A Better Man

by Louise Penny

  Olivier translated again.

  “I was afraid of that,” said Armand. After all, he’d had an experience with a hill earlier in the day.

  Billy made some more noises and gestures.

  “When?” asked Olivier.

  More sounds from Billy.

  “Will it work?” asked Olivier.

  Billy thought, then nodded. “Yurt.”

  That Armand got. “It’s possible, then?”

  “But you’ll have to wait until the temperature drops and the ground hardens,” said Olivier. “He figures it’ll be sometime after midnight.”

  Armand looked over to the river. Then at his watch. It was almost 10:00 p.m.

  “Do we have that long?” Olivier asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Armand.

  They went back inside and reported what they’d found as they toweled off their faces and hair, then stuck their hands out to the fire.

  The others listened in silence. There was nothing to say and nothing to do, except wait.

  Jean-Guy called from Montréal and reported that they’d decided to blow the ice dams on the St. Lawrence. “They’ll issue a public warning and close the bridges while it’s being done.”

  “Good. Let me know if it works.”

  “I will.”

  Armand lowered his voice. “And the dams?”

  “No word. No mention of them now, even on the secure channels.”

  Gamache took a deep breath and said a silent prayer.

  “How’s it going there?” Jean-Guy asked.

  “We’ve designated St. Thomas’s as an evacuation center. Most of the residents have been moved up there, but some are staying behind.”

  “You speaking to numbnuts?” came a familiar voice in the background.

  “Do witches float?” asked Jean-Guy.

  “I believe they do,” said Armand.

  “Shame.”

  “I see he’s staying where it’s safe and warm,” said Ruth. “I’d expect nothing less. Or more.”

  “Bitch,” muttered Jean-Guy.

  “Bastard,” said Ruth. “Oh, and tell him to give my love to my godson. And tell Honoré I have a few more words for him to learn, and a special hand signal.”

  When Ruth moved on, Armand told Jean-Guy their plans for the Bella Bella.

  There was a pause. “That’s still two hours away, at best. Will the sandbags hold?”

  “Hard to tell.”

  Armand exhaled, and Jean-Guy could hear the strain.

  “Annie and Honoré are safe here, and I’m just sitting at HQ with my thumb up my—”

  “Got it.”

  “I’m coming down to help”—he glanced at the clock—“if I can get off-island before they close the bridges. See you soon.”

  “But—”

  But the line was dead.

  “Jean-Guy’s coming down to help,” he reported to the others.

  “Dumb-ass,” said Ruth.

  But Armand could see relief in the ancient face, illuminated by the flames from the log fire.

  * * *

  “I’m sorry sir, you’ll have to go back. We’ve closed the bridge.”

  Beauvoir flashed his credentials, and the officer stepped aside and waved him through, alerting agents along the span to let this vehicle pass.

  Just as he made it over, Beauvoir heard a huge explosion. He winced and instinctively ducked, even though he knew what it was. In the rearview mirror, he saw a plume of snow and ice shoot into the air.

  A few minutes later, some distance down the autoroute, he heard another, more muffled explosion.

  The ice was packed in tight, the St. Lawrence beginning to flood. If this didn’t work …

  As he drove, he monitored the secure Sûreté channels, while dynamite went off in a ring around the island and across Québec.

  At least Annie and Honoré were safe on high ground. And he’d return to them by dawn. Even if he had to swim across the St. Lawrence to get there.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  It had been decided by Ruth, apparently in consultation with a duck and a bottle of scotch, that sentries would be placed on the bridge to sound the alarm should the Rivière Bella Bella break through the sandbags.

  Reine-Marie and Armand chose to take the first shift.

  At the door Ruth made sure their heavy raincoats were well fastened. “You have your whistle, in case something happens?”

  “I do,” said Reine-Marie.

  “And your Boys’ Big Book of Flooding?”

  “Always,” said Armand.

  “Then we’ll be fine,” said the old poet.

