A Better Man

CHAPTER TWENTY

@CarlTracey: Cannot meet you now @NouveauGalerie. What exactly do you want?

Agent Cloutier smiled. Had she been an angler, she’d have recognized a nibble on the bait.

She was also amused, and reassured, by the cautious, even terse, response.

But mostly it was the speed of the response that grabbed her attention.

This was Carl Tracey’s Instagram account, but it was not Carl Tracey she was communicating with. He had no cell phone. And no cell phone coverage.

“Best not to discuss business publicly,” she typed, having already composed this response in her head. “Do you have a private account?”

Her phone was ringing the Bonanza theme, and she answered it but continued to stare at the screen. Trying not to see the amused looks of the other Sûreté agents in the open room.

“Cloutier,” she said.

“It’s Beauvoir. The search warrant’s come through. Meet us at the Tracey place.”

“On my way, patron.”

But still she stared at the screen, and then, just as she was about to shut it down, a single word appeared.

“No.”

Far from being disappointed, Cloutier smiled. It was the response she’d expected. Hoped for.

A normal potter, approached by a gallery about representing them, would be falling all over themselves to invite them into the private address. To talk business. But Carl Tracey or Pauline Vachon or whoever Cloutier was communicating with, was not.

Now, why was that?

Only one answer. They didn’t want anyone else to see what was on the private account. Posts. Photographs.

She had them in her sights now. It would just take a little time. A little teasing. A tastier bait. But she’d get there. She’d get them.

With effort, she didn’t type the response she’d already formulated.

Let them stew.

Before leaving, she checked on Homer.

“Do you need anything?”

There was no answer. He was staring straight ahead.

She wondered what he was seeing, though she could guess. The image he would see for the rest of his life.

“We’re searching the home. I’m heading there now. We’ll get him.”

That penetrated, at least a little. Homer turned to her and smiled weakly.

“Merci, Lysette.”

Her fingers were around the bars, and he reached out and touched her hand.

It took most of the day to go over the Tracey property.

Where the earlier search was for Vivienne, today they were looking for her killer. And the evidence to convict him.

It had been decided that Lacoste would stay behind in the incident room, to coordinate the information as it came in and assign agents as necessary.

Beauvoir dropped Gamache off at the Tracey house, while he himself continued to the dirt road and the car. And the bridge.

His team had been there for hours, calling in engineers to first secure the bridge so they could walk on it safely.

While one crew did that, another went over the car.

“Tell me what you know.”

“There’re smears of blood on the outer and inner door handles, the steering wheel, the gearshift, a small smear on the trunk handle, and a drop on the backseat.”

“A drop, not a smear?”

“Exactly.” The agent showed Beauvoir. It had the telltale splatter of blood that had formed a drop, then hit. Maybe from a bleeding nose or lip.

“Prints?” Beauvoir asked.

“From at least three different people. There’re butts in the cigarette holder. We’ve bagged them, and we’ve taken dirt samples from the tires, of course. To see if we can work out where she’s been recently.”

“Tire tracks?”

“None. The rain washed everything away, including boot prints.”

“Damn,” said Beauvoir, looking around.

“Chief,” said an agent standing by the bridge. “We’re ready.”

“Chief?”

“Oui?” Gamache turned to see Agent Cloutier at the door to the living room.

“There’s something curious in the bedroom,” she said. “Something different from when we were here yesterday.”

He followed her through the rambling old farmhouse to the bedroom and saw immediately what Agent Cloutier meant.

When he was last there, the room was a mess. Now it was tidy. Not, perhaps, ready for a photo shoot in Country Living, but far neater than it had been.

He brought out his phone.

“There’s no reception, sir,” said the inspector in charge.

“Merci,” he said, and continued to scroll until he found what he was looking for. The photographs he’d downloaded the day before, from the first search of the Tracey home.

“Here’s what this room looked like yesterday when we came looking for Vivienne Godin.”

He turned the phone so that the inspector could see. The photo was taken from exactly the place where they now stood.

It showed a room in disarray. Clothing scattered on the floor and draped on a chair. Bed unmade and sheets dirty. Though not bloody. Which wasn’t to say traces of blood weren’t there. Just unnoticeable except by people trained to find them.

“Get Monsieur Tracey up here, please,” said Gamache, and Cloutier hurried away.

“We’ve looked, patron, and we can’t find any clothes that obviously belonged to Madame Godin.”

They heard footsteps on the stairs, and Tracey appeared.

“What do you want?”

“What did you do with your wife’s belongings?” asked Gamache.

“Well, she didn’t need them anymore.”

“How did you know? You haven’t been back here since her body was found. Which means you got rid of her things before you knew she was dead. Unless you did know.”

“All I knew is that she’d left me and I was pissed off. Before I went to bed last night, I took all her shit and burned it in the kiln.”

