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“A shitshow. What the fuck was that?” Beauvoir stopped, took a deep breath, closed his eyes, then opened them again. “Sorry. But really. What the fuck was that?”

They circled the building in Old Montréal. Feeling the sun on their hot faces. And the fresh air in their lungs.

They spoke a little, mostly curses from Beauvoir. Gamache, who had said almost nothing since the judge’s pronouncement, let them vent. While he walked and considered.

Then they all fell silent, lost in their own thoughts. The same thoughts.

Partly about what had gone wrong, mostly how to fix it.

Beauvoir’s phone buzzed. A text from Zalmanowitz. As terse as the man.

Meet me in my office.

The three Sûreté officers were around the back of the building, but Gamache knew the way in, past the trash and recycling bins. After he’d pressed the button and stared into the camera, the door was unlocked. It helped that Gamache knew the guards by name and they knew him. After decades of trials. And tribulations.

Beauvoir and Lacoste followed Gamache along grimy, ill-lit corridors. Taking the service elevator, they finally emerged into the gleaming marble hallway. The public face, hiding the smelly, dark underbelly of justice.

“Well, that was a clusterfuck of a decision,” said Zalmanowitz, not bothering to get up or even look up from his laptop, as they entered. “I spoke to Judge Pelletier, who walked me through it.”

“And?” asked Beauvoir.

“And we’ll appeal, of course,” said the prosecutor.

“Will we win?”

“Hard to say.”

“Try.”

Now Zalmanowitz gave them his complete attention, turning from his screen. “Honestly? I doubt it. As much as we hate the decision, Judge Pelletier did her due diligence, even canvassing jurists across the country—”

“But a poisonous tree?” interrupted Beauvoir. “Come on.”

“I know. I can’t explain her interpretation. Well, I can. But it’s an incredibly narrow view of the law.”

He rubbed his eyes and sighed. Then, looking up, he smiled weakly. “You know what they say about lawyers—”

Gamache gave Beauvoir a warning glance.

“—that we’re like children in the dark, imagining all the monsters.”

It was, Gamache knew, a pretty apt description of his job, too.

“Seems I missed one,” said the lawyer. “Two, really.”

“We all did,” said Beauvoir.

Zalmanowitz nodded his thanks for sharing the blame. “Judge Pelletier had latitude. It could have gone the other way, and I think she genuinely struggled with it. Especially since, as she privately told me, our case was a lock—”

Beauvoir’s hands slammed down on the wooden arms of his chair, and he growled, “Jesus.”

Getting up, he paced the room, trying to blow off the pent-up frustration. The others let him pace until he’d regained control of himself.

Sitting back down, he didn’t apologize. But he did look directly at Zalmanowitz and say, “Someone needs to make sure Tracey gets what’s coming to him.”

“We’re trying.”

“Try harder.”