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?
A friend from her firm in Montréal had sent a link. And a warning. But, of course, she had to look.
Clicking on it, she watched. Blood draining from her face.
Honoré, on her knee, was also watching. But she quickly took him away, placing him in his playpen. Then she returned to her laptop, approaching it warily.
The screen was paused on an image of her father.
Her eyes were wide. Her breathing shallow. She muted the sound and hit play.
Reine-Marie covered her mouth with her hand and closed her eyes. The bruise on her face forgotten, she now felt as though she’d been hit, hard, in the gut.
Then, opening them again, she asked Myrna to go back to the beginning.
“Are you sure?” Myrna asked.
They’d gone up to Myrna’s loft over the bookstore, where the internet was most stable. Annie had sent the link. She knew that her mother would want to know. To be warned about what was out there.
In the few minutes it had taken the women to get upstairs, more and more messages had come in from friends who were alarmed and upset. Who wanted to warn both her and Armand.
Myrna and Clara were in the loft with her. As were Olivier and Gabri. Ruth was sitting beside her in front of the computer, her veined hand holding Reine-Marie’s.
“Please,” said Reine-Marie.
Myrna clicked, and the short video played again.
“Do you mind if we use your meeting room?” Beauvoir asked the station commander, who, on seeing him at her door, clicked her computer closed. And reddened. But not before Beauvoir had heard the telltale sound of muffled gunfire coming from her laptop.
“Not at all.”
Beauvoir closed the door to the private office and placed his laptop on the table. Gamache stood beside him, staring at the frozen image on the screen. It was of himself, in flak jacket. Weapon out. And raised. Eyes sharp. Preparing to shoot.
“It’s bad,” said Beauvoir.
Gamache nodded. “Go on.”
He stood straight and faced the screen. Much as he’d faced the boy on the fire escape earlier that day.
Beauvoir hit play.
The images were jerky but still fairly clear. It had been pieced together from old video, taken from the raid on the factory. They were images both Gamache and Beauvoir had seen before. Many taken from the cameras they themselves had worn.
But there were other images. Ones neither had ever seen. Video culled from God-knew-where on the internet. Of kids being gunned down. Many of them black kids. Clearly unarmed.
As Armand Gamache watched the screen, Beauvoir watched him.
Saw the narrowing of the eyes, the wincing at the terrible images.
The video had been edited to make it appear that Gamache was responsible for all of it.
The editing was rough. Not really designed to fool anyone. Except those who wanted to be fooled.
As Jean-Guy Beauvoir watched Gamache, he realized he’d never seen anyone actually gutted before. Until now.
Madeleine Toussaint sat at her desk with her second-in-command and watched the video.
Her email, her phone lines, had lit up. All guiding her to this travesty.
She watched it three or four times.
“What’re you going to do?” her second-in-command asked. “There has to be a response. The Sûreté has to condemn—”
“I know what has to be done. Leave me.” After a moment she added, “Please.”
When alone, Chief Superintendent Toussaint got up and walked over to the wall map. It showed the current flooding. Of which there was a lot, and more to come.
But her eyes rested on the massive hydroelectric dams. Without her consent, without her knowledge, the floodgates had been opened.
And, more, the resources had been diverted south. Runoffs had been dug, were still being dug. River levels lowering. There was collateral damage, to farms and fields, but most farmers not only understood but had helped.
Toussaint accepted the congratulations from the Prime Minister for her handling of the situation. Smart enough not to acknowledge it hadn’t been her doing.
She herself had still been considering the options when she’d been told there were no more options. The decision had been made. An irreversible action had been taken.
And she suspected by whom.
She looked across her vast office, at the image on the screen. Of the former occupant. Gunning down black teens. Some, she realized with horror, not even that old. She felt sick. Physically ill.
They could be her own son.
Yes, something had to be done about Gamache. Something more than what she’d already done.
Madeleine Toussaint sat back down and composed her response. Then, before she could regret it, she hit send.
Reine-Marie was sitting in Myrna’s kitchen with a shot of scotch. Talking with Annie on the phone while the others huddled together. Conferring.
All except Ruth. Who’d returned to the computer. Drawn back, like a compass to magnetic north, to the unimaginable violence. Done to those children.
Done to Armand.
Reine-Marie, phone to her ear and listening to Annie vent, watched as Ruth clicked away on the keyboard. Her bony fingers thudding the keys as though punishing the computer for its complicity.
Then, with a final flourish, the old woman hit one last key and sat back. Smiling.
“Annie, I have to go,” said Reine-Marie.
“I need to call Reine-Marie,” said Armand, reaching for the phone.
“I’ll call Annie.”
Jean-Guy got through, but Armand did not. After trying home, then the bistro, he finally reached her at Myrna’s.
“I saw it,” said Reine-Marie before he’d even spoken. “Don’t worry. No one believes it. It’s crude.”
“It’s cruel,” came a voice shouted in the background. “But I fixed it.”
Ruth, Armand recognized. “How did she fix it?”
“Armand?”
It was Jean-Guy’s voice. He had Annie on the line and was sitting once again at his laptop.
“Hold on,” said Armand, and he turned to his son-in-law. “What is it?”
“Annie sent me a link. Just posted.”
“The same one…?” Armand began to ask as he walked around to the laptop.
But he stopped, walking. Talking. Breathing.
The image frozen on the screen was clearly from the same raid on the factory. But this was a different video. It was, he could see immediately, from the original recording. The true record of what had happened that day.
It was never meant to be made public. Never meant to be seen outside the Sûreté and the official inquiry. But the video had been leaked and posted years ago, in a violation so profound it had taken Gamache, Beauvoir, the families, years to get over.
Scenes had obviously been taken from it to create the bastardized video that had gone up that morning.
Armand now knew how Ruth had “fixed” it.
Thinking she was helping a friend, she’d reposted the original. In hopes of showing the truth.
What the old poet didn’t realize, or had forgotten, was that social media was less about truth than perception. People believed what they chose to believe.
Neither did she appear to understand the damage she’d just done.
“I have to let you go,” Armand said into the phone.
When he hung up, he looked briefly at the clear image on the screen, taking one deep breath after another. Trying to control his outrage.
Then, reaching for the phone, he said to Jean-Guy, “Can you give me a few minutes?”
Jean-Guy stepped toward the door, paused, then turned around. He knew what Armand was about to do. “Non.”
“Non?”
“I’m staying with you.” He sat down. There would be no argument.