Page 74 of The Grey Wolf
No, it was the familiar file folder in front of Inspector Lacoste.
“I wasn’t going to do anything.”
“The documents we found say different.” Lacoste laid her hand on the manila file.
Chalifoux took a deep breath, as though to speak, then thought better of it. After a few moments of silence, Lacoste got up.
“I saw a bottle of rye somewhere. I think you could use a drink.”
She pulled out the Canadian Club rye whiskey, then found a glass and some ice and, mixing the rye with Canada Dry ginger ale, she handed the stiff drink to Chalifoux.
“Why’re you being nice?”
“Why not?” Though Lacoste wondered the same thing, and realized that she had some sympathy, even respect, for this woman. Not, perhaps, her methods, but her goals.
“It’s not what you think.”
“It never is. Besides, you don’t know what I think.”
“You think I sent those letters.” Chalifoux nodded toward the file.
“Didn’t you?”
“No. I was never going to. They’re ravings, that’s all. I was angry and frustrated and scared and broke. And drunk. And it seemed like a good idea at two in the morning. At seven in the morning it seemed insane.”
“And yet you kept the letters.”
Chalifoux colored. “You have to understand, Action Québec Bleu was, is, about to close. The fucking government cut our funding. This”—she looked around—“has become a community kitchen. We all pitch in, bring what food we can. Most from food banks. Some come and live with me when they’ve been evicted. It’s a shambles. We do good work, important work. But no one’s listening.”
She put her head in her hands, her fingers gripping her scalp. Speaking to the vinyl floor, she said, “I was desperate.” She lifted her head and jerked her chin toward the file. “So I wrote those.”
Lacoste read from the top printout.
“Dear Shit-Faces. Unless you give Action Québec Bleu ten million dollars, we will poison the drinking water with arsenic. The arsenic you produce, you asshole fucks.”
“Acch,” said Chalifoux, rolling her eyes. “I can’t believe I wrote that. It’s the childish ravings of a desperate person. If I was really going to threaten them, it wouldn’t be with a letter like that. No one’s going to take that”—again the chin jut—“seriously. I was venting, nothing more. I never sent it. You can ask the companies.”
“That doesn’t mean you weren’t planning to do it.”
“Put arsenic in the drinking water?” Chalifoux’s face had opened up in a look of incredulity.
“Did Charles find out about this?” Lacoste tapped the file. “Did he come to you demanding answers?”
“And then what?” demanded Chalifoux, regaining some equilibrium. “I had him killed? Are you insane?”
Are you?Lacoste almost asked, but decided not to.
She knew that people who were monomaniacal often became maniacs, losing all sense of proportion, all sense of right and wrong, in pursuit of what they convinced themselves was a righteous cause.
What would an unbalanced person not do if they felt that all life on earth was in the balance?
Industry had untold resources in money and lobbyists and power. So environmentalists were often driven to guerilla tactics. The more radical among them to radical acts of ecoterrorism.
Yes, Isabelle Lacoste, the mother of two young children, could sympathize. But not support, not condone, mass murder in the name of the greater good.
She left the kitchen and spoke to her team leader.
“Did you find any arsenic?”
