World of Curiosities

CHAPTER 3

After hosing down Honoré and finishing a Saturday morning breakfast of banana-filled crepes with crispy bacon and maple syrup, Annie, Jean-Guy, and the children headed to the car for the drive back to Montréal.

Armand held Idola while Reine-Marie kissed her daughter and Honoré. Then she turned to her son-in-law. “See you later?”

“Absolutely.”

He sounded far more enthusiastic than he was. The last thing Jean-Guy wanted was to sit in a stuffy auditorium on this fine June day and listen to speeches. While Annie and the kids went to a barbecue with friends near their home in Montréal.

He was doing this for Armand. Jean-Guy needed to be there in case this was the day something stepped out of that blind spot.

Armand kissed his granddaughter, then handed her back to Annie and turned to Honoré. Kneeling down to eye level, Armand opened his arms. The boy raced forward, plowing into him. Though prepared, he almost tipped over, and realized it would not be long before the boy actually tackled him.

Honoré, once free of the embrace, rifled his grandfather’s pockets, where he found a wintergreen mint in one and a licorice pipe in another. Their parting ritual.

As they drove out of Three Pines, past the tiny church and the bench on the brow of the hill, Jean-Guy looked in the rearview mirror. Reine-Marie was waving, but Armand had drawn in his elbows and hunched his shoulders against a chill no one else felt.

Except Inspector Beauvoir.

Maybe the Chief wasn’t so delusional after all. Maybe he could see what was coming.

There is always another story, thought Jean-Guy. There is more than meets the eye.

After getting into her dress, bought solely for this occasion, Harriet looked in the mirror.

You can do this, you can do this, you can do this.

She took several deep breaths, holding them, then slowly exhaling. As she’d been taught to do when she felt overcome with anxiety. Then she looked around to make sure she was alone.

Harriet Landers was nothing if not careful. It was a point of pride, as she’d watched the reckless behavior of her fellow students. Though as she’d seen them going to parties, getting high, heading to Cuba and Mexico and Florida for March break, Harriet had begun to wonder if “careful” was really the word.

Bending down quickly, she reached into her knapsack for the special gift for her aunt. She felt its heft in her hand and knew Auntie Myrna would be surprised.

By the time Armand and Reine-Marie had found parking and got to the auditorium, the place was throbbing as hundreds of parents and friends greeted each other. Barely believing this day had finally come. When they could stop writing checks.

Though they all suspected that day never really came. But the big obligation was done.

Their children were graduating from university, and with a degree that might actually get them a job.

How well Armand and Reine-Marie remembered sitting in similar auditoriums watching first Daniel, then Annie take their degrees.

But this event, in this university, evoked far more complex feelings.

Armand’s eyes swept the crowd, observing, noting. The proud parents and grandparents. The bored and resentful younger siblings, glancing toward the windows. And the sunshine.

The Chief Inspector’s practiced gaze took in the professors in their gowns, the Chancellor in his ceremonial robes, chatting with parents. The technicians onstage, preparing to begin.

But his eyes kept returning to the large young man standing by the door. He wore jeans and a hoodie and was unlike anyone else there.

Dark hair in a bun. A small growth of beard. And a bulge—was that a bulge under his sweatshirt?

Gamache started forward just as a uniformed officer went up to the man. Armand watched. Alert. Prepared.

Then he stopped and smiled with relief.

The younger man was a plainclothes officer, assigned by the local Montréal police. He looked over at Gamache and brought his hand up in a subtle salute.

Gamache nodded. Then continued his survey of the auditorium.

It was a scrutiny born of long years of practice. And necessity. Crowds were always, for a cop, problematic, and never more so than here. Today.

While he’d spent part of that morning remembering the early days with Beauvoir. Jean-Guy. Agent. Now, as he walked through the milling crowd, Armand remembered his own early days in the Sûreté. And the first time he’d come here to the École Polytechnique, the engineering school for the Université de Montréal.

He’d been in the final week of a placement in the Montréal ambulance service, training with a senior paramedic. Though already a graduate from the Sûreté Academy, and having applied to the Criminal Intelligence Division, he’d volunteered for this extra training while waiting to hear about his first placement.

It had been a cold day in early December. He’d just bought a plane ticket to visit his godfather, Stephen Horowitz, in Paris. He’d be flying out Christmas Day. It was the cheapest flight he could find.

Armand and his supervisor were packing up at the end of their shift when the call came through.

There was an incident at the École Polytechnique. That was all. No other information. Armand looked at the clock on the station wall. It was almost six p.m.

“Come on, Gamache,” she said. “Let’s go. It’s probably nothing. A drunk student. I’ll buy you a beer later.”

They went.

She was wrong.

It was December 6, 1989. And it was not a drunk student.

“Bonjour, Armand.”

He turned, startled. “Nathalie!”

