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?
“There’re enough things in this case that we can’t explain,” said Gamache. “Why Vivienne left her dog behind. Why was she on that bridge at all? Why would Carl Tracey kill her there and not at home? Who was she calling in the last hour of her life?”
“Why she didn’t want her father to come get her when he offered earlier in the day,” said Isabelle.
“All last night a phrase kept repeating itself. Dominica Oddly even used it as the title of her piece on Tracey.”
“All truth with malice in it,” said Beauvoir. “It’s a quote, right? Where’s it from? Not ‘The Wreck of the Hesperus,’ I hope.”
“As a matter of fact,” said Gamache, clearing his throat in advance of a recitation.
He smiled slightly as Jean-Guy’s eyes widened and he recoiled from what promised to be an onslaught of poetry. It was a familiar bit of mutual self-mockery.
Dear God, thought Isabelle. How’re they going to live without each other?
“Non,” she said, smiling at this set piece. “It’s from Moby-Dick.”
“You were thinking about a fish?” asked Jean-Guy.
“About human nature,” said Armand. “About obsession. About allowing rancor to cloud judgment. About what happens when we see the malice but fail to see the truth. We were all appalled by what happened to Vivienne. Even before she was found, we more than suspected that her drunken, abusive husband had done something to her. I thought that myself. I had absolutely no doubt that if something had happened to Vivienne, her husband did it.”
“It wasn’t a wild guess,” said Isabelle. “Experience points to him. The statements of others, including a local Sûreté cop, point to him. Her father. Even Agent Cloutier.”
“Yes, that’s true,” said Gamache.
He leaned forward. Trying to get them to see what he saw.
“And that’s the point. It was all so obvious, we never even considered anything, anyone else. Not seriously, anyway. I’m not saying Tracey didn’t murder Vivienne. I am saying we owe it to her to look at all possibilities. Including that he was telling the truth.”
“That’s what you’ve been doing all night?” asked Beauvoir, looking at the papers scattered on the coffee table and sofa.
“Yes.” Gamache sorted through them until he found Tracey’s statements.
“I’ll call in Cloutier and Cameron,” said Beauvoir. “We’ll need their help to go back over all this. Again.”
It was impossible to miss the exasperation in his voice. This was, Beauvoir knew, a waste of time. They should be concentrating on nailing Tracey, not looking elsewhere.
But then he wondered if that wasn’t exactly what Chief Inspector Gamache was doing. Trying to get Tracey. Sometimes, sometimes, if you didn’t look directly at a thing, something caught your attention. Out of the corner of your eye.
When Beauvoir looked at Gamache, as he did now, he saw a man who would easily, even in a bathrobe, perhaps especially in a bathrobe, pass as a college professor. A decent and thoughtful man. Who loved sitting by the fire, or in his garden, or in the bistro with a book. He loved good food and poetry and friends. He loved his wife and children and grandchildren. And Armand Gamache loathed violence.
But out of the corner of his eye, Jean-Guy Beauvoir saw cunning. A man who was calculating. Shrewd. Ruthless at times.
And determined. He would stop at nothing to catch a murderer. To catch Tracey.
“Why don’t you look over these.” Gamache handed over Tracey’s statements. “I’ll call Cameron and Cloutier.”
“But before you do…” Beauvoir looked him up and down, and Gamache smiled.
“Good point.”
He left Beauvoir and Lacoste by the fireplace. With their coffees. Reading.
As he mounted the stairs, Gamache looked back at Jean-Guy. He saw a man carefully held together. Taut. Intense. Nervous energy simmering close to the surface. Curt at times. Fierce in a fight. A man who blew off tension by happily smashing opponents into the boards in his hockey games.
But out of the corner of his eye, Armand Gamache saw kindness. Loyalty. A deep, almost inconceivable capacity for love.
Jean-Guy Beauvoir would stop at nothing to catch a killer. This killer.
“Oh, shit,” said Clara.
She was sober now. She felt she’d never been more sober.
Getting up from the easel, she had a shower, put on clean clothes, made a pot of strong coffee, and took a mug over to her kitchen window.
It was dawn. But barely light. Huge flakes only April could produce were falling. Plump with moisture, they hit the ground and melted. But not all. Some stayed behind.
A thin layer of white covered the grass, the road. It clung to the three huge pines. The cars and bench.
It should have been beautiful, except that by April most yearned to look out and see green. Not winter, clinging on.
Clara returned to her studio, but instead of going in, she snapped off the light and closed the door.
Then, needing fresh air, she took Leo for a walk. Their feet making dark tracks in the bright snow.
While Isabelle and Jean-Guy read over the files, Armand showered, shaved, and changed into slacks and shirt and tie. Quietly. So as not to awaken Reine-Marie.
Gray light and a cool breeze were now coming through the windows.
Before going downstairs, he looked in on Homer, to make sure he was all right and to see if Fred was hungry and eager to go out. Homer was asleep, and Fred just lifted his head, then lowered his gray muzzle to his paws.
Armand returned with food and water bowls, which he placed on the floor, then softly closed the door.
When he returned to the living room, he looked up the numbers for Agents Cameron and Cloutier in the Sûreté files. He reached for the phone, but that was as far as he got.
“When you’re ready, patron.”
Jean-Guy’s voice broke into Armand’s thoughts. Broke his concentration. His hand still resting on the phone, Armand looked over and saw Jean-Guy and Isabelle staring at him. Waiting for him.
“Alors,” said Jean-Guy, adjusting his glasses. “We went through Carl Tracey’s statements and cross-checked with those of others, including Pauline Vachon and Homer Godin.”
“And made a list of what it might mean if he was telling the truth,” said Isabelle.
Gamache nodded. Listening. He had his own notes beside him on the sofa.
“He said she was alive when he left her,” said Jean-Guy. “If that’s true, then someone else murdered her. If that’s the case, my money’s on Pauline Vachon. With or without Tracey’s knowledge.”
“But probably with,” said Isabelle.
By habit, they glanced at Gamache to gauge his reaction, but the Chief was noncommittal. Simply listening. Though it seemed to Jean-Guy that Gamache was struggling to remain focused.
“Is something wrong?”
“Non, non, go on. Pauline Vachon. I’m following.”
Jean-Guy glanced quickly at Isabelle, who’d also noticed the uncharacteristic distraction.
“I’ll get to that later,” said Jean-Guy, “but for now let’s go back to what Carl Tracey told you when you first visited his home. Before Vivienne was found. He said they’d both been drinking. That was later confirmed by the autopsy report on Vivienne’s blood-alcohol level.”
“Oui,” said Isabelle. “So that much was true. He said she was drunk. That was an exaggeration. They had an argument. She told him the baby wasn’t his.”