A Great Reckoning (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #12) - Louise Penny Page 0,52
other one.
“Oui. That poor man. I feel for him. I’ve tried for the last few months to regain the mayor’s trust. He finally, against the wishes of his councilors, endorsed the volunteer program with the academy at the last town meeting, only to have this happen.”
“But the two aren’t connected,” said Lacoste.
“No, but it puts the academy in a very bad light, wouldn’t you say? When one of our own professors is murdered? How can the mayor now say it’s safe for kids to come and use our pool or the hockey rink?”
“I see,” she said, and saw that Gamache was genuinely saddened. But not, she suspected, by the brutal murder of one of his colleagues. He was saddened that a good man like the mayor, and the children of the community, were being hurt, once again, by Serge Leduc.
“The chief of police was more sanguine,” he said. “Offering to help.”
Isabelle Lacoste straightened the crease in her slacks, then looked up at Armand Gamache.
“I had no idea this was such a hostile environment, patron.”
He smiled. “Nor did I, to be honest. I expected resistance when I first arrived, and God knows, I found it. I expected Serge Leduc to try to contaminate and control the feeling on campus. Which he did. I expected that the third-year students would be a lost generation. Which they are. Almost.”
He looked at her and considered for a moment.
“Do you know why the armed forces recruit eighteen-year-olds?”
“Because they’re young and healthy?” she asked.
“Healthier than a twenty-three-year-old? No. It’s because they’re malleable. You can get an eighteen-year-old to believe almost anything. To do almost anything.”
“The same could be said for street gangs and terrorist organizations,” said Lacoste. “Get them young.”
The thought set her back. The words had come out casually, but their meaning took a moment to sink in. Serge Leduc had essentially turned the Sûreté Academy into a terrorist training ground.
Within a few short years, he’d soured a once fine institution. Not just the academy—from here his cadets would become Sûreté agents. And rise through the ranks. No, not would. Had. They were already inside the Sûreté.
And worst of all, these young men and women wouldn’t see anything wrong with what they did. Or were about to do. Because they’d been told it was right.
Armand Gamache had chosen this post for a reason. To right the balance. And to do that he had to stop Serge Leduc.
She watched as Commander Gamache got up and walked to his desk.
An alertness stole over her. The sort that came to highly trained, finely attuned officers.
Serge Leduc had been stopped. Utterly and completely.
But it wasn’t Monsieur Gamache’s doing, she told herself. He had nothing to do with it. He had nothing to do with it. Nothing.
She watched as Gamache picked up a dossier and returned to his chair.
“You could’ve fired him, patron,” she said. “You might not have been able to arrest him for corruption, but at least that would stop him from doing more damage.”
“Firing Leduc would solve nothing. The problem would simply be shifted onto someone else. The Leducs of this world will always find fertile ground. If not with the Sûreté, then with another police force. Or a private security firm. No. Enough was enough. It had to end, and the people he’d already corrupted, here and in the Sûreté, had to see that his philosophy would no longer be tolerated.”
“And how did you intend to do that, sir?”
He looked at her closely now, quizzically. “Are you saying what I think you are? Are you suggesting I might have stopped him with a bullet in the small hours of this morning?”
“I need to ask,” she said. “And you need to answer. I’m not making small talk.”
“No, and neither am I,” he said, sitting back in his chair. “You think I’m capable of cold-blooded murder?”
She paused, holding his eyes. “I do.”
That sat between them for a very long moment.
“For what it’s worth, I think I am too,” she said.
“Under the right circumstances,” Gamache said, nodding slowly.
“Oui.”
“The question is, what are the right circumstances?” said Gamache.
“It must have become clear to you, patron, that Serge Leduc was winning. He’d already polluted the third-year cadets. You yourself said they were beyond redemption—”
“I said almost beyond. I haven’t given up on them.”
“Then why not teach a third-year class yourself? You only take the freshmen.”
“True. I gave the seniors someone better. Someone with more to teach them than I ever could.”
“Jean-Guy?” she asked, not even trying to disguise her doubt.