The Black Wolf (Chief Inspector Gamache #20)

Chapter 1

“We have a problem.”

Now, weeks later, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache could not overstate what a huge understatement that had been. Though at the time, while it was clear something was off, it had seemed only that.

A slight odor. A scent, a sense of something going bad.

A problem.

Not a crisis. Not a looming catastrophe that put the poisoning plot, if not to shame, then into perspective.

Jean-Guy Beauvoir and Isabelle Lacoste, his dual seconds-in-command at the S?reté du Québec, had joined him in Three Pines in the small hours of that August morning, and together they’d reread and reread the second notebook, the one they’d underestimated, even dismissed.

The one they’d, he’d, assumed contained preliminary notes. Not the final, the fatal one, that had already killed so many.

When they’d arrived, Armand hadn’t told Jean-Guy and Isabelle what he thought.

He wanted to see if they saw what he did.

He knew the blast in Montréal’s water-treatment plant had severely affected his hearing.

Maybe his other senses had also been jarred.

So that he could no longer see and think clearly.

Could no longer trust what his eyes, his common sense, his sixth sense, the tingling in his scalp told him.

But both Beauvoir and Lacoste, his best and brightest, had looked up and nodded.

“We have a problem,” they’d agreed.

He couldn’t actually hear the words over the scream of the millions of cicadas nesting in his head since the explosion, but he’d become adept at lip-reading. And if their mouths hadn’t told him, their eyes, their expressions, the sudden tension in their bodies did.

But still it was far from clear what they were now facing. What they’d missed, dismissed.

They only knew they’d been wrong about the order of the books the young biologist had hidden. They’d assumed the one outlining the poisoning plot was the second. The conclusion. The end.

But they were wrong. It was just the beginning.

Even now, weeks later, the exact threat was still concealed inside the words, the notations, the cryptic drawings and numbers that Charles Lang- lois had left behind. Before he’d been murdered. Mowed down within sight, within reach of Armand himself.

He’d died holding Armand’s hand. Clinging to his eyes. A young man, barely more than a boy, about to die.

When Armand had begged him for some clue, some idea, of what was happening, Charles had coughed up one blood-spattered word.

“Family.”

Nothing more.

Charles had been the first of many to die, some colluding in the poisoning plot, some trying to stop it, including the Grey Wolf himself. Giving his life to stop a catastrophe.

Dom Philippe was the one who’d first, years earlier on the shores of a pristine lake, told Armand the tale of the grey and black wolves, engaged in battle. The one advocating for decency, for peace, for civility and the courage to be kind. To forgive.

The other pressing forward with an agenda of hate, of aggression. Of retribution. Of a quest for power and domination, through fear. Through twisting the truth into a great lie, a great grievance.

Which one would win?

The Grey Wolf was gone. Murdered.

They’d thought the Black Wolf had been captured. But now, as Armand stepped out of the shower this early October morning, he was far from sure.

It was still dark outside when the head of homicide for the S?reté wiped the condensation off the bathroom mirror and a man in his late fifties appeared, half his face covered in shaving cream. Though it happened each and every morning, the face that looked back could still surprise him.

Away from any reflection, he was in his early forties. But each morning he was reminded that was not actually true. And getting less true by the moment, he thought as he brushed grey hair, damp and askew from the shower, off his forehead, then continued to shave.

The creases that appeared with each stroke of the razor were more pronounced, etching deeper into his face with every year, every month, each day and concern.

He wondered what his father would have looked like, had he reached this age.

Almost every working day Armand Gamache knelt beside people who would grow no older; many would never brush grey hair from their foreheads or see lines down their faces. Would never meet children or grandchildren.

And so he did not begrudge these signs of age, they just slightly surprised him.

Behind him in the reflection, Armand saw their bedroom in the village of Three Pines.

Worn oriental rugs were scattered on the wide-plank pine floors.

The walls were covered in bookcases and paintings inherited when parents and grandparents died.

Eclectic and not, perhaps, great art, but comforting in their familiarity. And the more appreciated for it.

