Kingdom of the Blind (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #14)

by Louise Penny

  “And what do you love, Isabelle?”

  “Pardon?”

  Gamache closed his eyes and raised his face to the ceiling. “‘White plates and cups, clean-gleaming, / Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust; / Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strong crust / Of friendly bread.’”

  He opened his eyes, looked at Isabelle, and smiled, deep lines forming at his eyes and down his worn face.

  “There’s more, but I won’t go on. It’s a poem by Rupert Brooke. He was a soldier in the First World War. It helped him in the hellhole of the trenches to think of the things he loved. It helped me too. I made mental lists and followed the things I love, the people I love, back to sanity. I still do.”

  He could see her thinking.

  What he was suggesting wasn’t a magic cure for a bullet to the brain. A huge amount of work, of pain, physical and emotional, lay ahead. But it might as well be done in the sunlight.

  “I’m stronger, healthier now than I was before any of that happened,” said Gamache. “Physically. Emotionally. Because I’ve had to be. And you will be too.”

  “Things are strongest where they’re broken,” said Lacoste. “Agent Morin said that.”

  Things are strongest where they’re broken.

  Armand heard again the impossibly and eternally youthful voice of Paul Morin. As though he were standing right there, in Isabelle’s sunny kitchen with them.

  And Agent Morin had been right. But oh the pain of mending.

  “I’m lucky in a way,” Isabelle said after a few moments. “I can’t remember anything about that day. Nothing. I think that helps.”

  “I think it does.”

  “My kids keep wanting to read me . . . Pinocchio. Something to do with what happened, but damned if it makes sense to me. Pinocchio, patron?”

  “Sometimes being shot in the head is a blessing.”

  She laughed. “How do you do it?”

  “Remember?”

  “Forget.”

  He took a breath, looked down at his feet, then back up, into her eyes.

  “I had a mentor once—” he said.

  “Oh Jesus, not the one who taught you poetry,” she said in mock panic. He had that “poetry” look about him.

  “No, but just for that.” He cleared his throat. “‘The Wreck of the Hesperus,’” he announced, and opened his mouth as though to launch into the epic verse. But instead he smiled and saw Isabelle beaming with amusement.

  “What I was going to say is that my mentor had this theory that our lives are like an aboriginal longhouse. Just one huge room.” He swept one arm out to illustrate scope. “He said that if we thought we could compartmentalize things, we were deluding ourselves. Everyone we meet, every word we speak, every action taken or not taken lives in our longhouse. With us. Always. Never to be expelled or locked away.”

  “That’s a pretty scary thought,” said Isabelle.

  “Absolument. My mentor, my first chief inspector, said to me, ‘Armand, if you don’t want your longhouse to smell like merde, you have to do two things—’”

  “Not let Ruth Zardo in?” asked Isabelle.

  Armand laughed. “Too late for that. For both of us.”

  In a flash he was back there. Running toward the ambulance. Isabelle on the gurney, unconscious. The old poet’s bony hands holding Isabelle’s. Her voice unwavering as she whispered to Isabelle over and over again the only thing that mattered.

  That she was loved.

  Isabelle would never remember that, and Armand would never forget it.

  “Non. He said, ‘Be very, very careful who you let into your life. And learn to make peace with whatever happens. You can’t erase the past. It’s trapped in there with you. But you can make peace with it. If you don’t,’ he said, ‘you’ll be at perpetual war.’”

  Armand smiled at the memory.

  “I think he knew what an idiot he was dealing with. He could see I was getting ready to tell him my own theory of life. At twenty-three. He showed me the door. But just as I was leaving, he said, ‘And the enemy you’ll be fighting is yourself.’”

  Gamache hadn’t thought of that encounter for years. But he had thought of his life, from that moment forward, as a longhouse.

  And in his longhouse, as he glanced back down it now, he saw all the young agents, all the men and women, boys and girls, whose lives he’d affected.

  He could also see, standing there, the people who’d hurt him. Badly. Almost killed him.

