The Grey Wolf

Armand and Jean-Guy return to the home of Charles’s parents. Armand tells them that Charles’s final word was “family,” indicating that he left the notebooks with his estranged family. Charles’s parents hand over the notebooks.

Meanwhile, Constantine shows Isabelle newspaper clippings about the Mafia murders that Armand has been investigating. These clippings are what Robert had hidden. Isabelle photographs the clippings and texts them to Armand. He replies, telling her that they found the notebooks. Isabelle tells Constantine that one of the clippings is about Robert’s aunt and that the other is probably about a stranger they killed to get his attention.

Jean-Guy drives Armand to the Charles-J.-Des Baillets water-treatment plant but stops a block away to look at the notebooks. One contains information about pollution in lakes, and the other contains Charles’s notes about the water-treatment plants he worked in. At the end of the notebook, Charles wrote, “Botulinum. 08/25 @ 23: 50” (373). Jean-Guy realizes that they have less than an hour until that time. Armand sees the collaborators’ names in the notebook, including Lauzon, Toussaint, and Tardiff. The names also include Jeanne, but with question marks near her name. The last name he finds is David Lavigne, who ordered Gauthier to shoot. Armand calls the Sûreté and tells them to put a tactical squad on standby. Once off the call, Armand finds the address of a junior engineer who works at the water-treatment plant and decides to ask her how to shut down the plant.

Isabelle confronts Sebastien, believing he killed Robert, and asks what Robert told him. He draws a knife.

Meanwhile, Armand and Jean-Guy arrive at the house of the engineer, Manon Lagace. Armand tells her that they’re the police and were warned by Charles, a maintenance worker at the plant, about a botulinum attack. Manon says that the plant has an emergency shutoff procedure and goes with them. Seeing that Armand and Jean-Guy are alone, without a SWAT team, Manon realizes that they don’t trust others in the Sûreté. She tells them more about staffing and operations.

Once inside the plant, Jean-Guy disarms and cuffs the guards, knowing that at least one is involved. The detectives think the command center is also compromised, and it will take too long to shut off one pump from there. Manon recommends that they close off the pump and gives them the emergency code to do so, as well as her ID. Armand orders Jean-Guy to take Manon to the command center while he goes to the pump and asks Jean-Guy to call in the tactical unit after he shuts down the plant.

Isabelle questions Sebastien. He claims that the attack is a way to save the world, which is being destroyed by humans, and says that he believes ecoterrorism is justified. When Sebastien moves to hit Isabelle, Constantine hits him with the book containing the original recipe for chartreuse.

Armand walks to the pump room, acting like he’s a busy worker in the plant, and isn’t stopped. When he encounters a guard at the door to the room, Armand knocks him out with the gun, zip-ties him to a railing, and then tosses the guard’s gun and clip separately into the water. Armand uses Manon’s ID to unlock the pump room door. He points his gun at the guard inside and orders him to drop his weapon. The others in the room are workers in white smocks. Armand orders them to get on the floor and give him their phones. One man’s hand is on his head awkwardly, and Armand orders him to drop what’s in his hand. A pill bottle rolls toward Armand.

Meanwhile, Manon tells a coworker who stops her that Jean-Guy is her brother-in-law and wanted to see the plant. Her explanation isn’t questioned. However, the guy tells Manon about a blocked toilet, and Jean-Guy realizes that Manon is a sanitation engineer.

Armand grabs the bottle and puts it in his pocket with the other bottle. Then, he enters the code for the emergency shutoff of the pumps.

Jean-Guy and Manon enter the command center as the console lights up from the emergency shutoff. One gunman escapes, and Jean-Guy shoots the other. Manon discovers that an engineer put a computer virus in the system that keeps them from shutting down the plant and that the emergency shutoff activates the virus. Jean-Guy has no cell reception, so he can’t warn Armand. Manon gets the landline working and calls in the tactical unit. They must find another way to shut down the plant.

Armand goes from pump one to pump two. There, David pushes a gun into the back of Armand’s head and orders Armand to drop his weapon, which he does. David then laments not having Gauthier kill Armand and orders one of his men to search Armand. Armand punches the man, and the man tackles Armand to the ground. While being kicked, Armand protects the bottle.

Meanwhile, Manon gets the security cameras working. Jean-Guy tries to give her a gun that he took from a guard, but she refuses. He leaves it on the table for her and starts to go to pump two, but more attackers are outside the command center door. Manon says that if they can get the system to sense that wastewater is about to spill, this will trigger a plant shutdown. The wastewater room is one floor below them. The security footage rotates to show David pointing a gun at Armand’s head as he kneels, and Jean-Guy tells Manon to keep it on this camera.