A large armchair in the corner held the clothes they’d taken off the night before and tossed there, his on top of hers because he’d crawled into bed later.

Though Reine-Marie had remained reading after he’d already fallen asleep, the book splayed on his chest and his reading glasses slipping down his nose.

Each morning he found both placed safely on the bedside table.

A cold breeze through the slightly open windows fluttered the curtains and brought in fresh morning air, lightly scented with pine and musky autumn leaves.

The dogs, Henri and Fred, were asleep at the foot of the queen bed, while Gracie, who might or might not be a chipmunk, or a ferret, had made a nest of their clothes and now lay half buried in them.

But while Armand took all this in, his eyes sought only one thing.

They came to rest, like a homing instinct, on Reine-Marie.

She was curled under the duvet, asleep. Her grey hair lay on the pillow.

Her mouth was open slightly, no doubt snoring softly.

A sound he’d never thought about but now missed.

He smiled, and as he did, the lines in his face deepened. His pleasure cut through and broke up those etched there by stress, by worry, by pain and sorrow.

His smile overpowered them. Though one remained. The deep scar at his temple that spoke of a sorrow that would never, could never, should never go away completely. He would carry it, Armand knew, into the next life and the next. Until he could make amends. For that terrible failure.

Now, in early October, the sun was rising later and later, though Armand himself was getting up earlier and earlier, propelled out of bed by the siren in his head and the agonizing feeling, the dread, that he’d made a mistake.

We have a problem.

The words, spoken in unison by Jean-Guy and Isabelle as they’d sat in the living room and read that second notebook weeks ago, were getting louder and louder.

We have a problem.

He shaved off the rest of the stubble and wiped his face with the moist cloth. Then, holding on to the edges of the sink, he leaned in and took a good, hard look in the mirror. He had to be brutally honest with himself.

He’d been over and over Charles Langlois’s second notebook. He’d practically memorized all the strange entries the young biologist had made.

They had a problem, and the problem was that they still didn’t know what the problem was.

Only that one existed. Something dreadful was about to happen.

Langlois, before he’d been murdered, had stumbled onto something that involved poisoning the drinking water of Montréal but did not stop there.

That one terrible act of domestic terrorism was simply a prelude, perhaps even misdirection.

Meant to mask what was really happening.

And Armand had fallen for it.

True, he and his team had stopped the poisoning, but they hadn’t seen that there was something else he should have given equal weight to.

Another tranche, a deeper, darker level.

Now Armand went to bed later and later and was woken up earlier and earlier by the howl in his head and the sickening feeling he’d made another terrible, terrible mistake.

In focusing on the one plot, he’d given the other time to grow, to fester, to march toward completion.

Somewhere out there, in the darkness, a black wolf was feeding, being fed. Growing.

The creature was becoming immense, grotesque. Powerful. Looming over them. Perhaps so close it was unrecognizable for what it was.

Watching and waiting.

We wait. We wait.

The problem, Armand was beginning to believe, wasn’t just out there, but in here. In the mirror. The problem was him. But maybe, maybe, so was the solution.

Some malady is coming upon us. We wait. We wait.

“Not a problem.”

“How can you know that? You underestimated him once.”

As she listened to Joseph Moretti’s warm voice down the phone line, she felt the thin ice crack beneath her.

She’d come close, so close, to solid ground.

To safety. After years out in the wilderness, she’d finally been able to see the shore.

Even smell it. That sweet pine scent that had always signaled happy times.

The Christmas tree, with its playful lights and ornaments and presents.

That first walk in the forest after the winter melt when the air finally held some warmth, and the evergreen needles released their scent.

Ever green. What a concept. Nature was resilient. Even optimistic.

Humankind less so.

After years of skating, of balancing, of slipping and sliding, she thought she could finally pull herself to safety. Finally.

And then, at the last moment, disaster. Thanks to Gamache. That fucker. She could not afford another mistake. Another misjudgment. Another moment of weakness.