A Better Man (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #15)(102)

“So’m I. I’ll put in the appeals. Even Judge Pelletier asked me to. She feels awful about it. I think she’s more than half hoping she’ll be overturned.”

He walked them to the door and shook their hands. When it came to Gamache, he leaned in and whispered, “I’m sorry about the videos. Shitty day. I don’t know if dumbass has done you a favor or not. Releasing the real video.”

“I know the answer to that,” said Gamache.

Zalmanowitz nodded. “There is one more thing, Armand.”

“Oui?”

“Did you steal Tracey’s dog?”

Now both Beauvoir and Lacoste turned and stared, first at the prosecutor, then at Gamache.

“I took Fred, yes. But I paid Tracey for him.”

“Apparently not enough. He wants the dog back. He’s filed a complaint.”

“You stole the dog?” Beauvoir asked. “I thought he came with Homer.”

“No. He was Vivienne’s dog. Tracey was going to shoot him, so I took him. And I’m not giving him back.”

On this day of blurred boundaries, one clear line had to be drawn, and it seemed to have been drawn at the dog. They couldn’t save Vivienne, they might not even be able to save Homer. But they could save Fred.

Barry Zalmanowitz stared at Gamache, then nodded. “I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry.”

“Merci.”

Now the prosecutor watched as the three of them, Gamache flanked by the two younger officers, walked down the corridor.

And he remembered the images on the real video. Gamache, amid ferocious gunfire, dragging a critically wounded Beauvoir to safety. Stanching the wound. Then having to leave him there and head back into the battle.

Then, later in the tape, Isabelle Lacoste was seen kneeling beside Gamache, holding his bloody hand as he lay, apparently dying, on the factory floor. Shot in the head and chest.

Now the three of them walked down the corridor, their feet echoing along a bright marble hall that hid so much stench below.

And while the prosecutor didn’t envy Armand Gamache anything about what was happening, with the case and with the social-media attacks, he did envy him this.

He watched until the three of them walked out the huge double doors and disappeared into the crisp April day.



* * *



Once hit by the cold air, Beauvoir, as though slapped awake from a reverie, began to talk.

“I’m not going out like this.”

“What do you suggest we do?” asked Lacoste.

“We head back to the incident room in Three Pines and go over the evidence we can use. Again and again. Until we find something we missed. There has to be something else there. Isabelle, I know you’re still officially on leave, but—

“I have an overnight bag in the car, all ready to go,” she said with a grin. “Old habits, right, patron?”

Gamache smiled. Old habits. Always being prepared to head out at a moment’s notice.

“I have to get back to headquarters,” she said. “I’ll meet you down in Three Pines when I’ve finished.”

Gamache and Beauvoir paused by their cars.

“How’re you going to keep Homer at your place?”

“Helps that he won’t have his own car, and I’ll ask the others to stay with him.”

“He’ll walk there if he has to, Armand.”

“Oui,” said Gamache. “But he needs help, and I don’t know what else to do, Jean-Guy. Do you?”

He was genuinely asking. But Jean-Guy Beauvoir had no answer.

As he drove down the familiar highway, Chief Inspector Beauvoir hoped and prayed they’d find something they’d overlooked.

Something.

Anything.





CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO


Gamache was in his car, following Beauvoir and talking with Reine-Marie on the phone, explaining, or trying to explain, what had happened in court.

“Homer?” she asked. “How is he?”

Armand paused, unsure how to answer that.

Out of his mind with grief and pain and rage?

Incensed that a system that called itself “just” would allow his daughter’s murderer to go free? On a technicality. Or two.

Inconsolable? Working out how to punish Carl Tracey himself?

Instead Armand gave the only answer he knew for sure. “There’s no concussion. He can go home. But do you mind—”

“If he stays with us? Of course not. But—”

“Will we be able to keep him from Tracey?” said Armand. “I don’t know. Can you hold on for a moment?”

Agent Cloutier was calling.

“Chief Inspector? We have a problem.” She was whispering, urgency in her voice.

“What is it?”

“We’re still at the hospital. They’re just releasing him, but he won’t come back to your place.”

“He wants to go home?”

“Yes, but mostly he says…” Her voice faltered.

“Go on.” Though Gamache suspected he knew what she was about to say.

“He says he never wants to lay eyes on you again.”

“I see.” Gamache took a breath.

He did see. It wasn’t just that Tracey had walked free. That somehow the investigators had screwed up. It was that he’d broken his promise to Homer.