A Better Man (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #15)(31)

“I see.” Beauvoir looked down at the smelly old thing, lying contentedly on the now-filthy rug. “I’m sorry we have to put that search on hold.”

“Actually, we don’t. Or at least I don’t. If it’s all right with you, I’d like to speak to her father in Ste.-Agathe, before the roads are closed. Do you mind if I take Agent Cloutier with me?”

“No, of course not. You don’t need to ask, patron,” said Beauvoir.

“But I do.” Gamache smiled.

“Mind if I come, too?” asked Lacoste. “Seems I’m free for the afternoon.”

“That would be great,” said Gamache. Not only did he value her judgment and company, but he knew that she was a mentor to Agent Cloutier.

Isabelle Lacoste had been a young woman when, to everyone’s surprise, he’d chosen her for homicide. That hadn’t been all that many years ago.

Now her hair was prematurely graying and there were lines at her forehead and from her mouth. Caused by stress. And pain. She walked with a limp and a cane, still recovering from near-fatal injuries almost a year earlier.

He’d often wondered if he’d really done her, done Jean-Guy, done any of them such a favor by recruiting them into homicide. But they were adults, he told himself, and could make their own decisions.

And now one had decided to leave and one had decided to return.

As he waited for the elevator, with Isabelle and Fred, he looked out at Montréal. So much rain was sliding down the window, it looked as though the city was underwater.

Gamache put his hands behind his back, one gripping the other, and felt his core grow cold. And saw again the animation. Of much of Québec sliding into Vermont. Sent there by a flood of water and a fear of making the wrong decision.

“All that most maddens and torments,” he said.

“Moby-Dick,” said Lacoste. “Studied it at university.”

“Right,” said Gamache, turning to her. “I couldn’t remember where it’s from.”

“But why remember it at all?”

“Just something someone in the meeting said.”

“Well, that can’t be good,” said Isabelle Lacoste as they stepped into the elevator. “Hardly reassuring.”

“Non.”





CHAPTER ELEVEN


They pulled in to the driveway of the neat bungalow in the center of Ste.-Agathe forty minutes later.

As they stood on the driveway, they could see that ice still covered the lake. But it was heaved up here and there. Ice-fishing cabins had been abandoned, and there was a huge fissure through the middle of the hockey rink twenty feet off shore.

Lac des Sables was breaking up. It had obviously hit swiftly. Taking the villagers by surprise.

Even from there they could hear the bangs. Booms. As new cracks formed in the thick ice.

The thaw was moving north. More swiftly than imagined. More swiftly, certainly, than hoped.

Gamache put his hands in his pockets and brought his shoulders up against the wind.

They were in the Laurentian Mountains, and it was considerably colder. What had been coming down as rain farther south was turning to ice pellets here. And soon, he thought, freezing rain.

They’d have to be quick about this if they hoped to make it back home.

Chief Inspector Gamache brought out his phone and called in the report of the ice breakup. He rang off just as a man appeared at the door.

Homer Godin had clearly been waiting for them. He came out of his house, but he stopped short and brought his hand to his face.

“Fred,” he said.

On seeing Monsieur Godin, Fred slithered out of the car. The man dropped to his knees to embrace the old dog.

Then Godin got up and wiped his face as he turned to Gamache and put out his hand.

“Thank you, thank you for coming. I’m Vivienne’s father.”

Not, Gamache noticed, Monsieur Godin. Not Homer. But Vivienne’s father. That was his identity now. And, perhaps, had been since his only child’s birth.

“Armand Gamache. We spoke on the phone.”

“Yes. I stayed here, as you suggested. But she hasn’t called.” Monsieur Godin searched Gamache’s face for reassurance. That she would.

But Armand Gamache was silent.

Homer looked down. At the dog. His shoulders rose and fell. And there was a gasp. A sob. His hands covered his face, and through the fingers came the muffled words.

“This’s all my fault.”

“No, no, that’s not true, Homer,” said Lysette Cloutier, reaching out to touch his arm.

But he didn’t seem to notice. Then he finally dropped his hands, and wiped his face with his sleeve.

“I’m sorry. I’m better now.” He pulled himself up, rigid. Then noticed the third person.

Gamache introduced Superintendent Lacoste.

“Thank you for coming. Thank you, thank you,” said Godin, composed. Of stone and wishful thinking.

He was in his late fifties, maybe early sixties. Gray stubble was beginning to form a beard. There were dark circles under his eyes, which were weary and bloodshot. And moist.

Homer Godin was tall, solidly built. A man clearly used to physical labor. He spoke with the broad country accent of someone who’d left school early to work on the land.

Lacoste knew this man. Not personally, but her own grandfather was just such a Québécois. Still vigorous at ninety-one, he liked nothing better than getting into the forest, even in winter, and chopping wood.