by Louise Penny
They might have left already, those cheerful little ornaments, with something nasty inside.
As soon as he’d read the slip of paper Jean-Guy had handed him, he’d known that this was what they’d been working toward.
Luring the cartel into making one great, fatal mistake.
“More than fifteen thousand people died in Canada from illegal drugs,” said Gamache, meeting her eyes again. His voice calm and steady. As though he had all the time in the world. “In a year. That statistic is a decade old and those are the ones we know about. There were almost certainly far more. We don’t have a more recent report, we’re working on putting one together, but we do know that opioid use has skyrocketed. As have the deaths. Heroin. Cocaine. Fentanyl. And more. Nothing is stopping these drugs from hitting the streets. From killing mostly young people. Never mind all the crime that goes with drugs.”
He leaned forward, very slightly, and dropped his voice as though inviting her into a confidence.
“We lost the war on drugs years ago and are just going through the motions, because we don’t know what else to do.”
Judge Corriveau’s eyes widened, just a little. But enough to register her shock at the statistic. But not at his pronouncement.
She knew he was right. They’d lost. She saw it all day, every day. In her former practice. In her current courtroom. In the halls of the grand Palais. A parade of lost youth, hauled up on charges. And they were the lucky ones. They were alive. For now.
They were also, for the most part, the victims. The ones who should be on trial were free, eating in fine restaurants and going home to large homes in respectable communities.
What Gamache had just said was true and shocking. But—
“What does that have to do with the murder trial?”
“We know that organized crime is behind the drug trade,” said Gamache.
“Cartels,” said Zalmanowitz, feeling he should contribute.
“Thank you, Monsieur Zalmanowitz,” said Judge Corriveau.
“By mutual consent, Québec has been divided into regions. Different organizations run each area. But it’s become clear that one dominates all the others,” Zalmanowitz continued, ignoring the pinched look on her face. “We’ve been chipping away at it, but without effect.”
“Not really chipping,” admitted Gamache. “More like a gnat and an elephant. It didn’t help that many of the top Sûreté officers were in the pay of the cartels.”
He’d said it without irony. And no one was smiling.
“But you’re in charge now,” said Corriveau.
Now he did smile. “I’m flattered you think that might help, and I am trying.” He held her gaze. “But I came to the realization when I first took over almost a year ago that there was nothing I could do.”
“Nothing?” she asked. “But like you said, so much of the crime in Québec stems from drugs. Not just the gang violence, but thefts, armed robberies, beatings. Murders. Sexual assaults. Domestic violence. If you can’t stop the drugs—”
“It’s not a matter of stopping,” Gamache interrupted. “We can’t even keep it stable. It’s growing. We’re past the tipping point. Doesn’t look like it, yet. People can still go about their normal lives. But—”
“What you’re saying, Chief Superintendent, is that not just drug abuse is out of control, but all crime is about to get worse.”
“And worse,” said the Chief Crown.
“Thank you, Monsieur Zalmanowitz.” She turned back to Gamache. “You said you realized there was nothing you could do. Nothing effective anyway.” She examined him more closely. “But that’s not quite true, is it? There is something you’re doing, and it has something to do with the trial.”
“The Chief Crown is right,” said Gamache. “One cartel dominates all the others. We didn’t realize it for a long time. We thought they were at war, hoped they were, and that they’d do some of our job for us. But as we looked closer, we realized it was all a sham. The other organizations were satellites, circling, protecting, decoys for the main one.”
“The biggest of the cartels,” said the judge.
“Non, that was its brilliance and our mistake,” said Gamache. “And why it took so long to identify it. It is, in fact, one of the smallest. It appeared to be just another organization, and not a very effective one. It was static, stale. Not growing or diversifying like all the others. It was so small it really wasn’t worth our effort. We were looking for just what you said”—he gestured toward her—“a great big powerful organization. I made the mistake of equating size with power.”
She took that in. “The nuclear bomb,” she finally said.
“Smaller than a car and can wipe out a city,” said Gamache.
“And did,” said the Chief Crown.
“Thank you, Monsieur Zalmanowitz.” She was smaller than both men, and could wipe them out. And might. “But you found it, right?” she said, returning to Gamache. “Eventually.”
“Oui. Took some time. We knew we were spread too thin, trying to go after all the cartels. All the crime. We had to focus, had to find the heart. But we were looking for the wrong thing in the wrong place. We were looking for a huge organized crime syndicate in Montréal.”
She was nodding. It was a reasonable assumption.
“Where did you find it?”
“It seems so obvious now,” said Gamache, shaking his head. “Where do most of the drugs end up?”
“Montréal,” said Judge Corriveau, though with a slightly questioning inflection.
“The stuff for Québec, certainly,” agreed Gamache. “But this province isn’t the major consumer. The problem is big enough for us, and tragic enough, but it’s tiny by cartel standards. We’re simply a highway. Some parcels fall off the truck, and stay here. But the vast majority is bound for the border.”
“Into the States.” She thought for a moment. “A massive market.”
“Hundreds of millions of people. The amount of opioids consumed, the amount of money involved, the consequences in suffering and crime are almost incalculable.”
