A Better Man

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Gamache was in his car, following Beauvoir and talking with Reine-Marie on the phone, explaining, or trying to explain, what had happened in court.

“Homer?” she asked. “How is he?”

Armand paused, unsure how to answer that.

Out of his mind with grief and pain and rage?

Incensed that a system that called itself “just” would allow his daughter’s murderer to go free? On a technicality. Or two.

Inconsolable? Working out how to punish Carl Tracey himself?

Instead Armand gave the only answer he knew for sure. “There’s no concussion. He can go home. But do you mind—”

“If he stays with us? Of course not. But—”

“Will we be able to keep him from Tracey?” said Armand. “I don’t know. Can you hold on for a moment?”

Agent Cloutier was calling.

“Chief Inspector? We have a problem.” She was whispering, urgency in her voice.

“What is it?”

“We’re still at the hospital. They’re just releasing him, but he won’t come back to your place.”

“He wants to go home?”

“Yes, but mostly he says…” Her voice faltered.

“Go on.” Though Gamache suspected he knew what she was about to say.

“He says he never wants to lay eyes on you again.”

“I see.” Gamache took a breath.

He did see. It wasn’t just that Tracey had walked free. That somehow the investigators had screwed up. It was that he’d broken his promise to Homer.

“Give him the phone, please.”

There was a pause. “He won’t take it.”

“Then hold it up to his ear.”

He knew he had seconds to get through to the man. Only one word, two at most, before Homer would pull away. He had one shot. And he took it.

“Fred.”

Pause. Pause.

There was a rustling of the phone, some muffled conversation, then Cloutier’s voice. “He’ll come. But just to get the dog. He won’t stay.”

“Tell him I’m asking for one night. Just one. Then he can take Fred and go.”

There was more muffled conversation.

Come on. Come on.

Finally, Cloutier’s voice. “One night, patron.”

“Bon.”

It was something. Twenty-four hours he didn’t have before.

“I’ll be in the incident room,” said Gamache. “Let me know when you get to Three Pines.”

“D’accord, patron.”

He hung up and went back to Reine-Marie. And explained what had just happened.

“And you? Are you all right?” she asked.

How could he answer that?

“Never mind,” she said. “I know. Come home soon.”

“We’re not far. Should be there in—”

“What is it, Armand?”

In the car ahead of him, Jean-Guy had put on the brakes and swerved, taking a dirt road off to the right.

They were almost at Three Pines. But now Jean-Guy was heading away from the village. At speed. Recklessly bumping along the washboard road.

The agent guarding Tracey had just reported that instead of going straight home, as he’d been advised to do after being discharged, Tracey had headed to his local bar.

To celebrate.

“What do you want me to do, patron?” the agent asked. “Should I go in?”

“No, stay where you are. I’m coming to you.”

Jean-Guy knew he shouldn’t, but still he did. He turned the car and now was gunning it toward Carl Tracey.

Beauvoir pulled in to the parking lot of the dive bar and parked beside the very well-marked Sûreté vehicle.

Normally, when doing surveillance, they wanted to be discreet.

But Beauvoir had specifically asked for a vehicle with “Sûreté du Québec” clearly marked. “In neon if possible,” he’d said. “And I want the agent in uniform.”

Tracey needed to be in no doubt that he was being not just guarded but watched.

As Beauvoir walked toward the bar, his hands flexed into tight fists, then opened. Then closed again. Into weapons.

Jean-Guy knew this was a mistake. The issue wasn’t whether he was about to step into a pile of something soft and smelly. That much was obvious. The only question was, how big would it be? How deep would he go?

And could he stop himself before…?

Chief Inspector Beauvoir walked right past the agent sitting in the car and said only two words.

“Stay here.”

He heard a car pull in to the parking lot. As he reached the door to the bar, his hand on the knob, he heard the familiar voice behind him.

“Jean-Guy.”

But for one of the few times in his life, Beauvoir chose to ignore Gamache.

“Stay here,” said Chief Inspector Gamache as he strode by the agent who was beginning to get out of the car.

She stayed.

Beauvoir stepped into the bar.

It was dark. Smelled of stale cigarettes and fresh urine and flat beer.

A television was on, showing an Andy Griffith rerun. Opie had questions for his father. Again. But the answers were drowned out by the burst of laughter from a group of grubby men at the bar.

Four of them, Beauvoir saw immediately. No, five.

Two bottles of rye on the bar. Beer bottles clasped in hands, the men turned and squinted into the unexpected and unwanted light through the open door before it swung shut.

“Who the fuck are you?” one of them demanded.

Beauvoir didn’t answer. He just stood there. Staring.

At Carl Tracey.

“Wait a minute,” said Tracey. “A little respect, please. This’s Chief Inspector Beauvoir. The guy who arrested me. Come to apologize?”

That brought more laughter.

Beauvoir did not react. Did not speak. Did not move.

Tracey lifted his beer. “Come on in. Jean-Guy, isn’t it? Now that it’s over, we can be friends. No hard feelings. Beer?”

He held the drink out toward Beauvoir, who could smell the musky, familiar aroma.

Gamache had stopped at the door. Through the dirt-smeared window, he was just able to make out the occupants of the bar.

