Chapter 39

C HAPTER 39

Armand Gamache lowered the gun, all the better to see Jeanne Caron's face, her eyes, as he questioned her.

"As you said, there are six treatment plants, but you suspect the target is one in particular. Which one?"

"That's what I was trying to find among Lauzon's papers. When he left for DC this morning, I broke into his desk. He has a hidden drawer in an antique rolltop in his office. I found some papers. They're in there." She pointed to the satchel on the altar.

"If you knew about the threat to the water, why not alert the RCMP?" demanded Gamache. "Why not tell someone who could stop it?"

"I tried. I called you on Sunday morning."

"I'm the last person you'd turn to for help. The truth. Now!"

"That is the truth. Listen, listen." She seemed desperate now. "Years ago, when I tried to bribe you, then threatened you, then went after your son, you still charged Lauzon's daughter with manslaughter. You couldn't be corrupted, you couldn't be intimidated. You held your ground and took the hit. I came to you because you're the only one I knew for sure would never be involved."

Gamache glanced quickly at the Abbot, whose eyes were wide with anxiety.

"Look," she said. "I know my boss. Lauzon has no brakes, no moral guardrails. He'll stop at nothing to get what he wants."

"And that is?" asked Gamache.

"Power, of course. And with it wealth, and all that goes with both."

"How does poisoning the drinking water get him all that?"

She shook her head. "You know the answer, but if you want to play games, so be it. Here's what's going to happen. People turn on their taps and begin to die. All over the city. Within minutes there's complete panic. The main job of a leader is to keep the people safe. If they fail at that spectacularly, they're out. Within a week the PM is ousted. Lauzon is a Liberal, so when against all he's publicly stood for he brings in draconian measures, they're seen as necessary. Voilà. A coup."

"Why not just kill the Prime Minister?" Beauvoir asked. "Isn't that an easier way to become PM?"

"True, but then he wouldn't have absolute power. This way he would. He'd effectively be a dictator and a savior at the same time. I began to suspect something was going on about a year ago. I saw references to private meetings. At first, I thought Lauzon was having an affair. Then I realized he was meeting with people who were dangerous to him politically. People he should never be seen with."

"I need names."

"You need only one name." Even before she spoke, Gamache knew what she'd say. "Joseph Moretti."

It was what David Lavigne had essentially told him, without naming names. The Deputy PM had been seen visiting Ste. émiline. The Moretti family had a second home there.

Joseph Moretti was the head of the Sixth Family. Considered as powerful as the five mafia families in the United States. From his homes in Montréal and Ste. émiline, he controlled the drug trade, tobacco, booze, prostitution, gambling, and any number of so-called legitimate businesses across Canada.

Gamache had suspected the mob was involved, but only as hired killers, doing the hits in Chicoutimi and the Magdalen Islands. Hiring, then killing Paolo Parisi.

He never suspected it went up as high as the capomandamento . The head of the family. Joseph Moretti.

"You have proof?"

"Some. I know they met, but I don't know what they talked about. I think what we need is in there." She again pointed to the satchel sitting on the raised wooden floor of the chapel.

"You've been by Marcus Lauzon's side since his first campaign. You've run his reelections, you've been his Chief of Staff. You've engineered his rise. He trusts you, relies on you. You're his right hand." Gamache glared at her. "You're saying he didn't bring you in on this?"

He had her. Her mask slipped and her old malevolence slithered out. Her contempt for him become visible for just an instant before being sucked back in.

Her face relaxed into a smile. "Got me, monsieur . I helped with some. At first. Bribes to prosecutors, to parole boards. To help move him up the ladder. I thought this was Lauzon collecting IOUs, to get to the final rung. But then I realized there were other events, meetings, agreements he hadn't told me about. I decided to try to figure out what he was up to. I kept seeing references to fresh water. Water security. Americans. But no specifics." She paused. "This goes back years."

Now she no longer looked sly. Jeanne Caron looked, and was, afraid. And for once, Gamache believed her.

He handed the gun back to Beauvoir. "What do you know about Paolo Parisi?"

"Parisi? I saw his name in one of the documents. Some minor figure Lauzon helped across the border. Why?"

