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?
On seeing the sadness in her face, he smiled. “Not to worry, Isabelle. Maybe I’m being selfish.” He leaned toward her and lowered his voice. “After all, it’s how the light gets in.”
That conversation flashed through her mind, more as a feeling than actually verbatim, as they stood on the side of the road, the icy mist seeping into their bones.
Beauvoir started down the drive.
Lacoste turned to Gamache. “You sure?”
“I’m sure,” he said. “Be careful. Tracey has knives, too.”
As Beauvoir and the others approached the house, Gamache signaled to Cameron to walk to the far side of the field and hold the position.
“And me?” asked Cloutier.
“You stay here, by the car. We’ll need you when we find Homer.”
“He won’t listen to me.”
“I think you’d be surprised.”
Gamache walked along the slushy road, in the opposite direction to Cameron, who was now barely visible through the mist.
Gamache heard Beauvoir on the other side of the house, knocking on the door.
“Tracey, it’s the Sûreté. Chief Inspector Beauvoir.”
Gamache took a few steps off the road, onto the soft grass, soaked by melting snow.
There was a door back there. Closed. It led, he knew, into Tracey’s studio.
As he got closer, he saw the boot prints.
He stopped. And stood absolutely still.
He heard pounding now. Beauvoir. At the door. Trying to get a response.
But there was no one there to respond, Gamache knew. At least no one alive.
He turned and shouted to Cloutier. “Homer’s already been here and gone. Beauvoir needs to get inside and find Tracey.”
“Yessir.”
She ran down the drive, sliding slightly in the mud but keeping her footing.
“He’s here,” she shouted. “Homer’s here.”
At the door, everyone turned.
“How’d you know?” demanded Beauvoir.
“Chief Inspector Gamache told me. Said to tell you to go inside. Tracey might be—”
“Merde,” said Beauvoir, and reached for the door handle as the two agents reached for their guns.
“Holster them,” said Lacoste.
The door was locked, and solid. They threw themselves against it, just as Cameron arrived. The human battering ram.
Putting his shoulder to it, the door burst open.
As he rushed in, Beauvoir wondered, very briefly, where Gamache was.
CHAPTER FORTY
“Tell him I’m following Homer,” Gamache shouted after Cloutier, as she ran to warn Beauvoir.
Then he turned back to the prints.
One set arriving.
One set returning.
Gamache followed the boot prints into the forest.
After a few steps, he paused and looked around. He knew then where Homer was heading.
No longer needing to follow the prints, Gamache moved through the woods as fast as he could, weaving between trees. Brittle branches scraped his coat, his hands, his face.
Once he had to stop as the mist grew thick and he lost his bearings. But he reoriented himself and pressed on.
It took ten minutes of slipping and slogging through mud and ankle-deep slush before he broke through to what was little more than an overgrown path.
He could hear labored breathing ahead of him, but it wasn’t until he turned the corner that he saw.
Homer. On the bridge. The mist rising from the Bella Bella almost enveloping him.
But he wasn’t alone.
Carl Tracey’s body was slung over his shoulder.
“Homer!”
Godin turned.
“Here,” shouted Cameron from the back of the house. “In the studio.”
Beauvoir hurried back there, expecting to find Tracey, either cowering behind his pots or dead. Instead he found Cameron standing by the back door.
“Godin must’ve gotten in this way,” said Cameron.
“No sign of Tracey?” said Beauvoir, pushing past Cameron. “Jesus, there’re footprints coming and going.”
“There’s blood on the floor,” said Lacoste, pointing to the stains. “Not a lot. Someone’s hurt, but doesn’t look like a fatal stabbing. There’d be lots more blood.”
“And a body,” said Beauvoir.
He stepped outside and saw what Gamache had seen. Not just two sets of prints, but one was deeper than the other.
“Homer must’ve taken Tracey with him.”
“And the Chief’s following them,” said Lacoste, pointing to another set of prints.
“Oh, God,” said Cloutier, and when they turned to her, she said, “He shouted something I didn’t hear. I should’ve stopped and asked, but I just kept running.”
Lacoste turned to Beauvoir. “He thinks we’re right behind him. He thinks he’ll get backup.”
Cameron started past Beauvoir to follow the prints, and the man, into the forest, but Beauvoir stopped him.
“Wait.”
Every fiber in his body wanted to run into the woods. He could feel the others straining to do the same thing.
But he remembered the Chief’s advice.
Think. Take a breath. Take a moment. Just a moment. To think.
So now, almost vibrating with the need to act, Jean-Guy Beauvoir thought.
“Godin’s taking Tracey to the bridge.” Turning to Lacoste, he said, “Take the car. You two go with her.” He pointed to Cameron and Cloutier.
“You?” she asked.
But Jean-Guy Beauvoir was already doing exactly what he always did. He was following Armand Gamache.
By the time Lacoste reached the car, Jean-Guy Beauvoir and the other two agents were well into the forest. Racing through the mist and trees.
“Drop him, Homer.”
Godin, twenty paces ahead, was heaving for breath.
“Put him down.” As he spoke, Gamache approached, reaching into his pocket as he walked toward the bridge. Not for the gun still resting there but for his phone. As Homer watched, Gamache stopped, pressed a button, and placed the phone on the ground, propped against a rock.
There was no reception there, he knew. It couldn’t send, but it could record.
Homer, with Tracey unconscious and slung over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, said nothing. Did nothing. Except stare at Gamache and gasp for breath.
Gamache approached, slowly. His hands out in front of him. He couldn’t see the knife. It was possible Homer had already used it. And dropped it.
Was Carl Tracey dead?
But Gamache, who’d seen many, many bodies, didn’t think so. There was still a pink hue to Tracey’s hands as they hung limp. And there was no trail of blood, no sopping stain on Homer’s coat, as there would be if he’d stabbed Tracey to death.
Homer backed up a step. Two. Toward the gap in the railing, mended only with yellow police tape.
And Armand knew what he planned to do. What he’d planned all along.
He would follow his daughter into the water. And take Tracey with him. Only parting ways in the afterlife. As Tracey went to hell, and Homer went…?
“Fred,” said Armand.
For a moment Homer looked confused. Then spoke. “Keep him. He’s yours.”
“No, I mean, why didn’t Vivienne take Fred with her when she left?”
He glanced behind him. Nothing.
He’d expected Beauvoir and Lacoste to be there by now.
He was running out of time, and Homer was running out of bridge. Gamache’s only hope was to distract him long enough.
“It doesn’t make sense,” said Gamache as he stepped onto the bridge. “She wouldn’t leave without her dog. I don’t understand. Do you?”
Tracey made a sound, and Homer tightened his grip on him.
If Gamache had hoped to engage Homer, break his focus, he’d failed.
Homer looked blank. But not confused. He was certain about the only thing that mattered now.