“And even then, buildings and bridges still collapse.”
There was an awkward silence as Nathalie Provost twisted the thin ring on the little finger of her right hand.
When Agent Gamache and his supervisor had arrived at the École Polytechnique that December evening, they found chaos.
The sun had set, and the place was lit with the glare of headlights bouncing off banks of snow and hitting the imposing engineering building.
Exhaust from emergency vehicles hung in the frigid air.
Gamache’s supervisor told him to stay by the ambulance while she tried to find out what had happened. What was still happening. She came back none the wiser, but considerably paler.
“There’re tactical units outside the building,” she told him. “They’re armed.”
“But they haven’t gone in?”
“No.”
The information they did pick up was contradictory and garbled. Even a newly minted Sûreté agent knew the one thing to avoid in an emergency was this. Confusion. But it too hung thick in the air.
There was a lone gunman inside, they heard. There were two gunmen. Three. A gang of them.
He was dead. He was still shooting.
Students started running from the building, shouting for help. Gamache and others on the scene moved forward, wrapping the dazed and panicked young men in blankets and checking for wounds as the senior cops peppered them with questions. Digging for, desperate for, solid information.
And still the tactical squad waited. For what?
Finally, the word came. The gunman had shot himself. There were multiple casualties. They could go in.
Armand and his supervisor moved quickly through the outer doors, not far behind the armed cops, and were immediately hit by a thick wall of sound. Screams of pain. Cries, pleas for help. Orders shouted by the police.
And not just orders. There were warnings now.
There might be another attacker hiding in a classroom. Armed. Maybe with hostages.
Classrooms might be booby-trapped with nail bombs.
Armand’s heart was pounding, his eyes wide. He tried to control his breathing, to remain calm. To keep his mind clear. To remember his training.
But there was a shriek inside his head. Leave. Leave. Run away. Go home. You shouldn’t even be here. Go.
He’d never known fear like this. Never knew such terror existed.
At each classroom, he expected to see the man. The gun.
At every door he threw open, he braced for the impact. Of bullets or nails. Of splintered wood and shards of glass.
Then, when that didn’t happen, when the room was empty except for overturned desks and chairs, he moved on. To the next door, the next classroom. Down, down the long hallway, he and his supervisor ran. Following the screams. Throwing open doors. Scanning. Every detail preternaturally sharp and clear.
Then, finally, they found them. Lying against the wall of their classroom. The bodies. Of the dead and wounded. It was suddenly very quiet. The wounded had no energy left to call for help. To even moan in pain. They were just trying to keep breathing.
He went to the first person clearly alive, though bleeding heavily.
“What’s your name?” he asked as he knelt beside her, his eyes and hands moving quickly over her blood-soaked clothing. Trying to find the wound.
“Nathalie,” she whispered.
“Nathalie, my name is Armand. I’m here to help.” He pulled bandages from his kit. “Where does it hurt?”
She couldn’t tell him. She was numb, going into shock.
He found one wound. Two. Three.
This woman, barely more than a kid, had been shot four times.
He put a compression bandage on the worst of her injuries, talking the whole time. Forcing his voice to be calm. Telling her she was going to be fine.
“Ça va bien aller.”
Repeating her name.
She was shivering. Nathalie. Her lips turning blue. Nathalie. He took off his coat and laid it over her.
As he worked, he asked her easy, mundane questions to keep her conscious. Blood was running into her eyes from a head wound. He wiped it away, but her eyes had closed.
“Where do you live?” “What courses are you taking?” “Stay with me, Nathalie.”
Armand stayed with her, holding her hand sticky with her own blood, calling for a stretcher. Yelling for a stretcher.
“Ça va bien aller, Nathalie.”
A stretcher finally arrived minutes, what seemed like hours, later. She gripped his hand as they took her from the classroom.
His supervisor grabbed his arm and shouted, “Come on. Move. There’re more.”
Armand had to yank his hand free as Nathalie disappeared into the hallway. And he moved in the other direction, searching for survivors.
It was only after half an hour and more victims that his supervisor, bending over one of the bodies and checking for a pulse that was no longer there, had turned to him, her eyes wide.
“Women. My God, they’re all women.”
Armand looked around. He’d been so busy just functioning, trying to help, trying to keep the horror and terror at bay, that he hadn’t noticed.
She had seen what he’d missed.
The gunman had only murdered, only wounded, only targeted women.
The fourteen white roses on stage represented each young woman murdered that day, thirty years and a stone’s throw away from where they now stood.
The killer had separated out the men and told them to leave. And then he’d shot the women. For daring to believe they could enter a man’s world without consequence. For daring to become engineers.
They were murdered because they were women. For having opinions. And desires.
Oh yes, and breasts, and a sweet pear hidden in my body.
Whenever there’s talk of demons, these come in handy.
Later, years later, Armand would read those words by Ruth Zardo, his favorite poet. And he would know the truth of it.
Death sits on my shoulder like a crow
… Or a judge, muttering about sluts and punishment.
And licking his lips.
Fourteen white roses. Fourteen murdered.
Thirteen wounded. Including Nathalie Provost.
It became known as the Montréal Massacre. The catchy alliteration made it easily digestible for those reading the headlines. Something awful had happened. They read the story and shook their heads in genuine sorrow. But most did not look deeper.
The Montréal Massacre.
For the families of victims and the survivors there were no words to describe what happened. It was both much bigger than the blaring headlines and more intimate. More personal. More universal. Much worse.
One of the police officers had entered the building and found his own daughter among the dead.
That had haunted Armand, and never more so than when, a few years later, he and Reine-Marie had Annie. He tried not to imagine, but couldn’t help …
Many of the families and survivors returned to the École Polytechnique each year to attend the graduation. For more than thirty years they’d supported and applauded those who walked across the stage to accept their degrees. In some ways surrogates for their daughters, sisters, friends. Fellow students. Who never made it that far.
These graduates were testaments to the fact that the gunman had not won. Hate and ignorance had not won. Though even now, those who listened closely could hear the mutterings, the talk of demons. That never really went away.
Many of the first responders, the cops and ambulance attendants from that day, also came to each graduation. In solidarity.