“I’ll get Scene of Crime to check the kiln,” said Cloutier, and left.

“You cleaned the place with bleach?” The inspector held up a swab.

“What can I say? Place was a shithole.” He turned to Gamache. “You saw it. What did you think?”

When Gamache didn’t answer, Tracey sneered. “I live in a pigsty and you judge. I clean it up and you judge. Well, fuck you. I’m finally free to live the way I want.”

They were, Gamache recognized, the words of either an extremely well-balanced person who didn’t care what others thought. Or a psychopath. Who didn’t care what others thought.

“Why in the world do you care what others think?” demanded Ruth as they sat in the bistro, in front of the warm fire.

“Because I’m human and live in the world,” said Clara. “With other humans.”

Part of her felt that Ruth was probably right. She shouldn’t care. But she also felt there was a criticism there, that Ruth was implying she was weak or needy. For caring.

“People are canceling their orders for my works,” said Clara.

“So?”

“So this’s my life, my career. My livelihood.”

“What do you need money for, anyway?” asked Ruth. “We live in a tiny village. We buy clothes from the general store, barter turnips for milk, and the booze is free.”

“Not free,” said Olivier, pouring her another shot of what looked like scotch but was actually cold tea.

There was a suspicion Ruth knew about the substitution but played along. Because, as with so much else in her life, she didn’t really care.

As she watched Ruth, Clara remembered that in the past few hours someone had gone onto Twitter and defended her.

You ignorant turd. Clara’s works are genius. #MorrowGenius

If it wasn’t Ruth, it was someone doing a damn fine imitation of the foulmouthed poet.

Those tweets were trending. Not because, Clara realized, they were insightful defenses of her creations but because the tweets were in themselves a form of genius.

There was now a Twitter account from someone calling themselves @ignorantturd.

“You’re far too needy,” said Ruth, watching as Rosa dipped her beak into the glass of cold tea.

The duck raised her head and muttered, Fuck, fuck, fuck. Apparently realizing it wasn’t really scotch.

“And you,” said Clara, “are an ignorant turd.”

There was a hush as everyone else around the fireplace braced for impact. But Ruth, after a moment, just chuckled.

“I’ll do it,” said Beauvoir, putting out his hand.

“I think I should, sir,” said the young agent. “I’m trained.”

And once again Chief Inspector Beauvoir found himself facing what had become a familiar decision tree.

In fact, since becoming head of homicide, he’d faced a veritable forest of comments like that. Testing his authority and certainly questioning his competence.

Once again, he stood at the verbal crossroads.

Should he reply, “Give me the testing kit, you stupid shit. How do you think I got to be Chief Inspector? By sitting on my thumbs?”

Or should he say, with a patient smile, “That’s all right, I do know what I’m doing. But I appreciate your concern.”

As Gamache might have answered. Had indeed answered many times, sometimes in response to Agent Beauvoir’s own somewhat insulting comments.

When asked about it one night, years into their relationship, Armand had explained, with a laugh.

“After I’d said something especially patronizing to my first chief, he just looked at me and said, ‘Before speaking, Agent Gamache, you might want to ask yourself three questions.’”

“Not the ones that lead to wisdom,” said Beauvoir, who’d heard them before.

“Non. Those are statements, these are questions. Are you paying attention?”

“What?”

They’d been sitting on the front porch of the Gamaches’ home, in the height of summer. An iced tea beside Beauvoir, a beer beside Gamache.

As he spoke, the Chief Inspector raised a finger, counting the questions.

“Is it true? Is it kind? Does it need to be said?”

“You’re kidding, right?” said Jean-Guy, shifting in his seat to look at Armand. “That might work in our private lives, but with other cops? You’d be laughed out of the room.”

“You don’t necessarily say them out loud,” explained the Chief.

Which was true. Beauvoir had never heard Gamache run through those questions, but he had heard, more often than not, a patient and constructive reply.

“Civility,” Armand had said. “How can we expect it if we don’t give it? Besides, when we do get angry, people pay more attention. Otherwise it’s just white noise.”

Is it true? Is it kind? Does it need to be said?

Beauvoir, with effort, ran through the questions as he stood on the bridge, looking at the young agent.

Then he heard himself say, “That’s all right. I do know what I’m doing. But thank you.”

You stupid little shit.

Yes, it did need to be said, but maybe not out loud.

Though he did now wonder what Gamache had chosen not to say out loud.

Beauvoir took the harness from the agent and attached it, expertly, to himself, then put his hand out for the evidence kit.

“I’ll go out first. If it’s safe, you can join me. One at a time. D’accord?”

“Oui, patron,” said the agents.

Turning around to face the rickety old bridge, Beauvoir took a breath and whispered to himself, Don’t pee, don’t pee, don’t pee.