There was no reception. No signal. No signal.
Amelia kept stopping to check.
She had to get to the Chief Inspector. She’d seen the message from the coroner telling him that Boisfranc was Fleming. But he wasn’t.
The caretaker, now disemboweled, was one of his victims.
She knew what must’ve happened. The glass she’d picked up from the caretaker’s room had someone else’s DNA. The only other person who used the basement kitchen was the minister, Robert Mongeau.
Could he have done it on purpose? Handling things in the caretaker’s small bedroom so his DNA would be on it and forensics would mistake it for Boisfranc’s? They’d see the match with Fiona and assume Boisfranc was Fleming.
That’s exactly what had happened.
Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Robert Mongeau was the escaped serial killer. He was in Gamache’s home and the Chief Inspector had no idea.
No signal. No signal.
She and Harriet raced, then stopped. Raced forward through the forest, then stopped to check her phone.
No signal. No …
One bar.
“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” said Amelia, her hands shaking so badly she could barely hit the right icon for Gamache’s number.
It rang. And rang.
No answer. No answer.
“Ffffffuck.” She called headquarters and spoke to the duty officer. Giving him the information even as she ran.
He already knew. Had received a message from the Chief Inspector minutes ago saying Robert Mongeau, the minister, was John Fleming. Amelia then found the same message on her phone.
Gamache knew, so there was a chance …
But the message said no more. If the Chief Inspector could, he would have issued orders. Instructions. More information.
But there was nothing beyond those few words: Mongeau is Fleming.
Fortunately, Agent Choquet knew exactly where John Fleming was, and she told the duty officer.
“His home?” said the agent, unable to conceal his shock. “The serial killer is in Chief Inspector Gamache’s home?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, shit. I’m sending every agent down and alerting the local detachment. I’ll trace his phone and let you know where the Chief is.”
But Amelia feared it was already too late. Feared what the silence from the Chief Inspector meant. Feared what they would find once there. Not just Gamache, but Beauvoir and Madame Gamache as well.
As soon as she’d gotten to the lake house, Amelia had been told that Madame Gamache had returned to Three Pines. Amelia had immediately rushed back.
Now she could feel the panic rising, threatening to overwhelm her. She tamped it down.
“My aunt,” said Harriet. “We can call her. She can go over.”
“And then what?” They were running again. Tripping, helping each other up. Holding each other’s arms as they ran through the forest toward the car. “If she goes over there, she’ll be killed.”
She’d almost said “too.” Killed too.
Six minutes.
A phone rang. It was Beauvoir’s. It was lying on the floor where it had fallen when Sam hit him.
Sam picked it up. “Amelia Choquet,” he read on the screen. “There’s a text from her too, and an earlier one from”—he turned to Gamache—“you.”
Fleming raised his brows. “Now, what could you have said? Open it.”
Jean-Guy shook his head.
Fleming grabbed Reine-Marie again. “Open it,” he shouted.
“You’ll have to untie me,” said Beauvoir.
Armand held his breath. Do it. Do it.
He tried to keep his expression blank. His body unchanged. Even as he prepared to move.
Do it.
Fleming nodded, and Sam walked over to Gamache, holding the phone out.
“I hope you have the code.” Fleming needed to say no more.
Resigned, Armand took the phone and punched in the numbers. He’d hoped and prayed this wouldn’t happen. But there was nothing he could do now. They had one chance and now it seemed even that was gone.
Sam grabbed the phone back and read the two texts. Amelia’s first.
“Well, looks like they found Boisfranc. They must think Godin is you,” he said to Fleming.
Then Sam’s face grew hard, his eyes narrowed, as he read the next text. From Gamache.
“What is it?” said Fiona.
Sam turned the phone around and showed the message to Fleming. It was—it should have been—the distraction Armand needed, but Sam was blocking his view of Reine-Marie. He couldn’t see the knife. Couldn’t see, or get to, Fleming.
He had to let it pass. Time and patience. He was running out of both.
When Sam stepped aside, Armand saw Fleming’s eyes drilled into him. “Seems, Armand, you were slightly smarter than I thought. You figured it out.”
“What did he figure out?” Fiona demanded.
“He sent a text to his entire team telling them that I’m Fleming. They’ll have alerted the local Sûreté.”
“Shit,” she said, heading for the door. “They’ll be here any minute.”
“Where’re you going?” demanded Sam.
“To look out for them, where do you think?”
They both looked at Fleming, who nodded to her. “Go. Warn us when you see them.”