  They all lived there.

  And while he would never be friends with many of those memories, those ghosts, he had worked very hard to make peace with them. With what he’d done and what had been done to him.

  “And are the opioids there, patron? In your longhouse?”

  Her question brought him back with a jolt, to her comfortable home.

  “Have you found them?”

  “Not all, non. The last of it, here in Montréal, has disappeared,” he admitted.

  “How much?”

  “Enough to produce hundreds of thousands of hits.”

  She was silent. Not saying what he knew better than anyone.

  Each one of those hits could kill.

  “Merde,” she whispered, then immediately apologized to him. “Désolée.”

  She rarely swore and almost never in front of the Chief. But this one escaped, riding the wave of revulsion.

  “There’s more,” she said, studying the man she’d gotten to know so well. Better than her own father. “Something else is bothering you.”

  Weighing on him, was more like it, but she could not quite come up with that word.

  “Oui. It’s about the academy.”

  “The Sûreté Academy?”

  “Yes. There’s a problem. They want to expel one of the cadets.”

  “It happens,” said Isabelle. “I’m sorry, patron, but why is it your concern?”

  “The one the Commander called me about, and wants to expel, is Amelia Choquet.”

  Isabelle Lacoste settled back in her chair and considered him closely. “And? Why would he call you about this? You’re no longer head of the academy.”

  “True.”

  And she saw that this wasn’t just a weight on Gamache. It was close to crushing.

  “What is it, patron?”

  “They found opioids in her possession.”

  “Christ.” And this time she didn’t apologize. “How much?”

  “It seems to be too much for personal consumption.”

  “She’s trafficking? At the academy?”

  “It would appear so.”

  Now Isabelle was quiet. Absorbing. Thinking.

  Armand gave her time.

  “Is it from your shipment?” she asked. She hadn’t meant to give him ownership, but that was the way it came out. And they both knew he did have ownership, if not of the actual drugs then of the situation.

  “They haven’t been sent to the lab yet, but it’s possible, yes.” He looked down at his hands, one clasping the other. “I have a decision to make.”

  “About Cadet Choquet.”

  “Oui. And frankly, I don’t know what to do.”

  She wished with all her heart she could help him.

  “I’m sorry, Chief, but surely this is up to the Commander. Not you.”

  Watching Chief Superintendent Gamache, Lacoste couldn’t fathom what he was thinking. He seemed to be asking for her help and yet keeping some information from her.

  “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

  “Let me ask you this, Isabelle,” he said, ignoring her statement. “What would you do if you were me?”

  “And a cadet was found with drugs in her possession? I’d leave that up to the Commander of the academy. It’s not your business, patron.”

  “Oh, but it is, Isabelle. If it’s my opioids, as you put it, in her possession.”

  “Where did she get the drugs from?” Isabelle asked. “Has she told you?”

  “Th
e Commander hasn’t interviewed her yet. As far as he knows, Cadet Choquet doesn’t even realize they’ve been found. I’m going there now. If he expels her, she’ll die. I know that much.”

  Lacoste nodded. She knew it too. What most didn’t know was why Gamache had let Amelia Choquet into the academy in the first place. Why that messed-up young woman, with the history of drug abuse and prostitution, had been given a coveted place at the Sûreté school.

  But Isabelle knew. Or thought she knew.

  The same reason he’d reached down into the bowels of her own career and given her a job.

  Had reached down and dragged Jean-Guy up, a moment from being fired himself.

  It was the same reason Chief Superintendent Gamache was now considering convincing the current Commander to keep Cadet Choquet.

  This was a man who profoundly believed in second chances.

  Except this wouldn’t be Amelia Choquet’s second chance. It would be her third.

  And that was, in Lacoste’s view, one too many.

  There was grace in second chances and foolishness in third. And perhaps worse than foolishness.

  There was, or could be, outright danger. Believing a person capable of redemption when they’d proven they were not.

