Chapter 13 #2
Tardiff was trying not to look at Gamache but finally gave in. It was like approaching a car wreck and looking inside. How bad would it be?
There weren’t many things worse than being called a coward. And for a cop, a senior cop? Even if not true, an accusation like that would still sting.
Yes, Armand had led the S?reté during an especially tumultuous time and been fired. But not for cowardice or incompetence. It was for illegally chasing a drug lord into the United States.
The Chief Inspector Gamache she saw now was not the same man who’d literally dragged the head of the cartel back across the border, to face trial in Québec.
Armand was gazing at Lauzon, perplexed. And what happened next was worse.
“Désolé,” he said. “But could you repeat that? You were talking too fast.”
It was Jean-Guy Beauvoir’s turn to grip his knees. He could almost feel the blood vessels bursting under his fingers. Would Lauzon see through the ruse? And was it part of the act, or was Armand serious?
Marcus Lauzon opened his mouth, then shut it again in frustration.
“You were talking about power, I believe,” said Gamache.
“And heights. Then something about leadership. I caught that much. You would’ve given a lot, I think, to be Prime Minister.
But you knew you could never be elected, so your only route to the top was in a coup. Though it couldn’t be seen to be that.”
“Yes, I heard that said at my trial.” Lauzon was still smarting from having his coup de grace, his thrust into Gamache’s heart, miss.
Worse, ignored. “Your own testimony, in fact, Armand. That I plotted to poison the drinking water, creating a national catastrophe that would be blamed on the incompetence of the current Prime Minister. He’d be ousted, and I would rise, heroically, selflessly even, taking charge in the face of great personal danger.
I’d bring in the Emergencies Act, to head off future attacks, thereby giving myself unlimited power.
All approved and even applauded by a terrified and cowed citizenry. ”
Gamache lifted his hands in an eloquent That’s it.
“You despise me”—Lauzon leaned forward slightly—“and yet you have doubts.”
“If not you,” Gamache repeated for the third time, “then who?”
Lauzon leaned back again and studied the large, contained man before him. A man he’d rarely met in person—both had avoided it—but whom he’d hated from a distance. For decades. Far from diminishing the hate, time had only deepened that loathing.
It was all he could do now not to leap across the table and strangle the man who’d arrested his daughter for manslaughter. Who’d tried to ruin her young life.
That hit-and-run years ago had been an accident.
Nothing more. She was his only child. Young and foolish, certainly, but she did not deserve to pay for one mistake for the rest of her life.
The fact she’d left that grocery clerk to die alone in a ditch was a shame, but the boy probably would have died anyway.
Getting his daughter off had cost the newly elected MP decades of IOUs.
When the charges had been dropped, Gamache had lodged a complaint and requested an investigation. Nothing came of it except a mutual vendetta.
In return for Gamache’s actions against his daughter, Lauzon had gone after Daniel Gamache. An eye for an eye. A child for a child.
The Chief Inspector had brought it on himself. Was solely responsible, including for his son’s suicide attempt. Lauzon did not feel the least bit guilty, was not the least bit sorry. Not then. Not now.
Over the years, over the distance from Ottawa to Québec City, he’d studied Gamache, watching his career and influence grow.
Every time he appeared on television, in interviews and news conferences, Lauzon had watched.
Smiling with satisfaction when that young journalist had appeared on the scene and begun harassing Gamache, hurling insulting accusations at him in the form of questions.
It would have been more satisfying had she managed to land a few blows.
If Gamache had lost his temper and shown his true self.
A large, powerful, older white cop lashing out at a young woman of color.
How perfect that would have been. But instead, he’d answered each insult with a calm and reasoned explanation.
Meeting rudeness with the same courtesy he showed all the journalists.
But while others might’ve been fooled, the former Deputy Prime Minister was not.
Lauzon had even recorded some of Gamache’s appearances, sitting in his study at night after dinner, hearing his wife and daughter and grandchildren talking and laughing in the next room.
He drank cognac and played and replayed the recordings.
Over the years he’d watched the man age.
Seen his hair turn grey. Seen that deep scar appear at his temple.
Seen that familiar face become heavier, weatherworn.
