Chapter 10

C HAPTER 10

Reine-Marie sat in the study, staring at the blank screen. Knowing she should look. But putting it off.

Armand had called to tell her he'd gone to the rendezvous, and what had happened.

"There's video. It's going to be all over the internet and on the news."

"Are you all right?" That was really all she cared about.

"Yes." She heard the hubbub behind him, of shouting and sirens.

"Are you coming home?"

"Not just yet. But I'll be home tonight. Not for dinner, but later."

He was tempted to say, Don't wait up. But he knew she would.

That had been an hour ago.

Clara sat in Myrna's loft above the bookstore, a glass of beer partway to her lips.

On the sofa, facing the television, Myrna and Billy Williams also watched as the CBC anchor announced the lead story of the six o'clock news. And the video began.

Billy reached out to take Myrna's hand. And Myrna reached for Clara.

Gabri stood in the laundry room off the kitchen of the B&B, shoving bedding and towels into the washing machine. Their guest had checked out, and this needed doing before he could sit down with a cocktail. But not the one the elderly man had suggested. That had been vile.

The television was on in the living room, tuned to the French Radio-Canada television news. At the mention of Chief Inspector Gamache of the S?reté du Québec, Gabri stopped what he was doing and poked his head around the corner.

Then, a towel still in his hand, he walked into the room and dropped onto the sofa. His eyes wide, his mouth partly open, he twisted the towel as the video played.

"Oh, fuck," muttered Ruth.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," agreed Rosa. A contrary fowl who rarely agreed with anything, this time there was no argument and no other word for it.

Before the story was even over, Ruth scooped up Rosa and headed for the door.

" Bonjour? "

Reine-Marie turned to see Clara in the doorway of the study. Then Gabri and Olivier appeared. Then Myrna. And finally, though out of sight, Reine-Marie heard, "Fuck, fuck, fuck."

"We let ourselves in," said Olivier, as though it were unusual and needed to be said.

"Are you okay?" Clara asked.

"Have you seen it?" asked Myrna.

"Armand called and told me, but I haven't yet." Reine-Marie looked at the clock on the bookcase and was surprised to see it was ten past six. "It's all over the news?"

" Oui ," said Gabri.

"All you need to know is that Armand and Jean-Guy are all right," said Olivier.

"She needs to know more than that." Ruth's querulous voice entered the room, followed by the rest of the old poet. Her rheumy blue eyes held Reine-Marie's. "You need to see it. So your imagination won't make it worse than it already is."

And Reine-Marie knew two things.

The demented old woman was right. And that was why they were there. So that she wouldn't be alone when she watched.

The curtains at the window billowed softly, like a breath, as fresh air wafted in from the village green. It brought with it the scent of grass, and the sound of children playing, and the soft murmur of bees bumbling in the intertwined honeysuckle and sweet pea growing up the trellis.

How nice it was, how peaceful, thought Reine-Marie, to live in a place where bumbling was a virtue. Even a necessity. And where lives were intertwined.

Then, as Clara took the chair beside her and held her hand, Reine-Marie watched.

Armand went back to their city apartment, where he showered and changed into a light blue shirt, a summer sweater, and slacks.

When he'd undressed, he was not surprised to see scrapes and bruises. Welts. Most not actually painful. What hurt the most was his left foot. It was swollen and bruised.

Armand put antiseptic on the cuts and scrapes.

The clothes he'd been in lay in a lump in the corner of the bedroom. They'd have to be thrown out. They were torn, and stained with dirt and blood. Beyond repair.

Beauvoir had found and given him the shoe that had flown off, and now Armand put it on, since he didn't have another pair in that apartment.

He'd tried to clean it with a washcloth but couldn't get the deep scuffing off.

It was the least of his concerns. That thought brought back what Charles had said. He'd made it clear that the S?reté being compromised was the least of it.

But he hadn't said what "it" was.

They now knew that his full name was Charles Langlois. He lived on rue Versailles, in the Petite-Bourgogne quartier of Montréal. They got that much from the wallet they'd found on his body. There was also a house key and phone, but nothing else.

Gamache had gone directly from the crime scene to that address, not stopping to clean up or change. He needed to get to Charles's family quickly, before they saw the video.

So far, a search of the database had not shown anything for a Charles Langlois. He had no police record. While Beauvoir drove, Gamache took a call from Chief Superintendent Toussaint.

"I'm watching a video, Armand. Is there something you'd like to tell me?"

