A Better Man (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #15)(62)

Only once before in his career had he felt this particular sensation.

It was doubt. Not that they could find the killer. He was pretty sure they’d already done that. But that they could convict him.

That other time, his first year as head of homicide, he had indeed failed. And a killer had gone free.

And now he looked down at the body of Vivienne Godin. Saw her bruises. Saw the incision on her belly.

And felt that wave of nausea. That fear that whoever did this would walk free.

“What do you have?” Jean-Guy Beauvoir asked Dr. Harris.

“As you can see, the body is badly damaged. Some trauma clearly postmortem, but some done while she was alive.”

“She was beaten,” said Beauvoir.

“Well—”

“Well, what?” he snapped, then put up his hands in apology. “Désolé.”

“It’s okay. I feel it, too. This’s a particularly nasty case. The problem is, I can’t say for sure which injuries, if any, were done in a beating just before she died and which ones were caused by being battered in the river while still alive. There’re some obviously older bruises.” Dr. Harris pointed to some yellow and greenish blotches on Vivienne’s arms and legs. “But these”—the coroner pointed to other marks on Vivienne’s body—“are harder to explain.”

“They’re fresh,” said Gamache.

“Oui. But what made them? A person? Or rocks and tree limbs? She’d have been tossed around in the floodwaters. That could’ve done a lot, even all of the damage we see.”

They looked down at Vivienne’s naked, battered body.

“The fetus?” asked Gamache. “How far along?”

“I’d say she’d be about twenty weeks.”

“She?” said Beauvoir. “A baby girl?”

Jean-Guy paled and looked across the body. To his father-in-law. And Armand knew then.

Annie and Jean-Guy were having a daughter. A baby girl.

“Yes.”

If Dr. Harris noticed this moment between the two men, she chose not to say anything.

“What I can say for sure is that she was alive when she went into the river. There’s water in her lungs.”

“If questioned on the stand,” said Gamache, giving Jean-Guy a moment to compose himself, “what would you say about the bruising?”

She considered the body again. “Some of her wounds could have happened before she went into the water, but most have signs of battering consistent with being hit by rocks. It’s a sort of tumbling action as a body’s swept along.”

“You say most of the wounds are consistent with battering in the water,” said Beauvoir, recovered. “But not all?”

“There are two bruises that’re harder to explain.” She pointed to Vivienne’s upper chest, just below the collarbone.

Beauvoir and Gamache leaned closer.

At first it looked like one large blue mark spreading across her chest. But, looking closer, they could see other marks. Like something trapped below the surface. One on either side.

Armand put on his glasses and leaned closer still. “What do you think made them?”

“At a guess?” Dr. Harris raised her hands, palms toward them. Then thrust forward.

“She was shoved,” said Beauvoir. He looked at Gamache, who nodded.

“Oui.” She put her hands over the bruises. “You can see that the hands are quite big.”

“Could you say for sure those marks were made by a person and not by debris?” Gamache asked.

Dr. Harris sighed. “I’ve been struggling with that. I’m not sure I could swear to it. What I can say is that the chances of two identical bruises happening while she was being tossed about in the river are astronomical. These”—she looked back down at Vivienne—“were done at the same time, by the same thing. The only explanation I have is that she was pushed, violently.”

“Intentionally.”

“Maybe in a fit of rage, but yes, whoever did this wanted to shove her back. Hard.”

“Can you measure those bruises?” Gamache asked.

“To give you the size of the hand? I could, but it wouldn’t be very accurate. There’s weeping of the blood around the edges. Again, any defense will argue, quite rightly, that the hand could’ve been smaller. Besides, a lot of people have hands that big.”

Tracey’s hands, Gamache knew, were not large. But as the hands of a potter, they’d be powerful.

And he could think of one person related to the case whose hands were very big.

Bob Cameron.

Left tackle’s hands. And what did a left tackle do? He pushed and shoved. Violently. Perhaps, at this stage, instinctively. When threatened.

“Any idea how long she’s been dead?” asked Beauvoir.

“Two, maybe three days. The water was cold, so that has to be taken into account. This is Tuesday? I’d say she went into the river on Saturday night, maybe at a stretch early Sunday morning.”

Gamache was nodding. Thinking. And finally asked the question Jean-Guy Beauvoir did not seem willing to ask.

“Is there any evidence, any proof, that she was murdered?”

Sharon Harris paused before answering. “I’m sorry. I looked. Hard. But I can’t find anything. It could’ve been suicide. It could’ve been an accident. I think she was murdered. I think that she was hit so hard in the chest she fell off the bridge. But as for absolute proof?”