A Better Man (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #15) - Louise Penny Page 0,9
way she’d hoped.
Chief Inspector Beauvoir now looked angry.
Beside him, Superintendent Lacoste watched and braced. There’d be a collision after all, but not with Gamache. Chief Inspector Beauvoir was about to run over Agent Cloutier.
“My son is an infant,” Beauvoir said, his voice cold. “There’s a difference.”
“But if you love them, age doesn’t matter, does it? Really?” she persisted, barely believing she was doing this. “They’re still our children.”
Beauvoir stared at her, the whole room holding its breath while the Chief Inspector weighed the options.
“What’s the name?”
“Vivienne. Vivienne Godin.”
Beauvoir wrote that down. “And husband?”
“Carl Tracey.”
If this Vivienne Godin really was missing, then something bad had happened, and time counted.
Unfortunately, Cloutier was pretty much their Clouseau. She would not find the woman, even if standing next to her in line for a Double Double at Tim Hortons.
It wasn’t that Cloutier was an idiot, just that this was not her strength. It wasn’t why she was brought into homicide.
In a swift glance, Beauvoir took in the officers around the table. All had their hands full with active murder investigations. Where murders had indeed been committed and killers needed to be found. Urgently.
His eyes came to rest on the one officer as yet unassigned.
Jeez, thought Beauvoir, am I really going to do this to him?
“Would you work with Agent Cloutier and see if there’s anything there? Just for the day?”
“With pleasure,” said Chief Inspector Gamache.
CHAPTER FOUR
“I’m sorry,” Beauvoir said under his breath as they left the meeting.
“Why?” asked Gamache.
“You know why.” Beauvoir cocked his head toward Cloutier, who was at her desk. “She stapled her transfer papers to her thigh the first day here.”
“She isn’t armed, is she?” asked Gamache.
“Are you kidding?”
“Is she working out?” Gamache asked. After all, it had been his decision to transfer this desk agent into homicide.
“Actually, if kept off the streets and away from any citizens or anything sharp, yes.”
“Good to know.”
Gamache watched Agent Cloutier sitting at her desk, staring into space. He tried to believe she was thinking, but the look on her face said that she was paralyzed by indecision.
“Noli timere,” said Beauvoir with a grin.
“Huh. Well, maybe just a little timere,” admitted Gamache. As he considered Agent Cloutier, he thought about her question.
How would you feel…?
How would he feel if his daughter, a grown woman, a married woman, had been missing for a day and a half?
He’d be frantic. He’d hope and pray that someone would pay attention. Someone would help.
Agent Cloutier’s persistence had shown courage. Her question had shown empathy.
Both were extremely valuable, he told himself, even as he watched her knock her phone off the desk. Into the garbage.
She was nervous, that much was obvious. About the missing young woman? About working with him? About failing? Or was there something else?
“I’ve arranged for another desk to be put into the office,” said Beauvoir. He’d almost said “my office” but had stopped himself.
“Merci. I appreciate the thought, but I’d like to sit out here.”
“Really?” Beauvoir looked around.
Desks were placed together, facing each other, two by two. Some neat, some with documents piled high. Some personalized, with family photos and memorabilia. Others antiseptic.
Gamache followed Beauvoir’s gaze. It had been years, decades, since he’d sat in an open bullpen. At a desk like any other.
An investigator like any other.
Far from the humiliation it was meant to be, this actually felt comfortable. Comforting, even. Someone else was in charge, and he could just concentrate on the job at hand.
“If it’s all right with you, I’ll take that desk.” He pointed to the empty one across from Cloutier.
“It’s all yours.” Putting his hand on Gamache’s back, Beauvoir said, “If you need anything, or just want to talk, my door’s always open.”
Gamache recognized it as something he said to raw recruits. “When’s your last day again?”
Beauvoir laughed. “It’s good to have you back. Sir.”
Gamache took a deep breath. The place smelled of sweat. Of coffee burned to the bottom of the glass pot. Every day. For years.
For intelligent people, no one in homicide, it seemed, ever learned to turn the thing off. Or make a fresh pot.
It smelled of paper and files, and feet.
It smelled familiar.
When a nervous Agent Gamache had walked in, his first day at homicide, the place had been a riot of noise. Of agents yelling to each other. Phones ringing. Typewriters clacking.
Now there was a murmur of voices, the soft buzz of cell phones, and the tippity-tap of laptops.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.