The Black Wolf: A Novel By Louise Penny - 6

“ Non. ”

“ Pardon? ”

“You heard me. No. I’m not going to speak to you or anyone else. Only Gamache.”

“That’s not going to happen, Monsieur Lauzon. The Chief Inspector is still recovering from wounds inflicted on your orders—”

Beauvoir held up his hand to forestall Marcus Lauzon’s objections.

“I was wrong. Apologies. You ordered your man to kill the Chief Inspector, not wound him. It was only thanks to the presence of your own Chief of Staff that that didn’t happen.”

“Jeanne Caron is a traitor,” snapped the former Deputy Prime Minister of Canada.

“And lucky for you, for all of us, that she betrayed you.”

“Not me, you piece of shit. She’s a traitor to this country.”

“Right. And you’re the hero.” Though Beauvoir was still smarting from what that officer had said. He apparently did think Lauzon was a hero. And if a Sûreté officer could believe it, how many others did too? What lies were being spread?

Beauvoir studied the man across the table from him. He was almost unrecognizable now. Once composed and dignified, refined and yet managing to also seem a man of the people, Marcus Lauzon had rocketed up the party ladder, from backbencher to cabinet minister, his portfolios and power increasing, until finally he’d been made the second most powerful person in the nation. Behind the Prime Minister. His fetid breath on the PM’s neck.

Now the man’s cheeks were sunken, his eyes bright with what looked like a leering madness. His face was irregularly shaven, with patches of grey stubble.

If met on the street, Marcus Lauzon would be taken for indigent. Destitute.

And in many ways, thought Beauvoir, he was. He was morally bankrupt, bereft of normal human emotions. Missing empathy and any moral guardrails.

“Caron set me up. None of what was said in court was true. All those documents used against me were faked. By her. Who else had access to them?”

“Well, sir, you did. They were in your handwriting, and in your private and protected computer files. You—” Jean-Guy stopped himself and gave a small laugh. He’d almost fallen for it. Fallen down that deep dark hole where this man kept his tangled lies.

Beauvoir stared at the former politician for so long, the man grew uncomfortable.

“ Quoi? ” What?

“We know.”

“Know what?”

It was hard for Jean-Guy to decide if Lauzon was really interested or was simply trying to prolong this visit, before being returned to the prison within a prison. Within a prison. Where he would almost certainly eventually, despite precautions, be killed.

It was the one thing Beauvoir and that young Sûreté agent agreed on. It was surprising that Marcus Lauzon had lasted this long. The only reason he had was that Gamache had requested that Lauzon be placed in solitary. It appeared to be added punishment. It was actually to protect him.

It was not, Beauvoir knew, compassion on the part of the Chief Inspector that led him to put a cordon around Lauzon. It was realpolitik. He needed the former politician alive until all their questions were answered.

Sitting in front of Jean-Guy Beauvoir was one of the only people who knew what was about to happen. Knew what they’d missed.

“We know that the second notebook is the one that matters,” said Beauvoir.

He watched Lauzon for a reaction. There was none.

“I will only speak to Gamache. I deserve that.”

“What you deserve, sir”—Beauvoir lowered his voice and leaned across the table—“is what we both know you are going to get, one night after lights out. If you do not answer me now, Chief Inspector Gamache will ask the warden to return you to the general population.”

That struck home. Lauzon clearly did not realize that the only reason he was alive was because of the man he’d tried to murder.

And now the time had come for the former politician to prove he had worth alive.

Lauzon knew this was the last time he’d be visited. The last time he’d be asked. But there was, alongside the fear, an animal cunning. And for a moment Jean-Guy Beauvoir had a sense of the creature he was locked in with. He felt the hairs on his forearms involuntarily raise.

Lauzon’s mouth curled into what might have been a smile. More like a leer, a sneer.

“Tell your boss that he’s the only one I will talk to. If he won’t come here, then take me to him. Or kill me. But the truth dies with me. As you so eloquently said, it’s just a matter of time.”

Marcus Lauzon got up so quickly his chair scraped the floor and startled Beauvoir. His show of nerves annoyed him and amused the former Deputy Prime Minister of Canada, who seemed to have filled out, feeding on Jean-Guy’s fear.

Evelyn, do you think you can come down to Three Pines and join us for Sunday lunch tomorrow?

Chief Inspector Tardiff sat in her office staring at the message.

“What is it, patronne ?” Agent Yvette Nichol asked.

“Gamache wants me to go to Three Pines for lunch tomorrow.”

Nichol stepped closer and read the message over her boss’s shoulder. “Why?”

