Page 131 of The Grey Wolf
“Let me make a call.” When she hung up, Sister Irene said, “Come with me.”
As they walked through the warren of corridors, Lacoste continued to look into offices, in case she spotted Brother Sébastien.
“Where did you study to be a nun?” Looking into more offices.
“At the Motherhouse in Amityville. New York.”
“What did you do before coming here?”
“I was a teacher.”
Lacoste’s pace slowed. “Where?”
“The seminary in Washington.”
Lacoste stopped, and Sister Irene, after taking a few steps, turned back.
“DC?”
“Yes. What? Do you need help? Water?”
Sister Irene was staring at Lacoste. Concerned.
“Do you know a Frère Sébastien?” Lacoste fumbled to get the photo out. “He was a Dominican, but is now a Gilbert—”
Now it was Isabelle’s turn to be concerned. The nun looked like she’d been struck. Hard. Across the face.
“No.”
“We were wrong,patron.”
Armand was walking to his car through a light drizzle, more a heavy morning mist, when his phone rang.
Lacoste’s voice, while a whisper, was urgent, packed with excitement.
“Not a monk, a nun! One of Sébastien’s friends at the seminary was a nun. Sister Irene.”
The satchel slipped from Armand’s shoulder and dropped onto the wet grass. Reine-Marie, who was walking with him, stopped. Stooped. And picked it up.
“What?” she mouthed. Armand’s grip on his phone had tightened, and he was staring, unseeing, past her and into the dark forest.
“How do you know?”
“I’m with her now.”
On seeing the nun’s face when she’d asked the question about Sébastien, and hearing what was clearly a lie, Lacoste had pushed the nun into a nearby bathroom and locked the door.
“She works at the Office of the Doctrine of the Faith. She refuses to speak, but by her reaction, she obviously knows Sébastien. She won’t tell me where he is, or admit she even knows him, but she must be the one who wrote asking him to come here.”
Isabelle was leaning against the locked door while Sister Irene leaned against a porcelain urinal.
“You need to ask her what the threat is,” said Gamache.
He listened as Isabelle spoke to the nun. “We need to know what’s about to happen so we can stop it. It’s something to do with water, we know that. Are they planning to poison drinking water?”
There was silence.
“Is it Montréal?” Lacoste demanded. “Montréal’s drinking water? For God’s sake, we need to know.”
