Glass Houses

CHAPTER 3

Judge Corriveau decided it was a good time to break for lunch.

The Chief Superintendent would be in the witness box for many days. Being examined and cross-examined.

It was now stifling in the courtroom, and as she left she asked the guard to turn the AC on, just for the break.

When she’d sat down that morning, Maureen Corriveau had been grateful that her first murder case as a judge would be fairly straightforward. But now she was beginning to wonder.

Not that she couldn’t follow the law involved. That was easy. Even the appearance of the robed figure in the village, while strange, was easily covered by clear laws.

What was making her perspire even more than just the overbearing heat was the inexplicable antagonism that had so quickly developed between the Crown and his own witness.

And not just any witness. Not just any arresting officer. The head of the whole damned Sûreté.

The Chief Crown wasn’t just getting in the Chief Superintendent’s face, he was getting up the man’s nose. And Monsieur Gamache did not like it.

She wasn’t an experienced judge, but as a defense attorney she was an experienced judge of human actions and reactions. And nature.

There was something else happening in her courtroom, and Judge Corriveau was determined to figure it out.

“Is it just me, or is this trial going a bit off the rails already?” asked Jean-Guy Beauvoir as he joined his boss in the corridor of the Palais de Justice.

“Not at all,” said Gamache, wiping his face with his handkerchief. “Everything’s perfect.”

Beauvoir laughed. “And by that you mean everything’s merde.”

“Exactly. Where’s Isabelle?”

“She’s gone ahead,” said Beauvoir. “Organizing things back at the office.”

“Good.”

Isabelle Lacoste was the head of homicide, personally selected for the job by Gamache when he’d left. There’d been grumbles when the announcement of Gamache’s successor had been made. Complaints of favoritism.

They all knew the story. Gamache had hired Lacoste a few years earlier, at the very moment she was about to be let go from the Sûreté. For being different. For not taking part in the bravado of crime scenes. For trying to understand suspects and not just break them.

For kneeling down beside the corpse of a recently dead woman and promising, within earshot of other agents, to help her find peace.

Agent Lacoste had been ridiculed, pilloried, subtly disciplined, and finally called into her supervisor’s office, where she came face-to-face with Chief Inspector Gamache. He’d heard of the odd young agent everyone was laughing at, and had gone there to meet her.

Instead of being thrown away, she was taken away by Gamache and placed in the most prestigious division in the Sûreté du Québec. Much to the chagrin of her former colleagues.

And that rancor had only escalated when she’d risen through the ranks to become Chief Inspector. But instead of responding to the critics, as some within her division had begged her to do, Lacoste had simply gone about her job.

And that job, she knew with crystalline clarity, was indeed simple though not easy.

Find murderers.

The rest was just noise.

When the day was done, Chief Inspector Lacoste went home to her husband and young children. But she always took part of her job with her, worrying about the victims and the killers still out there. Just as she always took part of her family with her when she went to work. Worrying about what sort of community, society, they would find when they left the safety of home.

“I just got a text,” said Beauvoir. “Isabelle has everyone in the conference room. She’s ordered sandwiches.”

He seemed to give both pieces of information equal importance.

“Merci,” said Gamache.

The corridors were crowded with clerks and witnesses and spectators, as the courtrooms in the Palais de Justice emptied for the lunch break.

Every now and then there appeared a figure in black robes.

Barristers, Gamache knew. Or judges. Also hurrying to grab something to eat.

But still, a sight that should have been familiar now gave him a start.

Inspector Beauvoir said nothing else about the morning’s testimony. The frozen look of efficiency on his boss’s face told him all he needed to know about whether it was going according to plan. Or not.

Chief Superintendent Gamache’s guard was up. A tall, thick wall of civility that even his son-in-law couldn’t penetrate.

Beauvoir knew exactly what was behind that wall, clawing to get out. And he also knew the Crown Prosecutor would not want it to actually get out.

They walked swiftly along the familiar cobblestoned streets of Old Montréal, a well-traveled route between their office and the courthouse. Past low-ceilinged, beamed restaurants full of the lunch crowd.

