Page 52

Gamache handed the man over. “Secure him in the back seat.”

“Yessir. With pleasure.”

The man who’d been his supervisor until a few hours ago was letting rip with a string of abuse and threats. That gave Beauvoir even more pleasure, as did the rotting maple leaf plastered to the side of the man’s face. Which Beauvoir left there.

“I heard a shot. You okay?” he asked when he got back into the driver’s seat.

“I am. You heard the shot, but stayed here? You didn’t leave your post?”

“You sound surprised. The truth is, I was getting caught up on emails. I’d have gone eventually.”

Gamache gave a small grunt of amusement. He’d seen Beauvoir’s dark hair, dripping wet. He’d obviously heard the shot, gotten out of the car, and stood there for a while. Tempted.

But he’d followed orders.

“You got them.” Beauvoir nodded toward the items the Chief Inspector was placing in evidence bags. A video camera and an exercise book.

“He got them.”

Gamache was soaked through and shivering. He leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes. Not to sleep, not to rest. Time for that later. He was trying to see the next step.

It wasn’t over yet. But almost. Almost.

Beauvoir, cold and wet himself, turned the heat up full blast, pointing the vents toward Gamache, and drove back to the station in silence. His questions answered. Or most of them.

An hour later all three of the agents Gamache had released, and two of the off-duty officers, had been arrested. Their names found in the careful records in the exercise book. Forensics had taken prints and DNA off the video camera and the tape still inside, as well as the ledger, then handed it back to Gamache and Chernin for closer study.

Clotilde had been, among other things, a businesswoman. She’d kept detailed records. There were names and dates and addresses. And amounts paid. As well as stickers beside certain names. Unicorns for some. Roses. Fairies. Puppies.

“Code?” Chernin asked.

“Seems so.” It was far from clear what those cheerful appliqués meant. Gamache wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

No, he was sure. He didn’t want to know. And wished he didn’t have to think about it. But he did.

Between these records and the videos, there was more than enough evidence to charge everyone involved.

“I want photographs taken of every page and emailed to Serious Crimes,” said Gamache as he closed the book. Squeezing it shut as though it would trap the rot in. “And copies made of the videos.”

If anything happened to them, if somehow this evidence was destroyed, there would be a record of it.

Once he’d issued assignments, Gamache went to the bathroom to splash warm water on his face and disinfect his hands. He changed into the clean and dry clothes he’d packed, knowing they’d probably have to stay at least a few days.

He gripped the side of the sink and closed his eyes. Then, opening them, he stared at himself in the mirror. There was a middle-aged man, with graying hair, gray stubble, and deep lines down his face. How quickly this happened.

He longed to call Reine-Marie. To speak to Daniel and Annie. To hear about their day at school. About Reine-Marie’s day. She worked at Québec’s National Library and Archives, but her hobby was tracking down lost documents from Montréal in the 1600s.

There was one book in particular she was desperate to find.

“It’s called a grimoire,” she’d told him one night, when the kids were asleep and they were relaxing on the back balcony of their apartment in the Outremont quartier of Montréal. “Most of my colleagues think it’s a myth, but I’m not so sure. I found a reference to it in Mother Catherine’s writings.”

“The mystic?” asked Armand, who was an avid, though amateur, student of Québec history.

“Well, mystic or lunatic,” said Reine-Marie. “She was an Augustinian. Helped found one of the first orders in Québec, back in the mid-1600s.”

“What’s a grimoire?”

“It’s a book to summon demons.”