All the Devils Are Here (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #16) - Louise Penny Page 0,122

they’ll kill Daniel now. In front of you. And then they’ll go to the archives, hunt down everyone there, and kill them. And then they’ll go to the George V—”

“Enough!”

“—and they’ll kill everyone there. One by one. Until you hand it over.”

“You’d do that?” demanded Armand, horrified. “You’d let them do that?”

“I can’t stop it even if I wanted to. Fuck, Armand, they’re the truck and you’re the bug. You and your family are about a millimeter away from that windshield now.”

“But I don’t know what Stephen found. Maybe nothing.” Armand felt himself sliding into panic. “Maybe he just had suspicions and no hard evidence. He might’ve hoped it would be enough to frighten the board. He might’ve thought coming from him, that would be enough.” He stared at Claude Dussault. Desperate now. “Maybe there’s nothing to find.”

“You’d better pray there is, and that you find it.”

Dussault knocked, then opened the door to Stephen’s apartment.

Four men stood up and turned to them. One of them, Gamache saw with near despair, was Xavier Loiselle.

He was holding an assault rifle. On Daniel.

CHAPTER 37

Armand pushed past Dussault.

Xavier Loiselle swung his weapon toward him, but Dussault simply gestured and Loiselle stepped back.

Armand grabbed Daniel and held him close, whispering, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

He could feel Daniel trembling as he clutched his father. Then Armand pulled away and, holding Daniel at arm’s length, he examined the bruise and blood on his son’s face.

Then he turned to the three large men.

“Who did this?”

“I did,” came a voice from the dining room. And Thierry Girard appeared. “He wouldn’t tell us what he found at the bank. But then”—Girard smiled—“he did.”

“Dad, I’m sorry.”

“They already knew,” said Armand, his voice a snarl. He faced Girard. “You already knew what he found, didn’t you? But you beat him anyway, you sadistic shit.”

Gamache took a step toward him, then stopped, frozen in place by a familiar sound. The soft, metallic click of a safety coming off.

He turned to his son.

Daniel’s eyes were wide with terror as the gun pressed against his temple.

“You’re right,” said Girard, his voice conversational, almost chatty. “We did know. But you better than most know the advantage of having a cooperative witness. Sometimes people just have to see the full advantage of being helpful. And the disadvantage of not.”

Gamache glared at him. “I’ll kill you.”

“Ah, you just slipped from your favorite spot on the higher ground, Chief Inspector,” said Girard. “What does it feel like to be in the dung with the rest of us?”

“You’d better frisk him,” said Dussault. “Make sure he’s unarmed.”

Gamache glared at Loiselle as he frisked him.

“Nothing.” Then he gave Gamache a quick jab in the solar plexus with the butt of his machine gun, dropping him to his knees.

“Dad?”

Armand raised a hand, to indicate he was all right, then struggled to his feet. As he did, he looked at Claude Dussault.

The Prefect’s brows had risen, very slightly. In surprise. In annoyance. At Loiselle’s blow? No.

Claude Dussault had expected Loiselle to find a gun.

Armand knew then that Dussault had planted the weapon in his apartment. In the box of Stephen’s things. Where he was bound to find it. And do what?

Use it? Or try to? But if so, why insist he be frisked? Why give it to him, only to have it taken away?

Had Dussault expected Armand to pull it on him in the Place de la Concorde? In a rage when told about Daniel?

If he had, he’d have been immediately gunned down by the heavily armed police who patrolled the place.

Another execution.

Was that what Dussault wanted?

But no, that didn’t make complete sense. They didn’t want him dead. They needed him alive, to find Stephen’s evidence.

So why had Claude Dussault left a gun in his apartment? And did he really expect that the head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec wouldn’t notice what it was loaded with?

“Dad, Stephen—” Daniel began, and once again Loiselle raised his rifle and Daniel cringed.

“Let him tell his father what he found at the bank,” said Dussault. “Monsieur Gamache here needs to know if he’s going to help us.”

Armand’s eyes held Daniel’s, and he said, softly, gently, “Tell me.”

It was the same voice he’d used tucking Daniel into bed: “Tell me about your day.”

And the little boy would. It would all come spilling out from a child who found wonder everywhere.

He’d hear about the odd-shaped clouds, the piles of autumn leaves, the snow forts Daniel and his friends had built and defended. The carefree battles waged