Jean-Guy glanced in, but kept going.

Up ahead was Sûreté headquarters, rising from the old city. Towering over it.

Not, Beauvoir thought, an attractive building. But an efficient one. It, at least, would have air-conditioning.

The two men emerged from the narrow street into the open square in front of Notre-Dame Basilica, weaving around tourists taking photographs of themselves in front of the cathedral.

When looked at years from now, they’d see the magnificent structure, and a whole lot of sweaty people in shorts and sundresses wilting in the scorching heat as the sun throbbed down on the cobblestones.

As soon as they entered Sûreté headquarters, they were hit by the air-conditioning. What should have felt good, refreshing, a relief, actually felt like someone had thrown a snowball into their faces.

The agents in the lobby saluted the chief, and the two men took the elevator. By the time they reached the top floor, they were drenched in sweat. Perversely, the AC opened the floodgates of perspiration.

Gamache and Beauvoir entered the chief’s office, with its floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Montréal, and from there across the St. Lawrence River to the fertile flatlands and the mountains on the horizon. Beyond which lay Vermont.

The gateway into the United States.

Gamache paused for a moment, staring at the wall of mountains. More porous than they appeared from a distance.

Then he opened a drawer and offered Beauvoir a clean, dry shirt.

Beauvoir declined. “I’m good. I wasn’t on the witness stand.” He walked to the door. “I’ll be in the conference room.”

Gamache quickly changed into the new shirt, then joined Beauvoir, Lacoste and the others.

They stood as he entered, but he waved them to be seated before taking his own chair.

“Tell me what you know.”

For the next half hour he listened and nodded. Asking few questions. Taking it all in.

These men and women, pulled from various departments, had been specially, carefully chosen. And they knew it.

This was a new era. A new Sûreté. His job, Gamache knew, wasn’t to keep the status quo. Nor was it to fix what was wrong.

His job was to build afresh. And while institutional memory and experience were important, it was vastly more important to have a solid foundation.

The officers in that room were the foundation upon which a whole new Sûreté du Québec was rising. Strong. Transparent. Answerable. Decent.

He was the architect and much more involved than his predecessors, some of whom had engineered the corruption of the past, and some of whom simply let it happen, by not paying attention. Or being afraid to say something.

Gamache was paying attention. And he insisted his senior officers did too.

And he insisted that they not be afraid to question. Him. The plans. Each other. Themselves. And indeed, many had questioned the new chief, ferociously, when shortly after taking over and immersing himself in their dossiers and briefings, he’d presented them with the reality.

“Things are getting worse,” he’d said. “Far worse.”

This had been almost a year earlier. In this same conference room.

They’d looked at him as he detailed what “far worse” meant. Some not comprehending. Some understanding perfectly well what he was saying. Their faces going from disbelieving to shocked.

He’d listened to their protests, their arguments. And then he said something he’d hoped wouldn’t be necessary. He didn’t want to shatter their confidence, or drain their energy. Or undermine their commitment.

But he could see now that they needed to know. They deserved to know.

“We’ve lost.”

They looked at him blankly. And then some, those who’d followed his report most clearly, blanched.

“We’ve lost,” he repeated, his voice even. Calm. Certain. “The war on drugs was lost a long time ago. That was bad enough, but what’s happened is the knock-on effect. If drugs are out of control, it isn’t long before we lose our grip on all crime. We aren’t there yet. But we will be. At the rate things are going, growing, we’ll be overwhelmed in just a few years.”

They’d argued, of course. Not wanting to see it. To accept it. And neither had he, when he’d first compiled the information. Put it all together. In the past, the departments had competed, been territorial. Had been reluctant to share information, statistics. Especially those that might make them look bad.

It appeared to Gamache that he was the first one to meld all the information. To put it all together.

He wondered if this was how the captain of a great ship felt when he alone knew it was sinking. To everyone else, it still looked fine. Moving along as it always had.

But he knew the cold waters, unseen, were rising.

At first he’d been in denial too. Going over and over the files. The figures. The projections.