"I was just about to call you."

Beauvoir shot him a look and wondered how truthful that was.

Gamache told the Chief Superintendent what had happened, albeit a carefully curated version.

"You say this man, the dead man, asked to meet you? So this wasn't a random act."

"Definitely targeted."

"You're sure? There's no further risk to the public?"

"Not from the SUV, non ."

If the Superintendent heard the implication, she did not follow up.

"The Mayor of Montréal will be holding a news conference. She wants us both there. The video's already all over the internet."

He muttered under his breath, and the Chief Super did not ask him to repeat it.

"Are you sure it wasn't a terror attack?"

"Absolutely."

"Are you sure you were not the target, Armand?"

He saw once again the face, the eyes, of the driver. Locking on him for an instant. Before shifting to Charles. "Absolutely sure."

"You need to tell me everything you know, Chief Inspector. I'll be in my office."

"Understood."

What he understood was that he was in for a dressing-down.

Chief Superintendent Toussaint was younger than him by ten years. She'd come up through Cybercrimes and the Anti-Terror unit. While some grumbled that she'd been appointed simply because she was a Black woman, Gamache knew different. He'd been one of her professors at the academy, back in the day. And several years ago, after he was demoted, he'd put her name forward to replace him as Chief Superintendent of the S?reté du Québec, though that was confidential, and he doubted she knew.

It was, after all, irrelevant.

The Chief Superintendent had earned her place at the top. And, Gamache knew, he'd earned whatever consequences were coming his way. For not foreseeing what would happen. For not preventing it.

"I'm on my way to speak to the dead man's family."

"Get here as soon as you can. I'll be waiting," she snapped. Then her voice softened. "Are you sure you're all right, Armand?"

"I'm fine, Madeleine. Merci ."

As he hung up, he could feel the doubt, planted by Charles, spreading. Could he really trust Toussaint? He'd helped put her in place, but things happened to people in power. And she had more power than most.

As they drove to Charles's home, Gamache tucked in his shirt and tried to at least clean up his hands and face and smooth his hair so that he was more presentable. When the body had been removed, he'd taken back his suit jacket and put it on, to cover the all-too-obvious blood on his white shirt. Now he wondered if that had been a mistake. The jacket was torn, and there was blood on it too.

Leave it on, or take it off? What would be less horrific for Charles's family?

There seemed no good choice. Just degrees of bad.

Beauvoir drove, silent in the car, trying to find the words to apologize.

As they stopped at a traffic light, Armand turned to his son-in-law. Knowing what he was thinking. Feeling.

"The vehicle was electric. It made no sound. You were focused on the café, and rightly so. I saw it parked there and said nothing. I could have signaled you, Jean-Guy, but didn't."

"Because you trusted me to have checked it out." Jean-Guy's hands were tight on the wheel. His eyes forward.

He wondered how long it would be before he stopped seeing the Chief's face, and the streak of black.

"I should have."

"And I should have understood the danger sooner. And Charles Langlois should have met me in my office and not a public place."

Armand wondered how long it would be before he stopped seeing Charles's face, when he knew he was dying. He was twenty-seven years old and lying broken on the road. Some stranger holding his sticky hand.

"There's enough blame to go around, Jean-Guy, there always is. We need to set that aside and figure out who did this and why."

And what was going to happen next. Because there was a next. Something was about to happen.

" Oui. "

Both were lost in their own thoughts for the rest of the journey.

"You're that cop." The downstairs neighbor had come out onto her landing when she heard the knocking on her neighbor's door. She eyed the larger, the older, of the two men, bloody and disheveled. "From the video."

Gamache sighed. Were they too late to get to the family?

The neighbor's eyes widened as she looked at the door, then back at them. "Was that him? The guy who was killed?"

"Does Charles Langlois live here?" When she nodded, Gamache added, "Alone?"

" Oui. Never seen or heard anyone up there with him. God, that's awful. Terrorists, do you think? That's what they're saying."

" Non , not terrorists. How long's he been here?"

The woman thought. "Less than a year, I'd say. The landlord'll know more."

"We'll need the landlord's name and number," said Beauvoir. "And yours."

Gamache knocked, then knocked again, before using the key they'd found on Charles's body. They walked in. And stopped.

The single room was a shambles. Books splayed on the floor. The cushions of the sofa bed ripped. The mattress tipped over.

The drawers of the old desk in the corner were pulled out and contents dumped.

"I'll get forensics," said Beauvoir.

