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?
Beauvoir got back to his feet. “No, Your Honor, we didn’t ask, and the defendant did not give us permission to open the bag.”
“I see.” She gestured to him to sit back down.
As he did, he glanced at Gamache, who nodded approval. A lie would make this even worse. Besides, there was the video Reine-Marie had taken at his request.
“The opening of the bag is, in my opinion, a poisonous tree,” said Judge Pelletier, “and everything that stems from that act is its fruit and therefore tainted and inadmissible.”
The prosecutor leaped up. “I object!” Speaking more forcefully than was perhaps wise.
“Noted,” said Judge Pelletier.
“Are we in trouble?” Agent Cloutier leaned across Homer to whisper to Gamache.
“We’re all right. We have Pauline Vachon’s signed statement. That didn’t stem from the discovery of the duffel bag.”
“Right. Good.”
“Now,” said Judge Pelletier, no longer looking up at them. “On to the other issue.”
The world seemed to stop for Gamache.
Other issue?
He could feel, almost hear, his heart throbbing. Everything, everyone else seemed to recede, except the judge. He was completely, totally, focused, and when she next spoke, it was as though her words were deposited directly, and uniquely, into his head.
“The statement by Madame Vachon. I’ve considered this and consulted colleagues across the country, many of whom are beginning to form judgments on the issue of social media and boundaries.”
“What’s she saying?” hissed Beauvoir. “My God, she’s not…”
But he couldn’t continue. Couldn’t conceive that—
“The boundaries of a person’s house are clear,” said the judge. “The property line. The front door. A warrant is needed to cross. A warrant is needed to tap into a phone and listen to private conversations, to read private emails. But the very notion, even the name, of social media confuses issues of trespass. How can something social, public, be trespassed? There are limits, of course. Laws against hate speech. Pornography. But even those are unclear, blurry. When is social media private and when is it public? Pauline Vachon and her relationship to Carl Tracey were discovered after a Sûreté officer tricked Madame Vachon into giving her access to her private Instagram account.”
Agent Cloutier’s eyes opened wide. “What…?”
“Oh, my God,” whispered Beauvoir.
“Armand?” said Homer. “What’s this?”
The judge had not raised her head. Would not look their way. And appeared to be reading now from notes.
“There’s not much jurisprudence on this as yet, but the vast majority of jurists I consulted agreed that in posing as NouveauGalerie, it was the equivalent of a robber posing as an electrician to gain access to a private residence. Under false pretenses. With the intent to compromise the occupant.”
The prosecution shot to his feet. “I object. That isn’t the correct analogy.”
“And what is?”
“Undercover operations,” snapped Zalmanowitz. “A police officer posing as someone they are not in order to gain evidence in a criminal case.”
“Yes, I did consider that,” said Judge Pelletier. “Except there was as yet no reason to suspect Madame Vachon of anything criminal. Monsieur Tracey, perhaps, but as soon as Agent Cloutier realized she was corresponding with this Pauline Vachon, she should have disengaged. Instead she tricked Madame Vachon into giving her access to an account that led to not just evidence of an affair but to those incriminating posts.”
Judge Pelletier turned to Carl Tracey. With her voice flat, she began to speak.
Armand Gamache held his breath.
Don’t do it. Don’t do it.
“Monsieur Tracey, I am having the charges against you dropped. You’re free to go.”
“No!”
Godin shot to his feet, as did Gamache.
He reached for Homer and braced himself but was still propelled backward as Vivienne’s father exploded forward. Toward Tracey.
There was sudden mayhem as chairs and benches were knocked over. Guards ran to yank the judge off the dais and into the back room.
People fell over, and others joined the fight to stop an inconsolable, uncontainable father.
Gamache felt his feet go out from under him and fell backward, dragging Homer down with him. They landed in a pile on the marble floor.
There was an eerie silence. Then the squealing of overturned chairs being shoved aside as arms and legs reassembled themselves into individual people.
There were moans and groans. Orders issued by guards and cops.
Beauvoir, who’d leaped over the railing to try to stop Homer, now rolled off the man’s back. And tried to get air back into his own lungs.
“Armand?” he gasped.
“Okay. You?”
“Oui.”
Gamache freed his legs and, scrambling to his knees, bent over Homer’s inert body. So still was the man that Gamache felt for a pulse, then laid down, his cheek on the cold marble floor. Face-to-face. Their noses almost touching.
“Homer?”
His eyes were closed, and Armand noticed blood on the floor. “Get an ambulance.”
A court officer ran to make the call.
Beauvoir was keeping the guards away, explaining the man wasn’t armed. Wasn’t a danger.
Homer’s eyes fluttered, then opened. And focused on Armand.
“You promised,” he whispered.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Vivienne’s father was taken by ambulance to the Hôtel-Dieu hospital.
Gamache had wanted to go with him but sent Cloutier and Cameron instead.
It had been Bob Cameron who’d finally brought Godin down. He’d come into the courtroom late, standing unnoticed at the back, as the judge had given her reasoning and conclusion.
And when Homer had burst forward, Cameron had instantly seen what was happening. And what needed to be done.
The left tackle did what he’d been trained to do.
He’d run into the fray, diving at the last minute, using his body to sweep Godin’s legs out from under him. And, in so doing, also tackling Gamache. And Beauvoir. And Cloutier. And anyone else hanging on to Vivienne’s father.
“Give me a few minutes,” Zalmanowitz, the prosecutor, said to the Sûreté officers once the ambulance had left and order had been restored. “I’ll speak to the judge. Then we can talk.”
Judge Pelletier had decided not to charge Monsieur Godin. Clearly sympathizing with the man. The father.
“Merde, merde, merde,” muttered Beauvoir.
“Merde,” added Lacoste.
She’d been in another interview, to possibly take over command of Public Security, when word had reached her about what had happened in the courthouse.
She’d hurried over, and now the three of them walked along the slushy cobblestoned streets outside the courthouse. In need of fresh air and to try to clear their heads.
“A shitshow. What the fuck was that?” Beauvoir stopped, took a deep breath, closed his eyes, then opened them again. “Sorry. But really. What the fuck was that?”
They circled the building in Old Montréal. Feeling the sun on their hot faces. And the fresh air in their lungs.
They spoke a little, mostly curses from Beauvoir. Gamache, who had said almost nothing since the judge’s pronouncement, let them vent. While he walked and considered.
Then they all fell silent, lost in their own thoughts. The same thoughts.
Partly about what had gone wrong, mostly how to fix it.
Beauvoir’s phone buzzed. A text from Zalmanowitz. As terse as the man.
Meet me in my office.
The three Sûreté officers were around the back of the building, but Gamache knew the way in, past the trash and recycling bins. After he’d pressed the button and stared into the camera, the door was unlocked. It helped that Gamache knew the guards by name and they knew him. After decades of trials. And tribulations.