This was unexpected. The first wrench in the works. And the meticulous Fleming hated wrenches. He had very little ability, or need, to pivot.
Until now.
Gamache’s body tingled, every nerve jangling. How would Fleming react? Would he slaughter them all now and run, like any sensible lunatic? Or stick to the plan?
“Fuck,” said Sam. “We have to do it now. Then get out.”
“No,” shouted Fleming. “Not yet. Four minutes. But”—he stared at Gamache—“we can make a start. I believe you have those photographs in your pocket. Take them out, Armand.”
When he hesitated, Fleming screamed, “Take them out!”
Armand took a deep breath, then put his hand in his pocket and brought out the pictures. Used in court. The ones that, like Medusa, changed anyone who looked at them forever.
“Put them on the table.”
Armand did.
“Back up. Further.”
Armand did.
Fleming nodded to Sam. “Give them each one.”
Reine-Marie took it but didn’t look. Instead, she kept her eyes on her husband. She saw in him a profound sadness, and apology.
“Look at it!” Fleming screamed, tightening his grip until she could barely breathe.
“Fleming,” shouted Armand.
“Stay where you are. Look at the photograph. Look at what’s about to happen to you.”
And Reine-Marie did. And Jean-Guy did.
Armand watched their faces pale. Watched fear turn to terror turn to horror. Watched as the size of the monster in the room with them became clear.
Agent Choquet and Harriet stopped, gasping for breath, at the top of the hill that overlooked Three Pines. A message had come through.
“Gamache’s phone is in the Old Train Station,” said Amelia.
Harriet took off. Maybe this, she thought, was why she’d spent her adult life running. She’d thought it was to get away, but maybe she’d been in training to run toward.
Amelia chased after the wild woman, who was still clinging to the tree branch as though it were a club. It looked like Amelia had stumbled across the missing link in the forest outside Three Pines. There was something primal not just in Harriet’s appearance, but in her being.
Her lifelong flight response had turned to fight.
“Three minutes. I, of course, will be the one to finish what you started, Armand, so many years ago. When you broke your promise to me. But I promised young Sam here that he could help. And I keep my word.”
He nodded to Sam, who tucked Beauvoir’s gun into his belt and approached Gamache with the hunting knife.
“I’ve hated you from the first moment you came into our house,” said Sam. “When you ruined everything.”
Armand kept his eyes on Reine-Marie, and she on him. But he could see Sam getting closer.
Come on. Come on, Armand begged. Come get me.
“Look at me!” shouted Sam. His arm shot out, bringing the blade to Gamache’s throat. But Armand did not move his eyes from Reine-Marie.
Closer. Come closer. Come on, you little shit. Just one more step.
Another few inches and Armand could grab the gun from Sam’s belt.
Come on. Come on.
He could shoot Fleming before the man knew what was happening. And he could overpower Sam. He knew he could. The adrenaline was rushing through him. His senses in overdrive. True, the knife might slash his throat, but Gamache knew there’d be a few precious seconds of consciousness. And that was all he’d need.
He didn’t drop his eyes, didn’t want Sam or Fleming to know what he was about to do.
Come on.
“Wait, stop,” commanded Fleming. “Step away. Give me the gun.”
Sam did.
Fleming held it up and looked at Armand. “Well, that was close.”
Armand knew then that Fleming had done it on purpose. Allowed Sam to get within inches. Allowed Armand to hope, hope, that there was a chance.
Only to take it away.
Seeing this, Jean-Guy began to flail. Struggling to get his hands free. But he could not. The cords were tied too tight. In knots, he realized, he’d taught Sam after the boy had been kicked out of Scouts.
Jean-Guy had asked Sam why, but hadn’t asked the Scout leader. If he had, he’d have discovered that it wasn’t because Sam wet his bed during a sleepover, as Sam claimed. It was because the boy, all of twelve, had killed a cat, and the Scout leader had found out.
Had the Scout leader not taken pity on the boy, knowing his background, had the Scout leader warned the authorities, had the authorities warned the foster home. Had the foster home looked in the crawl space, they’d have found the other creatures Sam Arsenault had eviscerated.
Then none of this would have happened.
But none of that happened.
Instead, Jean-Guy had taken it upon himself to teach the boy some of the things he might have learned in Scouts. Like tying knots.
Armand had warned him not to get too close. But Jean-Guy did not agree with Gamache. He knew that Sam was the victim and Fiona was the dangerous one. The psychopath.
They were both right, and both wrong.
Jean-Guy rolled and thrashed, fighting to get loose. Honoré, Idola. Annie.
