Page 163 of The Grey Wolf
He almost never used caps, so this would appear not just a shout, but a scream.
“He also pointed me to Jeanne Caron,” he said. “When he gave her the other half of the Chartreuse recipe. He’s not a co-conspirator. He’s trying to expose her and her boss.”
“Butpatron, that doesn’t make sense. I agree, Dom Philippe must’ve given her the other half, but she was the one who sent it to you, not him. She wanted to get your attention, and he made it possible.”
It was true. Armand Gamache felt his heart sink. Had Dom Philippe gone to Three Pines not to alert Gamache to the crisis, but to confuse him? Distract him from what was really happening? Get him to hare off in all directions?
Had Charles Langlois been sent by Caron to meet with him for the same reason? To send out vague half-truths that seemed more legitimate when the young man had been killed. Right in front of the Chief Inspector.
Was he an unwitting pawn? And maybe Langlois was too. And maybe, as he lay dying, the young man realized it.
He’d begged Charles to tell him who was behind this. To give him something. And the dying man had whispered, “Family.”
And now, thunderstruck, Gamache had an idea. Could Charles Langlois have been trying to tell him who was behind it after all? And he’d missed it?
The family. Not his, but one of the crime families? Had Langlois recognized Paolo Parisi and known him to be connected to the mafia? That would explain the look of panic on Charles’s face when he’d assured the dying man he’d tell his family.
Charles Langlois had gone to his grave, to his maker, to a drawer in the morgue, knowing he’d died senselessly. Because the numbskull head of homicide had made an assumption, based on his own experience when he thought he was dying.
Still, where did that get them? As hard as it was for Gamache tothink that the Abbot was the black wolf, he also found it difficult to believe the mafia was involved in a plot to poison Montréal’s drinking water. After all, they had no proof Parisi was mafia.
In Gamache’s experience, the mob, while brutal, were also astute businesspeople who were surgical in their targets. An act of terrorism on this scale was too messy. And to what end for them?
He needed answers, not more questions. And he needed them now.
They’d come to a fork in the road, in every way. By habit Beauvoir got into the right-hand lane, which would take them into downtown Montréal and Sûreté headquarters.
“Go left.”
“Left?” Beauvoir asked. The ramp was just meters away.
“Left!”
Jean-Guy yanked the wheel, and they just made the exit, to angry honking behind them.
“Where to,patron?”
“Ottawa.”
CHAPTER35
Just over an hour later, Armand Gamache was staring at the famous buildings on Parliament Hill.
He’d been here many times. Sometimes for ceremonies. Often for meetings. He and Reine-Marie had brought the children here years ago.
This was the first time he’d looked at the buildings that were the symbol for, and housed the government of, Canada, and felt unease.
On the way to Ottawa, he’d written his friend and colleague David Lavigne, the assistant commissioner of the RCMP, to tell him what he was planning to do.
He had yet to reply.
“I’ll come with you,” said Beauvoir.
“Merci, but I need to do this on my own.”
“Is that wise?”
“I think wise is disappearing in the rearview mirror,mon ami.”