And then one day in early autumn, at home in Three Pines, he’d laid his hand on the last dossier, gotten up from his seat by the fire, and gone for a walk.

Alone. No Reine-Marie. No Gracie. No Henri, who’d stood perplexed and hurt by the door. His ball in his mouth.

Gamache had walked, and walked. He’d sat on the bench above the village and looked out over the valley. The forests. To the mountains, some of which were in Québec. And some in Vermont.

The border, the boundary, impossible to see from there.

Then he’d lowered his head. Into his hands. And he’d kept it there, shutting out the world. The knowledge.

And then he’d gotten back up, and walked some more. For hours.

Trying to find a solution.

Suppose they got a larger budget? Hired more agents? Threw more resources at the crisis?

Surely there was something that could be done. The situation couldn’t possibly be hopeless.

He only stopped when he’d met himself again. The Armand who’d been standing on the side of the quiet road, in the middle of nowhere, waiting. At the intersection of truth and wishful thinking.

Where the straight road splayed.

And he knew then. They were all going down. Not just the Sûreté, but the entire province. And not necessarily his generation. But the next. And the next. His grandchildren.

He was up to his neck in crime. They’d be over their heads.

And he knew something else. Something he wished he didn’t know, but could not now deny.

There was nothing that could be done. They’d reached and passed the point of no return. Without even a lifeboat in sight. The corruption of decades within government and police forces had seen to that.

“So what do we do?” asked one of the older officers in the meeting. “Give up?”

“Non. I don’t have a solution. Not yet. So we bear down, do our jobs, communicate. Gather information and share it.”

He looked at each of them, sternly.

“And we try to come up with creative solutions. Come to me with anything, everything. No matter how crazy it sounds.”

What he felt in that room, as he left, wasn’t despair, not quite yet. Not yet panic, but panic adjacent.

And now, many months later, they sat in the same conference room.

All had looked so bleak back then. Now they were close, so close to their first major victory.

But it depended on this trial. The outcome, but also the path of it.

Perversely, when things had been at their worst, everything had appeared just fine. Québec, the Sûreté, functioning as it should.

Now that there was a glimmer of hope, things appeared to be spinning out of control.

Senior politicians and some media outlets had lately noticed what appeared to be a certain sleight of hand on the part of the head of the Sûreté.

Arrests were up. And for a while that had caused outright celebration on the part of politicians and their electorate.

Until the Radio-Canada television show, Enquête, had investigated and discovered that the arrests were mostly for small to medium-size crimes.

“Explain this,” the Premier Ministre du Québec had demanded, having called Chief Superintendent Gamache into his office in Québec City the day after the program aired.

The Premier had slapped a thick file onto his desk. Even from across the room, Gamache could see what it was.

The printout of the latest monthly report on Sûreté activities.

“I’ve checked. Fucking Enquête is right, Armand. Yes, arrests are up, and thank God you’re still managing to arrest murderers, but what about the rest? There hasn’t been a significant arrest in other divisions since you took over. No biker gang member, no organized crime figure. No drug arrests or even seizures. Minor trafficking, but nothing more. What the hell are you doing over there?”

“You of all people should know that statistics,” Gamache nodded toward the file, “don’t tell the whole story.”

“Are you saying all this,” the Premier put his hand on the file, “is a lie?”

“Non, not a lie. But not the complete truth.”

“Are you running for office? What sort of gibberish is that? I’ve never heard you so evasive.”

He glared at Gamache, who stared back. But said nothing more.

“What are you up to, Armand? Dear God, don’t tell me Enquête was right.”

In the TV program they’d intimated, but never crossed the line of actual slander, that Gamache was either incompetent or, like his predecessors, in the employ of organized crime.

“No,” said Gamache. “I can see how they might come to that conclusion, or have that suspicion. But Enquête was not right.”

“Then what is? I’m begging you for an answer. Give me something. Anything. Other than this pile of shit.” He shoved the papers across his desk with such force they cascaded over the edge. “You’re deliberately putting up this mist of arrests that looks good, until someone realizes they’re minor. Until fucking Enquête realized that.”

