A Better Man (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #15)(61)

“Yes. I think it was a simple mess of a murder. You found blood in the living room. And we found blood in the car. Tracey admits beating her. I think either he killed her in the home, beat her to death, drove her to the bridge, and threw her over, wanting to make it look like suicide or an accident, or he took her there while she was still alive and threw her off.”

“I don’t think he beat her to death in the house. There wasn’t enough blood. And if she was still alive, why would she get into the car with him?”

“Yes, that’s a problem. She wouldn’t. Not voluntarily, anyway.”

“So the most likely explanation is that he knocked her unconscious, drove her there, and threw her off the bridge,” said Gamache. “Hoping, like you said, it would look like an accident or suicide. He packed the duffel bag, grabbing things at random, and threw it in after her. But people don’t pack for suicide. If that’s what he wanted us to believe, he made a mistake.”

“There’s another problem,” said Beauvoir. “The blood smears are on the driver’s side. It looks like she was hurt, but conscious enough to drive.”

“So she took herself there,” said Gamache, considering. “And there’s no physical evidence of anyone else on that bridge with her.”

“Not yet. You think he didn’t do it?”

“Tracey? Oh, he did it. It’s just a matter of understanding the evidence. And getting enough to convict.”

He glanced over at his companion. Jean-Guy’s eyes were just about closed.

Within a minute of Gamache’s falling silent, Jean-Guy had fallen asleep.

By the time they pulled in to the morgue, Gamache had been over that conversation a few times but was no closer to a solution.



* * *



When Agent Cloutier returned to the local detachment, she found a very different Homer Godin than the man she’d left.

“How come I’m in here and he’s free?” he demanded. “Let me out.”

“I can’t.”

“Of course you can. You’re a goddamned cop.”

Lysette paled. Not used to being spoken to that way. And certainly not by Homer. She stared into those angry eyes and knew in her rational mind that it wasn’t Homer speaking. It was grief.

But though her brain told her that, her heart still recoiled.

She saw Homer now in a different light. Not as a man but as a father. Not having children herself, she hadn’t quite appreciated the depth of his feeling for his daughter. Now she knew what her friend Kathy had been talking about. That bond between father and daughter. It was almost cliché and, in some cases, mythic.

Kathy had long complained, but Lysette, as much as she loved her friend, could understand why Vivienne would be drawn to her father and not her mother.

Kathy was not demonstrative. She was efficient. Kept a clean and tidy and orderly home. But Homer brought the joy into it. As Vivienne brought joy into his life.

It was a perfect little ecosystem. But it left Kathy on the outside looking in.

As soon as Vivienne had been born, her father had become simply skin stretched over his love for his daughter.

But now she was gone. And there was nothing holding him together.

Except hatred.

Chief Inspector Gamache had seen that before anyone else. He knew, perhaps because of his love for his own daughter, what a person in that position could do. Would do.

Unless they were locked up.

Though Agent Lysette Cloutier did just wonder if it would really be such a bad thing, if she opened the cell door.

Homer would murder Carl Tracey, of course. But he’d almost certainly be given as light a sentence as the justice system allowed.

He would not be held criminally responsible. And he would clearly not be a menace to society. Just to one man.

She would also be arrested and tried, for letting him out. But at least Homer would know what she was willing to do for him.

The other agents in the room, including Agent Cameron, looked at her as she returned to her desk and brought up the Instagram account.

Do they suspect what I’m considering doing?

Did it matter?

Lysette Cloutier looked down at her computer and saw, again, the curt No on the screen. Now a few hours old. She typed in her own reply.

@NouveauGalerie: Sorry. Busy with buyers. No worries. Lots of other promising ceramicists. I’m sure you have other options. Good luck to you.

Within two minutes there was a reply. Again, terse. But enough. It contained an invitation to join Carl Tracey’s private Instagram account.





CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO


@NouveauGalerie: Thanks for the access. Looked at your work. Ceramic pieces promising, but not right for the gallery. Good luck @CarlTracey.

@SeriousCollector: Rethinking the Morrow portrait I bought. Three old women laughing. Weaker than I first thought. Sorta superficial.

Holy shit. Check out this video. #GamacheSux There was, Gamache knew, an unmistakable smell about a morgue.

Not the sickly aroma of rot. He could pick that up from a distance after years of approaching corpses. And killers.

No. The morgue smelled of extreme, almost severe cleanliness.

It turned his stomach.

As the door swung open, sterile air met him, and he braced himself.

But Armand Gamache knew the slight sick feeling in the pit of his stomach this time went beyond the smell. Went beyond, even, the gnawing thought that this could be Annie on the metal slab.