A Better Man
- Автор: Пенни Луиза
- Серия: Chief Inspector Gamache #15
- Год: 2019
- Язык: английский
- Год: St. Martin's Publishing Group
- ISBN: 9781466873711
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «A Better Man». Краткое содержание книги:
It's Gamache's first day back as head of the homicide department, a job he temporarily shares with his previous second-in-command, Jean-Guy Beauvoir. Floodwaters are rising across the province. In the middle of the turmoil, a father approaches Gamache, pleading for help in finding his daughter.
As crisis piles upon crisis, Gamache tries to hold off the encroaching chaos, and realizes the search for Vivienne Godin should be abandoned. But with a daughter of his own, he finds himself developing a profound, and perhaps unwise, empathy for her distraught father.
Increasingly hounded by the question, how would you feel..., he resumes the search.
As the rivers rise, and the social media onslaught against Gamache becomes crueler, a body is discovered. And in the tumult, mistakes are made.
In the next novel in this constantly surprising series that deepens and darkens as it evolves (The New York Times Book Review), Gamache must face a horrific possibility, and a burning question.
What would you do if your child's killer walked free?
The last time she’d been in the Monday-morning meeting, she’d chaired it, as head of homicide. Now she entered limping.
Her injuries, though almost healed, were not completely gone. And never would be.
Officers and agents crowded around, welcoming her back, while she tried to explain she wasn’t really back. Promoted to Superintendent, she was in the building for meetings to discuss the timing and conditions of her return to active duty.
But it was no coincidence, everyone in that room knew, that she was there this Monday. Not just any old day. Not just any old meeting.
She took a chair by the head of the table and nodded to the others to retake their seats. Then she looked at the young agent who’d made the comment about Chief Inspector Beauvoir.
“What did you mean by that?”
Her voice was calm, but she sat unnaturally still. Veteran homicide agents who’d served under Chief Inspector Lacoste recognized the look. And almost pitied the foolish young agent who found himself in her crosshairs.
“I mean that we all know Chief Inspector Beauvoir is leaving the Sûreté,” he said. “Moving to Paris. But not for another couple of weeks. What happens before then? With Gamache coming back. I’d rather be in a firefight than be Chief Inspector Beauvoir walking into this meeting today. I bet he feels the same way.”
“You’d lose,” said Lacoste.
The room grew quiet.
He’s young and foolish, Lacoste thought. Probably longing for some desperate glory.
She knew this agent had never been in a so-called firefight. Even using the ridiculous phrase gave him away. Anyone who’d actually raised a weapon, sighted another human, and shot. Again, and again. And been shot at. Would never consider that glory, nor call it a firefight.
And would never, ever wish to be there again.
Those in the room who’d been on that last raid were looking at the agent. Some with outrage. But some almost wistfully. Remembering when they’d been that young. That naïve. That immortal.
Nine months ago.
They thought back to the summer afternoon. In the pretty forest by the Vermont border. How the sun broke through the trees and they could feel the warmth on their faces.
That moment that seemed to hang in midair before all hell broke loose.
As weapons were raised and fired. And fired. Cutting down the saplings. Cutting down the people.
The screams. The chocking, acrid stench of smoke from the weapons. Of wood and flesh burned by bullets.
Chief Inspector Lacoste was one of the first to fall. Her actions giving Chief Superintendent Gamache that one moment he needed to act. And act he had.
Isabelle Lacoste hadn’t seen what Chief Superintendent Gamache had done. By then she was unconscious. But she’d heard about it. She’d read the transcripts of the investigation, after he’d been suspended.
Gamache had survived the events that day.
Only to be cut down by his own people.
And the attacks were continuing, even as he returned to work.
Isabelle Lacoste, and every veteran officer in that room, knew that the decisions Chief Superintendent Gamache had made were audacious. Daring. Unconventional. And, unlike what the tweets claimed, hugely effective.
But it could very well have gone the other way.