Gamache turned to Dom Philippe. "And you?"

"Me?"

"You had breakfast with him every morning at The Mission."

"I did not. I had breakfast with some poor Italian boy who didn't speak French. Or English."

"Why?"

"Why? Because he was alone in a strange city. Wouldn't you try to help?"

The Abbot looked so sincere, Gamache almost believed him.

"What did he tell you?"

"Honestly, Armand, I couldn't understand what he was saying most of the time."

Gamache studied the elderly monk. There was no proof that Big Stink and Parisi had a relationship outside of those breakfasts together. Parisi wasn't in the meeting with Caron and Langlois. In fact, he'd spied on them. It was possible the Abbot was telling the truth.

It was also possible, probable, both the Abbot and Charles Langlois were trying to stop the attack, while Caron was actually just using them. And Langlois had started to see that.

"When did you realize the plan was to poison Montréal's drinking water?" Gamache asked Caron.

"That was me," said the Abbot. "After Brother Robert told me what he knew, I went right to my niece in Ottawa, but she refused to see me."

"We were," Caron said, "estranged."

"I decided to write her a note, something that would get me in. The only paper I had was the page of the recipe Robert had given me. I tore it in half and wrote on the back, Water . I didn't want to say more because I didn't know who might see it."

"And a scribbled Water was enough?" said Gamache.

"I knew Lauzon's scheme had something to do with water, but not what," said Caron. "When I got that note, I needed to see whoever had written it. I was shocked to see Uncle Yves."

"I told her what Robert had said, about an attack on the drinking water. I could see she doubted me."

The phone in Gamache's pocket vibrated, but he ignored it.

"My uncle had just the word of a terrified monk hiding in some monastery in France. Without solid, irrefutable proof, there was no way anyone would believe the Deputy Prime Minister was plotting to poison thousands of citizens. I barely believed it. We needed hard evidence."

"That's when she approached young Langlois," said the Abbot.

Gamache was listening closely. Looking for the inevitable holes in Caron's fabrication.

"I'd met him on one of our official visits to The Mission a year or so ago," said Caron. "He'd told me his story. That he was a marine biologist who'd become an addict. Lost everything. Was estranged from his family. But he'd gotten straight. At the time, he was a resident of The Mission, and I'd only just begun to suspect Lauzon was up to something to do with water, but not what. I knew Charles could be trusted."

"Don't you mean used?" said Gamache, his voice cold.

"I used him the way you use your people, Chief Inspector. So far, I've lost one. How many have been killed under your leadership? How many have you told about this threat?"

Beauvoir took a step forward, but Gamache stopped him. He turned to Caron. "What's your relationship with Action Québec Bleu?"

"What?"

"AQB. The environmental group," said Beauvoir.

"Never heard of it."

Gamache stared at her. It seemed she was telling the truth. "Charles Langlois worked for them. They focus on water pollution."

"If he did, it wasn't through me. If the threat was from domestic terrorists imbedded in the federal government, why would I get him a job in some tiny provincial environmental organization no one's ever heard of? It doesn't make sense."

Beauvoir and Gamache looked at each other. She was right. It didn't make sense. But Langlois definitely worked for AQB.

Could he have been moonlighting? Working part-time with the environmental group? But if so, why? And why not tell Caron?

"When my uncle came to me with the story about poisoning the drinking water, we finally had a focus. The attack has to be on one of the six treatment plants. Probably on one of the two largest. I got Charles a job in the Atwater treatment plant, but he found nothing. So I had him transferred to the next likely place, the Charles-J.-Des Baillets facility in LaSalle."

"He didn't find anything there either," said Dom Philippe. "We had no idea which one would be targeted, and we were out of options. The three of us met at The Mission to discuss what we should do next. That's when Jeanne decided to try to contact you, Armand."

"Wouldn't they target more than one plant?" said Beauvoir. "Like the 9/11 bombers in New York, and the 7/7 in London. They'd increase their chances of success."

"But they'd also increase the chance of someone talking," said Gamache.

"And someone clearly did, in DC," said the Abbot. "Thank God."

"Langlois was working at the LaSalle plant when he was killed," said Beauvoir. "Isn't it fair to think he found something?"

