A Better Man (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #15)(43)

While he stayed with Tracey and the duffel bag, Beauvoir went to the river and was walking the banks. Shining his flashlight, to see if he could see something else. Someone else.

As he walked, Beauvoir’s heart thudded in his chest, in his wrists, at his temples, and in his throat. His skin tingled. His face, in the cold, was flushed.

He’d spent much of his adult life looking for bodies, at bodies. What was out there didn’t scare him.

What frightened him was what was in there. Inside himself. What dark thing had been aroused, awoken, when he realized he was in the presence of someone who’d almost certainly thrown his wife and unborn child into a freezing river. To die.

It was all Jean-Guy Beauvoir could do not to turn around. March back to Tracey. Tell Armand and Reine-Marie and Billy to look away while he forced Tracey to a kneeling position, took out his gun. Placed it at the base of the monster’s skull. And fired.

Jean-Guy paced. Pointing the flashlight this way and that. Trying to settle his mind and focus on the job at hand.

What he saw were shards of ice, rocks, roots uprooted. Debris. Rushing water. But no Vivienne.

At Beauvoir’s request, Billy had turned his backhoe so that its light faced the river.

From the cab, Billy Williams watched Jean-Guy pace. He knew torment when he saw it.

Then he looked over at Armand. Standing right up against Carl Tracey. Not side by side but facing him, in an act of extreme and ghastly intimacy.

Billy Williams knew that what he was witnessing was also an act of love. Not for Tracey, of course, but for Jean-Guy.

Armand had sent the younger man away to, on the surface, do the worst job. To look for the body of a young woman and her unborn child. But in reality, Armand was saving Jean-Guy. From himself.

Gamache was standing that close to Carl Tracey so that Beauvoir didn’t have to.

When Tracey backed up, Gamache moved forward. Not letting the weaselly man step away. Get away. Gamache was at least two inches taller, twenty pounds heavier, and twenty-five years older than Tracey.

He had the advantage of height, weight, control, and sobriety.

But Tracey had the greater advantage of knowledge. He knew where Vivienne was.

Gamache’s boots thucked in the mud as he stepped even closer to Tracey.

“Tell us,” Gamache repeated, his eyes not leaving Tracey’s. “Where’s Vivienne?”

“I don’t know. She went away,” said Tracey. “Ran away with some guy she was—”

“Enough,” said Gamache. “What did you do with her?” Then he modulated his tone. Corralling, with difficulty, his anger. His voice, when he spoke again, was unnaturally reasonable. Coaxing a brute to do one decent thing. “Tell us, Carl. Let us give her some rest.”

Behind them, the Bella Bella ran off into the mucky field. The night air was crackling with cold and outrage.

“I have no idea where she is. Maybe she got drunk and fell into the river. Or maybe whoever got her pregnant tossed her in.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Armand saw Reine-Marie take a step closer. Her hand gripped the phone, as though it were a baseball bat.

Somehow this vile man had managed to stir up in Reine-Marie an outrage that bordered on violence.

Gamache’s own breath, through his nostrils, came out in long, warm puffs. Like a bull longing to charge.

He barely registered that behind him, Billy Williams was speaking.

“There’s no sign of her,” called Beauvoir. “Billy says he thinks the duffel bag came from farther upriver.”

“There’s an old logging road about a kilometer from here.” Billy waved behind him. “A bridge goes over the Bella Bella. It’s been closed for a while now, but hunters sometimes use it in the fall.”

Jean-Guy translated what was said.

Gamache turned and looked at the .22 leaning against the backhoe. A hunting rifle.

“Can you show us?” he asked.

“Yurz.”

“What about the bag?” Reine-Marie asked.

“We’ll take it with us,” said Gamache.

“You can’t,” said Tracey.

“Then we’ll open it here,” said Beauvoir.

Gamache asked Reine-Marie to use her phone to record the search of Vivienne’s bag while Billy took his place beside Tracey.

“No,” said Tracey. “Stop. It doesn’t belong to you. It’s on my property. It belongs to me.”

“It belongs to your wife,” said Beauvoir, unzipping it.

The duffel bag contained all the things you’d expect someone to pack who was going away for a few days. T-shirts, a pair of jeans. Some shorts. Pajamas. Underwear. Toiletries.

“What are these?” Gamache held up a bottle of pills and read off the label, “Mifegymiso.”

When the others shook their heads, Gamache held them out for Tracey to see.

“How should I know? Probably some street drug she picked up, the—”

“Enough.” Beauvoir got to his feet and took a step toward Tracey.

“Jean-Guy,” snapped Gamache.

The cold, the exhaustion, the find, the growing certainty of what had happened to this young woman and who’d made it happen, were all fraying their nerves.

Beauvoir glared at Tracey but managed to contain himself.

“We’re done,” said Gamache, zipping the duffel bag shut. “We’ll take this with us and give you a receipt.”