“He doesn’t say, and if I ask, it would seem suspicious. It might be just social. Sunday lunch with the family.”

“Has he ever asked you before?”

Silence answered that question.

“Will you go?”

Armand was back home in his study, and Reine-Marie had driven off to the Pinnacle Peddler gas station in Richford, Vermont, to find a map of the state.

Isabelle had reported in. They’d arrived at the lake and had asked the pilot to motor around its perimeter, to see if anything stood out, before finding a likely spot to inflate the raft and row to shore.

She sent a few photos. Once again Armand could almost hear the soft lap of water on rock and the splash of plump fish that saw, as yet, no reason to be afraid of people.

If there was a heaven on earth, this was it.

And yet the head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec was pretty sure visiting that lake was what had gotten Charles Langlois killed. Or had, at least, been the final push over the edge. Even Paradise had its edges, its limits.

Jean-Guy had also written. His meeting with Lauzon had gone nowhere.

He says he’ll only speak to you, patron.

It was not the first time Lauzon had made that demand, but this time Gamache sat back in his chair and considered it as he looked out the window at the village green and the gardens surrounding it. Neighbors were busy cutting back the perennials, the rose bushes and daylilies and hostas, for the winter.

The bee balm would be left, only cut down at the last minute. But the last minute was getting close.

He could feel it in his bones.

One more thing, patron.

Jean-Guy sat in his car in the long shadow of Archambault penitentiary and wrote. He’d been unsure how much to say to the Chief but decided on everything.

This was clearly no time to be diplomatic or practice restraint. And he did not want Armand to come across it by accident.

Armand sat in the peaceful study and read the message, while outside his window villagers knelt in their gardens and children ran and leaped and no doubt shrieked with delight as they scattered the carefully collected autumn leaves.

He read what the young highways agent had said. About him. About abandoning his agents and saving only his own family. Leaving the rest to possibly die.

This was no lie spread by conspiracy theorists on marginal sites.

It was true. It was true.

Even as he knew it was not the whole story, it was still enough of the truth to make him lightheaded. He was followed day and night by the image of himself, standing on the threshold of his office, watching his senior inspectors, his junior agents, the men and women whom he led. Who followed him. Who trusted him with their lives.

He’d wanted to shout, Leave! Get your families and leave the city! The drinking water is about to be poisoned!

Even now he felt those words burn his throat.

But he’d swallowed the warning, not willing to risk triggering the attack by alerting the terrorists with an exodus.

And so he’d kept quiet and felt part of his own humanity die.

The fact that decision was almost certainly the right one didn’t matter. The fact that he’d gotten his own children and grandchildren quietly out of Montréal and down to Three Pines also followed him every day. Haunting and taunting, and whispering that he’d been a hypocrite and a coward. A traitor to his team.

But really, how could he not save his own family? If he had to do it again, would he?

Yes. In a heartbeat. He’d sacrifice his own life—it was his to give—but not those of his family.

Once the crisis had passed and he’d left the hospital, his first stop was to Sûreté headquarters and a meeting with his department. As he’d entered, they’d stood and applauded, and Armand could feel his cheeks burning.

Stepping onto a chair, then up onto a desk, so all could see him, he’d thanked them, and then …

“There’s something you need to know.”

He’d steeled himself for this moment, practicing what he’d say. Words mattered, these words mattered. But finally, as he stood there and looked into their upturned faces, his mind went blank.

“We know, patron ,” one of his senior inspectors spoke.

But Armand couldn’t hear. The shriek in his head was at a fever pitch. It was all he could do not to lose his equilibrium and tumble off the desk. He stared at the inspector, whom he’d worked with for decades, who also had children and grandchildren. He’d gone to their weddings and bat mitzvahs. But Armand could not decipher what he’d just said.

The man’s eyes, though, were kind, and there was a gentle smile that created lines down his familiar face.

Clearly he didn’t know what his Chief Inspector was going to say. Otherwise he would not be smiling.

Armand held up his hand, and the smile vanished. They all looked worried now. What was their Chief about to tell them?

And then he began to speak, his voice much louder than it normally would have been. He wasn’t yet practiced in modulating it, so he was unintentionally, unknowingly shouting at them over the noise only he could hear.

When he’d finished, there was silence. He swayed slightly but caught his balance. And looked out at the dozens of faces. Of men and women who’d trusted him. And who he’d abandoned.

Then one of the agents stepped forward. The youngest. The newest recruit. Mélanie Fontaine. Just out of the academy, she had her whole life ahead of her. The agent who knew him least, and who had the most reason to despise him.

