She got up, turned off the fan, took off her robes, ran her fingers through her hair, and gestured to the two chairs in front of her desk.
“Sit.”
They sat.
“All right,” she said. “It’s just us. As far as I know the room isn’t bugged.” She looked at both men and raised her brows in inquiry.
They looked at each other, and lifted their shoulders. If it was, it wasn’t them.
“Good.” She paused for a moment. All the fine speeches she’d crafted, all the clever arguments, all the justified anger put into pithy phrases were thrown out when faced with Barry Zalmanowitz and Armand Gamache.
Two men who had served justice for much longer than she had. Served their province. Served their consciences. Often at great personal risk, and cost.
“What’s going on?” she asked, calmly meeting their eyes. When neither spoke, she added, “You can tell me.”
The air was heavy in the room. Humid, sticky, close. Time trickled by.
Zalmanowitz opened his mouth, his lips trying to form words, sentences, cogent thoughts. Then he glanced to his right, at Gamache.
And wished he hadn’t. In the instinctive gesture, he’d given something vital away. Something the astute judge couldn’t fail to see.
Whatever was happening, it had been Chief Superintendent Gamache’s idea.
Gamache looked down at his hands, clasped together on his crossed legs, and spent a moment collecting his thoughts. There were so many ways to handle this badly, and maybe no way to do it right.
He didn’t dare look at his watch, or even glance at the small carriage clock on the judge’s desk.
But he was aware of time going by. Of the officers gathering in the conference room of Sûreté headquarters. Of the matryoshka dolls at Mirabel and what nested inside them.
They might have left already, those cheerful little ornaments, with something nasty inside.
As soon as he’d read the slip of paper Jean-Guy had handed him, he’d known that this was what they’d been working toward.
Luring the cartel into making one great, fatal mistake.
“More than fifteen thousand people died in Canada from illegal drugs,” said Gamache, meeting her eyes again. His voice calm and steady. As though he had all the time in the world. “In a year. That statistic is a decade old and those are the ones we know about. There were almost certainly far more. We don’t have a more recent report, we’re working on putting one together, but we do know that opioid use has skyrocketed. As have the deaths. Heroin. Cocaine. Fentanyl. And more. Nothing is stopping these drugs from hitting the streets. From killing mostly young people. Never mind all the crime that goes with drugs.”
He leaned forward, very slightly, and dropped his voice as though inviting her into a confidence.
“We lost the war on drugs years ago and are just going through the motions, because we don’t know what else to do.”
Judge Corriveau’s eyes widened, just a little. But enough to register her shock at the statistic. But not at his pronouncement.
She knew he was right. They’d lost. She saw it all day, every day. In her former practice. In her current courtroom. In the halls of the grand Palais. A parade of lost youth, hauled up on charges. And they were the lucky ones. They were alive. For now.
They were also, for the most part, the victims. The ones who should be on trial were free, eating in fine restaurants and going home to large homes in respectable communities.
What Gamache had just said was true and shocking. But—
“What does that have to do with the murder trial?”
“We know that organized crime is behind the drug trade,” said Gamache.
“Cartels,” said Zalmanowitz, feeling he should contribute.
“Thank you, Monsieur Zalmanowitz,” said Judge Corriveau.
“By mutual consent, Québec has been divided into regions. Different organizations run each area. But it’s become clear that one dominates all the others,” Zalmanowitz continued, ignoring the pinched look on her face. “We’ve been chipping away at it, but without effect.”
“Not really chipping,” admitted Gamache. “More like a gnat and an elephant. It didn’t help that many of the top Sûreté officers were in the pay of the cartels.”
He’d said it without irony. And no one was smiling.
“But you’re in charge now,” said Corriveau.
Now he did smile. “I’m flattered you think that might help, and I am trying.” He held her gaze. “But I came to the realization when I first took over almost a year ago that there was nothing I could do.”
“Nothing?” she asked. “But like you said, so much of the crime in Québec stems from drugs. Not just the gang violence, but thefts, armed robberies, beatings. Murders. Sexual assaults. Domestic violence. If you can’t stop the drugs—”
“It’s not a matter of stopping,” Gamache interrupted. “We can’t even keep it stable. It’s growing. We’re past the tipping point. Doesn’t look like it, yet. People can still go about their normal lives. But—”
“What you’re saying, Chief Superintendent, is that not just drug abuse is out of control, but all crime is about to get worse.”
“And worse,” said the Chief Crown.
“Thank you, Monsieur Zalmanowitz.” She turned back to Gamache. “You said you realized there was nothing you could do. Nothing effective anyway.” She examined him more closely. “But that’s not quite true, is it? There is something you’re doing, and it has something to do with the trial.”
“The Chief Crown is right,” said Gamache. “One cartel dominates all the others. We didn’t realize it for a long time. We thought they were at war, hoped they were, and that they’d do some of our job for us. But as we looked closer, we realized it was all a sham. The other organizations were satellites, circling, protecting, decoys for the main one.”
“The biggest of the cartels,” said the judge.
“Non, that was its brilliance and our mistake,” said Gamache. “And why it took so long to identify it. It is, in fact, one of the smallest. It appeared to be just another organization, and not a very effective one. It was static, stale. Not growing or diversifying like all the others. It was so small it really wasn’t worth our effort. We were looking for just what you said”—he gestured toward her—“a great big powerful organization. I made the mistake of equating size with power.”
She took that in. “The nuclear bomb,” she finally said.
“Smaller than a car and can wipe out a city,” said Gamache.
“And did,” said the Chief Crown.
“Thank you, Monsieur Zalmanowitz.” She was smaller than both men, and could wipe them out. And might. “But you found it, right?” she said, returning to Gamache. “Eventually.”
“Oui. Took some time. We knew we were spread too thin, trying to go after all the cartels. All the crime. We had to focus, had to find the heart. But we were looking for the wrong thing in the wrong place. We were looking for a huge organized crime syndicate in Montréal.”
She was nodding. It was a reasonable assumption.
“Where did you find it?”
“It seems so obvious now,” said Gamache, shaking his head. “Where do most of the drugs end up?”
“Montréal,” said Judge Corriveau, though with a slightly questioning inflection.
“The stuff for Québec, certainly,” agreed Gamache. “But this province isn’t the major consumer. The problem is big enough for us, and tragic enough, but it’s tiny by cartel standards. We’re simply a highway. Some parcels fall off the truck, and stay here. But the vast majority is bound for the border.”
“Into the States.” She thought for a moment. “A massive market.”
“Hundreds of millions of people. The amount of opioids consumed, the amount of money involved, the consequences in suffering and crime are almost incalculable.”