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?
They were olive green. Rubber. Lined with felt. And came up to the knees.
“A going-away gift for Paris?” he asked. “Too kind, my little cabbage.”
“More of that and you’ll find them up your ass.”
“Should the new head of organized crime be talking like that?” He smiled at her. “Congratulations. I’ve heard from other senior officers that you accepted the job.”
“Not quite yet,” she said. “Have to talk to my family. And you do know I won’t actually be heading up a crime family, right?”
“Merde, I thought we’d be getting free appliances for life.”
“Silly man. Free cheese, maybe.” She took a seat at her desk. “About the boots, I got them from Monsieur Béliveau’s general store. The Chief was right. According to Monsieur Béliveau, those’re the most common boot he sells. Everyone has a pair.”
“And why wouldn’t they? Very stylish.” Beauvoir dropped them to the floor. “Same ones as Tracey has, right?”
“Right. Same boots that made the print under Vivienne’s car. Same size. Ten. Even Chief Inspector Gamache has a pair.”
“Are you suggesting he’s a suspect?”
“Yes, yes I am,” she said with a patient smile. “You know what I’m saying.”
Jean-Guy did know. He picked up the boots again and examined them.
She was right, of course.
They were exactly like the ones that had made the boot prints under Vivienne’s car. Like the ones they’d found in Tracey’s home and used for evidence. Evidence now deemed poisonous fruit.
And, apparently, like the footwear everyone in rural Québec owned.
“I put them on,” Lacoste said, “and walked around in the snow and mud. Took pictures of the prints I made. The strange thing is, while those’re size-ten men’s, my feet are size seven.”
“Women’s.”
“Thank you. Yes. But because the rubber sole is so thick and the treads so deeply stamped, my boot prints look exactly like the ones under the car.”
“Exactly?” He turned the boots over. The treads were made from tough rubber, designed to insulate and grip. And not to wear down. So that the tread of a five-year-old boot would not be much different, if at all, from that of a brand-new one.
“I sent the pictures to the lab, and they’ll analyze them, but I couldn’t see a difference.”
“So—”
“So anyone could’ve made those boot prints under her car. A man, a woman—a child, even, I suppose.”
“This isn’t getting us closer to Tracey,” he said. “In fact, you’re making the defense’s case, if a case was still needed.”
“I know,” she said.
It didn’t have to have been a large man on that bridge. It could have been a smaller woman. And now that Beauvoir thought about it, the coroner had said that those handprints on Vivienne’s chest, bruises made in a shove, probably were made by a large man.
But—
The coroner also pointed out that bruises bleed. Spread internally. Dr. Harris had left the possibility open that they, too, could have been made by a smaller woman.
“Pauline Vachon?” he asked.
Lacoste nodded.
Lysette Cloutier got to her feet when Chief Inspector Gamache entered the kitchen.
Homer and Reine-Marie sat in front of the woodstove, a pot of tea and some shortbread cookies on a tray on the hassock between them.
Fred lay on the rug at Homer’s feet, barely raising his head to look at the man who’d just come in.
Henri and Gracie had run to the door to greet him and now chased each other into the kitchen, getting between Armand’s legs, almost tripping him up. But he was used to it.
Homer stared down at his large hands, which gripped each other tightly.
Then he got up slowly and turned to Armand. There was a bandage on the left side of his head, above his temple, where he’d hit the floor of the courtroom, knocking himself out. He had a black eye and bruising into his hairline.
His face, as he faced Armand, was impassive. A mask.
He just stood. And stared. And stared.
And then, silently, he moved. Brushing past Armand.
“Homer?” said Armand.
But the man had left the warm kitchen. There was a whistle from the living room. Fred lifted his head, struggled to his feet, and followed the sound.
“Please stay here,” said Armand to the others.
Homer was on the front porch with the old dog.
It was five in the afternoon, and the shadows were long. The temperature was dropping with the sun.
Woodsmoke rose from the homes, slightly scenting the chilly early-evening air.
Armand held the door open, and, at a nod, out shot Henri, followed by Gracie, who was looking, and behaving, more and more like a chipmunk every day.
They caught up with Homer and Fred, who were walking with a measured pace along the edge of the village green. Neither in nor out of the circle.
Lights were on in homes around Three Pines, and Armand could see the glow from the old railway station across the still-swollen river and knew that Jean-Guy and Isabelle were in there, working to solve a crime that seemed to be getting away from them.
Then he turned to the grizzled man, walking through the twilight.
“I’m sorry,” he said as he fell in beside Homer, keeping slow pace with him.
But Homer didn’t reply. Just stared ahead, at the hills and forests growing darker and darker around them.
At the path into the woods, which followed the Rivière Bella Bella and went to the place where Vivienne was found, Homer stopped. It was now little more than a slightly darker opening in a dark forest.
Then he turned and looked in the opposite direction. Upriver. Where Vivienne had first gone into the water. Where she’d last been alive.
His breath came out in warm, soft puffs. Joining, mingling with Armand’s.
“What do you want from me, Armand?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s not true. I can see it in your eyes.” He turned to face him. “What is it? Forgiveness? You want me to say it’s okay that you messed up? That I now have to do what you couldn’t? Get justice for my little girl.”
Armand was quiet. And he thought maybe Homer was right.
He wanted to be absolved of his guilt.
Vivienne’s father was quiet for a long time, his eyes returning to the river. Before he finally spoke.
“Is it possible some things can’t be forgiven? They’re just too terrible? Abuse? Murder?” He looked at Armand. “Could you?”
“Forgive murder?” asked Armand. He thought about it. He was being asked to consider the murder not of a stranger but of his wife. His child. His grandchild. Could he forgive? Sincerely. “It would take years and a huge amount of work. And help. And still…”
“Yes?”
“I hope I’d get there—”
“But?”
“But I think it would take a better person than I am,” admitted Armand.
Homer deserved the truth. And there it was. Could he forgive? In his heart, in his soul? Armand was far from sure.
“Would it help if whoever did it was genuinely sorry?” asked Homer. He searched Armand’s eyes.
“Yeeesss, I think it would.”
Homer nodded. “I wonder if Vivienne believed it.”
“You think Tracey said he was sorry?”
Armand doubted that Tracey would ever have apologized, but maybe he had. Abusers often did. They begged forgiveness. Declared their love. They brought flowers and gifts, and through a flood of tears they promised to never, ever do it again.
And maybe they were even sincere. Until the next time.
“You don’t have to forgive him,” said Armand. “You don’t have to forgive me. But for your own sake, for your own sanity, you do need to give up this obsession with revenge.”