It had been a coup de grâce. The last desperate act of the most senior officer in Québec, who felt there was no other option.
Had Gamache failed, and for a while it appeared he would, the Sûreté would have been crippled, leaving Québec defenseless against an onslaught of gang violence, trafficking, organized crime.
Gamache had prevailed. But just barely, and at a cost.
Any reasonable person making those decisions would expect a consequence, no matter the outcome. The Chief Superintendent was reasonable. He must’ve expected to be suspended. Investigated.
But had he expected to be humiliated?
In their own coup de grâce, the political leadership had decided to save their own skins by putting Gamache’s career out of its misery. Though vindicated in the investigation, he would be offered a job he could not possibly accept. Chief Inspector of homicide. A position he’d held for many years. One he’d handed over to Lacoste when he’d been promoted to head of the Sûreté. After she’d been wounded, it was a job now filled by Jean-Guy Beauvoir.
It was a demotion, the leadership knew, that Armand Gamache could not agree to. The humiliation would be too great. The cut too deep. He would resign. Retire. Disappear.
But Armand Gamache refused to go. To their astonishment, he’d accepted their offer.
His fall from grace would be completed here. In this room. Today.
And it appeared he’d land, with a thump, right on top of Jean-Guy Beauvoir.
It was seven minutes to eight. The two men would soon walk through the door. Both holding the rank of head of homicide.
And then what would happen?
Even Isabelle Lacoste found herself glancing at the door. Wondering. She didn’t expect trouble but couldn’t help thinking about what George Will called the “Ohio Event.”
In 1895 there were only two automobiles in the whole state. And they’d collided.
No one knew better than Lacoste that the unexpected happened. And now she found herself bracing for the collision.
“It’s your own fault,” said Ruth Zardo. “You should never have agreed to it, if you ask me.”
No one had.
“Listen to this one,” the elderly poet continued, reading off the phone. “Clara Morrow’s contribution is trite, derivative, and banal. They left out clichéd and pedestrian. Or maybe someone says that further down the thread.”
“I think that’s enough, Ruth,” said Reine-Marie Gamache.
She glanced at her watch. Nearly eight. She wondered how her husband was getting on. It did not take a savant to know how Clara was doing.
Her friend had dark circles under her eyes and looked drawn. And slightly painted. There were dabs of cadmium red and burnt umber on her face and in her hair.
Clara was wearing her usual jeans and a sweater. Success as an artist had not changed her fashion sense. Such as it was. Perhaps because recognition had come later in Clara’s life. In her late forties now, she’d been working in her studio for decades, creating works that went unnoticed. Her greatest success had been her Warrior Uterus series. She’d sold one. To herself. And given it to her mother-in-law. Thereby weaponizing her art. And her uterus.
Then, after an evening in the bistro with women friends from the village, Clara had gone back to her studio and started something different. Portraits. Oil paintings. Of those women.
She’d painted them as they really were, their lines and lumps and wrinkles. But what she’d really captured, in her bold strokes, were their feelings.
The portraits burst onto the art scene, lauded as revolutionary. Bringing back a traditional form but revitalizing it. Her portraits were luminous. Joyous. Vibrant. Unsettling at times, as the loneliness and brute sorrow in some faces became apparent.
Her portraits of the women were challenging and bold and audacious.
And now, this April morning, many of those same women had joined Clara in the bistro. They’d celebrated her successes here. Today they came to comfort.
“They don’t know what they’re talking about,” said Myrna. “It’s just mean, malicious.”
“But if I believed them when they loved the works, shouldn’t I believe them now?” asked Clara. “Why were they right then but wrong now?”
“But these aren’t art critics,” said Reine-Marie. “I bet most of them haven’t even seen the exhibition.”
“The art critic for the New York Times just posted,” reported Ruth. “He says in light of this disaster, he’s going to go back to your earlier works, the portraits, to see if he’d been wrong about them. Shit. He can’t mean the portrait you did of me, can he?”