Annie. Honoré. Idola. Jean-Guy bucked and fought and struggled.
Tears of frustration and rage and terror blinded him. He howled his outrage.
Henri and Fred and Gracie were barking and scratching and throwing themselves against the study door.
Armand’s eyes fell on the picture his granddaughter had made when all seemed so dark, so hopeless, during the pandemic. When something as simple as going to the grocery store was a life-and-death act.
When something as simple as an act of kindness by children could give hope.
Ça va bien aller.
There was always hope. If he was right, if he was right. If …
It was a huge “if.” He feared it was magical thinking. But Armand Gamache believed in magic.
Amelia’s phone rang.
“Where are you?” the voice demanded.
The person didn’t identify herself, didn’t have to. It was Isabelle Lacoste, Inspector Lacoste, who shared second-in-command duties with Inspector Beauvoir.
“Almost at the Incident Room in Three Pines.”
“The local Sûreté is still seven minutes away. I’m right behind them. Are you armed?”
“Oui.”
“Wait for backup.”
“Oui.”
“Eleven thirty, Armand. You know the significance.”
“Non.”
He did, of course, but wanted to shove Fleming closer to the edge. To give him the impression that something so significant to him meant nothing to the man he hated.
It also kept Fleming’s attention on him. Away from Reine-Marie. Away from Jean-Guy.
Think. Think. Come on.
Gamache’s eyes now gripped Fleming’s.
He could see this insult was working. Fleming, wildly unpredictable, was becoming more unbalanced.
Come on.
“You fucker. You do know. I know you know.”
Gamache just shrugged. “Désolé, but that time means nothing to me.”
He saw Fleming’s eyes narrow. The risk, the terrible risk, was that in pushing Fleming so far, the man would first do harm to Reine-Marie before turning on him.
He could see it in Fleming’s eyes. In his grip on the knife. His grip on Reine-Marie tightening.
“Oh, wait. Is that the time when you left the SHU?” he asked, pulling Fleming back from the cliff.
Fleming glared at him and loosened his grip, slightly. “It’s the time you dragged me back in.”
“Right. But for a brilliant man, you must’ve known I’d never let you out.”
Gamache was scrambling to keep Fleming focused and occupied. And just off-balance enough.
Push, recover. Push, recover.
“The very fact that you thought I would proves your insanity,” Gamache continued. “And now you think you’ve bested me? Do I look like a man in despair? You know, somewhere in that lunatic brain of yours, that there’s something you’ve forgotten, John.”
The room had grown quiet. Beauvoir had stopped shouting. Even the dogs were silent. Time had suspended. The earth had stopped moving.
Armand could see it in Fleming’s eyes. Finally. Finally.
If Fleming could get into Gamache’s head, and he could, then Gamache could get into Fleming’s.
And he was. Finally.
Gamache could see the piles of garbage, the sewage, the rot and decay and filth. The hatred and jealousy, the loathing. The madness.
And the fissure of doubt that had let him in.
He could see Fleming’s mind working. Going over and over what he had spent years planning. Building. Was it possible, he was asking himself, that there was some detail, some miniscule item he’d forgotten?
The sort of tiny mistake that could derail a train, collapse a building.
Bring an entire bridge falling into the St. Lawrence. One small miscalculation. One tiny, missed calculation. And catastrophe.
“His files,” said Sam. “In the basement. The ones Fiona told us about. There must be something in them. Something he found. He knows even if we kill him, his people will find it.”
“That’s impossible. There is nothing.”
“Then why does he keep it locked?” demanded Sam, his own voice rising with anxiety.
Gamache could see Fleming’s doubt growing by the second. He was tempted to push in further, but resisted. He knew that his silence only made it worse. It spoke of confidence.
Which he did not actually feel.
Though the Chief Inspector was confident of one thing. His days, months, years as an investigator had proved that everyone had secrets. Things they kept from the world. Often from themselves. But they were there. Buried deep. Festering.
Even a psychopath had things he never wanted to admit, even to himself. Secrets that might be locked in the room in the basement.
“You’re fucking with us,” snarled Fleming.
“You’re right. There is nothing there.”
Fleming glared at him, his eyes scanning, digging, tunneling deeper. Trying to find the truth. And the beauty was, Armand had just told the truth.
There was nothing.
“Tie them up,” said Fleming, and Sam quickly bound Reine-Marie’s and Armand’s hands behind their backs.
“You stay here,” he said to Sam, handing him the gun again and taking the huge hunting knife, always his weapon of choice. “If we aren’t back in three minutes, shoot them.”