“But don’t most of the illegal drugs into the States go through Mexico?” she asked.
“Used to. But more and more are coming through Canada,” said Gamache. “With all the scrutiny on the Mexican border and so much of the DEA’s attention focused on Mexico, the head of the cartel here saw an opportunity.”
“Bring it in where they aren’t looking,” she said quietly. Thinking.
“The country with the longest undefended border in the world,” said Gamache. “Thousands of miles of forest, and no guards. No witnesses. The rum runners during Prohibition knew that. Fortunes were made in Canada by getting illegal booze into the States.”
It was true, Judge Corriveau knew. Many prominent families could trace their wealth, if they had the stomach for it, back to those days.
First it was the robber barons, and then came the rum runners.
Canada had a great reputation for law and order, as long as you didn’t look under the table.
“How did you discover all this?” she asked.
He opened his mouth to reply, but needed a moment to marshal his thoughts.
“The reason this one small cartel dominates all the others is because the person who runs it has made sure they’re invisible. And, if spotted, is dismissed as unimportant. As we did,” he admitted. “This is a structure that’s been years in the making. Simple. Lean. It’s carefully constructed and all but transparent.”
“A glass house, Chief Superintendent?” asked the judge, but he didn’t smile.
“Yes. It’s there, but not there. And it’s almost unassailable. It’s able, above all else, to hide. Not behind cigar smoke in some greasy dive, or in a fortress estate. But in plain view. Unrecognized for what it is.”
“The devil among us,” said Zalmanowitz.
Corriveau turned a jaundiced eye on him, dismissing this romantic and unhelpful statement. But then she remembered the photo, shown in her
courtroom. Blown up to twice life-size.
Of the robed figure looming. Masked. Still. Staring. Standing on the pretty village green.
The devil among us. Maybe it wasn’t such a ludicrous thing to say after all.
Judge Corriveau was quiet for a moment, then her brows drew together and she shook her head.
“You’re still not telling me how you found it. The cartel and the person who runs it. And what this has to do with the trial.” Then her face opened in surprise. “The defendant? You’re not telling me the defendant is the head of the drug cartel?” Her mind raced. “But the charge is murder, not trafficking. The killing of Katie Evans. Does the defendant know that you know the rest? Wait a minute…”
Why were the two of them in this, whatever “this” was, together? The cop and the Crown?
It was Chief Superintendent Gamache’s idea, his plan. Why did he have to involve the Crown? Why did he need Barry Zalmanowitz?
And if the defendant really was the head of the cartel, why would the Chief Superintendent of the Sûreté hide that fact? Surely arresting Québec’s equivalent of a drug lord would be reason to celebrate. Especially when the government, the press, members of his own force were accusing the Sûreté, accusing Gamache, of incompetence.
The Sûreté had become a national shame. An embarrassment.
Surely this would be vindication, something to be shouted from the rooftops. A great victory.
But instead, there was this quiet conspiracy between two men who didn’t even like each other.
Why?
Because … because … Judge Corriveau slowed down her racing mind, and stepped from logic to logic.
Chief Superintendent Gamache needed the Crown’s help. His collusion.
And there was only one thing the Chief Crown could bring to the table.
The charges.
“You don’t want the defendant to know that you know,” she said. “So you trumped up these charges to buy time.” She glared at Gamache. “You’ve intentionally arrested the wrong person for the murder of Katie Evans, to get them off the street while you collect evidence.” Then her eyes swung over to Zalmanowitz. “And you’re trying someone for a murder you know they didn’t commit. Not this murder anyway.” She glared at them. “Which means the person who really killed Katie Evans is still out there.”
Her eyes narrowed, studying the men.
She looked from Gamache to Zalmanowitz.
The Crown, while an effective prosecutor, would never make it as a professional poker player.
He blinked.
And she turned back to Gamache, who would have made a fortune on that circuit.
“No, no,” she murmured. “That’s not it, is it? I’ve missed something. There’s more to it than that. Tell me, now.”
Gamache was silent.
“You came in here knowing you would, Chief Superintendent. No more bullshit. I’m hot and tired and now I’m afraid. It’s not a pleasant combination. For me. Or for you.”
Gamache gave a decisive nod, then looked toward the pitcher of water, ice now melted, on a tray on the sideboard.
“Do you mind?”
“Not at all.”
He got up and poured them each a tall glass before sitting down and drinking his all in one go. He was parched but, more than that, the gesture gave him the chance to look at his watch without being noticed.
Four fifteen. The court had adjourned early. He glanced outside. The sun was still a good way up in the sky.
And while it was up, the new shipment would remain in Québec. But he knew that as the sun approached the horizon, the opioid would approach the border.
Still, he had time. Just.
“On the day the body of Katie Evans was discovered in the root cellar, I was having lunch with Superintendent Toussaint in Montréal. She’s the head of Serious Crimes.”
“I know her, oui,” said the judge.
