Though Gamache didn’t seem upset or angry. He simply nodded agreement. But kept a thoughtful eye on her.
“That’s when we began to consider what Jacqueline was suggesting,” said Matheo. “We’d tried everything else. There seemed nothing to lose.”
“It took longer than we thought to get everything organized,” said Lea. “For one thing, we had to find a costume. Finally, we decided to make one. Didn’t Jacqueline tell you all this?”
She looked at the baker, sitting pale and contained on the sofa between Gamache and Lacoste.
“She did. But we need to hear it from you,” said Lacoste. “Who made the costume?”
“Jacqueline,” said Lea. “Even when it was finished, we weren’t all in. It just seemed stupid. Katie was the one who convinced us. She’d been the closest to Edouard. She wanted him to pay.”
“Even after all these years?” asked Lacoste. “Edouard died almost fifteen years ago.”
“When you see your best friend jump off the roof, it never goes away,” said Matheo. “Especially when the person who did it hasn’t paid any price. Hasn’t even apologized.”
“Is that what you wanted?” asked Gamache. “An apology?”
They looked at each other. It seemed possible they hadn’t really discussed what they wanted. What would be enough.
“I think so,” said Lea. “We’d fuck with him, scare him a bit, and then go back to our lives. What more could we do?”
“You said ‘him,’” said Lacoste. “Who’s he?”
“Didn’t she tell you?” asked Matheo.
“Again, I need to hear it from you.”
“Anton,” said Lea. “We’d begged him to stop selling to Edouard, and he agreed, but the shit was lying to us. He kept doing it. More drugs. Stronger.”
“We didn’t know,” said Matheo. “Until—”
Matheo was staring at Lacoste, but seeing the leap.
It was no accident. No stumble. Edouard had stood on the ledge while around him everyone partied. And below him, in some dorm room, his great love, Katie, and his friend Patrick had sex.
All around him there was youth and freedom, sex and love.
But Edouard had been left on the island, with the Lord of the Flies. And the insatiable beast gnawing inside him.
Edouard had slowly spread his arms, like something magnificent. And as Matheo and Lea watched, too stunned, too far away to do anything, he’d jumped.
Beauvoir closed his eyes, and while he didn’t know Edouard, he knew that despair. And the blessed release of drugs. And how easy it was to mistake falling for flying.
Edouard left the ledge, and the island. And his friends. And family. But they never left him.
Lea looked at Jacqueline, who’d sat silent through this.
“Anton killed him,” Lea said to the baker. “He might as well have been the hand on Edouard’s back. We all knew that.”
Jacqueline held Lea’s eyes, and nodded a small acknowledgment.
“The cops told us Edouard’s death had been ruled an accident,” Matheo continued. “Even if they found Anton, he’d never be charged with anything other than trafficking, and even then the charges might be dropped or the sentence suspended. First offense, young university student—”
“The family hired a private investigator to find him,” said Lea. “Took a long time. He’d bummed around, gone into rehab and later got a job with the Spanish family. Worked for cash. But the investigator finally tracked him down.”
Jean-Guy, standing by the fireplace, nodded.
Anton had told him all this. He went by Lebrun but his real name was Boucher.
Butcher.
A good name for a murderer, Beauvoir had thought. Though he also knew it was ridiculous to suspect someone because of their last name. But still …
“That’s when Jacqueline got back in touch with us,” said Lea, looking again at the woman sitting stiffly on the sofa. “She told us they’d found Anton, and that the family was looking for a nanny and tutor, to teach the Spanish children French.”
“She wanted to use us as references,” said Matheo. “We agreed and when Madame Ruiz called we vouched for her.”
Beauvoir wondered, in passing, who’d vouched for Anton.
It had been a sticking point. The one thing that hadn’t rung true in Anton’s conversation with Jean-Guy that afternoon. He’d admitted to all this. Confessed his sins. Showed remorse.
But there was that one tiny little thing. Why the Ruiz family, especially Antonio Ruiz, hadn’t checked out Anton before hiring him. As they apparently had with Jacqueline.
Instead, Ruiz, a suspicious, perhaps even paranoid man, had hired some stranger to come live with his family.
Why was that? Beauvoir wondered. Why hadn’t he placed a single call?
“What happened next?” Lacoste asked.
“After working there for a few months, Jacqueline heard about the cobrador and got back in touch with us,” said Lea. “Once we were convinced, we just needed to work out the details. When and where to spring the cobrador on him.”
“We couldn’t have it stand outside the home,” said Matheo. “Ruiz would probably shoot it. He’d certainly think it was there for him, and so would Anton. We needed someplace else.”
“Then the family was transferred back to Spain and it looked like our plan might fall apart,” said Lea. “But then Anton got a job here as a dishwasher. We’d been to Three Pines a few times, for reunions. It seemed perfect. It even had you.”
“Me?” asked Gamache.
“We needed to make sure the cobrador was safe,” said Matheo. “That no one would attack him.”
“We knew you wouldn’t let that happen,” said Lea.
“You played me?” asked Gamache.
“We trusted you,” said Lea. “To uphold the law, no matter how personally upsetting the situation might be.”
Gamache took a long, deep breath. More manipulation. But, far from annoying, it was enlightening. It certainly threw a light onto Lea Roux, and her ability to strategize.
She’d come a long way from the young elected official and Edouard’s Law.
“Jacqueline got a job at the bakery, and then our plan fell into place.”
“And what was your plan?” asked Lacoste.
“It was simple,” said Lea. “The cobrador would show up and scare the crap out of Anton.”
“And then?” asked Lacoste. “Was that it? To scare him?”
Matheo was about to answer, then he shut his mouth and looked at Lea, then Patrick, and finally Jacqueline.
They seemed confused by the question, and Isabelle thought she knew why.
What had begun as one thing, the quest for an apology, had become something else.
How often something starts off as noble, and then warps, corrupts, takes on a life of its own. Becomes a creature in a black cloak.
A body in a root cellar.
How it came to that was the question. And she intended to have the answer that night.
“This was in the spring,” said Lea. “We were going to have the annual reunion here in the summer and it would work perfectly. Except—”
“Daylight,” said Matheo.
On hearing that, Gamache gave one small grunt.
Daylight.
That answered so many questions.
Why the reunion had been changed to late October. And how the cobrador managed to stand there all day.