A Great Reckoning (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #12)(48)

She watched as Gamache picked up a dossier and returned to his chair.

“You could’ve fired him, patron,” she said. “You might not have been able to arrest him for corruption, but at least that would stop him from doing more damage.”

“Firing Leduc would solve nothing. The problem would simply be shifted onto someone else. The Leducs of this world will always find fertile ground. If not with the S?reté, then with another police force. Or a private security firm. No. Enough was enough. It had to end, and the people he’d already corrupted, here and in the S?reté, had to see that his philosophy would no longer be tolerated.”

“And how did you intend to do that, sir?”

He looked at her closely now, quizzically. “Are you saying what I think you are? Are you suggesting I might have stopped him with a bullet in the small hours of this morning?”

“I need to ask,” she said. “And you need to answer. I’m not making small talk.”

“No, and neither am I,” he said, sitting back in his chair. “You think I’m capable of cold-blooded murder?”

She paused, holding his eyes. “I do.”

That sat between them for a very long moment.

“For what it’s worth, I think I am too,” she said.

“Under the right circumstances,” Gamache said, nodding slowly.

“Oui.”

“The question is, what are the right circumstances?” said Gamache.

“It must have become clear to you, patron, that Serge Leduc was winning. He’d already polluted the third-year cadets. You yourself said they were beyond redemption—”

“I said almost beyond. I haven’t given up on them.”

“Then why not teach a third-year class yourself? You only take the freshmen.”

“True. I gave the seniors someone better. Someone with more to teach them than I ever could.”

“Jean-Guy?” she asked, not even trying to disguise her doubt.

“Michel Brébeuf.”

Isabelle Lacoste sat very still. As though something horrible had entered the room and she didn’t want to attract its notice.

Finally she spoke.

“A known traitor?”

“An example,” said Gamache. “A powerful example of what corruption will do. It robbed Michel Brébeuf of everything he cared about. His colleagues, his friends, his self-respect. His career. His family. He lost everything. Serge Leduc was promising the cadets power and rewards. Michel Brébeuf is the reality check. What really happens to corrupt S?reté officers.”

“Does he know that?”

“He knows he’s been given this chance to redeem himself. To close the gate.”

Isabelle Lacoste cocked her head slightly, missing the allusion.

“And suppose he doesn’t try to redeem himself?” she asked. “Suppose he sees this as his chance to get back in? Suppose he’s gone back to his old ways and has found his own fertile ground. Aren’t you worried that putting Michel Brébeuf, Serge Leduc, and a school full of impressionable cadets together will be a disaster?”

“Of course I am,” he snapped, then quickly reined himself in. He looked at her, his eyes sharp and the anger just below the surface. “You can’t possibly think I don’t worry about that every moment of every day. But how do you put out a wildfire? With another fire.”

“A controlled burn,” said Isabelle Lacoste, then lowered her voice. “Controlled.”

“You think I’ve lost control?”

“There’s a body being taken to a morgue, and you were heckled by the cadets.” She sighed. “I do think you’ve lost control. And please know, I say that with the greatest respect. If anyone could have solved this problem, it would’ve been you.”

“But you think I’ve made it worse?”

She opened her mouth, then closed it.

“I’m not going to sit here and tell you the murder of Serge Leduc was part of my plan,” said Gamache. “Or anything I thought remotely possible. But I won’t back down. You’ve never run away, Isabelle. Even when you could have. Even when you should have, to save yourself.”

He smiled at her now, with those same deep brown eyes that had looked up at her as he lay dying on a factory floor and she was desperate to stanch the blood. As automatic weapons fire hissed overhead and the walls around them exploded with bullets and the air was thick with dust and shouting and the screams of mortally wounded men and women.

She’d stayed with him. Held his hand. Listened to what they both knew would be his last words. Reine-Marie.

He’d placed those words into Isabelle Lacoste. And with them all his heart and soul. All his happiness, and an apology. Reine-Marie.

Gamache had survived, of course. And Isabelle had not had to deliver that final message.

“And I won’t run away now,” he said. “We stay the course.”

“Oui,” she said.

“We’ve seen worse, haven’t we, Isabelle?” he said.

She smiled. “We have. At least the cadets aren’t armed and shooting at us. Yet.”

Gamache gave a single gruff laugh. “I’ve asked the chief of police to quietly take all the ammunition from the armory. The weapons will stay, but there’ll be nothing to fire.”