She was small but powerful. Not in her build but in her presence. She radiated aggression.
Fuck off.
The words fairly pulsed off her, a spiky aura.
Was a time, when Gamache first met her, that she’d actually say it. To his face. To anyone’s and everyone’s face. But now she simply thought it. Such was the force of the petite woman, though, that she might as well be screaming it.
Still, thought Gamache, it was progress. Of sorts.
She gave him one curt nod.
Fuck off.
He didn’t respond. Simply watched her.
The piercings were still in place. Through her eyebrow, her nose and cheek. Along the gristle of her ears.
And…? Yes. There it was.
The click, click, click as she moved the post in her tongue up and down, knocking it against her teeth.
In poker it would be considered a “tell.”
Click, click, click. Amelia’s unconscious Morse code.
One day he might tell her about her tell. But not just yet. Right now it served a purpose. His purpose.
Click. Click. Click.
SOS.
Clean sheets, thought Gamache. The scent of wood smoke. Feeling Henri’s head on my slippers. He went through his own private code. A sort of rosary.
Flaky croissants.
“Do you know why you’re here?” the Commander asked the cadet.
When Gamache had left the academy to take up the job of chief superintendent of the Sûreté, he’d had long discussions with his successor about the cadets. Including the suggestion that the students be allowed to be individuals. Amelia Choquet was certainly that. And more.
“No, I do not know why you wanted to see me.” Pause. “Sir.”
The Commander picked up an envelope from his desk, and from it he took a baggie.
“Recognize this?”
“No.”
The answer came too quickly for her to be surprised. She knew exactly why she was there. And she knew exactly what was in that little plastic bag.
Gamache knew Amelia well enough to know she’d prepared for this encounter. Perhaps a little too much. She wasn’t showing the natural curiosity, even astonishment, of the innocent.
Instead she displayed the rehearsed answers of the guilty.
He glanced at the Commander to see if he’d picked up on the same thing and saw that he of course had.
Gamache felt his heart speed up as he saw the point of no return approaching. He’d made up his mind what had to be done, though it seemed his heart remained unconvinced. But he knew he had to see this through.
Amelia Choquet’s breathing had changed. Shorter, more rapid.
She too could see the point of no return. Just there. On the horizon. Getting closer. Fast.
The clicking had stopped. She was alert. An animal who, after living with smaller creatures, suddenly discovered a world of giants. Suddenly discovered it was tinier than it realized. More vulnerable than it thought. More threatened than it believed possible. A creature looking for escape and finding only a cliff.
“It was in your room, under your mattress,” said the Commander.
“You searched my room?” She sounded indignant, and Gamache almost admired her rally.
Almost.
“That’s not exactly the lede, is it, Cadet Choquet?” The Commander lowered the baggie to his desk. “This is a narcotic. Enough to traffic.”
“It’s not mine. I have no idea where it came from. If I was going to do something as stupid as having shit in the academy, I’d find a better hiding place. Like maybe someone else’s room.”
“Are you suggesting someone planted it?” asked Gamache.
She shrugged.
“Intentionally?” he persisted. “Trying to set you up? Or just wanting to get it out of their own room?”
“Take your pick. All I know is, it isn’t mine.”
“The bag has been fingerprinted—”
“Clever.”
The Commander stared at her. Amelia, Gamache knew, had a rare ability to get up people’s noses. Though why she’d want to be there was anyone’s guess.
“—and we’ll have the results soon. Where did you get it from?”
“It’s. Not. Mine.”
The clicking had begun again. A rat-a-tat-tat now, designed to annoy.
Gamache could see the Commander struggling not to claw his way across his desk and reach for her throat.
And Cadet Choquet was doing nothing to save herself. In fact, just the opposite. She was taunting them. Arrogant, smug, almost certainly deceitful, she was demanding to be doubted. And worse.
An innocent cadet, when a Schedule 1 drug was discovered in her room, would protest innocence and try to work with them to find out whose it was.
A guilty cadet would almost certainly at least pretend to do the same.
But she was doing neither.
She’d gone from a vulnerable creature, trapped and frightened, to an aggressor, throwing out ridiculous and obvious lies.
Amelia Choquet was a senior cadet. She’d matured into a natural leader, not the bully Gamache feared she’d become.
She was quick-witted, alert. Someone others instinctively wanted to follow.
Which made Cadet Choquet as trafficker in narcotics all the more dangerous. But not, with her background, completely unbelievable.
Leaning closer to her, he saw the tattoos on her wrists and forearms, where the sleeves of her uniform had ridden up. Then his sharp gaze traveled to her face, and he saw something else. Something that might explain her lack of judgment, her self-destructive, erratic behavior in this meeting.
Her reactions had been wild. Unpredictable. The reactions of a junkie.
She hadn’t…?
His own eyes widened a little.
“You foolish, foolish woman.” His voice was practically a snarl. Then he turned to the Commander. “We need a blood test. She’s high.”
“Fuck you.”
He glared at her. “When did you last use?”
“I’ve taken nothing.”
“Look at her,” Gamache said to the Commander before turning back to Amelia. “Your pupils are dilated. You think I don’t know what that means? Search her room again,” he said, and the Commander placed a call.
“I have a mind to end it right now,” Gamache said, turning back to Amelia.
“Don’t you dare. I’ve come too far. We’re so close. I can do this.”
“You can’t. You’ve messed up. You’re messed up. You’ve gone too far.”
“No, no. These are eyedrops. Only eyedrops.” She was almost begging. “It looks like I’m stoned, but I’m not.”
“Tell the agents searching her room to look for eyedrops,” said Gamache, who wanted, was almost desperate, to believe her. To believe she hadn’t taken any of the drug herself.
“They won’t find any,” said Amelia. “I threw them away.”
There was silence as Gamache stared deep into the dilated eyes of the cadet.
Seeing the look on Gamache’s face, she turned away from him and spoke to the Commander. “If you think I’d deal in that shit, you’re a worse judge of character than I thought.”
“Drugs change people,” said the Commander. “Addiction changes people. As I think you know.”
“I’ve been clean for years,” she said. “I’m not stoned. Why the fuck would I enroll in the Sûreté, for God’s sake, if I was still a junkie?”
Gamache started to laugh. “You’re kidding, right? You get a gun and access to any amount of drugs. Most dirty agents at least have the sense to wait until they’ve graduated and are on the street before they turn. But then most don’t arrive as addicts.”
“I was never an addict, and you know it.” She was all but screaming at him now. “I used, yes. But I was never addicted. I quit. In time.”
Her own words seemed to give her pause as she remembered how and why she quit. In time.
It was because of this man. Who’d given her a home here. A purpose and a direction. A chance.
“I’m not trafficking,” she said. Her voice quieter. “I’m not using.”
Gamache examined her. Studied her. So much was riding on this.