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?
Jean-Guy did not leave his side as Armand called the families of the officers who’d been slain that day. Whose deaths, like some horrific snuff film, were once again played out in public.
Armand placed call after call.
They were numbers he knew by heart, since he spoke to the mothers, fathers, husbands, and wives every week and visited the families whenever he was invited.
Now he called to warn them. To listen to their rage. To absorb, again, their agony.
When he’d finished, he asked Jean-Guy to leave him. Just for a couple of minutes.
And this time, Jean-Guy did.
When he was alone, Armand sat quietly, then dropped his face into his trembling hands.
Things are strongest where they’re broken, the young voice reassured him. And Armand gasped with pain as he held the agent, no more than a boy, in his arms.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“Some abortion drug.”
Those were Pauline Vachon’s words. Too ashamed to go back to her doctor, she’d gone where desperate women had for centuries. Into a back alley.
But this time it wasn’t some sadist with a coat hanger. It was a kid with a pharmacy.
“Mifegymiso?” Lacoste asked.
“Maybe. I dunno. I just took it, and it worked.”
“Is that how Carl Tracey knew about it?”
There was silence. Except for the ticking of the old clock on the wall. As the reality of what they were really talking about hit Pauline.
“I was just trying to help a client. Nothing wrong with that.”
Lacoste remained silent.
“His wife was pregnant,” Vachon went on. “He said it probably wasn’t his, that they hadn’t had sex in months. So I told him about the drug.”
“And where to get it.”
“Yes.”
“You knew he was going to give it to her, probably without her knowledge, and that was fine with you?”
“What he did with it was his business.”
Lacoste struggled not to show her disgust. At Tracey. But also at this alarming young woman who didn’t seem to see anything wrong with this.
“It didn’t work,” said Lacoste. “Vivienne was still pregnant when she died.”
“She couldn’t have been. This was last summer,” said Vachon.
Isabelle Lacoste’s mind raced.
It seemed they were talking about two different pregnancies. Carl Tracey had ended one with the abortion drug last summer. But now Vivienne was pregnant again.
Had she suspected what he’d done? Was that one of the reasons, perhaps the main reason, she’d decided to finally get out now? So the same thing didn’t happen to this child?
“Well, she was,” said Lacoste. “Pregnant. You didn’t know?”
“I didn’t know him all that well. He didn’t tell me everything.”
“You knew him well enough to set up an illegal drug buy. Well enough to help him abort the baby, without his wife’s knowledge. Well enough to sleep with him.”
Lacoste opened the file in front of her and removed the photographs, taken off the private feed. She placed them, one at a time, on the table.
Pauline was momentarily taken by surprise but then recovered herself. With speed rarely seen by Lacoste, she grasped the situation. And made a decision.
“I’m not exactly picky, am I?” said Pauline, smiling.
Lacoste realized she’d underestimated this young woman and how remarkable she really was.
This was strategic. Mix truth in with lies, so it became more and more difficult to tell them apart.
“It meant nothing,” Pauline explained. “Might not’ve been the smartest thing I’ve done, having sex with a client, but hey, people’ve done worse.”
“Like murder,” said Lacoste.
There could be no more doubt about the relationship between Tracey and Vachon, and neither was there any doubt about the relationship between interviewer and interviewee. One was in charge, the other in trouble.
Pauline Vachon looked down at the photographs, her lips compressing. “How did you get these?”
“You’ve been corresponding with NouveauGalerie, I believe,” said Lacoste.
“You?” said Vachon, looking first at Lacoste, then at Cloutier, who gave a curt nod.
The clotted makeup could not conceal the panic in her face.
Lacoste opened the file again and read, “Stuff’s in the bag. Everything’s ready. Will be done tonight. I promise. That was a message from Carl Tracey to you, around noon on the day Vivienne disappeared. And your reply?”
“Look, I had nothing to do with it.”
“Finally. Good luck. Don’t mess it up.” She looked up from the file. “But he did, didn’t he? He messed it up royally. That’s why you’re here, Pauline.”
The younger woman was flushed. But she tried one more twist to get off the hook.
“Those were about the clay Tracey was buying. He was going to do more pieces that night. I told him not to mess it up. He’d been promising some for weeks.”
Lacoste got up. “I’ll let you think about what you just said. Unless something happens in the next few minutes, like a meteor strikes, you’ll be charged with the murder of Vivienne Godin.”
She and Cloutier left the room. Leaving the file behind.
“We have her,” said Lacoste, walking up to Beauvoir, who was standing outside the meeting room. “Pauline Vachon doesn’t admit to being part of the murder—yet—but she will. I’m letting her stew for a few minutes. She was clearly shaken when she realized we’d seen the private account.”
“You should’ve seen her face,” said Cloutier.
Lacoste nodded. “She admits she used the abortion drug herself and was the one who told Carl Tracey how to get it on the black market.”
How Lacoste got the young woman to admit to a third abortion, never mind buying the black-market drug, still amazed Cloutier. It had been a masterful combination of guile, of guesswork, of knowing when to push and when to make nice. Until Vachon had nowhere to go but the truth.
Cloutier was looking at Lacoste with something close to awe. But there was caution there as well. She did not want to make the same mistake as Vachon.
Whether by natural instinct or honed skills, Isabelle Lacoste had the power to see things people wanted to hide.
And they all had them, as Lysette Cloutier knew only too well.
But while Cloutier was focused on Lacoste, Lacoste was focused on Beauvoir.
“What is it?”
He told them about the video.
Before Lacoste could react, the door opened and Gamache stepped out. He was pale but composed.
Every agent in the open room looked over at him.
They’d all read the Twitter feed and seen the doctored video that was blowing up online. They had yet to see the real video that had just been posted.
“What can we do, patron?” Lacoste asked, going to him and touching his hand.
“There’s nothing to be done. Mais merci, Isabelle. I’ve spoken to the families.” His smile was tight and his voice brisk. “How did the interview go with Pauline Vachon?”
As they returned to the meeting room to talk privately, both Lacoste and Beauvoir noticed that Gamache’s right hand was closed into a tight fist. But still it trembled.
They watched on the monitor as Pauline Vachon turned the folder around and went through the photographs and printouts.
Then she sat back in her chair. And stared at the far wall.
Seeing, Lacoste knew, all her work, all her dreams, dissolving.
Then Beauvoir closed the feed on his laptop and turned to Lacoste.
“Tell us what happened.”
When Lacoste finished, Beauvoir thought for a moment. “She’ll crack.”
“I’m not so sure,” said Lacoste. “She’s clever and she’s tough. Makes me so angry. She really could’ve made something of her life. I still don’t know why she’d hook up with Carl Tracey.”