As he pushed Gamache toward the basement door, Fleming looked out the window. Still no sign of cops. No signal from Fiona. He had a moment of doubt, but then he saw her standing on the front lawn, looking up the road out of the village.
Gamache saw her too. Still, he clung to hope. Though he knew that when the clock on the mantel struck the half hour, no power on earth could save them.
Fleming flicked on the lights and Armand started down, his mind racing. He’d managed to separate Fleming and Sam, but he was far from certain that was an improvement.
As he walked down the stairs, his eyes traveled around the familiar space, for something, anything, he might use. This must have been, he realized, where Sam had hidden. He’d obviously gone through the box of Christmas ornaments. Finding the tinsel to tie them up with. A big glass ball lay shattered in the dirt.
Daniel, just a child at the time, had bought it with his allowance to celebrate the millennium. It was now a curiosity. And a family treasure.
Was that the sound he’d heard earlier in the evening? Not Fred, but Daniel’s ornament breaking? Could all of this have ended then had he only looked closer when he’d come down?
He thought of his grandchildren, his children, at the cabin, and what would happen if this lunatic and his apprentices escaped.
“Hurry.” Fleming gave him a shove, and Gamache lost his footing, tumbling the last few steps. Unable to reach out to cushion the fall, he twisted and landed on his shoulder, then rolled a few times, ending up on his back, winded. Gasping for breath.
“Get up,” Fleming commanded. “You have two minutes now to open that door, get the files, and get back upstairs before Sam starts.”
Gamache rolled onto his knees and knelt there for a moment, head down, gasping for breath. Then he struggled to his feet and staggered to the metal door to the room where all the secrets were kept.
Amelia and Harriet were almost at the stone bridge over the Bella Bella when a voice came out of the darkness.
“Stop. Wait.”
Not a shout, but an urgent plea.
Amelia drew her gun. She recognized the voice. It was Fiona Arsenault. She was running toward them, waving her arms.
“They’re in the house. Quick. We’re almost out of time.”
Amelia hesitated. This could be, probably was, a trick.
Gamache’s phone was in the Incident Room. There was every reason to believe he was too, and Fiona Arsenault, John Fleming’s daughter, was luring them away.
“For God’s sake,” pleaded Fiona. “You have to believe me.”
Amelia Choquet, who’d seen terrible people do terrible things on the streets, had also seen acts of immense, immeasurable courage.
But which one was this? She stared at Fiona. Stared. Stared.
Then she changed direction and ran after Fiona, Harriet hard on her heels. The three young women raced across the village green, past the pines, toward the house.
“What’s the code?”
Fleming was standing in front of the keypad.
“Zero, zero, zero, zero.”
Fleming turned and glared at him. “You’re lying.”
Armand’s head was lowered as he struggled for breath, his shoulders heaving. Raising his eyes, he met Fleming’s.
“Would you have ever guessed it?”
Fleming smiled, shook his head, then punched in the numbers. There was a clunk. Fleming reached out and turned the door handle. But it didn’t move.
“You dumb f—”
That’s as far as he got. Armand launched himself forward, knocking Fleming against the wall.
Hearing the struggle in the basement, Sam lifted the gun to Reine-Marie’s head.
“Stop,” Jean-Guy screamed. “No!!”
Amelia skidded around the corner of the house and onto the back patio.
In a flash she could see what was happening.
Armand heard the shot.
The shard of glass he’d picked up from Daniel’s broken ornament had cut the tinsel almost all the way through. Now, with all his might, Armand wrenched his wrists free.
There was a second shot.
He yelled, a roar of rage and anguish, even as he crushed Fleming against the wall. His hand shot up and grabbed Fleming’s wrist just before the knife could reach him.
It flew away as both men fell to the ground. Gamache’s hand closed around something, and he lashed out, hitting Fleming squarely on the skull. Once. Twice.
He heard a cracking but didn’t stop to check. He knew the man was down. And wasn’t getting up.
Grabbing the knife, he ran up the stairs, two at a time.
At the top he rammed into someone, knocking both of them to the floor. Gamache scrambled to his feet, his eyes wild. Brandishing the knife.
“Chief,” shouted Amelia, her hands up in front of her.
He took her in, then looked around. Around. A—
And there she was. Coming toward him.
He dropped the knife and went to Reine-Marie. They clung to each other. Rocking and sobbing. Then Armand reached out and grabbed Jean-Guy, bringing him into the embrace, as Amelia and Harriet looked on.
And Fiona knelt by her brother.