Glass Houses (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #13)(89)

“Which means?”

“We, I, chose one area. A single focus. From which, as you said, most other crimes spring. The fountainhead. Drugs.”

“What have you done?” she asked, almost under her breath.

“I ordered that all of our efforts, all of our resources, be focused on finding the source, and destroying it.”

“All?”

“Essentially all,” he said.

“But that would mean…” Judge Corriveau’s mind once again raced. “The other departments were gutted. Rendered ineffective.”

“Virtually, oui.”

She stared at him in disbelief. “You did this? Knowing the human cost?”

He didn’t move.

“And the drug trade? Has it stopped?”

“It’s grown over the past year,” he said. “As I knew it would. As it had to. We let it.”

“You let it?” she demanded, then reined herself in. And took a couple of deep breaths. Holding her hands out in front of her as a sort of bulwark against more information. Before she dropped them and clasped one tightly inside the other. Leaning forward now.

“Why?” she asked, trying to control her voice.

“Because the cartel had to believe we were incompetent. Ineffective. That we were absolutely no threat to them. They had to be emboldened. The invisible cartel, so protected and hidden, had to know, absolutely know, it was safe to show itself. It had to get sloppy. Only then would it be vulnerable.”

“And to do that, you let them do anything they wanted?”

“But we weren’t idle,” he said. “We were working hard, with informants, undercover agents, monitoring online chatter. Following shipments, getting to know routes and routines. As the year went on, they grew bolder and bolder. The shipments grew larger and larger—”

“You make it sound like flowers or porcelain,” she said. “These were shipments of drugs, presumably some quite large.”

“Oui.”

“And you just let them pass?”

“Oui.”

That sat in the now charged atmosphere.

Judge Corriveau’s eyes narrowed and her lips thinned. And her knuckles turned white.

“You started off by quoting a statistic, Monsieur Gamache. Tens of thousands of mostly young people a year who’re killed because of the drug trade. How many of those deaths can be laid at your feet?”

“Wait—” Barry Zalmanowitz began, before being silenced by her look.

She turned back to Gamache and stared. And he stared back.

Then he nodded very slowly and thought about the notebook in his desk, and the notes he’d begun making the night Katie Evans’s body had been found.

Warming himself by the cheerful fire at their home in Three Pines, that November night. Sleet outside. Reine-Marie beside him. Henri and Gracie curled on the rug.

He wrote about the horror to come. About the consequences of what he was considering.

He’d pause now and then, fighting the urge to make it less appalling than it would be. If he really went through with it. If he really pulled almost all the S?reté resources, and focused on just one crime. One battle, to win the war.

“Over the course of the past year, since I took over and issued this order, there would have been thousands of crimes and, yes, deaths,” he said to Judge Corriveau. “Thousands more than the usual carnage. Laid, as you said, at my feet. And it’s not just those here in Québec, but those across the border. The shipments we allowed to pass.”

“I should have you arrested right here and now,” she said, and looked toward the closed door, beyond which sat the clerk. And officers of the court. Who, at a word from her, would enter. And take this man away. And charge him with murder.

Because that was, they all knew, essentially what he’d committed.

Premeditated. Deliberate.

“If this works—” Zalmanowitz began.

“And if it doesn’t?” demanded Corriveau. “You’ve taken a monster and fed and nurtured it over the course of a year, and let it loose. A nightmare walking.”

“Non,” said Gamache. “It was already loose and growing and laying waste to everything before it. And it was getting worse and worse. It would’ve consumed Québec, and we were powerless to stop it. We have, over the course of a year, constructed a trap. And we’ve been very carefully, very gently, very quietly steering the monster toward it.”

He leaned forward. “You can arrest me. You probably should. But know this. If you do, you’ll be destroying our one chance.” He held up his finger, raised to the ceiling. Then he lowered it and closed his hand into a tight fist.

When he began speaking again, his words were measured. “It is a huge risk. I’ll grant you that. One almost certain to fail. But know this. We had no choice. I had no choice. We had lost. And don’t think for a moment I’m not aware of the price that others have paid for my decision.”

“But if it works…” Zalmanowitz tried once again, pausing for her interruption and surprised when she allowed him to continue. “If it works, the cartel will be destroyed. The drug trade will be crippled, if not wiped out. We will have won.”

Judge Corriveau turned to the Chief Crown. She’d essentially dismissed him. Marginalizing him in this interview. But now she saw him with fresh eyes.