A Better Man (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #15)(128)

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.