Page 61

They Were Our Children.

Armand sat in the cheery blue and green and yellow light spilling through their bodies, and described the abuse Clotilde’s children had suffered in that house. Years of it, according to the ledger their mother had carefully kept, and then the children kept up when she’d become too drug-addled to do it.

That had been one of the many elements that had muddied the waters at Fiona’s trial.

Instead of running away. Instead of turning away the men when their mother could no longer function, Fiona and Sam had continued the business.

A psychiatrist who specialized in this field had testified that by then they were so programmed, so damaged, they no longer knew different. They’d known “wrong” so long they no longer recognized “right.” Or felt they had a choice.

On top of that, it brought in the money the children needed to survive.

They were trapped.

“I arrested Fiona on charges of manslaughter, but with extenuating circumstances. I argued that the charges should be dropped, and she and Sam should be given counseling. The prosecution disagreed. Even though she was a minor, they chose to try her as an adult.”

“Why?” asked Mongeau.

“She was almost fourteen by then. The prosecution argued in keeping those records and running the household, she was essentially acting as an adult—”

“But the abuse started—”

“Based on the records, when she was ten.”

“Oh, dear God,” sighed the minister.

“Between the written records, the fact it seemed she’d taken over from her mother and was prostituting her brother, and that she’d sold the car to that man, the car used to take their mother’s body to the lake, well, it looked like she was less a victim and more an instigator. But there was one more damning piece of evidence. One I contributed to. Her brother said she’d tried to kill him too. In the alley. She was the one who’d beaten him almost to death.”

“How did you contribute? How could you have?” Robert asked.

“I delayed arresting them by a day. By then they knew that I was coming over, and they suspected why. It spooked them. My decision to delay gave them the time they needed to run away.”

“But that wasn’t your fault.”

“If I’d gone over right away, Sam wouldn’t have suffered those injuries, and the prosecution and ultimately the judge wouldn’t have decided Fiona was a willful murderer who’d succeeded once with her mother, and attempted again with her own brother. She was a danger.”

Robert Mongeau looked down at his hands, then lifted his eyes to Armand’s. “Were they wrong? If she did those things…”

“She was a child herself. Even if she did those things, was she likely to be able to make rational decisions? I don’t think so.”

“But still…” Mongeau struggled. He looked around and settled on the brittle boys before turning back to Gamache. “If she did those things, if she couldn’t tell right from wrong then, are you sure she can now? I know you believe in second chances. So do I. God knows, I’ve been given one. But there is a limit, isn’t there? Could she still … be a danger?”

Armand lifted his hands in resignation. “I don’t think she ever was.”

He’d fought the prosecutor’s decision. He’d been appalled, infuriated, that they’d tried Fiona Arsenault as an adult. That they’d tried her at all. He’d argued that even if what Sam said was true, Fiona was clearly not responsible for her actions. She’d been hurt, abused, raised in a twisted environment without a moral compass or a role model. She needed help, not punishment.

He’d argued, even shouted at the prosecutor. To the point where he’d been threatened with expulsion from his office.

Not only was it patently unfair to try Fiona as an adult, there was another reason the head of homicide fought so hard to have the charges reduced or dropped completely.

He didn’t believe Fiona had acted alone. In fact, he came to believe that Fiona hadn’t even conceived the plan. Sam had. And he suspected Sam had hurt himself in that alley, banging his head against a wall to create injuries that looked much worse than they were. Head wounds bled, and there was a lot of blood. But they were, finally, superficial.

It was not a murder attempt. It was an attempt to shift blame.

He did not tell Robert Mongeau this. Only Beauvoir knew his suspicions. Ones that could never be proved.

And so the case had gone to trial. Sam had, at the very least, been an accomplice in the murder of his mother. That was not denied. But he was deemed too young, too fragile, too damaged to know what he was doing. The prosecution argued that he’d been controlled, abused, assaulted by his older sister.

Sam Arsenault was sent to what was apparently a happy and calm foster home, where he was followed closely and received psychiatric help.