"And find out if the other neighbors saw or heard anything."

While Beauvoir did that, Gamache stood in the small studio apartment, surveying the mess. Then he walked slowly around. Not touching anything.

There was no computer. No papers or notebooks that he could see. It had all been scooped. Gamache walked over to the wall where he could see staples with scraps of paper trapped under them. Whatever had been up there had been ripped off, leaving just the corners.

But he recognized those scraps, and so did Jean-Guy when he returned.

"Map," he said, joining Gamache. "Charles had a huge map stapled up."

"The neighbors?"

Beauvoir shook his head. "The woman downstairs is the only one in right now, but she said she was out most of the afternoon. Didn't hear or see anyone."

Clothes were scattered on the floor, pockets turned inside out.

"Look at this." Gamache was kneeling over a sweater. On it was a pin with a symbol. "Recognize it?"

It was the yin-and-yang symbol, half in blue, half green. With a leaping fish in the middle.

" Non ," said Jean-Guy.

Gamache struggled a little to stand up, the bruising and stiffness setting in. Beauvoir reached out to steady him. "We'll have to get a hoist soon, patron ."

Gamache smiled. "I can still take you." Though both knew that had stopped being true a few years earlier.

"Someone obviously did this while he was at Open Da Night," said Beauvoir. "So they must've known about the rendezvous."

Gamache nodded.

"But why not kill him before you met, if they knew about it and were so afraid of what he'd say to you?"

Gamache stood looking out the window, his hands clasped behind his back, and considered the question.

"Maybe they didn't know about our meeting." His warm breath clouded the windowpane. "It's possible they were following him, and when they saw him talking to a S?reté officer, they panicked. Throwing something together at the last minute. Sending someone here to rifle his place, then running him over in broad daylight. It doesn't seem like a well-thought-out plan."

"They must be shitting themselves," said Beauvoir. "They don't know what he told you, and now you'd have told others. They couldn't contain it."

"The problem is, he didn't tell me anything."

You know , Charles had said. Or at least you suspect.

Gamache sighed in frustration. Charles had been wrong. He neither knew nor suspected.

Beauvoir's phone buzzed with a text from Lacoste. "Shit. They found the SUV in Terrebonne, the Lachenaie landfill. And the driver."

Gamache turned from the window. "Dead?"

"One shot in the head. No ID. She's sending photos."

Gamache had often wondered if it was intentional, or unintentionally ironic, that the place the city had chosen to dump all its garbage was called Terrebonne. Good earth.

And not just garbage. It was a favorite dumping ground for the Montréal mafia. More than a few bodies had been found there.

Gamache gave a curt nod. "Did you get a photo of that pin?"

" Oui. I'll send it into the system."

"No," said Gamache abruptly. "Keep it between us. Show Isabelle, but no one else."

"You believed him about the S?reté? That there's someone on the inside?"

"I don't know, but we have to assume."

Did Charles know he was being more than just set up? That he was targeted? Is that why he wanted to meet away from the S?reté?

And yet he'd chosen to meet the most recognizable cop in Québec, in a public place. If he suspected he was being watched, then he wanted them to be seen together. That's why the popular café. That's why he'd even paused on the sidewalk.

Far from wanting to hide, he wanted to be seen, and seen with Chief Inspector Gamache. Charles must have thought that would guarantee his safety. No use killing him if he'd already spilled everything, and to a senior S?reté officer.

But he was wrong. And that meant there was even more, much more, at stake than even Charles Langlois realized.

"Jean-Guy?"

" Oui? "

"If you knew you were being watched, and you had evidence that could damage some very nasty and desperate people, what would you do?"

Beauvoir thought. "If I was that afraid? I'd broadcast it. Send it to the cops. So that it wouldn't do any good to kill me for it. The information was already out there."

"But if you couldn't do that? If you still had to sort out the innocent from the guilty?"

"Weellll." Jean-Guy thought. "I guess I'd hide it until I knew."

"That's what I'd do too."

Gamache looked over to the desk. Was it possible the laptop and papers and whatever was on the wall hadn't been stolen but hidden?

"Got it, patron . The symbol on the pin." Beauvoir held out his phone. "It's for a group called Action Québec Bleu. Some environmental organization." He hit the small phone icon and put it on speaker.

"Action Québec Bleu," said the cheerful young voice.

" Bonjour ," said Gamache. "I'm calling to find out if you know a Charles Langlois."