“We are arresting murderers.”

“Well, congratulations on that,” said the Premier.

They’d known each other a long time. Since Gamache had been a junior agent and the Premier was articling in the legal aid office.

“They’re calling you the worst Chief Superintendent of the Sûreté in a very long time. And that’s some bar to squeeze under.”

“It certainly is,” said Gamache. “But believe me, I am doing something. I really am.”

The Premier had held his gaze, searching for the lie.

Then Gamache bent down and picked the report off the floor. He handed it back to the Premier, who held the pile, which was heavy on statistics, and light on actual action.

“My own party is circling, smelling blood,” said the Premier. “Yours or mine. They don’t really care. But they want action, or a sacrifice. You have to do something, Armand. Give them what they want. What they deserve. A significant arrest.”

“I am doing something.”

“This”—the Premier laid his hand, with surprising gentleness, on top of the retrieved pages—“is not ‘something.’ Not even close. Please. I’m begging you.”

“And I’m begging you. Trust me,” said Armand quietly. “You have to get me across the finish line.”

“What does that mean?” the Premier had asked, also whispering.

“You know.”

And the Premier, who loved Québec but also loved power, blanched. Knowing he might have to give up one to preserve the other.

Armand Gamache looked at the good man in front of him and wondered which of them would survive the next few months. Weeks. Days. When the St.-Jean-Baptiste fireworks went off at the end of June, which of them would be standing there to see the skies lit up?

Which of them would still be standing?

Chief Superintendent Gamache had taken the train back to Montréal, walking from the station through the old city, to his office. A few heads turned as he passed, recognizing him from the unfortunately popular TV show that had aired the night before.

Or maybe they knew him from past appearances in the media.

Even before he was the most senior officer in the Sûreté, Armand Gamache had been the most recognizable police officer in Québec.

But what had once been glances of recognition and even respect were now tinged, tainted, with suspicion. Even amusement. He was on the verge of becoming a joke.

But Armand Gamache could see beyond those looks, to the finish line.

That had been mid-June. A month earlier, almost to the day. Now Gamache glanced at the clock and stood.

“Time to get back to court.”

“How’s it going, patron?” asked Madeleine Toussaint, the head of Serious Crimes.

“As expected.”

“That bad?”

Gamache smiled. “That good.”

They locked eyes, and then she nodded.

“You have that report coming in from an informant on the Magdalen Islands,” he said. Trying not to sound too hopeful. Or was the word “desperate”?

She’d mentioned this in the meeting. There’d been interest, but nothing unusual. Only a handful of them understood just what that report might mean.

“Will you hear in time for the meeting at the end of the day?” Beauvoir asked.

“I hope. It all sorta depends on what happens at the trial, doesn’t it?” said Toussaint.

Gamache nodded. Yes. It did.

After Superintendent Toussaint returned to her office, Beauvoir and Chief Inspector Lacoste remained with Gamache.

“Speaking of the trial,” said Lacoste, gathering up her papers, “I’m not sure I’ve seen a prosecutor go after his own witness in such a way. And the judge sure hasn’t. She’s new to the bench, but not to be underestimated.”

“Non,” said Gamache, who’d noticed the sharp look in Judge Corriveau’s eye.

They walked the length of the corridor and the elevator arrived. Lacoste got off at her floor.

“Good luck,” she said to Gamache.

“Good luck to you,” he said.

“Almost there, patron,” said Isabelle, as the doors closed.

Almost there, thought Gamache. But he knew that most accidents occurred within sight of home.

“Chief Superintendent Gamache, you testified this morning that the figure on the village green in Three Pines returned the next day. How did that make you feel?”

“Objection. Irrelevant.”

Judge Corriveau considered. “I’m going to allow it. The trial is about facts, but feelings are also a fact.”

Chief Superintendent Gamache thought before he answered.

“I felt angry, that the peace of our little village was being violated. Our lives disrupted.”

“And yet, he was just standing there.”

“True. You asked how I felt, and that’s the answer.”

“Were you afraid of him?”

