killer. She just didn’t know which of them it was.
“Merci. But I have a small question. Something we need to pursue to put to rest.” She turned to Patrick. “I understand that you kept in touch with the family of Edouard Valcourt. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“I’d like to speak with them, and need their address or phone number or whatever you have.”
“But why?” asked Lea.
Lacoste turned to her and smiled. “I’d forgotten that you sponsored a bill in his name, didn’t you? You must’ve been in touch with the family too. Do you have a way to contact them?”
“I do, absolutely,” said Lea. “Not on me, of course, but I can contact my assistant at the National Assembly and ask him to get it for you. I have your email, I believe.”
Lacoste had given them each her card at the end of their interviews.
“Merci. I’d like to try to contact them tonight.” She turned back to Patrick. “Do you have their information in your contacts list?”
“I think I probably deleted it, when I upgraded devices,” he said.
“Why would you want to speak with the Valcourts?” asked Lea again. “You don’t think they’re somehow involved in Katie’s death?”
“No,” she assured her. “I don’t think they were, but we do have to wonder about Madame Evans’s past, and one unresolved issue seems to be the death of your friend Edouard.”
“There’s nothing unresolved,” said Matheo. “He was stoned and fell off the roof. Katie had nothing to do with it. She wasn’t even there. Neither was Patrick.” He turned to him. But Patrick just stared.
Matheo suppressed the overwhelming desire to slap the back of his head and knock that pathetic puppy-dog look off his face.
“I have no problem at all giving you their phone number and address,” said Lea. “But it’ll have to wait until morning. Is that all right?”
“If you can’t get it sooner, yes.”
And Lacoste left them to their dinner and headed out into the snowy evening once again.
She came away without the Valcourts’ coordinates, but with something else. The certainty that whatever had happened, Lea Roux was at the center of it. She was in charge.
And Lacoste remembered the advice given to Mossad agents. Advice Lacoste had found abhorrent, wrong on every level. Until it had been explained.
The instruction given the Israeli agents, if they met resistance during an assault, was kill the women first.
Because if a woman was ever driven so far as to pick up a weapon, she would be the most committed, the least likely to ever give up.
Kill the women first.
Lacoste still hated the advice. The simplicity of it. The baldness. But she also hated that the philosophy behind it was almost certainly true.
* * *
Gamache took a few steps through the snow, into the woods. Not far.
Then he turned around to face the back wall of the church and as he did, lights went on, illuminating the ground around him. The snowflakes, like crystals caught in the light, gleamed.
He stood for a moment, taking in the sight, so bright, then he turned and looked into the gloomy woods.
With a last puzzled glance at the back wall, Gamache retraced his steps, climbed the stairs, and entered the warm church, where Jean-Guy was whacking his gloves against his coat.
“Madame Gamache said you wanted to see me here.” His stomach growled and he covered it with his hand while giving Gamache an accusing look. They could be eating by now instead of standing in the chilly church. “Why were you outside? What’re you looking for?”
“Rum runners.”
“They went thataway.” He pointed toward the cemetery.
Gamache turned in that direction, his brow furrowed, thinking. Snow trickled along his scalp and down his face and the back of his neck, as though the effort of thinking was melting it. The rivulet found its way past his collar and dribbled straight down his spine, making him roll his shoulders in discomfort as he led the way downstairs to the Incident Room.
CHAPTER 29
A fine line of perspiration trickled down Chief Superintendent Gamache’s neck and soaked into his collar.
In the powerful air-conditioning of Sûreté headquarters, he could feel his sodden shirt growing clammy as it clung to his body.
He wished he’d had time for a quick shower and change into clean clothes, but that would have to wait until after this meeting.
The officers had stood as he entered the conference room, but he waved them to their seats and took his own chair at the head of the table.