And Gamache could guess where.
After confronting the imposter, who refused to speak, Gamache had left the interview room.
“I need to search the prison for Fleming,” he told the head guard. “You need to come with me.”
“But there’re hundreds of inmates.”
Gamache turned on him. “Do you have any idea who John Fleming is? What he’s capable of? What it means if he’s not here?”
“But he is.” The guard gestured toward the closed door of the interview room, where the false Fleming was still chained to the metal table.
“I’ve met Fleming,” snapped Gamache. “I helped put him here. He’s unmistakable. I don’t know who that is”—he gestured angrily toward the door—“but it’s not Fleming.”
“Fine. We’ll look. But it’s a massive waste of time.”
Before starting the search, Gamache called Beauvoir. “You spoke to the warden of the SHU yesterday.”
“Yes,” said Beauvoir. He didn’t tell the Chief he was in the car on his way to the prison, for fear Gamache would order him back to Three Pines.
“Call him again. Tell him to come right away and meet me in his office.”
“Why? What’s happened?”
Gamache told him.
“Fucking—” was as far as Beauvoir got before the line went dead. “—hell.”
“Let’s go,” said Gamache, stuffing the phone back into his jacket pocket.
Through the locked barriers they went. One, two, three doors. They were searched and scanned. Gamache’s phone was taken away. Finally, there was a screech of an alarm as the last barrier between them and bedlam closed. They were locked in.
Gamache had been in any number of prisons, but no other was even remotely like the SHU. It was fairly new but felt ancient and derelict. A ruin.
The very air was heavier here. Denser. As though guilt and gravity had partnered, pressing the weight of the accumulated crimes down on them.
Along the concrete corridor the two of them strode, Gamache looking into the cells, looking into the eyes of every madman in the prison. Many he’d put there. Word spread through the population that Chief Inspector Gamache was there, and an uproar ensued. Men, barely more than beasts, screamed his name. Screamed abuse.
They shook and rattled the bars, dragging anything they could find across them.
The head guard began to breathe heavily, his eyes moving this way and that. Trying to keep himself from panicking.
Prisoners spat as Gamache walked past. They tried to piss on him. But Gamache walked through it all, laser-focused on finding, or not finding, John Fleming.
Halfway through, Jean-Guy arrived.
“What’re you doing here?” Gamache asked, though Jean-Guy detected a note of relief.
“What? You’d be lost without me.”
Around them the air was putrid with threats and sweat and the smell of piss. And worse.
Beauvoir took it all in, then said, “Feels like dinner with Ruth.”
Gamache smiled and held Jean-Guy’s arm, in gratitude for that small respite. Then he said, “Go to the warden’s office. Tell him you need the file on Fleming, but don’t open it. I’ll join you when I’ve finished.”
But instead of moving, Beauvoir just stood there. “Non. I’m staying with you.”
“Inspector Beauvoir—”
“Non. You can fire me, but I’m not leaving. Not this time.”
Jean-Guy Beauvoir, lashed to the mast, would sink or swim with this man. Their fates were bound together, as the winds howled, and the storm descended, and they traveled deeper into Hell.
They looked into each of the cells. Into the faces of any number of lunatics. But not the one they were searching for.
John Fleming was no longer there.
Outside the warden’s office, Gamache turned to the head guard. “How long have you been at the SHU?”
“Two and a half years.”
“That long.” Gamache sighed.
“Do you think Fleming’s been gone since then?” asked Beauvoir.
Gamache nodded. “What happened to the former head guard?”
“He retired.”
“I’m guessing suddenly.”
“Yes.”
“And he moved away?”
“To Florida.”
“Can you get us his address?” asked Beauvoir.
It was clear that the head guard was about to object, to say he’d need the warden’s approval. Then he changed his mind. He’d watched these men be verbally abused. Spat on, almost pissed and shit on. And they kept going.
If they could do that, he could do this. Besides, he was beginning to believe them.
He knew John Fleming. At least, he knew his crimes. He’d familiarized himself with the details of each prisoner when he got the job. And no prisoner was more famous than Fleming.
Like everyone else, the head guard knew the broad strokes of his crimes.
Over the course of seven years, John Fleming had kidnapped and murdered seven people, men and women, young and old. One a year. His victims were completely random, from a clerk at the Hudson’s Bay Company, to a bridge builder, to a fisherman, and more. Each in a different decade of their life.
That he knew. That everyone knew.
What wasn’t said was what this madman had done with the bodies.
On arriving at the SHU, the head guard had read the file. Seen the photos. And then spent every hour of every day wishing he had not.
His job now was to make sure these men stayed behind these iron doors. And none more than Fleming.
It became clear to him that this was not just a job, it was a sacred duty. The Special Handling Unit was filled with murderers, mass murderers, child murderers. Serial killers.
The deranged, the criminally insane, lived out their lives within those walls, waiting for their own deaths. No family, no friends ever came. Not even the Grim Reaper wanted to visit. Many of the inmates lived to a ripe old age. Some were over one hundred years old. Unable to live. Unable to die.
Of all these criminals, John Fleming was the worst. The head guard knew that. And now, standing outside the warden’s office, staring into the deep brown eyes of the head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec, he’d begun to suspect that the worst had happened.
“I’ll get it for you,” he said.
“Merci.”
With that, the Sûreté officers walked into the warden’s office.
The warden was furious. He’d been dragged out of bed, forced back to the office, and was now being accused of allowing the most dangerous prisoner in the SHU to escape.
Gamache put on his reading glasses and scanned the file, though he knew what he’d find. Lies. A deliberate counterfeit.
Sure enough, the file showed a photo and description of the man Gamache had just met. It was close, the resemblance almost uncanny. But it was not John Fleming.
The litany of Fleming’s crimes was there, along with psychiatrist reports. There was an all-too-brief description of Fleming’s background, including his education.
It said the same thing as Gamache’s private records. John Fleming was a mathematician. Not an engineer.
Gamache snapped the file shut, then handed it to Beauvoir, but not before removing the photographs of what Fleming had done and putting them into his pocket. Leaning forward, he spoke with blistering courtesy to the warden.
“The man introduced to me just now as John Fleming is not John Fleming. I know it, and you know it, sir. And you know that, despite what the record says, I can prove it.”
Though Gamache also knew that could be problematic. If as much trouble had been taken over this escape as it seemed, the DNA and prints of the false Fleming would now be in the official file.
John Fleming would have dissolved and re-formed into someone else.
But the real file, along with evidence of other crimes he might have committed, were intact. The real John Fleming was in the locked room in Gamache’s basement.