“But what you’re describing is a sort of counterfeit conscience,” said Reine-Marie. “Something that might look ‘right’ but is actually wrong. No one with an actual conscience would stand for it.”
“I wonder if that’s true,” said Myrna. “There was a famous psychological study, a test really. It was designed as a response to the Nazi trials, and their defense that their consciences were clear. It was war and they were just doing as they were told. It was Eichmann’s defense when he was caught, years later. The public was enraged, saying that no normal person would do what the Nazis did, and no civilized society would stand by and let it happen. So the social scientists, during the Eichmann trial, put it to the test.”
“Wait,” said Clara. “Before you tell us, I need another drink. Anyone else?”
Armand got up. “Let me.”
He and Myrna took the glasses to the kitchen, and poured more wine.
“Nothing for you?” she asked, pointing to the Glenfiddich.
“Non, merci. I think there’s quite a bit of work ahead tonight. That study you’re referring to, is it the Milgram experiment at Yale?”
“Yes.” She looked at Reine-Marie and Clara, chatting by the woodstove. “Would they have done it, do you think?”
“Isn’t the question more, would you have done it? Would I?”
“And the answer?”
“Maybe we’re doing it now, and don’t realize it,” he said, and thought of the notebook locked away in his quiet home. And what it contained. And what he was considering doing.
But, unlike the Nazis, he wouldn’t just be following orders. He’d be issuing them.
And hundreds, perhaps thousands, would almost certainly die.
Could he justify it?
CHAPTER 26
Isabelle Lacoste leaned closer to the laptop.
The fluorescent lights of the church basement were not kind to a computer screen. Or to the face reflected in it.
How did I get so old? she wondered. And so worried. And so green?
The photograph Beauvoir had been waiting to download had finally appeared, and he’d brought his laptop over to her desk. And now he sat beside her.
Not looking at his screen. He knew perfectly well what was there.
He was looking at Isabelle Lacoste.
She brought a manicured hand up to her face, resting her elbow on the desk and placing her fingers splayed over her mouth.
Staring at the screen. At the woman.
“That isn’t Madame Evans,” she finally said.
“No. This is a picture taken eighteen months ago, in Pittsburgh. I’ve been researching Katie Evans. So far she appears to be what everyone says. An up-and-coming architect. She did her thesis on glass houses. Adapting them to harsh climates, like ours. She completed her studies at the Université de Montréal, as we know.”
“Where they all met.”
“Oui. But she spent the summer between high school and university taking a course at Carnegie Mellon—”
“In Pittsburgh,” said Lacoste, going back to staring at the screen.
The photograph was both banal and awful. Perhaps because of the extreme normalcy of ninety percent of the image. And the horror at the very edge.
“Monsieur Gamache asked me to do some research on the cobrador a couple days ago, when it first showed up here. Among the things I found was that.”
Lacoste was right. It was not Katie Evans, though the woman on the screen was the same generation. In her early thirties. Well dressed. An executive, heading to work. Or home.
Hurrying, like everyone else.
It was an ordinary moment on any crowded street.
But something had caught the woman’s eye. She was just beginning to register it.
Isabelle felt the blood run cold in her veins.
The woman’s expression was like all the rest who rushed around her. But her eyes had begun to change. They had that look horses got when frightened and about to buck or bolt.
There, on the very edge of the photograph. At the far reaches of her peripheral vision. Just entering her orbit. Stood a cobrador.
Busy commuters, heads down looking at their devices, flowed around it, while this apparition from a time long forgotten stood like a black rock in a river.
And stared.
Though the woman couldn’t know what it was, she seemed to know that it was there for her.
“Who is she?”
“Colleen Simpson. She owned a chain of day care centers. There were allegations of abuse and she was tried. And acquitted.”
Lacoste nodded. Of course she’d been acquitted. If she’d been found guilty there’d be no need of the cobrador.
“Someone didn’t believe it,” said Lacoste.
“She was acquitted on a technicality,” said Beauvoir. “One of the cops fucked up.”
It was the dread most investigators carried. To make a mistake, and set a predator free among the prey.
Lacoste turned back to the screen. The monster had changed. It was no longer the cobrador. It was the nicely dressed woman, so much like everyone else on that street.
Lacoste’s gaze shifted to the now empty root cellar.
“You’re wondering if Katie Evans knew this woman,” said Lacoste. “That maybe they met at Carnegie Mellon.”
“It’s a long shot, but…” He lifted his hands in a “might as well try” gesture. “If Madame Evans knew this woman, it’s possible the cobrador came for them both. First one, then the other.”
“See what you can find out.”
“Oui, patron.”
Chief Inspector Isabelle Lacoste returned to her laptop and the transcripts of that day’s interviews. She clicked on the next interview and groaned slightly.
Ruth Zardo.
Lacoste closed that screen. Interviewing the demented old poet once was bad enough. Having to read over that mess again was too much, even for the head of homicide. Besides, there was nothing there. She went on to the next transcript, reaching for her coffee and settling in.
“Oh, merde,” she sighed and, closing that, she brought up Ruth Zardo, smiling slightly at the thought.
Ruth certainly resembled something brought up.
*
Clara and Reine-Marie were deep in conversation when Armand and Myrna returned with the wine and more sliced baguette for the cheese.
“Ahhh, merci,” said Reine-Marie, reaching for the bread first.
“What were you talking about?” asked Myrna. “Nazis?”
“Pinocchio,” said Clara.
“Of course.” Myrna turned to Armand. “I see we’ve returned just in time to elevate this conversation above nursery school.”
“By talking about Nazis?” asked Clara. “That elevator is descending.”
“No, by telling you about the experiment,” said Myrna. “Eichmann’s defense was that he was just following orders, right?”
The women nodded. They’d all heard that. It was the classic defense for the indefensible.
“The prosecution, and the court of public opinion, said that was absurd. That any decent person would’ve refused to participate in the Holocaust. It became a talking point of the day, around water coolers and at cocktail parties. Wouldn’t a person of good conscience refuse? That’s what the experiment was set up to test.”