“Amelia?” Isabelle asked Jean-Guy.
They’d left the Chief Superintendent reading to the girl and had returned to the living room.
“We just came from the hospital,” said Jean-Guy, dropping into an armchair. “They got her heart going, and she’s breathing on her own.”
“Brain damage?” asked Isabelle.
“They’re doing tests, but we won’t know until she wakes up. We’re going back there right after we leave here.”
She nodded. “If there’s anything I can do.”
“There may be. Thank you. I’ll let you know.”
“So she was working with the Chief all along? Did … anyone know?”
“No.”
“Not even you?”
“No. I knew he’d expelled Amelia in hopes she’d lead him to the carfentanil, but I had no idea she was in on it.”
Isabelle looked at Jean-Guy closely. “Are you okay with that? With not being told?”
He lifted his fingers off the arms of the chair, then dropped them. What could he say? What could he do? It was, he knew, the nature of the job.
Secrecy. Secrets.
Lacoste had them. All senior officers had things they kept close to the chest.
God knows, he himself had his secrets. One in particular.
He knew he’d have to tell his father-in-law soon. And this one hit closer to home and was far more personal than the secret Gamache had kept from him.
“The carfentanil?” asked Isabelle.
“Looks like we got it all, except for what was used in the experiments.”
“What experiments?” Isabelle’s husband asked.
“This particular opioid’s so new that no one really knows the safe dose. And, of course, that also depends on weight, body type. Health. So many addicts have weak hearts, and very little will push them over the edge. This guy—”
Boom, boom, boom. Beauvoir saw, in a flash, the man drop. Dead.
Something he would never unsee. Another ghost for his longhouse.
“—experimented on junkies. Giving out different doses and writing on their arms the amount. A milligram. Two. To see who survived and who died.”
Isabelle shook her head, and then her brow furrowed. “Why did he call it David?”
“It’s his father’s name.”
Isabelle took that in. Not sure what it meant. Was it meant as a tribute or an attack, an accusation? Was it meant to thank or to hurt?
She suspected the latter.
“You okay?” she asked Jean-Guy. She could guess what he was thinking.
That he’d just killed a young man. Troubled. Criminal. A killer. It was self-defense. But he was still dead. And one day soon, Jean-Guy would have to face the boy’s father. David.
“I’m tired,” said Jean-Guy, and she could see that it would take much more than a shower and a good night’s sleep for him to recover.
“The sound of maple logs in an open fire,” she said quietly. “A hot dog at a Canadiens game. Honoré’s hand … holding yours.”
“These things I’ve loved,” Jean-Guy whispered. “Merci.”
She glanced down the hall to where the children were sleeping. A delicate, almost reedy sound was coming from there.
Jean-Guy and Isabelle went quietly down and looked in.
Armand had closed the book and was leaning toward the child, his elbows on the torn and filthy knees of his slacks.
He was humming. While, in the bed, the little girl’s eyes were closed.
Edelweiss. Edelweiss.
Hours later Amelia Choquet opened her eyes, squinting into the bright light.
She felt a hand on her shoulder and startled.
“It’s all right, you’re in the hospital. My name’s Dr. Boudreau. I’ll be looking after you.”
He spoke slowly. Clearly.
“Can you tell me your name?”
There was a pause.
“Amelia … Choquet.”
“That’s right. And do you know who this is?”
Dr. Boudreau looked at the man standing beside him.
“Shit. Head,” she mumbled.
“Wha—” the doctor began, but Gamache gave a gruff laugh.
“She got that right too,” he said, and looked across the bed to Jean-Guy, who was smiling with relief.
“I’m sorry, Amelia,” said Gamache. “For this.”
“Did you—”
“Yes, we got it all.”
She closed her eyes, and Gamache thought she’d drifted off. But she spoke again, her eyes still closed.
“Girl.”
“We have her. She’s safe,” said Jean-Guy. “Your friend Marc is here in the hospital too. They’re looking after him.”
Amelia nodded, then went silent.
Gamache took the doctor aside. “Will she be all right?”
“I think so. She’s healthy, and you got the rescue med to her in time. She’s lucky.”
“Yeah, well,” said Jean-Guy, “I can hardly wait to hear her version of that when she’s fully awake.”
Before he left, Armand took the worn little book from his pocket and pressed it into her hands.
“Erasmus,” he whispered, though he wasn’t sure she could hear him. “For company.”
They left the hospital, but there was one more stop they had to make before the day, or night, was over.
Agent Cloutier was asleep in her chair but awoke quickly and stood up at her desk when she saw the Chief Superintendent come in with Chief Inspector Beauvoir.
Both men looked exhausted. Unshaved and disheveled.
She’d heard what had happened and had begun toward them when she stopped. And smiled. Broadly. On seeing who walked slowly in behind them.
“Chief Inspector,” said Cloutier, going over to Lacoste and hugging her.
“Is that how we greeted each other, patron, when you were head of homicide?” asked Jean-Guy.
“Only in private.”
Beauvoir laughed and pulled over two chairs to join the two already in front of the laptop on Cloutier’s desk.
Isabelle sat and took a moment to look at Ruth glaring back at her.
“Amazing,” she said. “I keep expecting her to say ‘numbnuts.’”
“Why would the Virgin Mary say that?” asked Cloutier.
“Not important,” said Beauvoir. “Show us what you have.”
As Agent Cloutier walked them through the files they’d found on Anthony Baumgartner’s computer, a pattern emerged.
The three of them stared at the screen. Then at each other. Then at Agent Cloutier.
Beauvoir had known some of this when he’d been called away. But most of it Cloutier had uncovered on her own.
“It’s genius,” Cloutier said in admiration. “Almost too simple to believe, and that made it hard to find.” She shook her head. “Incredible.”
The other three were leaning forward. Examining the details.
“It’s suggestive,” said Gamache.
“It’s more than that, sir,” she said. “It says it all.”
“No. It says one thing, but there’s no proof this is what actually happened,” said Gamache.
“We need proof, Agent Cloutier,” said Jean-Guy. “But this at least tells us where to look.”
“I have proof,” she said. “Follow the money.”
She smiled and started tapping rapidly on the keys. Different pages popped up and disappeared from the screen.
“This is,” she said as she typed, “the same route Anthony Baumgartner took. Circuitous, but then it would have to be.”
There, finally, on the screen was the home page of a corporation in the British Virgin Islands.
“Is that where Baumgartner hid the rest of the money?” asked Beauvoir.
“With Shaeffer’s help. But it’s a launch point, not the final stop,” said Cloutier. “People who want to hide money set up a corporation in a tax haven like BVI, then funnel it to a numbered account. Switzerland used to be the country of choice. But then came the crackdown. This”—she hit another page—“took over.”
A bank in Singapore came up.
“How do you know this’s where Baumgartner hid his money?” asked Beauvoir.