“I was new to the job, and so was she,” Gamache continued. “We were going over our notes, the mess we’d inherited. We both knew then, of course, that the drug situation was out of control. And, frankly, beyond our control. We were tossing around ideas on what to do. None of them, honestly, useful or effective. We agreed that we had to try something new. Something bold and unexpected. And then Superintendent Toussaint said something, she used an expression. A cliché, really. Burn our ships.”
He looked at Judge Corriveau to see if it meant anything to her.
She was listening closely. The phrase was familiar, but without import.
“It means doing something from which there is no return,” he said.
“I know what it means, Monsieur Gamache.”
But he let it sink in. Everyone knew what it meant. But did they really, really, know what it meant?
To her credit, he could see the judge thinking more about it. Looking beyond the cliché, beyond the words, to the action it implied.
“Tell me,” she said.
“Going after all crime, everywhere, wasn’t working. That much was obvious. So if that wasn’t working, what would?”
She remained still. It was clearly a question she couldn’t answer, nor was he expecting her to.
“Focusing,” he said. “Specializing. I thought about choosing two or three areas to crack down on, ones that were particularly out of control. But that would’ve been a half measure. It would’ve been like burning half our ships. We had to burn them all.”
“Which means?”
“We, I, chose one area. A single focus. From which, as you said, most other crimes spring. The fountainhead. Drugs.”
“What have you done?” she asked, almost under her breath.
“I ordered that all of our efforts, all of our resources, be focused on finding the source, and destroying it.”
“All?”
“Essentially all,” he said.
“But that would mean…” Judge Corriveau’s mind once again raced. “The other departments were gutted. Rendered ineffective.”
“Virtually, oui.”
She stared at him in disbelief. “You did this? Knowing the human cost?”
He didn’t move.
“And the drug trade? Has it stopped?”
“It’s grown over the past year,” he said. “As I knew it would. As it had to. We let it.”
“You let it?” she demanded, then reined herself in. And took a couple of deep breaths. Holding her hands out in front of her as a sort of bulwark against more information. Before she dropped them and clasped one tightly inside the other. Leaning forward now.
“Why?” she asked, trying to control her voice.
“Because the cartel had to believe we were incompetent. Ineffective. That we were absolutely no threat to them. They had to be emboldened. The invisible cartel, so protected and hidden, had to know, absolutely know, it was safe to show itself. It had to get sloppy. Only then would it be vulnerable.”
“And to do that, you let them do anything they wanted?”
“But we weren’t idle,” he said. “We were working hard, with informants, undercover agents, monitoring online chatter. Following shipments, getting to know routes and routines. As the year went on, they grew bolder and bolder. The shipments grew larger and larger—”
“You make it sound like flowers or porcelain,” she said. “These were shipments of drugs, presumably some quite large.”
“Oui.”
“And you just let them pass?”
“Oui.”
That sat in the now charged atmosphere.
Judge Corriveau’s eyes narrowed and her lips thinned. And her knuckles turned white.
“You started off by quoting a statistic, Monsieur Gamache. Tens of thousands of mostly young people a year who’re killed because of the drug trade. How many of those deaths can be laid at your feet?”
“Wait—” Barry Zalmanowitz began, before being silenced by her look.
She turned back to Gamache and stared. And he stared back.
Then he nodded ve
ry slowly and thought about the notebook in his desk, and the notes he’d begun making the night Katie Evans’s body had been found.
Warming himself by the cheerful fire at their home in Three Pines, that November night. Sleet outside. Reine-Marie beside him. Henri and Gracie curled on the rug.
He wrote about the horror to come. About the consequences of what he was considering.
He’d pause now and then, fighting the urge to make it less appalling than it would be. If he really went through with it. If he really pulled almost all the Sûreté resources, and focused on just one crime. One battle, to win the war.
“Over the course of the past year, since I took over and issued this order, there would have been thousands of crimes and, yes, deaths,” he said to Judge Corriveau. “Thousands more than the usual carnage. Laid, as you said, at my feet. And it’s not just those here in Québec, but those across the border. The shipments we allowed to pass.”
“I should have you arrested right here and now,” she said, and looked toward the closed door, beyond which sat the clerk. And officers of the court. Who, at a word from her, would enter. And take this man away. And charge him with murder.
Because that was, they all knew, essentially what he’d committed.
Premeditated. Deliberate.
“If this works—” Zalmanowitz began.
“And if it doesn’t?” demanded Corriveau. “You’ve taken a monster and fed and nurtured it over the course of a year, and let it loose. A nightmare walking.”
“Non,” said Gamache. “It was already loose and growing and laying waste to everything before it. And it was getting worse and worse. It would’ve consumed Québec, and we were powerless to stop it. We have, over the course of a year, constructed a trap. And we’ve been very carefully, very gently, very quietly steering the monster toward it.”
He leaned forward. “You can arrest me. You probably should. But know this. If you do, you’ll be destroying our one chance.” He held up his finger, raised to the ceiling. Then he lowered it and closed his hand into a tight fist.
When he began speaking again, his words were measured. “It is a huge risk. I’ll grant you that. One almost certain to fail. But know this. We had no choice. I had no choice. We had lost. And don’t think for a moment I’m not aware of the price that others have paid for my decision.”