"That's what I think too," said Caron. "It's the biggest, and the newest. The only problem is that it has the most sophisticated system to detect and treat toxins. That's why I didn't start him out there."

Gamache had done his homework on the various plants. The LaSalle one had multiple layers of treatment, finishing with sodium hypochlorite to kill all toxins, except—

"Botulinum would survive the treatment."

Caron nodded. "I was afraid you'd say that. It was my guess."

"Guess? You don't know the toxin?"

"Not for sure. I'm hoping it's in the papers I stole. I've read some but haven't had time to go through them all. And now you're wasting time. When Lauzon gets back in the morning, he'll discover the broken desk and know who did it. There's no going back now."

Gamache's jacket pocket buzzed again. This time he brought it out and glanced at the message. It was from Lacoste.

Brother Robert was dead. Almost certainly murdered. There was a photo attached.

"What is it?" Beauvoir asked.

As Gamache handed him his phone, he noticed Dom Philippe was staring into the dark corner of the small chapel.

Gamache grew very still. Beside him, Beauvoir, sensing the change in the Chief, lowered the phone.

St. Thomas's no longer felt like a sanctuary.

There was, in the shadows, the slightest glint.

Gamache just had time to turn, to try to warn the others, when the first shot was fired.

"This didn't happen very long ago," said Dussault as Lacoste knelt and shone her flashlight on Brother Robert, face down in the grass.

She could see that her message to the Chief Inspector had been read, but he hadn't replied. Normally she'd at least get a Got it . But there was nothing.

"I've called the police in Grenoble," said Dussault. "They're sending a team."

She stood up and turned to the Abbot, interrupting their prayers. "Is anyone missing?"

He looked around. "Brother Constantine."

"The other monk who holds the recipe?" asked Dussault.

"Yes."

"We need to find him," said Lacoste. She turned to Sébastien. "Can you take me to him?"

The monks were looking at her as though she were either a saint or the devil, and they couldn't figure out which. What they did know was that before this woman had crossed their threshold, all of them were alive.

Lacoste followed Frère Sébastien into the monastery.

"I wanted to ask you something alone. Are you sure Frère Robert didn't tell you anything?"

"I'm sure. All he'd say was that something awful was about to happen. Brother Constantine's cell is over here."

"First, let's check out Robert's room."

"Right. It's this way." At the closed door, Sébastien hesitated. "It wasn't an accident, was it?"

"No."

Up until that moment the Québécois monk seemed to have managed a level of denial. But that was now gone.

"Who?"

"Who do you think?"

"I don't know. It can't be one of us."

One of us , thought Lacoste. There were few more dangerous phrases. Partly because it held truth. There were teams, tribes, families, companies. Friends. Us. But it was rarely just a description of a group. There was, about it, a distinction. "Us" implied there was a "Them."

And "Us" was better than "Them."

"Let's just for a moment say it was one of you. Who would you think?"

Sébastien seemed dumbfounded by the question. But he had an agile mind and had accepted the obvious. One of "Us" had killed Brother Robert.

"Let me think."

"While you do that, I need to look at his cell."

It turned out to be roughly the shape of a beehive. The lower floor was circular and fairly large, though spartan. There was a woodstove, a crude table with a single stool. The floor was slate, and there was a ladder leading to a cone-shaped loft with a mattress stuffed with straw.

Or had been.

It was now empty, the stuffing everywhere. Books had been splayed and thrown about. The table and stool were upended.

"Don't touch," she cautioned Sébastien, who'd instinctively reached out to pick a Bible off the stone floor. "We need to find Brother Constantine."

At the door she suddenly turned back and, walking over to the woodstove, she hovered her hand over it. It was cold.

Brother Constantine's cell was empty.

"Where else could he be?"

"The infirmary."

"Is he a doctor?"

"No, but there's a room off it where the elixir is mixed. Chartreuse itself is brewed off-site, but the formula is made here and sent to the distillery."

"It's after midnight. Would he really be making it up now?"

"He prefers to work at night," said Sébastien. "More private."

As they hurried down the hallway, Lacoste heard the thump-thump-thump of helicopter rotors. The Grenoble police had arrived.

The investigation would soon be taken out of her hands.