David finds the bottle that Armand was protecting, but it’s the decoy that Armand brought from Three Pines. However, David (like the readers) is unaware that Armand switched the bottles. Armand pretends that the decoy is the real thing and pleads with David not to use it. David refuses, and Armand hopes that Jean-Guy can shut down the plant.

In the command center, Jean-Guy opens a vent to begin climbing to the wastewater room with Manon.

At pump two, David demands to know where Charles’s notebooks are. Armand thinks about his family, how the crime would ruin the environment for future generations, and how he doesn’t want to die. One of David’s men put the bottle they think has the poison (but is just water) into the pump. When Armand refuses to tell David about the notebooks, David threatens Armand’s family.

The men who break into the command center think that Jean-Guy went into the vent, but he’s hiding behind the console. He comes out and shoots them as they look in the vent. This enables Jean-Guy and Manon to leave through the door and run to the wastewater room. Manon starts the process of dumping wastewater that will activate the plant shutdown.

Armand refuses to answer David and hears the turbines slowing down. Then, he hears a gunshot. Jean-Guy hears it too and runs to the pump room. He discovers that a bullet grazed Armand but left him unable to hear and unable to see out of one eye. Jeanne shot David while he was shooting at Armand, and Jeanne’s shot saved Armand’s life. Armand tells Jean-Guy that he switched out the poison for plain water and that he left the bottle containing poison under the console of pump one. Armand stays behind to check on Jeanne.

A few weeks after the attack, Jean-Guy tells the residents of Three Pines about the case. They gather in the bistro, and Armand struggles to hear what people are saying since he’s still experiencing hearing loss from the shooting. In addition, he struggles to control the volume of his voice and relies heavily on lipreading. Jean-Guy jokes that Armand’s final words before passing out were a declaration of love for Ruth. However, Armand doesn’t hear the punchline. Reine-Marie speaks slowly so that Armand can see her lips and jokes that his final words declared his love for Gabri’s steak frites.

After a while, Armand, Reine-Marie, and Jean-Guy leave and walk around the village green. They kick leaves, imitating the children who kicked them earlier. However, Armand’s grandchildren struggle to understand his hearing loss. Because of his ear issues, he can’t fly to Yves’s (Philippe’s) funeral at Blanc-Sablon or Saint-Gilbert-Entres-les-Loups, but he watches the former ceremony online. Armand and Isabelle do their briefing via text messages. She informs him that Sebastien is with the police but isn’t talking. She thinks that he’s the one who confessed the plan to Robert and that Robert was running from Sebastien. Irene tipped off Sebastien about the confession and sent for Philippe. According to Isabelle’s theory, Robert didn’t tell Philippe about Sebastien.

The narrator details how Armand switched the aspirin bottles in pump room one. He’s on sick leave while his hearing and concussion heal. He constantly hears “shrieking cicadas” and struggles to sleep because of this noise and nightmares. The nightmares are about him revealing the location of Charles’s notebooks. Armand visits a therapist and talks about his issues but isn’t ready to share his nightmares with Reine-Marie. In the present moment, Armand switches to pen and paper for his conversation with Isabelle to avoid a written record of it. They talk about the people who weren’t arrested.

After the attack on the water-treatment plant, Jeanne presents the evidence she has on Lauzon. He’s arrested. David’s involvement in the poisoning left the RCMP in chaos. Toussaint and Tardiff aren’t arrested, but Inspector Goudreau, who was disruptive in their Monday meetings, is arrested. Moretti hasn’t been arrested, and Armand thinks that Tardiff is behind this. However, his feelings of doubt about the Sûreté have lessened: He thinks Tardiff is inept, not corrupt.

Jeanne visits Three Pines, apologizes to Reine-Marie, and says that she’ll apologize to Daniel next. Reine-Marie feels silent rage. As Jeanne is leaving, she reveals that she got the key to Armand’s apartment by stealing, copying, and returning his cleaner’s key. Armand sent Jean-Guy to deliver Clara’s statues of gray wolves honoring Yves to Blanc-Sablon and Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups.

That night, Armand struggles to sleep and gets up in the middle of the night. In his living room, he realizes that Charles’s second notebook, containing information about pollution in the lakes, might be meaningful. After looking through a scan of the notebook, he privately messages Jean-Guy and Isabelle. They come to Three Pines at 4:15 am, and he tells them that the black wolf is in the other notebook, so they have a bigger problem ahead.