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The Chief Inspector, in casual street clothing, sat with the manager in her office behind the kitchen. Since the criminals knew him by sight, he could not very well be in the restaurant proper.
He’d chosen the burger joint as his headquarters and assigned Lacoste to lead the team at the poutine restaurant, and the head of tactical to be in charge at the pizza place.
Beauvoir would be in the burger restaurant with him, posing as a customer at a table by the door.
Under guise of the cleaning staff, Gamache had had a communications system set up in the manager’s office. From there, he could talk to the officers and monitor all three locations.
The manager, at the desk beside him, was all of twenty-two and frightened, but also excited. Not, perhaps, believing this could really be happening. It helped that she knew she was immortal.
Her name was Rebecca and, as she told Gamache after they’d been sitting there for a couple of hours and she was getting bored and chatty, she hoped to study veterinary medicine one day. But first she had to save up.
“I have two dogs and something that might be a ferret,” said Armand, as he continued to look at the monitor. “They’ll be your first clients.”
“Ferrets are very smart.”
“Then Gracie might not be a ferret. What animal loves to run and jump and is very loyal?”
“A horse?”
“Okay, she’s a horse.” He couldn’t wait to tell Reine-Marie. “There. Do you know him?”
“That’s Pierre. He comes in every lunch hour.”
They watched a middle-aged man with a belly over his belt order his burger and poutine with extra curd.
“Yup, that’s our Pierre.”
Any number of difficulties had presented themselves. All logistical. The biggest being how to warn regular customers without also alerting the attackers.
It was, of course, impossible.
The Sûreté officers knew what the leaders looked like, but not any new gang members they might have recruited.
And so, everyone was let in, with only young Rebecca to advise the Chief Inspector who were the regulars and who were not.
Which didn’t mean, of course, that the strangers were threats.
Armand shoved the memory of what had happened in the restaurant aside.
It was a beautiful spring day, and he had enough to focus on without that intrusion.
He got up, and while he waited for Jean-Guy and Isabelle to arrive, he strolled around their garden, followed by Henri, Fred, and little Gracie.
Pausing at the apple trees, Armand examined the branches to see if the bees had done their job and the new blossoms would produce fruit.
Satisfied, he took off his jacket and wished he’d thought to make a pitcher of lemonade. Mostly he tried to think of anything other than the interview he’d soon have to conduct with the man in the B&B.
But Gaston Comeau kept intruding.
At the end of every day since that first raid, Armand had met with the Sûreté psychologist for his assessment of Agent Comeau. The last two days, he’d met with Comeau himself.
The young agent was shattered. Remorseful. Shocked by his reactions. His actions. Apologetic.
“I did lie, patron,” he admitted. “I was so scared. My legs gave way and I fell to the floor. Then they appeared. I tried … I tried…” He’d looked at the Chief Inspector, who was watching him and saying nothing. “I let them past in the hopes they’d let me live.”
The young man sobbed. Hiccuping and fighting for breath. He buried his face in his hands.
Armand already knew that, of course. If nothing else, the attackers’ own video had confirmed it. But it meant something to Gamache that the young agent had admitted it himself.
