All the Devils Are Here(18)

But which Gates?

“Hell is empty,” he murmured.

“Pardon?” asked Claude.

“Just something Stephen likes to say. Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.”

“Charming. But this’s Paris, Armand. The City of Light. No devils here.”

Gamache turned an astonished face to his friend. “You’re joking, of course.” He examined Dussault. “The Terror was partly inspired by the Age of Enlightenment. How many Protestants massacred, how many men and women guillotined, how many Jews hunted and killed? How many innocents murdered by terrorists here in the City of Light would agree with you? There’re devils here. You of all people know that.”

Dussault had forgotten that his friend was a student of history. And, therefore, of human nature.

“You’re right, of course. Monsieur Horowitz has no family of his own?” Claude asked, bringing the topic back to the man fighting for his life just meters away. “Siblings?”

“Not that I know of. Stephen’s family lived in Dresden.”

No more needed to be said about that.

“A wife? Children?”

Armand shook his head. “Just me.”

“I have agents going over the CCTV cameras in the area. Since we know the time of the attack, we’ll be able to find the van as it turned onto rue de Rivoli.”

“And where Stephen was hit?”

Claude shook his head. “We can’t put cameras on every block in Paris, so no, none on the small side street. But shopkeepers might have their own. They’ll be canvassed as soon as stores open. But there’s something I can’t immediately get my head around.”

“Was Stephen the target, or was it random?”

“Yes. If this was an attempt on Monsieur Horowitz specifically, how did the driver know it was him?”

“And if it was random, a terrorist attack like the others using vehicles, why didn’t the driver try to hit more people?” said Gamache. “Us. We were as vulnerable as Stephen.”

“Yes. We’re categorizing this as a hit-and-run, but”—he put up his hand to stop any protest—“treating it as attempted murder.”

Claude Dussault looked at his friend. And spoke the words Armand Gamache needed to hear: “I believe you.”

Both men looked over as a doctor stepped through the swinging doors.





CHAPTER 6




The moment she heard the creak of the front door, Reine-Marie was instantly awake and out of bed.

“Armand?”

“Oui,” he said, whispering, though without knowing why.

Reine-Marie switched on the hall light.

“Stephen?” she asked as she embraced him.

“Still alive.”

“Oh, thank God.” Though even as she spoke, she wondered if thanks were really owing. “How is he?”

“Critical. He’s in recovery. They wouldn’t let me see him.”

“How are you?”

She looked into his haggard face and saw his eyes well. She grabbed him to her again, and they held on to each other.

Weeping for Stephen.

For themselves.

For a world where this could happen as they strolled happily along a familiar street.

They stepped apart and wiped their faces and blew their noses, then Armand followed her into the kitchen.

All the way home in the taxi, all he’d wanted to do was hug Reine-Marie, have a hot shower, and crawl into bed. But now he just sat at the kitchen table, staring ahead.

Reine-Marie put the battered kettle on the gas ring and brought out the teapot.

The kitchen was old-fashioned. They’d discussed updating it, but somehow it never got done. Probably because neither really wanted to change it. It was the same as when Armand’s grandmother Zora was alive and had bustled around it, chatting away in her strange mix of Yiddish and German and French.

She’d learned Yiddish and French growing up in Paris. And German in the camps.

She’d left the apartment to him in her will, along with all she possessed. Which mostly amounted to her love, which was plentiful, and which he carried with him always.

“Nein. Opshtel,” Armand could almost hear her say. “Stop. Tea always better when wasser isn’t quite bouillant. You should know by now,” she’d chastise him.

“Don’t plotz,” he’d invariably reply, which amused her greatly.

His grandmother was long dead, and now he watched Reine-Marie, brushing gray hair from her eyes, move about the kitchen. She brought the teapot over, nicely steeped, with a jug of milk from the cranky old fridge.

“Merci,” he said, stirring in sugar. “They say he probably has brain damage, but at least there’s activity there.”

Reine-Marie sipped her tea. She knew Armand was thinking the same thing, but couldn’t yet say it.

When they finished their tea, Armand had a hot shower, turning his face into the water. Tasting the salt from his face.

Crawling into bed beside Reine-Marie, he fell immediately into a deep sleep.

Three hours later he woke up, with light streaming through the lace curtains. In the first flush of consciousness he felt completely at peace. Here in this familiar apartment. Surrounded by familiar scents that evoked such a deep contentment.