They embraced, then examined each other. There was gray in their hair now. And lines down their faces.

It was what happened naturally when people were allowed to grow older.

Nathalie Provost had been a young engineering student when they’d first met.

She was going about her day, going to her classes near the end of the semester as they prepared for the Christmas break. When it happened.

Armand was not that much older than she was. Than all of them. When they first met. When it happened.

Nathalie looked around the crowded auditorium before turning to Reine-Marie and hugging her too. Old friends by now.

“A beautiful day,” Nathalie said, and they knew she meant more than the fine spring weather.

“It is,” said Reine-Marie.

“I hope you’re staying for the reception.”

“We wouldn’t miss it.”

Just then Myrna arrived. She was hard to miss in her exuberant caftan of bright pink and lime green. Reine-Marie waved her over. She moved through the crowd like an ocean liner and docked beside Reine-Marie, who introduced her to Nathalie.

“Landers,” said Nathalie. “Any relation to Harriet?”

“My niece. I take full credit for her brilliance.”

Nathalie laughed.

Myrna’s eyes went to the stage, where a huge bouquet of white roses sat in a vase on a table. Nathalie’s eyes followed.

“We must never forget,” Myrna said.

“No danger of that,” said Reine-Marie.

“I hope you’re right,” said Nathalie. “But I’m not so sure. We see how easy it’s becoming to move backward and call it progress. No, we need to do more than just not forget. We need to remember.” She studied the woman in front of her. “Myrna Landers. You’re the psychologist.”

“Retired.”

“Not completely,” said Nathalie. “I read the report Armand asked you to write about Fiona Arsenault. You supported her taking her degree today.” Nathalie looked more closely at the woman in front of her. “You look uncomfortable. Is something wrong? Was your report not accurate?”

“No, no, it was accurate. As far as it went.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I guess I wish the issue hadn’t come up.” Myrna shot Armand a look. “It’s difficult. Psychology isn’t an exact science, unlike engineering.”

“And even then, buildings and bridges still collapse.”

There was an awkward silence as Nathalie Provost twisted the thin ring on the little finger of her right hand.

When Agent Gamache and his supervisor had arrived at the École Polytechnique that December evening, they found chaos.

The sun had set, and the place was lit with the glare of headlights bouncing off banks of snow and hitting the imposing engineering building.

Exhaust from emergency vehicles hung in the frigid air.

Gamache’s supervisor told him to stay by the ambulance while she tried to find out what had happened. What was still happening. She came back none the wiser, but considerably paler.

“There’re tactical units outside the building,” she told him. “They’re armed.”

“But they haven’t gone in?”

“No.”

The information they did pick up was contradictory and garbled. Even a newly minted Sûreté agent knew the one thing to avoid in an emergency was this. Confusion. But it too hung thick in the air.

There was a lone gunman inside, they heard. There were two gunmen. Three. A gang of them.

He was dead. He was still shooting.

Students started running from the building, shouting for help. Gamache and others on the scene moved forward, wrapping the dazed and panicked young men in blankets and checking for wounds as the senior cops peppered them with questions. Digging for, desperate for, solid information.

And still the tactical squad waited. For what?

Finally, the word came. The gunman had shot himself. There were multiple casualties. They could go in.

Armand and his supervisor moved quickly through the outer doors, not far behind the armed cops, and were immediately hit by a thick wall of sound. Screams of pain. Cries, pleas for help. Orders shouted by the police.

And not just orders. There were warnings now.

There might be another attacker hiding in a classroom. Armed. Maybe with hostages.

Classrooms might be booby-trapped with nail bombs.

Armand’s heart was pounding, his eyes wide. He tried to control his breathing, to remain calm. To keep his mind clear. To remember his training.

But there was a shriek inside his head. Leave. Leave. Run away. Go home. You shouldn’t even be here. Go.

He’d never known fear like this. Never knew such terror existed.

At each classroom, he expected to see the man. The gun.

At every door he threw open, he braced for the impact. Of bullets or nails. Of splintered wood and shards of glass.

Then, when that didn’t happen, when the room was empty except for overturned desks and chairs, he moved on. To the next door, the next classroom. Down, down the long hallway, he and his supervisor ran. Following the screams. Throwing open doors. Scanning. Every detail preternaturally sharp and clear.

Then, finally, they found them. Lying against the wall of their classroom. The bodies. Of the dead and wounded. It was suddenly very quiet. The wounded had no energy left to call for help. To even moan in pain. They were just trying to keep breathing.

He went to the first person clearly alive, though bleeding heavily.

“What’s your name?” he asked as he knelt beside her, his eyes and hands moving quickly over her blood-soaked clothing. Trying to find the wound.

“Nathalie,” she whispered.

“Nathalie, my name is Armand. I’m here to help.” He pulled bandages from his kit. “Where does it hurt?”

