“He wasn’t alone,” Norman was saying, the transmission cutting in and out as he raced through the mountains to the scene. “We’re looking for the other agent.”
It didn’t take a homicide detective to know what that meant. One agent shot, the other missing? Lying dead or gravely wounded in some culvert. That’s what Inspector Norman was thinking, that’s what Beauvoir was thinking.
“Who’s the other agent?”
“Morin. One of yours. He’s on loan to us for the week. I’m sorry.”
“Paul Morin?”
“Oui.”
“He’s still alive,” said Beauvoir, and felt the relief. “He’s on the phone with the Chief Inspector.”
“Oh, thank God for that. Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
Gamache took Morin’s call, his mind racing in response to what he’d heard from Inspector Norman. An agent gravely wounded, another missing.
“Agent Morin? What is it?”
“Chief?” The voice sounded hollow, tentative. “I’m sorry. Did you find—”
“Is this Chief Inspector Gamache?” The phone had clearly changed hands.
“Who is this?” the Chief demanded. He gestured to his secretary to get a trace and make sure it was being recorded.
“I can’t tell you.” The voice sounded middle-aged, perhaps late middle-aged, with a thick country accent. A backwoods voice. Gamache had to strain to understand the words.
“I didn’t mean to do it. I just got scared.” And the man sounded scared, his voice rising to near hysterics.
“Easy, softly. Calm down. Tell me what this is about.”
But in the pit of his stomach he knew what this was about.
An agent injured. An agent missing.
Paul Morin had been seconded to the Ste-Agathe detachment the day before, to fill in for a week. Morin was the missing agent.
At least he was alive.
“I didn’t mean to shoot him, but he surprised me. Stopped behind my truck.” The man seemed to be losing it. Gamache forced himself to speak slowly, reasonably.
“Is Agent Morin hurt?”
“No. I just didn’t know what to do. So I took him.”
“You need to let him go now. You need to turn yourself in.”
“Are you nuts?” The last word was shrieked. “Turn myself in? You’ll kill me. And if you didn’t I’d spend the rest of my life in jail. No way.”
Gamache’s secretary appeared at the door, giving him the “stretch it out” sign.
“I understand. You want to get away, is that right?”
“Yes,” the man sounded uncertain, surprised at Gamache’s response. “Can I?”
“Well, let’s just talk about it. Tell me what happened.”
“I was parked. My truck had broken down. Blown tire. I’d just replaced it when the police car pulled up behind.”
“Why would that be upsetting?” Gamache kept his voice conversational and he could hear the stress, the panic, on the other end subside a bit. He also stared at his secretary who was looking into the large outer room where there was sudden, frantic, activity.
Still no trace.
“Never you mind. It just was.”
“I understand,” said Gamache. And he did. There were two big crops in the backwoods of Québec. Maple syrup and marijuana. Chances were the truck wasn’t loaded with syrup. “Go on.”
“My gun was sitting on the seat and I just knew what would happen. He’d see the gun, arrest me and you’d find . . . what I had in the truck.”
The man, thought Gamache, had just shot, perhaps killed a Sûreté officer, kidnapped another, and yet his main concern still seemed to be concealing that he either had or worked for a marijuana plantation. But it was so instinctive, this need to hide, to be secretive. To lie. Hundreds of thousands of dollars could be at stake.
Liberty was at stake.
For a woodsman, the idea of years behind bars must seem like murder.
“What happened?”
Still no trace? It was inconceivable it should take this long.
“I didn’t mean to,” the man’s voice rose again, almost to a squeal. He was pleading now. “It was a mistake. But then it happened and I saw there was another one, so I pointed my gun at him. By then I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t just shoot him. Not in cold blood like that. But I couldn’t let him go either. So I brought him here.”
“You must let him go, you know,” said the Chief Inspector. “Just untie him and leave him there. You can take your truck and go, disappear. Just don’t hurt Paul Morin.”