  “Fucked up,” said Gabri.

  “Insecure,” said Olivier.

  “Neurotic,” said Clara.

  “And egotistical, yeah, yeah,” said Ruth. “Now, no necking, you two, and be home by midnight.”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  As the rain and ice pellets hit her face, Reine-Marie called to Armand, “Heck of a date.”

  * * *

  Inside, a discussion had begun around the fireplace. What to take, if an evacuation order was given.

  “I’d take Gabri,” said Olivier.

  “I’d take the espresso machine,” said Gabri. “And some croissants.”

  * * *

  At the bridge they stood, backs to the wind, shoulders hunched, hoods raised. Reine-Marie put on her flashlight and pointed it into the Bella Bella.

  “It’s rising,” she shouted.

  “Oui.”

  * * *

  “I’d take my Jehane Benoît cookbook,” said Myrna. “The photo album. The Lalique vase. That hand-knotted Indian rug—”

  “Hold on,” said Gabri. “Do you have a moving van? Can we use some of it? I’d take my grandfather’s Victorian sofa.”

  “Oh, no you don’t,” said Olivier. “The only good thing about a flood wiping out our entire lives is that it’d take that monstrosity with it.”

  * * *

  Armand and Reine-Marie walked over the stone bridge. And back again. Over and back. Pausing every couple of minutes to switch on the powerful flashlight and check the level of the Rivière Bella Bella.

  Then continue on.

  Like guards on a lonely frontier.

  Back and forth. Back and forth.

  Armand could barely hear his own thoughts for the sound of the water rushing below and the ice pellets hitting his coat.

  What he thought about, as he walked back and forth, back and forth, was Vivienne. Out there somewhere. And Vivienne’s father. And Annie.

  He tried to keep their daughter out of it, knowing how dangerous it was to personalize investigations. But perhaps his resistance was lowered by the cold, by the competing stresses, by incipient exhaustion, but he couldn’t seem to stop putting himself in Monsieur Godin’s place.

  Suppose Annie were missing? And everyone he turned to for help, while nice, didn’t actually help? If he pleaded with them, begged them, and all they did was smile and offer soup?

  It would be a nightmare. He’d be mad with worry.

  Pausing again at the top of the bridge, he took Reine-Marie’s hand. Suddenly feeling the need for comfort.

  The water in the beams of light was frothing, foaming. Like something rabid. It scudded along the lip of the shoreline. Rising faster than they’d expected. The jam, just a little way downriver, out of Three Pines, must be getting worse.

  And then.

  Armand heard a low hum, almost a moan, from Reine-Marie. As they watched, the Bella Bella broke up and over her banks.

  It was now racing along the bottom of the sandbags.

  “They’ll hold,” she said. “There’s a long way to go before the river reaches us.”

  “Oui.”

  Though they both knew that the problem wasn’t necessarily the height of the river but the force of it. The danger wasn’t that the water would cascade over the wall but that it would knock it down.

  They’d built it two bags thick. So it shouldn’t.

&n

bsp; But then, the Bella Bella should never have gotten this high.

  A lot of things were happening that shouldn’t.

  Just ask Homer Godin, who was living the great “should not be happening.”

  Reine-Marie lifted her eyes and through the sleet saw the lights of St. Thomas’s Church on the hill. Where volunteers were making sure the children were sleeping soundly and not afraid. They were setting up more cots and organizing food, fresh water, generators, and composting toilets. Should the worst happen.

  Then she shifted her gaze to the woods.

  “Where is she, Armand?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is she—”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But you suspect. Have you spoken to the husband?”

  “This afternoon. He’s a piece of work. Sûreté’s been called to their home more than once. Alcoholic. Maybe drugs.”

  “Abusive?”

  “Oui.”

  A buildup of trouble that had broken its banks, thought Reine-Marie. And the young woman was taken at the flood.

  “She’s pregnant?”

  “Oui.”

