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?
“Enough.” Beauvoir got to his feet and took a step toward Tracey.
“Jean-Guy,” snapped Gamache.
The cold, the exhaustion, the find, the growing certainty of what had happened to this young woman and who’d made it happen, were all fraying their nerves.
Beauvoir glared at Tracey but managed to contain himself.
“We’re done,” said Gamache, zipping the duffel bag shut. “We’ll take this with us and give you a receipt.”
“I don’t want a receipt. I want the bag.”
“You’re coming with us,” said Beauvoir, and shoved him toward the car as they all trudged across the field. Leaving the backhoe to sink further into the mire.
When they reached the car, Beauvoir placed the duffel bag in the trunk, and Gamache, having removed the bullets, put the .22 back there, too.
Tracey stood beside the car.
“Get in,” said Gamache.
When Beauvoir went to get in beside him, Gamache held out the keys.
“Why don’t you drive? Can you get in the front seat?” he asked Reine-Marie, who’d stopped recording and slipped the phone into her pocket.
Gamache and Billy got into the backseat, with Tracey between them.
“She isn’t dead, you know. She’s messing with you all. Trying to get me into trouble. I bet she threw that fucking bag into the river herself. You wait. When she shows up, after a bender with some guy, I’ll be suing your ass.”
“Let’s hope,” said Gamache.
Beauvoir drove while Billy pointed the way to the old logging road.
They came to little more than a break in the trees. Turning in, Beauvoir felt the tires begin to sink. “We have to walk from here.”
The five of them followed the flashlight beams down the narrow lane through the trees.
The limbs of the trees loomed overhead, a tunnel of dead branches. Their flashlights created shadows so macabre that even Beauvoir, not given to fantasy, felt his skin crawl. This was how horror films began. Or ended.
And then it got worse.
Beauvoir’s stronger beam landed on something up ahead. Blocking the way. A car.
“Stay here,” Gamache said to the others while he and Jean-Guy approached.
It was Vivienne’s.
Gamache nodded to Beauvoir, who carefully walked around to the other side and shone his light through the rear window while Gamache looked in the front.
Nothing.
Opening the driver’s door, careful not to touch too much, Gamache played his light over the seat. The wheel. The footwells. There were assorted wrappers, some change. It smelled of stale cigarette smoke. He checked the ashtray and found stubs.
The same brand Tracey smoked.
There was a smear of blood on the steering wheel and another in the shift. The hair on the back of Gamache’s neck was standing on end. Something awful had happened here.
He pulled a lever and popped the trunk.
“Nothing,” Beauvoir reported.
Gamache closed the car door, and both investigators made for the wooden bridge.
“Don’t worry,” shouted Tracey. “It’s safe.”
“No it’s not,” called Billy. “It’s probably rotten.”
Beauvoir reached out and stopped Gamache, who was just about to step on the wooden boards. Armand had heard Billy but hadn’t understood.
Beauvoir turned and glared at Tracey, who was smiling.
“Worth a try,” Tracey said, his eyes cold. Calculating.
Reine-Marie took a step away from this creature while Beauvoir wondered if all five of them would make it out of the woods.
From the safety of solid ground, Gamache and Beauvoir shone their beams along the old logging bridge. Then stopped. The two circles of light converged on a single spot.
A section of wooden handrail was missing. The side opened up to thin air.
Gamache pointed his beam down. Into the drop-off. Twenty feet below, maybe more, was the churning river. Grabbing, dragging, swallowing all that it could.
They played their lights over both shores, but there was nothing. Then Beauvoir’s beam stopped.
“Wait, I think I see something.”
Gamache swung his flashlight over to the far shore.
“What is it?” called Reine-Marie. “Have you found something?”
“No, it’s nothing,” said Beauvoir, relieved. “Just branches. They looked like a body for a moment.”
He moved his flashlight away. “We can’t search the bridge or shoreline right now. Too dangerous. It’ll have to wait ’til morning.”
But Gamache’s light hadn’t moved. In the beam, he saw what Beauvoir had seen. Tree branches, bobbing slightly in the current. Nothing more.
He could see why Beauvoir would mistake—
Opening his mouth, Gamache took a sharp breath, almost a gasp.
“What is it?” asked Beauvoir. “Do you see something?”
Once more he swung his light over, to join Gamache’s, until the two became one bright spot.
Beauvoir looked more closely at the clump of debris on the opposite bank. But still saw nothing. Certainly not anything that would explain the expression on his father-in-law’s face.
It was one of surprise. Shock, even.
“Vivienne’s not here,” Gamache said, then looked at Beauvoir. “But I think I know where she is.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The two men ran along the path, the river on one side, the forest on the other.
Jean-Guy skidded once and went down on one knee in the mud. Armand grabbed his jacket and hauled him to his feet.
And then they continued on. Their flashlights bobbing wildly ahead of them, illuminating trees, path, rocks, river.
They didn’t have far to go. Just to the bend in the river.
When they’d arrived back in Three Pines, they’d taken Carl Tracey to the bistro, where they found Olivier and Gabri, now that the danger of flooding had passed.
“Keep him here,” Gamache had instructed them. “Billy will stay with you. Homer?”
“At your place,” Olivier said. “Clara and Myrna took him there hoping he’d get some sleep. They’re staying with him.”
“What time is it?” asked Reine-Marie.
“Two thirty,” said Gabri.
“That late?”
“That early,” he said. “The wee hours, as Ruth calls it.”
“Where is she, by the way?”
“She went home. Had to wee.”
Reine-Marie glanced at Tracey. He was in the far corner, where he’d been placed by Jean-Guy. Far away from the warmth and soft light of the fireplace.
Then she turned to Armand. “I’ll make sure Homer doesn’t come over here. You go.”
And Armand and Jean-Guy did.
Even though both men knew there was no need to rush, still they ran. Down the path. Beside the wall of sandbags. They ran behind the general store, the boulangerie, past the back of the bistro and the bookstore. The Bella Bella on one side, forest on the other.
And then they were there.
Gamache was panting and holding his flashlight out in front of him with both hands, like a gun. Aiming the beam, steadying it as he stood beside Beauvoir.
Their lights, pointed in the same direction, merged.
And then they saw it. Her.
Gamache had been there earlier, when he and Olivier had checked the river levels.
They hadn’t come quite this far, but still, he’d seen it then as he’d leaned out. Olivier holding on to him.
The growing dam.
He’d noted the pale tree limbs and leaves bobbing up and down in the current. Trapped in the broken ice and debris that was forming.
He’d hesitated, trying to get a closer look. But Olivier’s grip had been slipping, and he was pulled away.
Now he was back. And he saw, in the bright circle of light, his mistake.
At the logging bridge, Beauvoir had momentarily taken trees for a body. And in that moment, Armand Gamache realized he’d done the same thing, only in reverse.