“Put it down,” Gamache demanded, and Dagenais slowly placed the Glock on the desk.
Gamache picked it up, but instead of holding it on the captain, or even putting it in his own belt, he took out the magazine and replaced the gun on the desk.
“There’s another one,” said Beauvoir. “In the right-hand drawer.”
Dagenais shot him a look of such loathing, had it been a gun Beauvoir would’ve been dead.
“Stand up, step away from the desk,” said Gamache.
When Dagenais did, the Chief Inspector opened the drawer, not even locked, and found it. A Sig Sauer. Illegal, thanks to Nathalie Provost and the others. This one no doubt confiscated in a drug bust.
Once again, Gamache removed the bullets and replaced the gun.
“Hands where I can see them.” Gamache walked up to Dagenais, and for a moment both Chernin and Beauvoir thought the Chief Inspector was about to beat the crap out of him. Neither would have raised a hand to stop it.
Instead, Gamache patted him down, though the act of touching the man clearly disgusted him. Then he stepped back.
“Alexandre Dagenais, you’re under arrest for sexual assaults on at least one minor. For—”
“You might want to look behind you, Monsieur Gamache.” Dagenais’s voice was filled with amusement.
Beauvoir’s heart sank. He knew what he’d see. Still, he’d dared hope …
He turned. Chernin turned. But Gamache did not. He continued to stare at Dagenais. Slowly, the smile was wiped off the captain’s face.
“You’re under arrest,” Gamache repeated and brought out his handcuffs. “Turn around.”
When Dagenais did not, Gamache grabbed him and in one practiced move spun him around, shoving his face into the wall and yanking Dagenais’s hands behind him. As he did, Gamache snarled something into his ear.
Once Dagenais was cuffed, Gamache pushed him back into the chair. Only then, after running his steady hand through his disheveled hair, did Chief Inspector Gamache turn and look through the large window into the outer office.
He saw exactly what he expected to see. Six Sûreté agents with guns drawn. In the attack posture.
“What the fuck?” whispered Chernin.
She turned her gun on Beauvoir, expecting, since he was also a member of this detachment, to see his weapon aimed at her. And Agent Beauvoir understood then why he hadn’t been warned about any of this. Gamache did not know whose side he was on.
He did have his gun out, but it was pointed at the window and his colleagues. His now former colleagues. His loyalties, perhaps at terrible cost to himself, were clear and declared.
Beauvoir, trying not to tremble, darted his eyes to the Chief.
What do we do? What do we do???
He expected to see him now armed with Dagenais’s Glock, pointing it at the agents in the outer office. But he was not.
The Chief Inspector was standing still and just staring.
We’re fucked, thought Beauvoir. We’re dead. The man’s paralyzed. Oh shit, oh shit, oh—
Gamache stepped forward. Far from being paralyzed, his mind was working quickly. Assessing, looking at options.
Coming to a conclusion.
“Do not lower your weapons, no matter what happens,” he said quietly to Chernin and Beauvoir, so Dagenais didn’t hear.
“Patron?” she said, not taking her eyes off the agents in the outer office.
“Trust me.”
“Oui.” She adjusted her stance, bracing for what seemed inevitable, at least to her, if not to the Chief.
Gamache turned to Agent Beauvoir and smiled. “Your first day on the job, and this happens.”
For a moment Beauvoir was confused. He’d been working as a Sûreté officer in this detachment for months. But then he understood.
This detachment was not the Sûreté. His time with the Sûreté had started the moment he followed Chief Inspector Gamache out of the basement.
That was the start, and this was the finish. All in one day. Young Jean-Guy Beauvoir had little doubt what was about to happen.
“If there was ever a time to follow orders, this is it, Agent Beauvoir. Do you understand?”
Beauvoir nodded.
“Do you understand?” Gamache repeated, his voice firm, the authority complete.
“Yessir.”
“Good.” Again dropping his voice, he whispered to both, “Do not fire, no matter what happens, unless they shoot first. And then, give ’em everything you’ve got.”
“And you?” Beauvoir asked.
“I think by then you’ll be on your own. With my profound apologies. However…” Gamache looked behind him. “… there is something that might help.”
He walked over to Dagenais and cuffed him to his chair. Then he wheeled the captain in front of Chernin and Beauvoir. In the direct line of fire.
“Oh, fuck,” muttered Dagenais.
“That’s better.” Gamache smiled, though his eyes held no amusement.
“Wait.” For the first time, there was desperation in Dagenais’s voice. “I know who killed Clotilde. Let me go and I’ll tell you, then I’ll disappear. Everyone wins. Everyone lives.”
Do it, thought Beauvoir. He could, at last, see some daylight between himself and catastrophe.
“I know who killed Clotilde,” said Gamache, staring at Dagenais.
“You think it was me? If it was, I’d have made sure she was never found.”
“You went to the house after she disappeared,” said Gamache. “That’s why you didn’t send anyone to look after the children. You needed time alone, to do what you had to do. You threatened them, if they told. And you gave the kids a huge new television. Textbook abuser. Threaten, then reward. They claimed no one visited, but that was clearly a lie. Someone did. There were no fingerprints on her keyboard, files were destroyed, and though the kids said the TV was old, we found the packaging in the backyard. It arrived after Clotilde disappeared.”
Beauvoir kept his eyes forward, trained on the agents. He knew Gamache had just lied. Yes, they’d found the packaging, but there was nothing on it to show when it had been delivered.
“You erased what you could of the hard drive, though not”—Gamache looked at the photo of the naked man—“quite well enough. And you found her record book. Did you destroy it?”
He stared at Dagenais, considering.
“No. You were selective in the videos you erased. Or copied? That’s what you did, didn’t you? You copied those incriminating videos Clotilde had made and kept her written records to blackmail the others.”
“You’re guessing.”
“True,” admitted Gamache. “But we’ll find the evidence.”
“You’d have to leave to do that, and there’s no way you’re getting out of here.”
“We’ll see,” said Gamache.
He stepped away from Dagenais, nodded to Inspector Chernin, then said quietly to Beauvoir, “You’re doing well.”
Jean-Guy Beauvoir felt himself steady. He nodded to the Chief, then watched in amazement. Surely he wasn’t …
But Gamache did.
He opened the door and stepped out. With a clatter, Dagenais’s agents turned to him. Weapons pointed. Poised to fire.
While his face was composed, Gamache’s heart pounded. This was, his desperate mind had told him, the only hope they had. But still, but still …
He opened his arms wide to show that he wasn’t concealing anything.
The next few seconds were the most dangerous. All it would take was for one agent to panic. Then there would be a bloodbath. And it wouldn’t be just him lying dead in a pool of blood, but Chernin and Beauvoir and Dagenais and at least some of these agents.
And those two hikers, waiting in an interview room, would have to be killed. These agents couldn’t just let that man and woman go. Not after this slaughter.