The guests at the B&B were just sitting down to dinner when Isabelle Lacoste arrived.
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said, but it did not look like she was interrupting much.
The shepherd’s pie, which smelled wonderful, sat on each of their plates, practically untouched.
“Would you like to join us?” Matheo asked. “There’s plenty.”
Isabelle recognized it for what it was. A vastly insincere invitation. She wondered what would happen if she accepted.
This had been a horrible day for them. Or, at least, for most of them.
They stared at her and, as Chief Inspector Lacoste looked at them, she suspected she was seeing a killer. She just didn’t know which of them it was.
“Merci. But I have a small question. Something we need to pursue to put to rest.” She turned to Patrick. “I understand that you kept in touch with the family of Edouard Valcourt. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“I’d like to speak with them, and need their address or phone number or whatever you have.”
“But why?” asked Lea.
Lacoste turned to her and smiled. “I’d forgotten that you sponsored a bill in his name, didn’t you? You must’ve been in touch with the family too. Do you have a way to contact them?”
“I do, absolutely,” said Lea. “Not on me, of course, but I can contact my assistant at the National Assembly and ask him to get it for you. I have your email, I believe.”
Lacoste had given them each her card at the end of their interviews.
“Merci. I’d like to try to contact them tonight.” She turned back to Patrick. “Do you have their information in your contacts list?”
“I think I probably deleted it, when I upgraded devices,” he said.
“Why would you want to speak with the Valcourts?” asked Lea again. “You don’t think they’re somehow involved in Katie’s death?”
“No,” she assured her. “I don’t think they were, but we do have to wonder about Madame Evans’s past, and one unresolved issue seems to be the death of your friend Edouard.”
“There’s nothing unresolved,” said Matheo. “He was stoned and fell off the roof. Katie had nothing to do with it. She wasn’t even there. Neither was Patrick.” He turned to him. But Patrick just stared.
Matheo suppressed the overwhelming desire to slap the back of his head and knock that pathetic puppy-dog look off his face.
“I have no problem at all giving you their phone number and address,” said Lea. “But it’ll have to wait until morning. Is that all right?”
“If you can’t get it sooner, yes.”
And Lacoste left them to their dinner and headed out into the snowy evening once again.
She came away without the Valcourts’ coordinates, but with something else. The certainty that whatever had happened, Lea Roux was at the center of it. She was in charge.
And Lacoste remembered the advice given to Mossad agents. Advice Lacoste had found abhorrent, wrong on every level. Until it had been explained.
The instruction given the Israeli agents, if they met resistance during an assault, was kill the women first.
Because if a woman was ever driven so far as to pick up a weapon, she would be the most committed, the least likely to ever give up.
Kill the women first.
Lacoste still hated the advice. The simplicity of it. The baldness. But she also hated that the philosophy behind it was almost certainly true.
*
Gamache took a few steps through the snow, into the woods. Not far.
Then he turned around to face the back wall of the church and as he did, lights went on, illuminating the ground around him. The snowflakes, like crystals caught in the light, gleamed.
He stood for a moment, taking in the sight, so bright, then he turned and looked into the gloomy woods.
With a last puzzled glance at the back wall, Gamache retraced his steps, climbed the stairs, and entered the warm church, where Jean-Guy was whacking his gloves against his coat.
“Madame Gamache said you wanted to see me here.” His stomach growled and he covered it with his hand while giving Gamache an accusing look. They could be eating by now instead of standing in the chilly church. “Why were you outside? What’re you looking for?”
“Rum runners.”
“They went thataway.” He pointed toward the cemetery.
Gamache turned in that direction, his brow furrowed, thinking. Snow trickled along his scalp and down his face and the back of his neck, as though the effort of thinking was melting it. The rivulet found its way past his collar and dribbled straight down his spine, making him roll his shoulders in discomfort as he led the way downstairs to the Incident Room.
CHAPTER 29
A fine line of perspiration trickled down Chief Superintendent Gamache’s neck and soaked into his collar.
In the powerful air-conditioning of S?reté headquarters, he could feel his sodden shirt growing clammy as it clung to his body.
He wished he’d had time for a quick shower and change into clean clothes, but that would have to wait until after this meeting.
The officers had stood as he entered the conference room, but he waved them to their seats and took his own chair at the head of the table.
Gamache looked at each of them, men and women of all ages, all ranks. Who’d sat around this table, in those same seats, at least once a week for almost a year.
He remembered the private interviews, as he’d decided the members of this inner circle. From the thousands of officers, he’d chosen these few, for their intelligence, their determination. Their ability to work as a team. To both lead and follow. They were chosen for their bravery and boldness and their loyalty.
Not to Gamache. Not to the S?reté. Not even to Québec. But to the Québécois. To protect them. Perhaps at great cost.
He’d taken the most promising, and asked them to possibly, probably, almost certainly, destroy their careers. And they’d agreed.
Not, it must be admitted, without a fight sometimes, as the long view was obscured by leaping and waving and screaming immediate needs. And by their own training and morals. To stand aside, to do nothing, as crimes were committed. It was soul-destroying.
But they’d held together. Finally.
And now here they were.
For almost a year they’d put their plan into place. As well constructed, as focused, as hidden as the cartel they were trying to bring down.
A glass house, Judge Corriveau had called it. Transparent.
That’s what it was. And that’s what they were. Now.
A good hunter, Gamache knew, learned from his prey. And he’d learned from the cartel to be lean. Focused. Invisible.
To appear to be weak, while actually gathering strength.
But the time had come for exposure, on both sides. By the end of this night, one would be victorious. One would be shattered.
Grabbing a tissue, he wiped the perspiration from his face, no longer concerned about how it would be perceived.
“Tell me what you know.”
His gaze moved around the table and settled on Superintendent Toussaint, who was looking uncomfortable.
“Seems we were wrong, patron.”
“Is that so? About what?”