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?
He cuffed her to the railing and moved on.
Gamache chased another kid into an apartment, where he tackled him, both of them falling onto one of the stained mattresses pushed together on the floor. Getting quickly to his feet, Gamache put the kid in a hold, patting him for weapons and scanning the room for other occupants. It was then he noticed pill bottles neatly arranged on shelves lining all four walls.
“Are you Toby?”
The boy was silent.
Gamache pulled a knife, a bottle of pills, and an ID from his pockets.
Not Toby.
“Where is he?”
Beauvoir grabbed hold of the collar of the largest kid as he tried to escape down the alley and swung him around. Not a he. A she. A girl about fifteen.
“Let her go,” came a voice from above.
Beauvoir turned, still holding the girl, and saw a skinny kid on the fire escape. Pointing a gun.
“You a cop?” the kid asked. “Of course you are.”
The girl yanked her jacket out of Beauvoir’s grip and stepped away.
“Toby?” Beauvoir asked the kid holding the gun.
“Get his gun,” said Toby.
The girl reached out, but Beauvoir backed away. “You don’t want to do that.”
“Give her your gun, old man,” said Toby.
“Or what? You’ll kill a cop?”
Beauvoir looked at the large girl standing in front of him. Her eyes were wide, round. She was stoned and afraid.
Then he looked at the kid on the fire escape and felt his heart leap in his chest.
He was not afraid. Not stoned.
His gray eyes were empty. Not cold. But not hot. Not glaring, not even threatening.
Chief Inspector Beauvoir had seen eyes like that, often. But only in the recently dead.
“I’m a minor,” said Toby. “What’re they gonna do to me?”
“You know what they’ll do to you?” came a voice down the alley.
Toby immediately turned his gun on the older man walking toward them. His hands were out by his sides, his jacket was open to show he wasn’t armed.
“If you kill a cop, if you even hurt one, they’ll try you as an adult. You’re close enough, right? What’re you?” Gamache turned his attention to the girl beside Beauvoir. “Fourteen. Fifteen.”
“Almost fifteen,” she said.
“Shut up, Daph,” said Toby, not moving the gun from the newcomer.
“There’s a third cop, you know, Daphne,” said Gamache. “Is that your name?”
She gave a small nod.
“If your friend shoots Chief Inspector Beauvoir—” He saw the girl’s eyes widen even further, though Toby did not react.
Gamache stopped where he was and addressed himself now to Toby. “That’s right. Not just a cop, but Monsieur Beauvoir here is head of homicide for the Sûreté. If you shoot him, you’ll have to shoot me, too. And our colleague will almost certainly then have to shoot you. Both.”
He let that sit there before speaking again, this time to Daphne. “Do you want to see fifteen?”
“I’m fifteen,” said Toby. “It’s not so great.”
“No,” said Gamache. He’d also noticed the look, or lack of it, in the boy’s eyes. “I don’t suppose it is. And I’m sorry about that. But it can get better.”
Just then Cameron rounded the corner, skidding in the slush as he tried to stop himself. Regaining his balance, he pulled out his gun. Pointing it at first one, then the other kid, finally settling on Toby on the fire escape.
“Put down your weapon, please,” said Gamache. And to everyone’s astonishment, it was clear he was talking to Cameron. “You might keep it at the ready. But just lower it.”
“But—”
“Do it,” said Beauvoir.
The girl Daphne had backed up and, quite sensibly, was now standing a few paces away from Chief Inspector Beauvoir.
But Daphne was not the problem. Nor was she the solution.
“We’ve come to ask you about a bottle of pills we found in a murder investigation,” said Beauvoir. “Mifegymiso. It’s an abortion drug.”
“I know what it is. I know all the shit I sell.”
“So you do sell it?” said Gamache. “But probably not a lot.”
As he spoke, he moved a step closer to the fire escape but away from Beauvoir. Dragging Toby’s attention, and his gun, toward him. Forcing Toby to choose between them. Making it more difficult for the boy to shoot both before Cameron could get off a shot.
“Stop,” snapped Toby before glancing at Daphne. “I said get his gun.”
To Beauvoir’s dismay, he felt his gun removed from its holster. This was, he knew, another reason Gamache never wore one.
Because it could be taken. Used against him. Them. Anyone and everyone. Most guns used in crime were stolen from people who had them legally.
And here was one more on the street.
Gamache looked over his shoulder at Cameron, warning him not to react. Not to overreact.
Nothing had happened yet. Not really. Nothing that could not be undone. But once a trigger was pulled, there was no going back.
“We need to know who bought the drug from you,” said Beauvoir. “That’s all.”
His own voice was steady, matter-of-fact. Trying not to betray the fear he felt. Trying not to flash back to what it was like. To feel the bullet strike. To be lifted— He stopped there and fought to harness his thoughts. “Then we’ll leave.”
Toby did what Beauvoir hoped he’d do. He turned his attention, and his gun, away from Gamache. And onto him.
What Toby could not see, what no one could see, was that Beauvoir’s knees had begun to tremble. But his face remained placid. As though this were an everyday occurrence and nothing to worry about.
Cameron, watching this, his weapon lowered but ready to raise and shoot, felt he was looking into some parallel universe. Where people held reasonable conversations while pointing guns at each other. And were not terrified.
Because he was very afraid. And Cameron knew one thing, from his time on the gridiron and his time as a cop. People who were afraid often did very stupid things.
Don’t be the one. Don’t be the one. Don’t be the one to do something stupid. And please, please, don’t let me be the one shot.
Gamache was very still. Alert to any movement. Anything that could trigger the boy with the empty eyes. The only comfort, if it could be called that, was that Toby would almost certainly get off only one shot before Cameron took him down.
Still, by Gamache’s calculations there seemed a better-than-average chance at least one of them would die in that alleyway.
He took another step away from Jean-Guy, forcing Toby’s attention, and weapon, back onto him.
“Stop,” said the boy. “Not another step. You think I won’t shoot, you dumb fuck, but I will.”
“I know you will, Toby,” said Gamache. “But I hope you don’t.”
“We just want one thing,” said Beauvoir. “The name of the person who bought the pills from you.”
“You think I asked for his name? You’re a fucking idiot.”
His, thought both cops. His name.
So Vivienne hadn’t bought the drug. A man had. Almost certainly Carl Tracey.
“Can you describe him?” Beauvoir asked. They had to be sure.
“Are you kidding? Look, the guys I sell to don’t like it when I tell the cops on them.”
“I can appreciate that,” said Gamache. “My friends don’t like it when I pass their address on to burglars.”
Daphne laughed, but Toby did not. Though he did cock his head with interest at the old cop, with the gray hair and thoughtful eyes.
He held those eyes for a moment, sensing something else in them. There was menace, for sure. Here was a man who might be old but wasn’t weak. And with a start, Toby recognized him.