  “How could someone—”

  But there was no use finishing the question. And there was no answer.

  They continued to pace. Back and forth. Back and forth.

  Still the question rankled.

  How could someone…?

  “Can you make him tell you?” Reine-Marie shouted above the torrent.

  “Short of putting a gun to his head or beating it out of him, no.”

  In her silence, he knew what she was feeling, if not thinking.

  Maybe, just this once …

  Maybe in some cases it was justified. Maybe torture. Maybe beatings. Maybe even murder was justified. Sometimes.

  “Situational ethics?” he asked.

  “Don’t be smug,” Reine-Marie said. “We all have them. Even me. Even you.”

  She was right, of course.

  It was the asp at the breast of any decent cop. Any military leader. Any politician.

  Any mother or father.

  Any human.

  Maybe. Just this once …

  * * *

  “I’d take Ruth,” said Olivier.

  “Thank you,” said the old poet.

  “Because she’s a witch and would float?” asked Clara.

  “Of course,” said Olivier. “We could cling to her.”

  “I’d rather drown,” said Gabri.

  They turned to Billy.

  “I think you’d know what I’d take,” he said.

  “Your tractor?” asked Myrna.

  * * *

  “So that’s how you’re doing it,” Lysette Cloutier muttered as she stared at the IP address. “You shit.”

  Over the fifteen years she’d worked in accounting for the Sûreté, Lysette had rarely used foul language. And rarely had she heard it.

  But in homicide she’d heard, and discovered within herself, a whole new vocabulary. It was, she thought, a form of verbal violence to counter the horrific things they saw every day.

  Instead of lashing out physically, they lashed out verbally.

  And yet, she thought as she put more commands into her laptop, she’d rarely heard Chief Inspector Gamache swear. She tried to think if she’d ever heard him.

  Maybe that’s why he was in charge. What was it he’d said to that Cameron? The population had a right to expect that people with a gun and a badge would also have self-control.

  Maybe he had greater control over himself than most.

  But what was he controlling? And what would happen if it ever broke free?

  * * *

  Bob Cameron sat in his car. The sleet had stopped. The skies were clearing. The temperature dropping.

  His windshield was frosting over, but he could still see stars, the Milky Way. And that single light in the house.

  In the bedroom.

  Was Tracey lying on the bed, on top of that comforter with its bright pink and green flowers that Vivienne’s mother had left her in her will?

  Was he drinking himself stupid?

  Stupider.

  Was that even a word?

  Or was he packing? Planning to run away.

  Cameron hoped so. That’s what he’d been waiting for. Hoping for.

  Expecting.

  Come on. Come on, you shit. Get in that truck of yours and just try it.

  Cameron had been reassigned from the effort to find Vivienne Godin to setting up emergency shelters. Sent home to rest, he’d come here instead.

  Tracey was a weak man, Cameron knew. The sort who’d try to run.

  And then what would I do?

  But he knew the answer to that. He’d pull Tracey over. Tell him to get out of the vehicle.

  And he’d do what he should have done weeks ago.

  He looked at his watch. It was almost 1:00 a.m. He should go home. His wife might be wondering. But he couldn’t. Not quite yet.

  Come on, you dumb-ass. Come on out. Come to me.

  * * *

  Billy Williams stood on the road out of town. He held a long, gnarled stick, and as Reine-Marie and Armand watched, he drove it into the mud. As he’d done every twenty minutes for the past couple of hours.

  He was testing to see how far the stick would sink in, but also, it seemed by his cocked head, listening for some sound from the earth. Some permission.

  The sleet had stopped an hour earlier, and the temperature had plummeted. Exactly what they needed.

  Maybe now …

  “Well?” asked Reine-Marie, just as Armand noticed a glow on the hill above them.

  Headlights. That could be only one person. Jean-Guy had arrived.

  Billy spoke.