  Amelia Choquet hadn’t been caught cheating on an exam or stealing some trinket from a fellow cadet. She’d been caught with a drug so potent, so dangerous, it eventually killed almost everyone who took it. Amelia Choquet knew that. Knew she was trafficking in death.

  Chief Inspector Lacoste regarded the steady man in front of her, who believed everyone could be saved. Believed he could save them.

  It was both his saving grace and his blind spot. And few knew better than Isabelle Lacoste what that meant. Some things hurtled. Some slithered. But nothing good ever came out of a blind spot.

  Isabelle noticed that Gamache’s right hand wasn’t trembling. But it was clenched into a fist.

  CHAPTER 12

  “Sit.”

  The Commander of the Sûreté Academy did not stand when Cadet Choquet entered the office, and neither did Chief Superintendent Gamache.

  Amelia waited at the door, defiant as ever, then walked across the room and dropped into the chair indicated, crossing her arms tight over her chest. Glaring straight ahead.

  She looked exactly as Gamache remembered her.

  Hair jet-black and spiky. Though perhaps not quite as belligerent in its cut. She was not, he suspected, softening so much as maturing. Or perhaps he was just getting used to it.

  Cadet Choquet was in the final year of her training. Within months of graduation.

  She was small but powerful. Not in her build but in her presence. She radiated aggression.

  Fuck off.

  The words fairly pulsed off her, a spiky aura.

  Was a time, when Gamache first met her, that she’d actually say it. To his face. To anyone’s and everyone’s face. But now she simply thought it. Such was the force of the petite woman, though, that she might as well be screaming it.

  Still, thought Gamache, it was progress. Of sorts.

  She gave him one curt nod.

  Fuck off.

  He didn’t respond. Simply watched her.

  The piercings were still in place. Through her eyebrow, her nose and cheek. Along the gristle of her ears.

  And . . . ? Yes. There it was.

  The click, click, click as she moved the post in her tongue up and down, knocking it against her teeth.

  In poker it would be considered a “tell.”

  Click, click, click. Amelia’s unconscious Morse code.

  One day he might tell her about her tell. But not just yet. Right now it served a purpose. His purpose.

  Click. Click. Click.

  SOS.

  Clean sheets, thought Gamache. The scent of wood smoke. Feeling Henri’s head on my slippers. He went through his own private code. A sort of rosary.

  Flaky croissants.

  “Do you know why you’re here?” the Commander asked the cadet.

  When Gamache had left the academy to take up the job of chief superintendent of the Sûreté, he’d had long discussions with his successor about the cadets. Including the suggestion that the students be allowed to be individuals. Amelia Choquet was certainly that. And more.

  “No, I do not know why you wanted to see me.” Pause. “Sir.”

  The Commander picked up an envelope from his desk, and from it he took a baggie.

  “Recognize this?”

  “No.”

  The answer came too quickly for her to be surprised. She knew exactly why she was there. And she knew exactly what was in that little plastic bag.

  Gamache knew Amelia well enough to know she’d prepared for this encounter. Perhaps a little too much. She wasn’t showing the natural curiosity, even astonishment, of the innocent.

  Instead she displayed the rehearsed answers of the guilty.

  He glanced at the Commander to see if he’d picked up on the same thing and saw that he of course had.

  Gamache felt his heart speed up as he saw the point of no return approaching. He’d made up his mind what had to be done, though it seemed his heart remained unconvinced. But he knew he had to see this through.

  Amelia Choquet’s breathing had changed. Shorter, more rapid.

  She too could see the point of no return. Just there. On the horizon. Getting closer. Fast.

  The clicking had stopped. She was alert. An animal who, after living with smaller creatures, suddenly discovered a world of giants. Suddenly discovered it was tinier than it realized. More vulnerable than it thought. More threatened than it believed possible. A creature looking for escape and finding only a cliff.

  “It was in your room, under your mattress,” said the Commander.

  “You searched my room?” She sounded indignant, and Gamache almost admired her rally.

