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 might not have realized she planned to leave,” said Beauvoir. “He says she told him, but does that really seem likely?”
It did not.
“So you think he killed her without knowing she was leaving anyway?” asked Zalmanowitz.
“Even if he knew, Tracey still had a motive,” said Gamache. “He admitted to me he had no intention of giving half the home to her. Or to support the child.”
He told them about his exchange in the kitchen when Tracey admitted that Vivienne’s leaving and taking half the farm with her was a pretty good motive.
“So there’s your answer,” said Beauvoir. “Tracey’s violent. Drunk. He planned to kill her, and he did. The fact she was going to leave anyway only drove him more crazy.”
“And the bag?” asked Zalmanowitz. “How did it get into the river? Who packed it?”
“We think Tracey did,” said Beauvoir. “Based on strange things in the bag and the private message to Vachon.”
“Stuff’s in the bag,” Lacoste read from her notes. “Everything’s ready. Will be done tonight. I promise.”
Zalmanowitz sighed. “Damning. And completely inadmissible. But what I don’t get is if she did plan to leave, like she told her father, why didn’t she pack the bag? Oh, never mind.” He flung himself back in the chair again and threw up his hands. “It’s all academic. The duffel bag is out of bounds. It’s as though the bag never existed.”
“Non,” said Beauvoir. “It’s as though we didn’t find it. But it happened. And now we need to find another way to get him.”
They looked at him. Beauvoir had climbed out of his outrage, more determined than ever. Far from defeated.
They’d get Carl Tracey. Somehow.
The prosecutor leaned forward again, drew his notepad toward him, and picked up a pen.
“Right. What we can use is Carl Tracey’s first statement to you,” the prosecutor said to Gamache. “That was before the bag or the body was found.”
“And we have the first interview with Homer Godin, when Vivienne was still missing,” said Beauvoir. “And we have the phone records that led us to Gerald Bertrand.”
They went back over and over those conversations.
Tracey saying Vivienne was drunk and abusive.
Tracey claiming she was having affairs.
That she told him the baby wasn’t his and that she was leaving him. That she’d gone off with some lover.
Tracey admitting to hitting her that Saturday night. And then going into his studio with a bottle, getting wasted, and passing out. When he woke up, she was gone.
“Okay,” said Zalmanowitz. “That’s his version of what happened. We know it’s all bullshit. How did he seem to you, Armand, when you first spoke to him?”
Gamache thought back. It seemed months ago now, not mere days. “Belligerent. Violent.”
He described the pitchfork and the shouts to get off the property.
“Not very cooperative,” said Zalmanowitz. “The one good moment from a shitty day was the judge asking Tracey why he didn’t want you to open the duffel bag, if he was so worried about his wife. It’s a good question. A telling question. It must eat her up to have to release him. But you know, something’s bothering me. After meeting Tracey and hearing more about him, I can understand him killing someone. What I don’t understand is the method.”
“How so?” asked Gamache.
“Wouldn’t you expect this fellow to do something stupid and brutal?”
“Throwing his pregnant wife off a bridge to be battered and drowned in a freezing river isn’t brutal enough for you?” asked Lacoste.
Zalmanowitz regarded her. “No. It’s not. Given his history, I’d have expected something simpler. More hands-on. Beating her to death. Shooting her. Hitting her with a shovel and burying her. Why throw her off a bridge half a kilometer away?”
“Maybe it was Pauline Vachon’s idea,” said Lacoste. “She seems smart.”
“No messages to support that it was her idea?”
“Where she suggests throwing Vivienne off the bridge?” asked Lacoste. “Yes, but we decided not to show you.”
For one brief moment, Zalmanowitz believed her, then lowered his brows.
“Of course there weren’t,” said Lacoste. “They must’ve come up with the plan when they were together. We’ve canvassed the neighbors. A few saw him entering her place last week. She says that was for business.”
“Right,” said the prosecutor. “And even if there were explicit posts, describing it in detail, we couldn’t use them, thanks to NouveauGalerie and that agent.”
“It wasn’t her fault,” Lacoste repeated. “Like I said, she ran it by me and I approved. Encouraged her, even. So lay off her.”
“Okay, sorry, you’re right,” said Zalmanowitz. “Back to the bridge. How did Tracey even get Vivienne there?”
“The coroner thinks the most likely explanation is that he beat her senseless at home, put her in the car, and drove her to the bridge,” said Beauvoir. “Her blood on the car handle and steering wheel might’ve come from her blood on his hands.”
“But that doesn’t explain his boot prints,” said the prosecutor. “How would they get under the car if he drove her there?”
“Made when he was scouting the place, maybe,” said Beauvoir. “We don’t really know the details. And probably never will. Another possibility is that part of what Tracey said is true. Vivienne arranged to meet her lover on the bridge. Tracey overheard and got there first.”
“Okay,” said Lacoste. “But then, what happened to the lover? And when did she call him? There were only five calls out of the house that day. Four to what we think is a wrong number and one to her father.”
“You said you believed Bertrand when he said he didn’t know her,” said Gamache. “Is it possible you were wrong?”
Lacoste considered. “It’s always possible.”
Gamache nodded, even as he recognized it for what it was. Desperation. But sometimes that uncovered something useful.
And they had precious little left to them except desperation.
“All right, let’s walk through it,” said the prosecutor. “Vivienne is afraid. She calls her father, telling him she’s leaving her husband but has to choose her time. That evening Tracey beats her senseless, and then, either thinking she’s dead or trying to work up the courage to finally kill her, he goes into his studio and gets drunk.”
“Then Vivienne regains consciousness and calls Bertrand, her lover,” said Beauvoir. “Begging for help. Telling him to meet her on the bridge. But this Bertrand fellow doesn’t show up. She was a fling to him, nothing more. He sure didn’t want to get involved with a pregnant woman running from a dangerous husband.”
“Vivienne gets in the car and drives herself there,” said the prosecutor. “Bertrand doesn’t show, but Tracey does. He’s waiting for her. He throws her off the bridge and tosses the bag in. The one he’d already packed, according to the posts.”
“There is another possibility,” said Gamache. They turned to him, and he sat forward. “That Bertrand did show up.”
“Go on,” said Zalmanowitz.
“Suppose Tracey didn’t pack the bag, but Vivienne did. Suppose she called Bertrand, telling him to meet her on the bridge.”
“Why there?” asked the prosecutor.
“Maybe that’s where they always met,” said Gamache. “She shows up and waits for him.”
As he spoke, the cold, dark April evening appeared before them. Vivienne Godin, bruised from Tracey’s latest and last beating, stands on the bridge. Bertrand’s headlights appear down the disused dirt road. Little more than a path.