“Maybe a little. Our myths are so deeply ingrained. He looked like Death. Rationally I knew he wasn’t that, but inside, I could feel the chill. It was”—he searched for the word—“instinctive.”

“And still, you did nothing.”

“As I told you before the break, there was nothing that I could do, beyond speaking with him. If I could have done something more, I would have.”

“Really? Judging by the Sûreté track record of late, that’s not exactly true.”

That brought outright laughter from the courtroom.

“Enough,” said Judge Corriveau. “Approach the bench.”

The Chief Crown did.

“You will not treat anyone like that in my courtroom, do you understand? That was a disgrace—to you, to your office, and to this court. You will apologize to the Chief Superintendent.”

“I’m sorry,” said the Crown, then turned to Gamache. “I apologize. I let my astonishment get the better of me.”

The judge gave a small sigh of annoyance but let it stand.

“Merci. I accept your apology,” said Gamache.

But still, Gamache glared at the Crown attorney with such focus, the man took a step back. Neither the jury nor the audience could fail to see both the look and the reaction.

In the gallery, Beauvoir nodded approval.

“So you did speak to him again, that next morning?” asked Zalmanowitz. “What did you say?”

“I told him again to be careful.”

“Clearly not of you,” said the Crown.

“No. Of whoever he’d targeted.”

“So you no longer thought it was a joke?”

“If it had been, I don’t think he’d have returned. He’d spooked the village with his first appearance. That would have been enough, had it been a joke, or even vindictive. No, this went deeper. There was commitment. There was a purpose.”

“Did you think he meant to do harm?” asked the Crown.

That was a more difficult question, and Chief Superintendent Gamache considered it. And slowly shook his head.

“I didn’t really know what he intended. Harm of some sort, it seemed. He was intentionally threatening. But did he have an act of violence in mind? If he did, why warn the person? Why wear that getup? Why not just do it, under cover of darkness? Hurt, even kill the person? Why just stand there for everyone to see?”

Gamache stared ahead of him, deep in thought.

The Crown seemed at a loss. So unusual was it for someone to actually think on the witness stand. They answered clear questions by telling the rehearsed truth, or a preplanned lie.

But they rarely actually thought.

“Of course, there are different ways of hurting, aren’t there?” said Gamache, as much to himself as the Crown.

“But whatever the original intention,” said Monsieur Zalmanowitz, “it led to murder.”

Now Gamache did focus, but not on the prosecution. He turned to the defense desk, and looked at the person accused of that murder.

“Yes, it did.”

Maybe, he thought, but didn’t say, it wasn’t enough to just kill. Maybe the point was to first terrify. Like the Scots and their shrieking bagpipes as they marched into battle, or the Maori and their haka.

It is death. It is death, they chant. To terrify, to petrify.

The dark thing wasn’t a warning, it was a prediction.

“You took a picture of him, I believe,” said the Crown, stepping in front of his witness, placing himself between Gamache and the defendant. Intentionally breaking that contact.

“Yes,” said Gamache, refocusing on the prosecution. “I sent it off to my second-in-command. Inspector Beauvoir.”

The Crown turned to the clerk.

“Exhibit A.”

An image appeared on the large screen.

If the Crown was expecting gasps behind him as those in the courtroom saw the photograph, he was disappointed.

Behind him there was complete and utter silence, as though the entire gallery had disappeared. So profound was the silence, he turned around to make sure they were indeed still there.

To a person they were staring, dumbfounded. Some openmouthed.

There on the screen was a quiet little village. The leaves were off the trees, leaving them skeletal. Three huge pines rose from the village green.

In contrast to the bright, sunny summer day beyond the courtroom window, the day in this photo was overcast. Gray and damp. Which made the fieldstone and clapboard and rose brick homes, with their cheery lights at the windows, all the more inviting.

It would have been an image of extreme peace. Sanctuary even. Would have been, but wasn’t.

In the center of the photo there was a black hole. Like something cut out of the picture. Out of the world.

Behind the Crown attorney there was a sigh. Long, prolonged, as life drained from the courtroom.

It was the first look most of them had had of the dark thing.