A Better Man (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #15)(85)

“You’re the cop everyone hates,” said Daphne.

She was at the next desk over, also being booked.

Gamache smiled. “Not everyone, I hope.”

“Everyone I know.”

Gamache was not particularly surprised to hear that teens running a criminal operation might not be fans.

“I saw the video of you killing those kids,” said Toby. “Brutal.”

Cameron, the arresting officer, stopped typing on his computer. Jean-Guy Beauvoir, sitting nearby and going over messages, looked up.

And Armand Gamache tilted his head slightly, the smile fading. “What video?”

Toby laughed. “You haven’t seen it? Posted about an hour ago. Gone viral. Funny that I watched it, then there you were.”

Gamache drew his brows together. There was a video out there of him gunning down children? How could that be?

He turned to Jean-Guy, who still looked pale, after that confrontation in the alley. As they’d driven back, Gamache had noticed Beauvoir trembling, and quietly asked if he was okay.

“I didn’t think I’d get out of there alive,” Jean-Guy said, under his breath.

Gamache thought the same thing, but didn’t say it. He still felt the acid burning his stomach.

“You’ll be on the Champs-élysées soon,” he’d said. “In the sunshine.”

“Not soon enough.”

While Jean-Guy knew Paris wasn’t immune to danger, it would at least be unlikely. There was a far better chance of returning home each day.

Now, on hearing what Toby said, Jean-Guy swung around to his laptop, hitting the keys.

S?reté, video, kids.

Gamache, video, shooting.

“I coulda shot you, you know,” said Toby. “Payback. For what you did.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Toby sat back and crossed his arms. “You weren’t worth the bullet. And you sure aren’t worth dying for. He’da killed me.”

He nodded to Cameron, who was staring at the boy.

“You got that right,” said Cameron.

Toby turned back to the older man. With the gray hair. And that nasty scar by his temple. That made him so recognizable.

The cop’s face wasn’t so much wrinkled as lined. From a great distance, from half a century away, he looked to the boy like a man broken and pieced back together.

Humpty Dumpty. Who’d had a great fall.

“Patron,” said Beauvoir from the other desk, breaking into Toby’s thoughts.

His voice was hushed. Almost a whisper.



* * *



Annie was working from home in Montréal. Studying for the French law admission exams.

A friend from her firm in Montréal had sent a link. And a warning. But, of course, she had to look.

Clicking on it, she watched. Blood draining from her face.

Honoré, on her knee, was also watching. But she quickly took him away, placing him in his playpen. Then she returned to her laptop, approaching it warily.

The screen was paused on an image of her father.

Her eyes were wide. Her breathing shallow. She muted the sound and hit play.



* * *



Reine-Marie covered her mouth with her hand and closed her eyes. The bruise on her face forgotten, she now felt as though she’d been hit, hard, in the gut.

Then, opening them again, she asked Myrna to go back to the beginning.

“Are you sure?” Myrna asked.

They’d gone up to Myrna’s loft over the bookstore, where the internet was most stable. Annie had sent the link. She knew that her mother would want to know. To be warned about what was out there.

In the few minutes it had taken the women to get upstairs, more and more messages had come in from friends who were alarmed and upset. Who wanted to warn both her and Armand.

Myrna and Clara were in the loft with her. As were Olivier and Gabri. Ruth was sitting beside her in front of the computer, her veined hand holding Reine-Marie’s.

“Please,” said Reine-Marie.

Myrna clicked, and the short video played again.



* * *



“Do you mind if we use your meeting room?” Beauvoir asked the station commander, who, on seeing him at her door, clicked her computer closed. And reddened. But not before Beauvoir had heard the telltale sound of muffled gunfire coming from her laptop.

“Not at all.”

Beauvoir closed the door to the private office and placed his laptop on the table. Gamache stood beside him, staring at the frozen image on the screen. It was of himself, in flak jacket. Weapon out. And raised. Eyes sharp. Preparing to shoot.

“It’s bad,” said Beauvoir.

Gamache nodded. “Go on.”

He stood straight and faced the screen. Much as he’d faced the boy on the fire escape earlier that day.

Beauvoir hit play.

The images were jerky but still fairly clear. It had been pieced together from old video, taken from the raid on the factory. They were images both Gamache and Beauvoir had seen before. Many taken from the cameras they themselves had worn.

But there were other images. Ones neither had ever seen. Video culled from God-knew-where on the internet. Of kids being gunned down. Many of them black kids. Clearly unarmed.

As Armand Gamache watched the screen, Beauvoir watched him.