“I understand.” She’d spoken slowly, her actions managing to also convey meaning. “You had no choice. My own father would have done the same. As would I.”

Others around the room were nodding. Not all, perhaps, but the vast majority.

He did not catch every word the young agent said, and yet he’d understood her meaning more clearly than anything else that had been said to him practically his whole life. Except that first time Reine-Marie had whispered, “I love you.”

This young woman had, in effect, said, I forgive you.

He felt himself losing his balance. As he swayed almost to the point of no return, Armand felt hands reach out and hold him steady. Hold him up. Hold him safe.

All this Armand remembered as he stared out the window at Honoré and Idola and Annie. At Rosa and mad Ruth, who was perhaps the sanest of them all.

And now it is now

and the dark thing is here,

The lines that drifted into Armand’s mind were from Ruth’s poem “Waiting.”

and after all it is nothing new;

it is only a memory after all:

a memory of a fear …

you have long since forgotten

and that has now come true.

Now there was a new fear. One the young Sûreté highways agent had inadvertently alerted Beauvoir to. Not about Armand himself and what he’d done, but what had been found hiding in plain sight on the internet.

If a trained Sûreté agent could believe the lies, believe the poisoning plot never happened, then how many others had been manipulated too?

How many others now believed Lauzon was a hero. Railroaded. Wrongly convicted and soon to be martyred.

And the most pressing question: Who was behind those posts? And why do it? Was it just to stir the pot, or was there another reason?

Merci , he wrote.

What do you want me to do now? replied Jean-Guy.

Armand wrote, Nothing. Come back. But then he erased it and wrote, Find Jeanne Caron. Bring her down here.

In his car, Jean-Guy looked at the text and frowned.

And don’t make a face , wrote Armand. I’ll meet her in the church, not at home.

They both knew Reine-Marie would never allow that woman in her home. Or the bistro. Or the bench. The church was okay. It could be cleansed.

Armand could imagine the women, led by Myrna with her smoldering stick, smudging the space in an ancient and powerful ritual.

D’accord , wrote Jean-Guy. And what do we do about Lauzon?

We need to speak to Caron before deciding.

Jeanne Caron had been Marcus Lauzon’s assistant, then Chief of Staff, and chief architect of his ascent and wrongdoings since the early days in their small Québec town.

Caron had also been the instigator of the attacks on Chief Inspector Gamache when, years ago, he’d refused to let Lauzon’s daughter off a manslaughter charge.

The charges had ultimately been dropped, thanks to the first in what would be a long series of dirty dealings by Caron on her boss’s behalf. But Gamache had still gone to the ethics commissioner to report the then junior member of Parliament.

It did no good. The daughter remained free, and the attacks on Gamache only escalated. When those didn’t work, Caron and Lauzon turned their attention to the Chief Inspector’s teenage son, Daniel, who was struggling with drug addiction.

Their attacks, the lies and insinuations, had been so brutal, so aggressive, Daniel had relapsed and tried to overdose, in a suicide attempt.

Straight now for decades, neither son nor parents would ever forget.

And yet, when the gun had been pressed against Armand’s skull as he’d knelt on the concrete floor, handcuffed and helpless in that water-treatment plant, it had been Jeanne Caron who had saved his life. And almost certainly the lives of thousands, perhaps millions, of others.

She’d tried, since that day, to make amends. Apologizing to Daniel. To Armand. Trying to apologize to Reine-Marie. But Daniel’s mother would not listen. Would never believe there was any genuine remorse. Or that Caron wouldn’t attack again, if need be.

So, no. Jeanne Caron was not invited to Sunday lunch. But Armand still needed to meet with her. And there was someone else he needed to contact, urgently.

“Have you told Moretti that you’re going to see Gamache?” Yvette Nichol asked, and got an angry glare from Chief Inspector Tardiff.

“Don’t tell me what to do.”

“ Désolée, patronne . I’m not telling, just asking.”

“We both know it comes to the same thing,” Tardiff snapped. “I’m going home. You should too.”

Yvette Nichol knew she should, and she would. But she waited until the Chief Inspector had left, then fired off a message.

Joseph Moretti was enjoying a meal with his family in the same hole-in-the-wall diner he’d visited every Saturday since he could remember. His phone buzzed, and he read the flagged message.

Merci , he tapped out. Good to know.

Then he went back to his croque-monsieur, the thick sliced ham under melted Gruyère and béchamel, on the fresh croissant, while his daughter struggled with a large cannoli. Off to the side, the owner of the small restaurant in north end Montréal watched, wiping her moist palms on her dirty apron.