A Better Man (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #15) - Louise Penny Page 0,142
and Armand got out.
The donkeys noticed first. Coming over to the fence to greet them.
“What do you want?” demanded Carl Tracey, once again standing at the barn door with a pitchfork. “Come to arrest me? I keep telling you, I didn’t kill Vivienne.”
Jean-Guy looked at the man and felt a wave of revulsion. He might not have killed his wife, but he beat her. Isolated her. Tormented her.
But Carl Tracey had also done something else.
“Non,” said Beauvoir. “I’ve come to thank you. For saving my life.”
He didn’t offer his hand. Couldn’t take it that far. But he did look Carl Tracey, his unexpected savior, in the eyes. And saw there surprise. And even, maybe, a softening? A hint of what this man could have been, might still become. Might actually be, deep inside.
Carl Tracey’s actions on the bridge had been instinctive. Maybe, below all the rot, there existed some timid decency.
“Yeah, well, a blow to the head’ll do that.”
Was there, as he said it, the smallest possible smile?
“And I came to apologize,” said Gamache. “For having you arrested, charged. I was wrong, and I’m sorry.”
“You’re kidding,” said Tracey, scanning the woods, the road, behind the Sûreté officers. “This’s a trap, right?”
Did Carl Tracey go through life looking for, seeing, manufacturing traps set by others, for him? How, Gamache wondered, must that affect how he sees the world?
It didn’t forgive the abuse, the violence. It wasn’t Gamache’s to forgive. But it might help explain it.
“No, no trap. An apology.”
While Jean-Guy backed the car up, Armand watched through the windshield as Tracey fed the donkeys carrots and scratched their long noses.
* * *
Superintendent Lacoste crossed her legs and smoothed her slacks. And looked across the coffee table at Chief Superintendent Toussaint.
It had been a week since the events in Three Pines, and her leave was coming to an end.
She was meeting with Toussaint to tell the head of the Sûreté which job she’d accept.
“I saw your tweets, Isabelle,” said Madeleine Toussaint as they settled into the comfortable armchairs in the sitting area of the office. “Defending Chief Inspector Gamache. You didn’t hide your identity.”
“Why should I?”
“Because you used your rank. You were posting not as a private citizen but as a senior officer in the Sûreté. Making it look like the official Sûreté position.”
“As it should have been. I waited, you know, for someone more senior to defend him.” She glared at Toussaint. “And when that didn’t happen…”
“There’re issues you’re not aware of.”
“What issues exactly make it okay to attack our own?”
“I didn’t attack him.”
“Oh, no? You think I don’t know where that video came from?” Lacoste demanded.
“What video?”
But Lacoste had seen the surprise in Toussaint’s eyes. The tensing of her body. A spasm of alarm. Of fear even.
“When the shit was flying, he made sure it didn’t stick to you,” said Lacoste, leaning forward. “You do know that Monsieur Gamache was the one who recommended you for this job.”
“He’s not the only reason I got it.”
“True. You got it because the Premier asked you not to defend Monsieur Gamache in the hearings and you agreed.”
“That’s a lie.”
“It’s the truth.”
Toussaint’s jaw clamped shut, and her eyes hardened. The problem with going up against Isabelle Lacoste was that she was a hero. Unassailable.
And a die-hard defender of Gamache.
“Be careful, Isabelle. It’s never a good idea to catch a falling knife.”
Toussaint knew that while Superintendent Lacoste might be beyond reach, Gamache was not.
When the smoke had cleared on that final, fateful raid and Isabelle Lacoste lay in her own blood, Chief Superintendent Gamache had to answer for his decisions.
Madeleine Toussaint had known, even as she stood in those woods surveying the wreckage, that he could never really explain his actions to anyone who wasn’t there. Even as they made sweeping arrests, in the most successful raid in decades, the vultures were circling.
Politicians desperate to rid themselves of this inconvenient person. A vicious and ravenous social media, desperate for fodder.
On his last day in command, before being suspended, he’d recommended Toussaint for his job. A black woman, a Haitian. They’d stood in this office. He shook her hand and told her she’d be great. But he had one request.
“Don’t defend me, Madeleine. You won’t win, and they’ll come after you.”
“But—”
“Promise me.”
When the board of review took their shot, no one in power had stepped in front of Armand Gamache to stop it.
Chief Superintendent Gamache had gone down.
And Superintendent Toussaint had risen up.
But what no one expected, was that Gamache would actually return. Would accept such