She watched Rosa, holding her dark duck eyes. And Rosa looked at Ruth, as Jean-Guy’s hand caressed the feathers of Rosa’s back, coming closer and closer to the long neck.
Ruth held fast to Rosa’s eyes.
Finally Jean-Guy’s hand stopped, and rested.
“Rosa came back,” he said.
Ruth nodded.
“I’m glad,” he said.
“She took the long way home,” said Ruth. “Some do, you know. They seem lost. Sometimes they might even head off in the wrong direction. Lots of people give up, say they’re gone forever, but I don’t believe that. Some make it home, eventually.”
Jean-Guy lifted Rosa from his lap and attempted to return her to Ruth. But the old woman held up her hand.
“No. You keep her now.”
Jean-Guy stared at Ruth, uncomprehending. He tried again to give Rosa back, and again Ruth gently, firmly declined.
“She’ll have a good home with you,” she said, now not looking at Rosa at all.
“But I don’t know how to look after a duck,” he said. “What would I do with her?”
“Isn’t the question more what’ll she do with you?” asked Ruth. She got up and fished in her pocket. “These are the keys to my car.” She gave them to Beauvoir and nodded toward an old beat-up Civic. “I think Rosa would be better off away from here, don’t you?”
Beauvoir stared at the keys in his hand, then at the thin, wrinkled, wretched old face. And the rheumy eyes that, in the bright sunshine, seemed to be leaking light.
“Leave here,” she said. “Take Rosa. Please.”
She bent down slowly, as though each inch was agony, and kissed Rosa on the top of her head. Then she looked into Rosa’s bright eyes and whispered, “I love you.”
Ruth Zardo turned her back on them and limped away. Her head erect, she walked slowly forward. Toward the bistro and whatever was coming next.
*
“It’s a joke, right?” the fat cop on the other side of the counter said to Isabelle Lacoste. “Someone’s gonna blow this up?”
He waved at his monitors and all but called her “little lady.”
Lacoste didn’t have time for diplomacy. She’d shown him her S?reté ID and told him what was about to happen. Not surprisingly, he hadn’t been eager to close the bridge.
Now she walked around the counter and stuck her Glock under his chin. “It’s no joke,” she said, and saw his eyes widen in terror.
“Wait,” he begged.
“Explosives are attached to the piers and will be set off any moment now. The bomb squad will be here in a few minutes but I need you to close the bridge, now. If you don’t, you’ll go down with it.”
When the Chief Inspector had told her the target and ordered her to close the bridge, she’d been faced with a problem. Who to trust?
Then it struck her. The security guards on the bridge. They couldn’t know what was about to happen, or they’d have gotten out of there fast. Anyone still working on the bridge could be trusted. The question now was, could they be convinced?
“Call your squad cars back in.”
She waited, her gun still trained on him, while he radioed the cars and ordered them back.
“Download this.” She handed the guard a USB key and watched as he put it in his computer and opened the files.
“What are these?” he asked, scanning them. But Lacoste didn’t answer, and slowly, slowly his face went slack.
She returned her gun to its holster. He was no longer looking at it, or her. His eyes, and attention, were completely focused on the screen. A couple of his colleagues arrived back at the guard post. They looked at Lacoste, then at him.
“What’s up?”
But the look on his face stopped any banter.
“What is it?” one asked.
“Call the Super, get the bomb squads out, close the bridge—”
But Lacoste didn’t hear any more. She was back in her car and heading over the bridge. To the far shore. To the village.
*
Gamache sped along the familiar, snow-covered secondary road. His car fishtailed on a patch of ice and he took his foot off the accelerator. No time for an accident. Everything that happened from here on in needed to be considered and deliberate.
He spotted a convenience store and pulled into it.
“May I use your phone, please?” He showed the clerk his S?reté ID.
“You have to buy something.”
“Give me your phone.”
“Buy something.”
“Fine.” Gamache picked up the closest thing he could find. “There.”
“Really?” the clerk looked at the pile of condoms.
“Just give me the phone, son,” said Gamache, fighting his desire to throttle this amused young man. Instead he brought out his wallet and put a twenty on the counter.
“If you want to use the can you’ll have to buy something else,” the kid said as he rang up the sale and handed Gamache the phone.