Every cell in his body was straining forward. Demanding that he go in. To rescue Jean-Guy, from himself.

He was pretty sure, judging by the look on Beauvoir’s face, that the head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec was about to beat the crap out of Carl Tracey.

Maybe worse. Maybe he wouldn’t stop at the crap.

But still, Gamache stopped himself. And he wondered why.

Then the thought appeared. Was it possible he wanted Beauvoir to do it?

Jean-Guy Beauvoir stood ten paces from Carl Tracey.

He stared but didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Didn’t react at all.

Even when Tracey stepped toward him, goaded on by his drinking buddies, Jean-Guy’s face remained completely impassive. A mask.

Gamache’s expression changed. He was still watchful, vigilant. Prepared. His hand on the door. But now there was a very small smile. Of surprise and recognition.

Still, he remained prepared to act.

Watching Tracey laughing, Beauvoir felt himself almost overcome with rage.

But still he stood. Still.

“Come on,” Tracey shouted, holding his beer by the neck and swaying slightly. “You’re not joining in the celebrations.”

But the men behind Tracey were growing uneasy in the face of this relentlessly still man at the door.

A couple continued to shout encouragement, but their voices were thinning. Their enthusiasm waning.

Carl Tracey was right up against Beauvoir now. But Beauvoir didn’t react.

“Why’re you here?” shouted Tracey. “I’m going to file a complaint. This’s harassment.”

Beauvoir’s silence. His blank stare. Were driving Carl Tracey mad. And his friends away.

Gamache’s smile had disappeared, and he prepared to enter the bar. Enough was enough.

Tracey staggered back.

His drinking buddies moved away and watched as he tripped and fell to the floor. Spilling his beer.

As silently as he’d entered, Chief Inspector Beauvoir left. Leaving behind four drunks staring down at the man wallowing on the floor. Tracey’s eyes lifted, and for a split second Beauvoir thought he saw sadness there. Sorrow.

And then Carl Tracey threw up.

Once outside, Jean-Guy closed his eyes and, turning his face to the sky, took a long, long breath of the fresh, pine-scented air.

When he opened them, he saw Armand Gamache standing right in front of him. Staring.

Then Gamache’s eyes crinkled at the corners. Wordlessly, because there was nothing to say, Gamache walked him back to his car, pausing for Beauvoir to speak to the agent.

“I’m going to get another officer here. I want one of you to stay in the vehicle and the other to stand outside the bar. Look through the window at Carl Tracey. So that he can see you. Whatever happens, don’t engage him. If he comes to you, don’t react. Only if he physically attacks you.”

“So you want me to just stare at him, patron?”

“Yes. And when he leaves, follow him. Always keeping a distance. But I want him to see you. Understand? If he goes into a shop, stand outside and stare. If he meets someone, stop and—”

“Continue to stare?”

“Oui.”

“Why?”

Beauvoir bristled slightly. Not liking being questioned. But he knew his orders were unconventional in the extreme.

“This’s a man who understand threats and violence. But this?”

“But what is ‘this’?” the young agent persisted.

“A conscience.”

“Huh?”

Chief Inspector Beauvoir recognized the expression on the agent’s face. It was exactly the same look he’d given Gamache. For years. When the Chief Inspector had said, or ordered, something unconventional. Or downright odd.

That blank stare, colored slightly by concern that the senior officer had lost his mind.

Beauvoir now smiled. In the same way Gamache had smiled at him. For years.

While he could have simply left it at that, he wanted the agent to understand. And to never be afraid to question the orders of a superior.

As Gamache had patiently explained things to Beauvoir. For years.

“Your job is to protect the man, but you will also act as a sort of external conscience for a man who obviously doesn’t have one.”

He could see it dawning on her. And she, too, smiled. “Got it. I’ll be the ghost of his dead wife.”

“Oui. That’s a good way of looking at it.”

For a brief moment the agent considered asking if she could take a selfie with Chief Inspector Beauvoir and Chief Inspector Gamache.

But wisely decided against it.

As they walked to their cars, Armand Gamache placed a hand on Jean-Guy’s back.

“Well done.”

“It was close,” said Jean-Guy, leaning toward him and lowering his voice. “You have no idea how much I wanted to—”

“I know.”

Jean-Guy grunted. “Yes. You do.” He looked behind him. “It won’t change anything. This…” He waved toward the agent now standing outside the bar. Staring. “… won’t make him confess. Not to murder.”

“No. But it might make that young agent realize there’re other weapons at our disposal besides our guns.”

Gamache tapped his temple.

“Honestly? I suspect she thinks it’s more…” Beauvoir raised his finger to his own temple and twirled it in a circle. “Thank God I told her I’m Chief Inspector Gamache.”

Now Armand did laugh. “I am going to miss you, old son.”

“And I’m going to miss you, too, sir. But I won’t miss this.”

He gazed at the fresh young agent standing straight and tall, twenty feet away from the cruddy bar.

Staring.

At a man Chief Inspector Beauvoir, as lead investigator, had let get away with murder.

Jean-Guy did not need anyone staring at him to know that it would be a long time, if ever, before his own conscience was clear.