around her daughter. “He’s alive, that’s al that matters.”
“Have you seen him?”
Reine-Marie nodded, unable now to speak. Unable to tel anyone what she’d seen. The oxygen, the monitors, the blood and bruising. His eyes closed.
Unconscious.
And the doctor saying they didn’t know the extent of the damage. He could be blind. Paralyzed. He could have another one. The next twenty-four hours would tel .
But it didn’t matter. She’d held his hand, smoothed it, whispered to him.
He was alive.
The doctor had also explained the chest wound.
The bul et had broken a rib which had punctured the lung causing it to col apse and col apsing the second.
Crushing the life out of him. The wound must have happened early on, the breathing becoming more and more difficult, more labored, until it became critical.
Fatal.
“The medic caught it,” the doctor said. “In time.”
He hadn’t added “just,” but he knew it to be the case.
Now the only worry was the head wound.
And so they’d waited, in their own world of the third floor of Hôtel-Dieu. An antiseptic world of hushed conversations, of soft fleet feet and stern faces.
Outside, the news flew around the continent, around the world.
A plot to blow up the La Grande dam.
It had been a decade in the planning. The progress so slow as to be invisible. The tools so primitive as to be dismissed.
Canadian and American government spokesmen refused to say how the plan was stopped, citing national security, but they did admit under close questioning that the shootout and deaths of four Sûreté officers had been part of it.
Chief Superintendent Francoeur was given, and took, credit for preventing a catastrophe.
Émile knew, as did anyone who’d had a glimpse inside the workings of major police departments, that what was being said was just a fraction of the truth.
And so, as the world chewed over these sensational findings, on the third floor of Hôtel-Dieu they waited. Jean-Guy Beauvoir came out of surgery and after a rocky day or so, began the long, slow climb back.
And after twelve hours Armand Gamache struggled awake. When he final y opened his eyes he saw Reine-Marie by his side, holding his hand.
“La Grande?” he rasped.
“Safe.”
“Jean-Guy?”
“He’l be fine.”
When she returned to the waiting room where Émile, Annie, her husband David and Daniel sat, she was beaming.
“He’s resting. Not dancing yet, but he wil .”
“Is he al right?” Annie asked, afraid yet to believe it, to let go of the dread too soon in case it was a trick, some jest of a sad God. She would never recover from the shock of being in her car, listening to Radio-Canada and hearing the bul etin. Her father . . .
“He wil be,” said her mother. “He has some slight numbness down his right side.”
“Numbness?” asked Daniel.
“The doctors are happy,” she assured them. “They say it’s minor, and he’l make a ful recovery.”
She didn’t care. He could limp for the rest of his days. He was alive.
But within two days he was up and walking, haltingly. Two days after that he could make it down the corridor. Stopping at the rooms, to sit by the beds of men and women he’d trained and chosen and led into that factory.
Up and down the corridor he limped. Up and down.
Up and down.
“What are you doing, Armand?” Reine-Marie had asked quietly as they walked, hand in hand. It had been five days since the shooting and his limp had al but disappeared, except when he first got up, or pushed too hard.
Without pausing he told her. “The funerals are next Sunday. I plan to be there.”
They took another few paces before she spoke.
“You intend to be at the cathedral?”
“No. I intend to walk with the cortege.”
She watched him in profile. His face determined, his lips tight, his right hand squeezed into a fist against the only sign he’d had a stroke. A slight tremble, when he was tired or stressed.
“Tel me what I can do to help.”
“You can keep me company.”
“Always, mon coeur.”
He stopped and smiled at her. His face bruised, a bandage over his left brow.
But she didn’t care. He was alive.
The day of the funerals was clear and cold. It was mid-December and a wind rattled down from the Arctic and didn’t stop until it slammed into the men, women and children who lined the cortege route.
Four coffins, draped in the blue and white fleur-de-lys flag of Québec, sat on wagons pul ed by solemn black horses. And behind them a long line of police officers from every community in Québec, from across Canada, from the United States and Britain, from Japan and France and Germany. From al over Europe.
And at the head, walking at slow march in dress uniform, were the Sûreté. And leading that column were Chief Superintendent Francoeur and al the other top-ranking officers. And behind them, alone, was Chief Inspector Gamache, at the head of his homicide division. Walking the two kilometers, only limping toward the very end. Face forward, eyes determined. Until the salute, and the guns.
He’d closed his eyes tight then and raised his face to the sky in a grimace, a moment of private sorrow he could no longer contain. His right hand clamped tight.
It became the image of grief. The image on every front page and every news program and every magazine cover.
Ruth reached out and clicked the video closed. They sat in silence for a moment.
“Wel ,” she final y said. “I don’t believe a word of it.
Al done on a soundstage I bet. Good effects, but the acting sucked. Popcorn?”
Beauvoir looked at her, holding out the plastic bowl.
He took a handful. Then they walked slowly through the blizzard, heads bowed into the wind, across the vil age green to Peter and Clara’s home. Halfway across, he took her arm. To steady her, or himself, he wasn’t real y sure.
But she let him. They made their way to the little cottage, fol owing the light through the storm. And once there, they sat in front of the fireplace and ate dinner. Together.
Armand Gamache rose.
“Are you al right?” Émile got up too.
Gamache sighed. “I just need time alone.” He looked at his friend. “Merci.”
He felt nauseous, physical y sickened. Seeing those young men and women, shot. Kil ed. Again.
Gunned down in dark corridors, again.
They’d been under his command. Hand-picked by him against Chief Superintendent Francoeur’s protests. He’d taken them anyway.
And he’d told them there were probably six gunmen in the place. Doubling what he’d been told. What Agent Nichol had told him.
There’re three gunmen, the message had said.
He’d taken six officers, al he could muster, plus Beauvoir and himself.
He thought it was enough. He was wrong.
“You can’t do this,” Chief Superintendent Francoeur had said, his voice low with warning. The Chief Superintendent had burst into his office as he’d prepared to leave. In his ear Paul Morin was singing the alphabet song. He sounded drunk, exhausted, at the end.
“Once more please,” Gamache said to Morin then whipped off his headset and Chief Superintendent Francoeur immediately stopped talking.
“You have al the information you need,” the Chief Inspector glared at Francoeur.
“Gleaned from an old Cree woman and a few sniff-heads? You think I’m going to act on that?”
“Information gathered by Agent Lacoste, who’s on her way back. She’s coming with me, as are six others. For your information, here are their names.