A Better Man (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #15)(24)

Gamache shook his head. As strict as the laws were governing firearms in Canada, they could be tighter. Here was a man known to abuse his wife, and he’s allowed to have a gun?

“Did you test it? Has it been fired recently?”

“We tested, and no, it hasn’t been fired in a while.”

Gamache looked into the dog’s eyes and knew that was about to change.

“There you are, finally,” Beauvoir’s voice came out the tinny speaker. “Did you get my messages?”

“No, we’re out of cell-phone coverage. About what?”

“A state of emergency’s been declared. Leaves have been canceled. There’s flooding across the province. Looks bad.”

“The dams?”

“Hydro’s sending engineers up there now to assess the situation.”

If they burst …

But Gamache didn’t say it. They all knew what would happen if the massive hydroelectric dams in James Bay were breached.

But that wasn’t the only potential disaster.

“Where’s the worst flooding?”

Beauvoir detailed it. As he spoke, Gamache visualized the map of Québec and saw the danger points. Where rivers met larger rivers. Inevitably that was also where towns and cities had been built. At the junction of the great waterways.

“The St. Lawrence?” he asked. And held his breath. Though in his heart he knew the answer already. He’d seen the ice buildup just a few hours earlier and had called it in.

Beauvoir quickly and succinctly described the affected areas. Ending with the worst-hit.

“Montréal.”

“Montréal,” repeated Gamache.

“I’ve been trying to reach you. There’s a meeting here they want you at. Starting in half an hour. How soon can you get back?”

Gamache looked at his watch. “I can be there in forty minutes.”

“Hurry.”

“Jean-Guy?”

“Oui?”

“The Bella Bella?”

“Still rising.”

Gamache looked south. Toward his village. He could be there in minutes. Then he looked north. To Montréal.

“Merci,” said Gamache. “I’ll be there as soon as possible.”

He gave the handset back to the agent and started to walk around to the passenger side. But paused.

“Sir?” asked the agent. The car was running. Waiting.

“Un moment,” said Gamache.

As the others watched, the Chief Inspector walked back to the porch, took out his wallet, placed bills at Tracey’s feet. Then walked back to the car. The old dog in his arms.

As he got in, he said, “His name’s Fred.”





CHAPTER TEN


The patrol car slid down the road, but the agent managed to guide it to where they’d left their vehicles. She dropped them off and continued down the hill. Opening the windows to air out her once-pristine vehicle. That now smelled of old wet dog, and mud, and donkeys.

“What do we do now, patron?” asked Cameron as they stood in the rain outside their cars.

“You return to your station. You’ll be needed for flood control or evacuations. We’re heading back to Montréal.”

Once in the car, Agent Cloutier asked, “What about Vivienne? What do I tell Homer?”

“I’ll call him once we’re out of the mountains and have communications.”

Rain was hitting the windshield. The clouds were low, mingling with the mist clinging to the forest.

“Can I stay on it, though? Keep looking for her?”

“You’ll do as you’re ordered, Agent Cloutier,” said Gamache. “As will I.”

He turned toward the woods, where the Bella Bella, invisible, was rushing toward the valley. And the village.



* * *



Ruth stood at the top of the fieldstone bridge and watched the activity around her.

The whole village was out, filling sandbags. It was something they did most springs, but until now it had been a precaution, that had morphed into a tradition, that had become a party. A celebration. To mark the end of a long winter.

The spring runoff often coincided with the running of the maple sap.

They’d fill sandbags and hold a sugaring-off party, with baked beans and crêpes and cauldrons boiling down the sap into syrup. A fiddler played as children, and Gabri, stood around the pots waiting to pour the sweet liquid onto snow, where it turned into a sort of soft caramel called tire d’erable.

While mothers and fathers, friends and neighbors filled sandbags to build walls along the Bella Bella, children, and Gabri, used twigs to roll the tire, then ate the maple candy and watched horses return from the forest bearing buckets brimming with more sap.

It was a festive end to winter. After all, the river had never broken her banks. There’d never been reason to worry.

But today was different. The fiddler was holding a shovel. The kids were safely in St. Thomas’s Church, their evacuation center. There was no tire. Only tired and sodden villagers.

Ruth stood in the rain, almost sleet, and watched as they bowed, then straightened, then bowed again, filling the sandbags in what looked like a pagan ritual.

But if this was a ritual, it was to an angry, vindictive deity.