adoration. And he became patron.
Though he didn’t feel like one now.
These men and women, his peers, had no idea what he’d just done. And what he’d just failed to do. As each of them walked past him and said, “Patron,” it felt like a shot to the gut.
“Patron,” said the last of the inspectors.
And Beauvoir closed the door.
“Court’s adjourned already?” asked Toussaint, glancing at the clock. It wasn’t yet four o’clock. When Beauvoir didn’t answer, she motioned to a chair. “How’s it going?”
Beauvoir sat but still didn’t say anything.
“That bad?” she asked, and took a deep breath. Not so much a sigh as a sign of exhaustion. “How’s he holding up?”
“He’s doing what needs to be done.”
Toussaint dropped her eyes, not wishing to meet Beauvoir’s.
Giving a curt nod, she tapped her tablet and turned it around for him to read.
“I had a report on that shipment we talked about.”
“The big one.”
“Yes. My informant says it has crossed into the States. Eighty kilos of fentanyl.”