  “Thank the Lord,” said Reine-Marie, turning to Armand. “Billy says it’s frozen.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  They stood on the frozen field, a few kilometers upriver of Three Pines, and watched as Billy’s backhoe dug into the banks of the Bella Bella.

  The strong beam from the light on the front of his cab illuminated the ice and muck and stones as the shovel dug in.

  Reine-Marie held her phone in her mittened hand. They had, away from the forests and on the clear, crisp night, a fragile signal. That came and went. But was at least there. For now.

  Jean-Guy was beside the river, and Armand stood on the running board, guiding the digging of the trench. While Reine-Marie listened for reports back from Three Pines.

  They’d left Clara and Myrna on the bridge. The river was now up to the second sandbag.

  Ruth was in Clara’s cottage with her landline. Reporting back.

  “River’s still rising,” Ruth shouted into the phone. Partly to be heard over the roar of the river and partly because she always shouted into a phone.

  * * *

  “Did you see that?” Myrna shouted into Clara’s ear.

  Damn her, thought Clara, who was busy trying to pretend she hadn’t seen anything.

  But Myrna rarely looked away from some awful truth. Preferring to know rather than to live in blissful, if dangerous ignorance. It was one of her worst qualities.

  “They’ve shifted.” Myrna turned and yelled across to Ruth. “Tell them to hurry. They’ve shifted.”

  “What’s that?”

  “They’ve shifted!”

  “Well, you’re pretty shitty, too!”

  Gabri, standing beside Ruth in the kitchen, grabbed the phone. “Here, give me that. Reine-Marie? The sandbags are beginning to shift.”

  “Merde.”

  * * *

  “Hey! Hey!”

  They turned and saw a flashlight approaching.

  “Keep digging,” Armand yelled into Billy’s ear, then jumped off the backhoe.

  “What’re you doing? This’s my land,” came a man’s voice.

  Armand gestured to Reine-Marie to stay where she was and walked toward the light and the shout. “Sûreté. Who are you?”

  But he knew the answer to that. Because he knew whose land they were on.

  Jean-Guy left the river and joined Armand. The man was still twenty paces away. And held a flashlight in one hand and something else in the other.

  “He’s got a gun,” said Jean-Guy, his sharp eyes not leaving the man slipping and stumbling toward them.

  “Oui,” said Armand, and took a step in front of Reine-Marie. “A .22. Hunting rifle. Saw it earlier, in the search. He has a permit.”

  “Fuck,” muttered Jean-Guy, shaking his head.

  A .22. Small-gauge. But it could still do damage. To a gopher. A fox. A human.

  “This’s private property,” Tracey shouted. “Get off.”

  They were downwind of him and could smell the whiskey. The donkeys had been put in the barn overnight, so it was just humans now, in the field.

  “Monsieur Tracey, it’s Armand Gamache. We met earlier today.”

  “I don’t care who you are. You’re on my land.” Tracey stopped ten paces away and raised his rifle. “Get off.”

  “Armand?” said Reine-Marie, stepping forward.

  “It’s all right,” he said, and put his arm out to gently move her behind him.

  Obviously, she thought, his idea of “all right” and hers were very different.

  “What’s happening?” came Gabri’s tinny voice down the phone. “Reine-Marie?”

  “Drop the gun,” commanded Beauvoir.

  “Gun?” came the tinny voice. “Hello?”

  “Get off my goddamned land,” yelled Tracey. The rifle still raised.

  Billy had stopped digging. Armand turned to him and shouted, “Whatever happens, keep digging.”

  “Yurz.”

  The machine began again, and Tracey stepped forward, slipping slightly on the snow and mud.

  The danger, Gamache could now see, wasn’t just that he’d fire the rifle on purpose but that he’d slip and it would go off accidentally.

  “I said stop,” yelled Tracey.

  “And I said drop the gun,” said Beauvoir, stepping directly in front of Armand. Directly in front of the gun.

  “Oh, my God,” shouted Armand, and waved toward the river.

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