Page 42 of The Grey Wolf
They shook their heads. Except…
Jean-Guy looked at the young woman named Debs, who was more distressed than the others.
“Did you?” he asked her softly. And she nodded.
Everyone looked at her, surprised.
“We went out a few times.”
“And you went back to his place?” When she nodded, he asked, “Can you tell me what he had on his walls?”
“Walls?”
Beauvoir waited.
She was thinking. “A map of Québec.”
“Did he say why?”
“We weren’t actually interested in the map.”
“We all take work home, Inspector,” said an older woman. “I suspect most of us have maps on our walls.”
She looked around and others nodded in agreement.
“Did Charles take his laptop home at night?”
Debs nodded.
“We can’t find it or any notebooks. Any idea where they might’ve gone?”
They shook their heads.
“Does this look familiar?” Beauvoir brought up a photo on his phone and they crowded around. And saw a list of herbs and spices.
“Are these plants, herbs, of particular concern to the environment?” he asked.
“Angelica stems? Nutmeg? If they are, it’s not our environment. And not our mandate,” said Madame Chalifoux.
“That’s not even his handwriting,” said Debs.
“No,” said Beauvoir, slipping his phone back into his pocket. “Do you recognize it?”
Again, they all shook their heads.
He had not shown them the other side of the list, where the wordWaterwas written.
Before he left, Beauvoir got Langlois’s schedule. When and where he had traveled.
Once back in his car, Jean-Guy applied for a search warrant for Action Québec Bleu and the home of its Executive Director. Langlois’s boss. Although in the meeting with Gamache the young man had described his boss as a man, that almost guaranteed it was a woman.
A news conference had been called by the Mayor to reassure the population of Montréal that there was no threat. This was a random act by a madman, not a terrorist attack.
And the murderer had been found dead. Shot. Not by police.
The implication being it was suicide.
Gamache looked into the bright lights of the cameras. His body was aching from the scrapes and bruises, especially his foot.