  Almost.

  “That’s not exactly the lede, is it Cadet Choquet?” The Commander lowered the baggie to his desk. “This is a narcotic. Enough to traffic.”

  “It’s not mine. I have no idea where it came from. If I was going to do something as stupid as having shit in the academy, I’d find a better hiding place. Like maybe someone else’s room.”

  “Are you suggesting someone planted it?” asked Gamache.

  She shrugged.

  “Intentionally?” he persisted. “Trying to set you up? Or just wanting to get it out of their own room?”

  “Take your pick. All I know is, it isn’t mine.”

  “The bag has been fingerprinted—”

  “Clever.”

  The Commander stared at her. Amelia, Gamache knew, had a rare ability to get up people’s noses. Though why she’d want to be there was anyone’s guess.

  “—and we’ll have the results soon. Where did you get it from?”

  “It’s. Not. Mine.”

  The clicking had begun again. A rat-a-tat-tat now, designed to annoy.

  Gamache could see the Commander struggling not to claw his way across his desk and reach for her throat.

  And Cadet Choquet was doing nothing to save herself. In fact, just the opposite. She was taunting them. Arrogant, smug, almost certainly deceitful, she was demanding to be doubted. And worse.

  An innocent cadet, when a Schedule 1 drug was discovered in her rooms, would protest innocence and try to work with them to find out whose it was.

  A guilty cadet would almost certainly at least pretend to do the same.

  But she was doing neither.

  She’d gone from a vulnerable creature, trapped and frightened, to an aggressor, throwing out ridiculous and obvious lies.

  Amelia Choquet was a senior cadet. She’d matured into a natural leader, not the bully Gamache feared she’d become.

  She was quick-witted, alert. Someone others instinctively wanted to follow.

  Which made Cadet Choquet as trafficker in narcotics all the more dangerous. But not, with her background, completely unbelievable.

&nbs
p; Leaning closer to her, he saw the tattoos on her wrists and forearms, where the sleeves of her uniform had ridden up. Then his sharp gaze traveled to her face, and he saw something else. Something that might explain her lack of judgment, her self-destructive, erratic behavior in this meeting.

  Her reactions had been wild. Unpredictable. The reactions of a junkie.

  She hadn’t . . . ?

  His own eyes widened a little.

  “You foolish, foolish woman.” His voice was practically a snarl. Then he turned to the Commander. “We need a blood test. She’s high.”

  “Fuck you.”

  He glared at her. “When did you last use?”

  “I’ve taken nothing.”

  “Look at her,” Gamache said to the Commander before turning back to Amelia. “Your pupils are dilated. You think I don’t know what that means? Search her room again,” he said, and the Commander placed a call.

  “I have a mind to end it right now,” Gamache said, turning back to Amelia.

  “Don’t you dare. I’ve come too far. We’re so close. I can do this.”

  “You can’t. You’ve messed up. You’re messed up. You’ve gone too far.”

  “No, no. These are eyedrops. Only eyedrops.” She was almost begging. “It looks like I’m stoned, but I’m not.”

  “Tell the agents searching her room to look for eyedrops,” said Gamache, who wanted, was almost desperate, to believe her. To believe she hadn’t taken any of the drug herself.

  “They won’t find any,” said Amelia. “I threw them away.”

  There was silence as Gamache stared deep into the dilated eyes of the cadet.

  Seeing the look on Gamache’s face, she turned away from him and spoke to the Commander. “If you think I’d deal in that shit, you’re a worse judge of character than I thought.”

  “Drugs change people,” said the Commander. “Addiction changes people. As I think you know.”

  “I’ve been clean for years,” she said. “I’m not stoned. Why the fuck would I enroll in the Sûreté, for God’s sake, if I was still a junkie?”

  Gamache started to laugh. “You’re kidding, right? You get a gun and access to any amount of drugs? Most dirty agents at least have the sense to wait until they’ve graduated and are on the street before they turn. But then most don’t arrive as addicts.”