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?
What was happening up there?
He left a message, then went upstairs, suspecting he wouldn’t be able to sleep. But the moment his head hit the cool, fresh pillow, he was out.
Reine-Marie, also exhausted, had joined him, and in their sleep they moved to the middle until their warm bodies touched.
Beauvoir and Lacoste walked past the thick wall of sandbags, pausing to consider them.
“Came close,” she said, pointing to the ones that had been pushed over by the force of the river.
Beauvoir grunted.
How close they all were, without knowing it, to disaster. All the time.
They walked over the stone bridge to the old brick train station. It had seen its share of reunions. And partings. Its share of tears. And shouts of joy.
Even he, fairly immune to fantasy, could feel that every time he entered the familiar building.
It had also seen its share of murder investigations, having been used in the past by Chief Inspector Gamache as temporary headquarters for the homicide unit.
Now Chief Inspector Beauvoir directed his team to set up shop.
Abandoned decades earlier by the railway, the building was now home to the Three Pines Volunteer Fire Department, overseen by its chief, Ruth Zardo, who glared down at them from the official photo, taken when she’d been given the Governor General’s Award for poetry.
“I didn’t feel the aimed word hit,” Beauvoir said, looking up at the embittered old poet. “And go in like a soft bullet.”
I didn’t feel the smashed flesh
closing over it like water
over a thrown stone.
“What was that, patron?” asked one of the agents.
“Nothing.”
“Sounded like poetry,” she said with some alarm.
“Keep working.” Beauvoir caught Isabelle Lacoste’s eye and saw amusement there. And recognition.
My God, he thought. I’m turning into Gamache.
But while he feigned alarm, what he actually felt was a sort of contentment. That on his last case he should finally turn into his mentor.
He stood still amid the activity and let the evidence come to him. But what came to him was an image. Clear as day. Young and pregnant Vivienne Godin, breaking through the railing. Arms out. The duffel bag, her worldly possessions, falling with her.
Her blue eyes wide, as realization hit.
And then the water. Cold as ice. Closing over her.
… like water over a thrown stone.
How would I feel if it was Annie …
Armand was right, of course. He was struggling to separate the two women.
Does my twisting body spell out Grace?
I hurt, therefore I am.
Faith, Charity, and Hope
are three dead angels
falling like meteors—
“Always cheerful, eh, you old witch,” muttered Jean-Guy as he gave one last glance up at Ruth before turning to examine the sodden items at his feet.
They’d found Vivienne’s purse in the tangle of the dam. Its contents were spread out on the sanitized plastic sheet on the floor, alongside the things from the duffel bag.
An agent described each item for the recording as it was removed. Tagged. Cataloged. Photographed. Swabbed. Examined.
Private items transformed, like black magic, into public property.
Finally the entire contents were spread out.
From the purse they’d taken a wallet, with a hundred and ten dollars and change. Driver’s license. A bank card but no credit card. Some paper, too wet to read, the water having turned it into pulp. Some mints. A Bic lighter but no cigarettes. What looked like house keys and car keys.
“Nothing unusual,” said Lacoste. But something had caught her eye. Taken from the duffel bag.
Wearing gloves, she picked up the pill bottle and sounded out the label. “Mifegymiso. I don’t know it.”
“I do,” said one of the agents, looking over. “It’s an abortion pill.”
“You mean the morning-after pill?” asked Beauvoir.
“No, that’s different. That’s for the day after sex, to stop insemination from going further. This’s for pregnancies in the first few months. To terminate them.”
“I didn’t know there was such a thing,” said Beauvoir. “Legal?”
“Yessir.”
“What do you think?” he asked Lacoste as they stared down at the collection of items.
“I think it’s strange that Vivienne Godin was beyond three months pregnant and she takes abortion pills with her. I’m assuming they won’t work this far into a pregnancy. If she had the pills, why not use them earlier?”
“Maybe she thought they would work,” said Beauvoir. “Maybe she was waiting to see how the father would react, and if it went badly, she’d take them.”
“This isn’t prescription,” said Lacoste. “There’s no doctor or pharmacy on the label. Not even her name.”
“Black market,” said Beauvoir.
“Seems so. If they’re legal, why go onto the black market?”
“And why would she tell her husband that the baby wasn’t his, even if it was true? She must’ve known how he’d react. Why not just get out while she could?” said Beauvoir.
Tracey, goddamn him, had said the same thing. That Vivienne knew what he’d do. That he’d hit her. Beat her. Though surely she never thought he’d kill her.
“Maybe she didn’t tell him,” said Lacoste. “We only have Tracey’s word for that.”
Beauvoir was considering. “Then why would he say it? He gave us a motive. He’s clever enough to know that.”
“He told the Chief that they were drunk,” said Lacoste. “Maybe she didn’t mean to tell him but it just came out. Maybe it wasn’t even true.”
Beauvoir nodded. He, more than most, understood the corrosive effect of booze. How it stole judgment and inhibitions until things were said and done that could never be unsaid. Undone. Alcohol stole dignity and friends and family and livelihoods before finally taking the life.
Alcohol was a thief. And often a murderer.
“She wanted to hurt him before she left,” said Lacoste.
“She couldn’t match him physically, but she could hurt him with words.”
The aimed word … like a soft bullet, thought Beauvoir, glancing up at the photo of Ruth scrutinizing them.
“Sober Vivienne probably knew better, but drunk…?” said Beauvoir. “The toxicology report will tell us more.”
“There’s something else,” said Lacoste. “The clothes she packed don’t make sense.”
“Why not?”
“Where’re the sweaters? The heavy shirts? The socks?”
“There’re shirts and jeans.”
“Summer weight. It’s freezing out. Why take those?”
“Maybe she planned to go south. Florida.”
“Maybe,” said Lacoste.
“Or…?”
“Or maybe she packed in a hurry. Just grabbing things. Or—”
“Maybe she didn’t pack the bag,” said Beauvoir. “Maybe he did.”
Lacoste nodded. “To make it look like she’d gone away. No woman in her right mind would take those clothes in early April.”
“The problem we’re going to have,” he said, “is proving that Tracey packed the bag. Even if we find his DNA and fingerprints on the items, his defense would argue they were there because they lived together.”
“Oui,” said Lacoste. “But if his prints are on that”—she pointed to the pill bottle—“we might have something. I think he tossed it in not knowing what it was.”
“Not exactly a smoking gun,” said Beauvoir, but he could feel hope rising, if not faith and charity. This might be the first nail.