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?
“You post for him?”
She nodded.
“Why doesn’t he do it himself?” asked Lacoste.
These were softball questions. Every interrogator had a particular technique. Hers was to set people at their ease. Have them lower their defenses.
“He’s an artist. Not great at technical things. Besides, there’s no internet at his place. Can you tell me what this’s about?”
It interested Lacoste that it had taken this long for Pauline Vachon to ask. It was normally the first question out of anyone’s mouth. But then, this young woman already knew the answer.
“Has something happened to Monsieur Tracey?”
She looked directly into Lacoste’s eyes. Not blinking. Brown eyes all innocent with just the right touch of curiosity. Without, it would appear, guilt or guile.
“I’m afraid his wife has drowned, and we just have some questions.”
“Oh, that’s terrible.” Pauline looked from Lacoste to Cloutier and back again.
“Yes,” said Lacoste. “Did Monsieur Tracey ever talk about his wife?”
Vachon paused to gather her thoughts. To sort through the truth and lies and decide which to choose.
“A bit. He didn’t seem happy. He said she drank. Was depressed. I felt sorry for him.”
“Pauline,” said Lacoste, leaning forward a little and dropping her voice so that it sounded as though she were about to confide in the young woman. “I really hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to ask you some questions that might seem odd. Is that all right?”
“Sure. Of course.” She looked at her watch. “I have an appointment in an hour—”
“Oh, this won’t take that long. Don’t worry,” said Lacoste with a motherly smile, despite the fact there weren’t that many years between them. It wasn’t years but choices that separated these two women.
“How old was your mother when she had you?”
Both Vachon and Cloutier looked at her with surprise.
“You weren’t kidding about the strange questions,” said Pauline with a laugh. Though she was slightly guarded now. “She was sixteen.”
“Young. Must’ve been difficult. And your grandmother? How old was she when she had your mother?”
“Do you really need to know this? What does this have to do with Carl’s wife?”
Cloutier had the same question and just barely stopped herself from nodding agreement.
“I’m sorry,” said Lacoste, and looked it. “I just need your help understanding some things about this community. How judgmental it can be of young women.”
It was a vague answer but seemed to satisfy, mollify, Pauline.
“My grandmother was fifteen.”
“And you’re twenty-one?”
“Yes.”
“How old were you when you first got pregnant?”
That hovered between the two women.
“Why—”
“Please, Pauline. It would help a lot.”
Cloutier could see that Vachon realized she’d created a problem for herself. She’d offered to help, needed to appear willing to help. And these questions were not, on the surface, threatening or even, it must be admitted, pertinent.
But they were deeply invasive.
“I was sixteen.”
“And what happened?”
“I had an abortion.”
“The next time?”
Now Pauline shifted in her seat. “Why are you asking this? It’s not illegal. It was all done by a doctor in a hospital.”
“Yes, I know. But I also know that small towns can be supportive, but they can also be pretty awful. You get a reputation.… Nasty rumors spread. Rumors with just enough truth in them to do damage. People don’t always like it when you’re a success, do they?”
“Not always,” Pauline said, lifting her chin slightly.
Isabelle Lacoste found herself admiring this young woman. Who refused to give in. She had guts. But did she have a conscience?
“Non,” said Lacoste quietly. “They’re not always as kind as we’d like. Especially painful when friends aren’t happy for you. You’re trying hard to get out, to make a career for yourself. To make a success of your business. Get a little money. And people are all, ‘Oh, she’s too good for us now,’ just because you dress nicely and take some care. Right?”
Pauline nodded but was guarded. Though not as guarded as she should have been.
“Can I tell you something?” Lacoste lowered her voice. “Something no one else outside the police knows.”
Pauline nodded, leaning forward.
“Vivienne was pregnant. That’s why I’m asking. But we don’t really know who the father was.”
“Really? Got it,” whispered Pauline. “Poor Carl.”
“Yes. Poor Carl. Who can blame him for wanting out of that marriage?” Lacoste leaned back in her chair, her voice once again businesslike. “Now, the second time you were pregnant, another hospital procedure?”
“D and C, yes.”
“And the third time?”
There was now, in Lacoste’s tone, a slight edge. Not of judgment but of warning. Tell the truth.
“How did you end that pregnancy, Pauline?”
“I know who you are,” said Toby, sitting at a desk in the station, not all that far from where Lacoste was interviewing Pauline.
“You’re the cop everyone hates,” said Daphne.
She was at the next desk over, also being booked.
Gamache smiled. “Not everyone, I hope.”
“Everyone I know.”
Gamache was not particularly surprised to hear that teens running a criminal operation might not be fans.
“I saw the video of you killing those kids,” said Toby. “Brutal.”
Cameron, the arresting officer, stopped typing on his computer. Jean-Guy Beauvoir, sitting nearby and going over messages, looked up.
And Armand Gamache tilted his head slightly, the smile fading. “What video?”
Toby laughed. “You haven’t seen it? Posted about an hour ago. Gone viral. Funny that I watched it, then there you were.”
Gamache drew his brows together. There was a video out there of him gunning down children? How could that be?
He turned to Jean-Guy, who still looked pale, after that confrontation in the alley. As they’d driven back, Gamache had noticed Beauvoir trembling, and quietly asked if he was okay.
“I didn’t think I’d get out of there alive,” Jean-Guy said, under his breath.
Gamache thought the same thing, but didn’t say it. He still felt the acid burning his stomach.
“You’ll be on the Champs-Élysées soon,” he’d said. “In the sunshine.”
“Not soon enough.”
While Jean-Guy knew Paris wasn’t immune to danger, it would at least be unlikely. There was a far better chance of returning home each day.
Now, on hearing what Toby said, Jean-Guy swung around to his laptop, hitting the keys.
Sûreté, video, kids.
Gamache, video, shooting.
“I coulda shot you, you know,” said Toby. “Payback. For what you did.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Toby sat back and crossed his arms. “You weren’t worth the bullet. And you sure aren’t worth dying for. He’da killed me.”
He nodded to Cameron, who was staring at the boy.
“You got that right,” said Cameron.
Toby turned back to the older man. With the gray hair. And that nasty scar by his temple. That made him so recognizable.
The cop’s face wasn’t so much wrinkled as lined. From a great distance, from half a century away, he looked to the boy like a man broken and pieced back together.
Humpty Dumpty. Who’d had a great fall.
“Patron,” said Beauvoir from the other desk, breaking into Toby’s thoughts.
His voice was hushed. Almost a whisper.
Annie was working from home in Montréal. Studying for the French law admission exams.