"Well, yes," said the woman. "He works here, but he's not in today. Can I take a message?"

" Non, merci. I might drop by, can you give me your address please?"

She did. He wrote it down and thanked her before hanging up.

"Isabelle's traced his phone calls. Looks like it was a burner phone. New. Only one call made from it."

Armand's plan had been to send Beauvoir to Action Québec Bleu, while he went back to the city apartment, showered, changed, then met the Chief Super. But the next call he made, the last one Charles Langlois had made, changed that. A man answered. Yes, he knew him.

"He's our son. Why're you asking?"

While Beauvoir went to Action Québec Bleu, Armand made his way to Charles's parents' place. The home was small, neat, almost painfully clean. " Propre " was the word that came to Armand's mind. Not just clean, but immaculate.

At the door Madame Langlois had, quite reasonably, asked to see his ID. Gamache showed them, painfully aware of the state of his clothes. The state of him.

Before leaving Charles's building, Armand had asked the downstairs neighbor if he could use her bathroom, to wash up. When he'd emerged, after washing his hands and face and wiping down his clothes as best he could, she'd studied him and nodded.

"Better."

Though better was a sliding scale, and he was at the very low end. Still, it was better.

Madame and Monsieur Langlois invited him in. They were about Gamache's age, and while guarded, they obviously had not seen the video or heard from family or friends.

He broke the news to them as gently as he could, but also clearly. There could be no doubt, no way for delusion and wishful thinking to find purchase. That would not be a kindness.

He looked at Madame Langlois as he spoke the final words. He expected to see, in those eyes so like her son's, a death there too. As the light drained away. With his words, which allowed no escape, he would end their lives as they'd known them, and send them off into a netherworld. Of perpetual twilight. Time would stop and be remeasured from this moment forward.

But Madame Langlois did not actually register surprise. And neither did Charles's father.

They told him then that they hadn't heard from their son in almost a year. They'd banned him from their home, from their lives, when his addictions took over. When he'd stolen from them. Over and over. When he'd threatened his mother with a knife if she didn't give him more money.

They lived in fear that he'd return. And had accepted that one day someone would knock on the door and tell them he was dead.

Gamache was that someone. This was the day.

Madame and Monsieur Langlois seemed almost relieved. The worst had happened. Now they could stop waiting for the nightmare. They had grieved for their lost little boy for so long, now they finally had a body to bury.

It was horrific, tragic, but it was not a surprise.

"Do you know anything about his life now?" Gamache asked.

They shook their heads.

"The last call he made was to you, this morning."

" Oui. I know," said his mother. "We didn't answer, and he didn't leave a message."

She did not seem to regret that. In fact, she seemed defiant, challenging Gamache to challenge her. It wasn't, Gamache thought, because she didn't care, but because her love for their son was buried beneath so much hurt and pain that she could not yet retrieve it.

He thought of his own son, Daniel, and their struggles with him when he'd been in his late teens. How horrific it had been, trying to reach a young man who was out of control. Out of reach. How wide the crevasse between them and their son, their child, had become. How deep the wound. A hurt, Armand knew, he had made far worse.

How close it had come to Reine-Marie and him sitting where the Langlois were now. Listening to some poor officer giving them the bad, the worst, news.

Thankfully it never came to that. To this.

Even now, Armand could not think of those days, those months and even years, without feeling sick.

Both Daniel and Charles had finally gotten straight. Daniel had come back to them. Slowly, tentatively. Like some wounded animal approaching the hunter for help.

And Charles might have returned to his family had he been given more time.

Armand didn't know if what he was about to say would make it worse, or better, but he felt the need to say it.

"Your son was, from what I could see, straight and sober. His last thought was of you." Armand looked from father to mother. Settling on Madame Langlois. "He was a brave man."

Armand warned them about the video and advised them not to watch. As he left, Monsieur Langlois showed him to the door. Just before it closed behind him, Charles's father looked him in the eye and said, "I can see he has you fooled too."

The door swung shut, and Armand walked, limping, to his car. And drove home.

He stood under the hot water for a long time, tilting his head, so that the stream hit his face. His eyes closed, he tried to clear his mind. But Monsieur Langlois's parting words would not be washed away with the blood and dirt circling the drain.

I can see he has you fooled too.

Though it was the look in Madame Langlois's eyes that followed him, haunted him. Exactly the same look her son had had, when he knew he was dying. It wasn't sorrow. It wasn't pain. Madame Langlois was panicked.