“Yes, I understand,” said Armand. “And that’s one of the reasons I’m here. I really can’t tell you much, partly because we don’t know much. But I can tell you that Katie Evans’s murder doesn’t seem to have been random.”
“What does that mean?” asked Myrna. “She was the target all along? Did the cobrador do it? He must’ve.”
“It looks like it,” said Armand, and wondered if they noticed the evasion.
“But why toy with her?” asked Clara. “That’s just cruel.”
“From what you told us, the original cobradors weren’t cruel,” said Myrna. “They were almost passive. Like an act of civil disobedience.”
“Wouldn’t be the first example of something good and decent twisted to suit another agenda,” said Reine-Marie.
“But still, if you look at what the cobrador actually did,” said Clara. “He just stood there. For two days. Not hurting anyone.”
“Until he killed Katie,” Myrna pointed out. But she shook her head. “It still doesn’t add up. If you’re going to try to terrify someone, why do it with some obscure Spanish creature no one knows about? And one that has a history of nonviolence.”
Armand was nodding. They were back to that. If the original cobradors were known for anything, it was extraordinary acts of bravery.
“He did nothing wrong,” said Clara, “and we hated him.”
“You defended him,” Armand pointed out. “When he was threatened.”
“We didn’t want him killed,” said Myrna. “But Clara’s right. We wanted him gone. You too, I think.”
Armand slowly nodded. It was true. The cobrador was different, unexpected, uninvited. Not playing by the normal rules of civilized behavior.
He’d unearthed some uncomfortable, some unpleasant questions. Maybe even some truths.
“You’re right,” Armand admitted. “But for all that, it’s important not to romanticize. There’s a very good chance he murdered Madame Evans.”
“Maybe—” Clara began, but stopped.
“Go on,” said Myrna. “Say it.”
“Maybe she deserved it. I’m sorry. That’s an awful thing to say. No one deserves it.”
“No,” said Reine-Marie. “But we know what you mean. Maybe Katie Evans did something to bring this on.”
“She must have,” said Myrna. “If what you say is true. That the cobrador was a conscience.”
“But a conscience doesn’t kill,” said Clara. “Does it?”
“Of course it does,” said Myrna. “To stop a greater evil. Yes.”
“So murder is sometimes justified?” asked Reine-Marie.
“If not justified, it’s explainable, at least,” said Myrna, filling the void. “Even atrocities. We might not like the explanation, but we can’t deny it. Look at Nuremberg. Why did the Holocaust happen?”
“Because deluded, power-crazy leaders needed a common enemy,” said Clara.
“No,” said Myrna. “It happened because no one stopped them. Not enough people stood up soon enough. And why was that?”
“Fear?” asked Clara.
“Yes, partly. And partly programming. All around them, respectable Germans saw others behaving brutally toward people they considered outsiders. The Jews, gypsies, gays. It became normal and acceptable. No one told them what was happening was wrong. In fact, just the opposite.”
“No one should have had to,” snapped Reine-Marie.
“Myrna’s right,” said Armand, breaking his silence. “We see what she describes all the time. I saw it in the Sûreté Academy. I saw it in the brutality of the Sûreté itself. We see it when bullies are in charge. It becomes part of the culture of an institution, a family, an ethnic group, a country. It becomes not just acceptable, but expected. Applauded even.”
“But what you’re describing is a sort of counterfeit conscience,” said Reine-Marie. “Something that might look ‘right’ but is actually wrong. No one with an actual conscience would stand for it.”
“I wonder if that’s true,” said Myrna. “There was a famous psychological study, a test really. It was designed as a response to the Nazi trials, and their defense that their consciences were clear. It was war and they were just doing as they were told. It was Eichmann’s defense when he was caught, years later. The public was enraged, saying that no normal person would do what the Nazis did, and no civilized society would stand by and let it happen. So the social scientists, during the Eichmann trial, put it to the test.”
“Wait,” said Clara. “Before you tell us, I need another drink. Anyone else?”
Armand got up. “Let me.”
He and Myrna took the glasses to the kitchen, and poured more wine.
“Nothing for you?” she asked, pointing to the Glenfiddich.
“Non, merci. I think there’s quite a bit of work ahead tonight. That study you’re referring to, is it the Milgram experiment at Yale?”
“Yes.” She looked at Reine-Marie and Clara, chatting by the woodstove. “Would they have done it, do you think?”
“Isn’t the question more, would you have done it? Would I?”
“And the answer?”
“Maybe we’re doing it now, and don’t realize it,” he said, and thought of the notebook locked away in his quiet home. And what it contained. And what he was considering doing.
But, unlike the Nazis, he wouldn’t just be following orders. He’d be issuing them.
And hundreds, perhaps thousands, would almost certainly die.
Could he justify it?
CHAPTER 26
Isabelle Lacoste leaned closer to the laptop.
The fluorescent lights of the church basement were not kind to a computer screen. Or to the face reflected in it.
How did I get so old? she wondered. And so worried. And so green?
The photograph Beauvoir had been waiting to download had finally appeared, and he’d brought his laptop over to her desk. And now he sat beside her.
Not looking at his screen. He knew perfectly well what was there.
He was looking at Isabelle Lacoste.
She brought a manicured hand up to her face, resting her elbow on the desk and placing her fingers splayed over her mouth.
Staring at the screen. At the woman.
“That isn’t Madame Evans,” she finally said.
“No. This is a picture taken eighteen months ago, in Pittsburgh. I’ve been researching Katie Evans. So far she appears to be what everyone says. An up-and-coming architect. She did her thesis on glass houses. Adapting them to harsh climates, like ours. She completed her studies at the Université de Montréal, as we know.”
“Where they all met.”
“Oui. But she spent the summer between high school and university taking a course at Carnegie Mellon—”
“In Pittsburgh,” said Lacoste, going back to staring at the screen.
The photograph was both banal and awful. Perhaps because of the extreme normalcy of ninety percent of the image. And the horror at the very edge.
“Monsieur Gamache asked me to do some research on the cobrador a couple days ago, when it first showed up here. Among the things I found was that.”
Lacoste was right. It was not Katie Evans, though the woman on the screen was the same generation. In her early thirties. Well dressed. An executive, heading to work. Or home.
Hurrying, like everyone else.
It was an ordinary moment on any crowded street.
But something had caught the woman’s eye. She was just beginning to register it.
Isabelle felt the blood run cold in her veins.
The woman’s expression was like all the rest who rushed around her. But her eyes had begun to change. They had that look horses got when frightened and about to buck or bolt.