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?
“The devil she knew,” said Gamache. “The damage done. Homer talked about that on the bridge. I didn’t understand at the time, I was so focused on just trying to stop him. But when we were waiting on the shores of the Bella Bella for his body to be brought in, I went back over what he’d said. And then I realized something. He actually confessed.”
“Oh, my God,” said Cameron. “He beat her, too? When she was growing up?”
“I think you saw it, without realizing,” said Gamache. “When she opened the door the first time. Last summer. You saw the look in her eyes. You recognized in them what you see in the mirror. It was, I think, one of the things that drew you to her. A mutual hurt that went back to the earliest memories. Of course she’d marry an abusive man. It was all she knew, all she thought she deserved.”
Gamache looked at Cloutier. “When did you begin to suspect?”
“I didn’t, not really. Not until I saw those payments.”
“What were they?” asked Cameron. “Blackmail?”
“Restitution,” said Lacoste. “Vivienne was already planning her escape last summer. About the time she miscarried. She probably suspected that Tracey had something to do with it. She knew she needed to get out, but she also needed money. So she contacted her father and demanded payment, for all the pain.”
“And if he didn’t pay,” said Beauvoir, “she’d tell her godmother all about it. I doubt Vivienne even knew that you and her father had grown close.”
“So Homer broke it off with you and paid,” said Gamache. “Over and over again on the bridge, he told us about the pain he’d caused Vivienne. The hurt. He even said that his wife had begged him to stop it. I thought he meant stop Tracey abusing their daughter. But standing by the river, quietly, going back over it, I remembered that Kathy had never met Tracey. She couldn’t have meant him. So who did she mean? There was only one answer.”
“She was begging me to protect Vivienne from her father,” said Cloutier. “From Homer. And I didn’t. Worse, I’d fallen in love with him. I didn’t see it. Didn’t want to see it.”
“None of us did,” said Gamache.
“But you couldn’t have saved Vivienne if you had.” Cloutier’s voice rose. “I could’ve. You didn’t promise to protect her. I did. But instead I actually blamed Vivienne for being cruel to her father. For cutting him out of her life.”
“So that’s why Tracey killed Vivienne,” said Cameron. “He knew about that money.”
“But how would he?” asked Beauvoir. “Would she really have told him? I think if she was going to confide in anyone about the money, it would be someone she trusted. A lover, for example. Don’t you?”
His voice had grown quiet. Almost a whisper. As he locked eyes with Cameron across the fire.
Cameron flushed red, almost purple. And closed his hands into fists.
“There was something else Homer said on the bridge,” said Gamache. “Before you all arrived. Or, actually, something he didn’t say.”
He looked at the circle of faces, all of them focused on him. Even Cameron broke contact with Beauvoir and shifted his gaze.
“When he was preparing to take Tracey with him, he said it was punishment for all the years Tracey had hurt Vivienne.”
“Yes,” said Cameron. “Exactly.”
“You’re not listening,” said Beauvoir.
“Wait,” said Lysette Cloutier, who understood what Gamache was saying. “Wait. That can’t be true.”
“Yes it is,” said Lacoste.
“What?” said Cameron, looking from one to the other.
“Homer Godin was punishing Tracey for abusing his daughter,” Beauvoir explained. “But not for killing her.”
He let that sink in.
“He never once said that, not on the bridge anyway,” said Gamache. “Before, yes. I think he’d convinced himself Vivienne’s death was Tracey’s fault. If Tracey hadn’t been abusing her, she’d never have needed to get away. Never have needed to demand the money. Never have needed to meet her father on the bridge.”
“And Homer would not have killed her,” said Beauvoir.
The words sat there. No one protesting. No one denying them.
It was, finally, the truth.
Lysette Cloutier hung her head, dropping it toward her heart. While Bob Cameron, wide-eyed, absorbed what had been said.
“I should’ve seen it sooner,” said Beauvoir quietly. “Only two numbers were called from the house that day. One a wrong number. The other was to her father. Vivienne was on that bridge to meet someone, and it could only be the one person she’d spoken to that day. Her father.”
Finally it was that simple. That obvious.
“But what about Fred?” asked Reine-Marie. And once again the dog raised his head. Then lowered it to his paws. “Why did she leave him behind?”
“Her plan was never to go away that night,” said Armand. “She wanted to get the money from her father, then return home and talk to you.” He turned to Cameron. “That’s why she didn’t leave when Tracey was at the art store, and that’s why she didn’t take Fred to the bridge. You didn’t break off the affair last fall, did you?”
“No. I broke it off just after Christmas. I couldn’t do that to my family.”
Gamache nodded. “I think she genuinely believed the child was yours.”
“She wanted to tell you,” said Beauvoir, “and see if maybe—”
“I’d go with her,” he said.
He didn’t tell them what his answer would have been, nor did they ask.
“She called over and over, trying to get through to you,” said Beauvoir. “She finally gave up and went to the bridge to meet her father.”
“But if she’d refused to see him since she left home, why agree to meet him that night?” asked Cameron.
“Yes,” said Cloutier. “The money could’ve been wired into her account, like all the rest. No need to see him at all.”
“The baby,” said Beauvoir. “That changed everything. The idea of being a parent changes you.”
Cameron nodded. Remembering his own mounting terror as his first child grew in his wife’s womb. That maybe he’d be his father. Maybe he’d be impatient. Cruel. Violent.
Maybe he’d lash out. With fists. With a belt. With a baseball bat.
“She needed to face her abuser,” said Cameron. “Look him in the eye. Confront him.”
As he’d confronted his own father. Before his son was born.
Only then did he know, in his heart, that he would love his children, protect his children. He would never hit them. And he had not.
“Yes,” said Beauvoir. “Vivienne met her father on the bridge for one reason. To look him in the eye and tell him what he’d done to her. She had to do it for her own sake, but also for her daughter’s.”
“It wasn’t about the money,” said Lacoste. “That was the excuse to get him there.”
There was silence as some looked down at the floor, some stared into the fire, and others looked out the window, at the bright, cheerful day. At the three huge trees, swaying, playing in the breeze.
“Do you think her plan was to kill him?” asked Cameron.
“No,” said Gamache. “If it was, she’d have taken Tracey’s rifle. She had no weapon. I think it was as Chief Inspector Beauvoir says. She wanted her freedom. Not another burden. Killing her father would’ve bound him to her for the rest of her life.”
But oh, thought Armand, the courage it must have taken to face him. And in doing that, turn her back on all the justified rage. All that had maddened and tormented her her entire life.
To rid herself of all the subtle demonisms of life and thought, Vivienne had to stand on that bridge and face them. Face him.