She couldn’t tell him. She was numb, going into shock.

He found one wound. Two. Three.

This woman, barely more than a kid, had been shot four times.

He put a compression bandage on the worst of her injuries, talking the whole time. Forcing his voice to be calm. Telling her she was going to be fine.

“Ça va bien aller.”

Repeating her name.

She was shivering. Nathalie. Her lips turning blue. Nathalie. He took off his coat and laid it over her.

As he worked, he asked her easy, mundane questions to keep her conscious. Blood was running into her eyes from a head wound. He wiped it away, but her eyes had closed.

“Where do you live?” “What courses are you taking?” “Stay with me, Nathalie.”

Armand stayed with her, holding her hand sticky with her own blood, calling for a stretcher. Yelling for a stretcher.

“Ça va bien aller, Nathalie.”

A stretcher finally arrived minutes, what seemed like hours, later. She gripped his hand as they took her from the classroom.

His supervisor grabbed his arm and shouted, “Come on. Move. There’re more.”

Armand had to yank his hand free as Nathalie disappeared into the hallway. And he moved in the other direction, searching for survivors.

It was only after half an hour and more victims that his supervisor, bending over one of the bodies and checking for a pulse that was no longer there, had turned to him, her eyes wide.

“Women. My God, they’re all women.”

Armand looked around. He’d been so busy just functioning, trying to help, trying to keep the horror and terror at bay, that he hadn’t noticed.

She had seen what he’d missed.

The gunman had only murdered, only wounded, only targeted women.

The fourteen white roses on stage represented each young woman murdered that day, thirty years and a stone’s throw away from where they now stood.

The killer had separated out the men and told them to leave. And then he’d shot the women. For daring to believe they could enter a man’s world without consequence. For daring to become engineers.

They were murdered because they were women. For having opinions. And desires.

Oh yes, and breasts, and a sweet pear hidden in my body.

Whenever there’s talk of demons, these come in handy.

Later, years later, Armand would read those words by Ruth Zardo, his favorite poet. And he would know the truth of it.

Death sits on my shoulder like a crow

… Or a judge, muttering about sluts and punishment.

And licking his lips.

Fourteen white roses. Fourteen murdered.

Thirteen wounded. Including Nathalie Provost.

It became known as the Montréal Massacre. The catchy alliteration made it easily digestible for those reading the headlines. Something awful had happened. They read the story and shook their heads in genuine sorrow. But most did not look deeper.

The Montréal Massacre.

For the families of victims and the survivors there were no words to describe what happened. It was both much bigger than the blaring headlines and more intimate. More personal. More universal. Much worse.

One of the police officers had entered the building and found his own daughter among the dead.

That had haunted Armand, and never more so than when, a few years later, he and Reine-Marie had Annie. He tried not to imagine, but couldn’t help …

Many of the families and survivors returned to the École Polytechnique each year to attend the graduation. For more than thirty years they’d supported and applauded those who walked across the stage to accept their degrees. In some ways surrogates for their daughters, sisters, friends. Fellow students. Who never made it that far.

These graduates were testaments to the fact that the gunman had not won. Hate and ignorance had not won. Though even now, those who listened closely could hear the mutterings, the talk of demons. That never really went away.

Many of the first responders, the cops and ambulance attendants from that day, also came to each graduation. In solidarity.

Gamache’s paramedic supervisor had died a few years earlier of breast cancer, after having joined the campaign for gun control. As had Armand. And he continued to press for even tougher gun control. Arguing as a now senior Sûreté officer that there was absolutely no reason a member of the public should have a handgun. And certainly not an assault-style weapon. They were only designed, and intended, to shoot humans.

A few months after the shootings, Nathalie Provost found Agent Gamache and returned his paramedic coat.

“I had it cleaned,” the young woman said, holding it out to him. “But…”

There were stains that would never come out. Nor should they.

Yes. Armand Gamache hated guns.

Finally, after all the testimony before Parliament, it was the clear, thoughtful, powerful voices of the families of the victims and survivors that swayed lawmakers to enact stricter legislation. Though some politicians privately complained that tougher gun control was a huge overreaction. The fact only women were killed was a coincidence.

The Montréal Massacre, while tragic, held no greater lesson. It was the act of a single deranged individual. Not an indictment of society, they said.

These women, they said, were understandably upset. Emotional. But there was no need to pander to them. That would be wrong.

The shootings, the denials, the scoffing at all evidence of institutionalized misogyny, the pushback against gun control, the patronizing attitude of editors and politicians, only served to radicalize those women.

Before the shooting, they were students.

Now they were warriors.

Before I was not a witch, wrote Ruth Zardo. But now I am one.

Before that day, that long night, Agent Gamache had wanted to go into the Criminal Intelligence Division of the Sûreté. Had applied. Was waiting to hear.

The next day he withdrew his application. And instead applied to homicide.