She was smaller than both men, and could wipe them out. And might. “But you found it, right?” she said, returning to Gamache. “Eventually.”
“Oui. Took some time. We knew we were spread too thin, trying to go after all the cartels. All the crime. We had to focus, had to find the heart. But we were looking for the wrong thing in the wrong place. We were looking for a huge organized crime syndicate in Montréal.”
She was nodding. It was a reasonable assumption.
“Where did you find it?”
“It seems so obvious now,” said Gamache, shaking his head. “Where do most of the drugs end up?”
“Montréal,” said Judge Corriveau, though with a slightly questioning inflection.
“The stuff for Québec, certainly,” agreed Gamache. “But this province isn’t the major consumer. The problem is big enough for us, and tragic enough, but it’s tiny by cartel standards. We’re simply a highway. Some parcels fall off the truck, and stay here. But the vast majority is bound for the border.”
“Into the States.” She thought for a moment. “A massive market.”
“Hundreds of millions of people. The amount of opioids consumed, the amount of money involved, the consequences in suffering and crime are almost incalculable.”
“But don’t most of the illegal drugs into the States go through Mexico?” she asked.
“Used to. But more and more are coming through Canada,” said Gamache. “With all the scrutiny on the Mexican border and so much of the DEA’s attention focused on Mexico, the head of the cartel here saw an opportunity.”
“Bring it in where they aren’t looking,” she said quietly. Thinking.
“The country with the longest undefended border in the world,” said Gamache. “Thousands of miles of forest, and no guards. No witnesses. The rum runners during Prohibition knew that. Fortunes were made in Canada by getting illegal booze into the States.”
It was true, Judge Corriveau knew. Many prominent families could trace their wealth, if they had the stomach for it, back to those days.
First it was the robber barons, and then came the rum runners.
Canada had a great reputation for law and order, as long as you didn’t look under the table.
“How did you discover all this?” she asked.
He opened his mouth to reply, but needed a moment to marshal his thoughts.
“The reason this one small cartel dominates all the others is because the person who runs it has made sure they’re invisible. And, if spotted, is dismissed as unimportant. As we did,” he admitted. “This is a structure that’s been years in the making. Simple. Lean. It’s carefully constructed and all but transparent.”
“A glass house, Chief Superintendent?” asked the judge, but he didn’t smile.
“Yes. It’s there, but not there. And it’s almost unassailable. It’s able, above all else, to hide. Not behind cigar smoke in some greasy dive, or in a fortress estate. But in plain view. Unrecognized for what it is.”
“The devil among us,” said Zalmanowitz.
Corriveau turned a jaundiced eye on him, dismissing this romantic and unhelpful statement. But then she remembered the photo, shown in her courtroom. Blown up to twice life-size.
Of the robed figure looming. Masked. Still. Staring. Standing on the pretty village green.
The devil among us. Maybe it wasn’t such a ludicrous thing to say after all.
Judge Corriveau was quiet for a moment, then her brows drew together and she shook her head.
“You’re still not telling me how you found it. The cartel and the person who runs it. And what this has to do with the trial.” Then her face opened in surprise. “The defendant? You’re not telling me the defendant is the head of the drug cartel?” Her mind raced. “But the charge is murder, not trafficking. The killing of Katie Evans. Does the defendant know that you know the rest? Wait a minute…”
Why were the two of them in this, whatever “this” was, together? The cop and the Crown?
It was Chief Superintendent Gamache’s idea, his plan. Why did he have to involve the Crown? Why did he need Barry Zalmanowitz?
And if the defendant really was the head of the cartel, why would the Chief Superintendent of the Sûreté hide that fact? Surely arresting Québec’s equivalent of a drug lord would be reason to celebrate. Especially when the government, the press, members of his own force were accusing the Sûreté, accusing Gamache, of incompetence.
The Sûreté had become a national shame. An embarrassment.
Surely this would be vindication, something to be shouted from the rooftops. A great victory.
But instead, there was this quiet conspiracy between two men who didn’t even like each other.