Careworn. Seen the lines appear. Surely more than a man his age should have.
But what struck Lauzon now, and what he’d missed from the television and the courtroom, was the look in Chief Inspector Gamache’s eyes. Intelligence, yes. You’d expect that. Even now, through the slightly perplexed look, they were thoughtful. Determined even.
Despite the fact Gamache was clearly diminished, it was best, Lauzon warned himself, not to underestimate this man. There was still, in those eyes, a cunning. And yet. And yet. He narrowed his own eyes, and as he did, he saw what Gamache was clearly trying to keep secret.
Most people, Lauzon knew, hid their cruel thoughts below the surface.
But if you had the wherewithal to look, and he did, then deep down, you could see.
There lived, there lurked, the worst of them.
Lauzon had used what he saw against friends, colleagues, competitors.
It was how he got ahead, by not being afraid to step in the piles of merde other people made and tried to hide. By understanding their true nature.
But today, on this sunny autumn afternoon, in this cheerful home, what Lauzon saw deep in Armand Gamache’s eyes wasn’t shit. It was worse than that.
It was decency.
Even, God help Gamache, kindness.
In a word, weakness. And perhaps a slight gullibility, a desire to believe the best.
Lauzon saw within that deep brown stare an Achilles’ heel in the form of a desire to believe that people really could be saved, salvaged from the wreckage of their lives.
Perhaps even a belief that Lauzon himself could be saved. That this come-to-Jesus meeting over roast chicken would work.
Had that belief always been there, or had it appeared to the head of homicide as he’d knelt on that cold concrete floor, the gun to the back of his skull? As he’d prayed. For what? Salvation.
And it had come. He’d been saved. And now did he feel his contract with God was to try to save others? It wasn’t just an Achilles’ heel. This was a superhighway of folly that led in only one direction.
“What could be worse, Armand, than a person not getting what they most want?”
The float plane had landed, and the forensics team had paddled ashore lugging their equipment, including a body bag.
While they got to work on the corpse and surrounding area, Isabelle and Vivienne packed up their campsite, remembering at the last minute to take the food and garbage out of the tree where it had been hung the night before.
“Do we still need to explore the rest of this lake?” asked Vivienne, telegraphing what she hoped and prayed would be the answer. She was wet and cold and would sell her firstborn for a coffee.
“Non. We’ll fly back to Montréal with the body.”
The first thing Isabelle needed to do was tell Frederick Castonguay’s family. She knew from their initial research into the young man that while he’d worked in Ottawa as assistant to Jeanne Caron, he was originally from Montréal.
The plane took off and circled the site where the team was searching the undergrowth for evidence. Perhaps the gun, though they all knew it would be at the bottom of the lake. Still, they needed to look.
The plane rose higher, and the three of them, and Frederick Castonguay, headed for home.
Marcus Lauzon had asked to use the washroom, and while Jean-Guy accompanied him, Evelyn Tardiff saw her chance for a quiet word.
But Gamache got there first.
Taking her quickly aside, he said, “We’ve found the body of Frederick Castonguay.”
He was looking at her with an intensity she found disconcerting. If she didn’t know it was because he needed to read her lips, she’d have thought there was another reason for that scrutiny.
“Jeanne Caron’s assistant? You’re kidding. What’s he doing dead?”
It was such a strange way of putting it that Armand almost smiled, though the situation was far from humorous.
“I take it it was not an accident,” she continued.
“Non. Bullet to the back of the head. Hands tied.”
“Moretti.” She looked puzzled. “Now why would the mafia want Caron’s assistant dead? Where was he found?”
“That’s also strange.” Gamache glanced at the kitchen door to make sure Lauzon wasn’t returning. “Castonguay’s body was found at the last lake that Charles Langlois investigated before his own murder. Up north.”
“What was he doing there?” When Gamache gave her a look, she shook her head.
“Sorry. I know you don’t yet know. So, Jeanne Caron’s assistant is dead.
I’ve told you all along, Armand, that the Caron woman can’t be trusted.
Yes, she saved your life, but probably because she knew the plot had failed and they’d been exposed.
She needed to do something dramatic to make herself look heroic.
To place herself on the right side of the law. Saving you was that grand gesture.”