A Better Man

by Louise Penny

  “And then he kills her.”

  She looked from Beauvoir to Gamache. Neither of whom disagreed.

  “Alors,” said Madame Fleury, raising her manicured hands. “All we can do is provide a safe place for those who do break free.”

  “Would they know where to go, though?” asked Beauvoir.

  The location of shelters was closely guarded. For good reason.

  “We don’t advertise the location of shelters, if that’s what you mean.”

  It clearly was not what Beauvoir meant. He was coming to deeply dislike this woman, who had a knack for taking what he said and exaggerating it, twisting it, into something ridiculous.

  “If they want help, we arrange to meet them,” she continued. “And bring them to a shelter.”

  “But still,” said Beauvoir, “must be hard in a small community to keep that secret. Neighbors and all.”

  “It is. How did she die?”

  “Pushed off a bridge into a river in flood. She either drowned or was battered against the rocks. She was pregnant.”

  Simone Fleury raised her head so that she was looking down her long nose at Beauvoir.

  He realized he was being brutal. Stating the facts as though they were just words. Matching her own matter-of-fact tone. Beside him, he heard Gamache take a deep breath of disapproval.

  He pulled himself back in. “It’s a terrible thing.”

  There was a pause, until through those thin lips came one word: “Yes.”

  She turned to Gamache. “Her husband, of course, otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”

  “He’s a suspect, oui.”

  “If you have any trouble convicting him, just send him over to the shelter. We’ll take care of him.”

  “Merci,” said Gamache. “We might have trouble.”

  Barely under her breath, as she squeezed her tea bag, Madame Fleury muttered, “Cops.”

  “If an abuser does show up at a shelter,” said Beauvoir, “what do you do?”

  “Invite him in for tea and petits fours. What do you think we do?”

  Is it true, is it kind, does it need to be said? Beauvoir held his tongue. Barely.

  “You call the cops,” he finally said, through his own thin lips.

  “Yeah, right. And wait the twenty minutes until they move their fat asses?”

  “That’s not true,” said Gamache.

  “Okay, that might be true, but not fast enough. Never fast enough when the guy’s pounding on the door.”

  “So what do you do?” Beauvoir persisted.

  “We take care of it.”

  “How? Do you have a gun?”

  “Are you kidding? Do I look crazy?”

  Gamache cleared his throat in a warning to Beauvoir not to answer that.

  “Believe me,” Madame Fleury continued, “those of us who managed to escape won’t put up with that bullshit ever again. No one gets through the front door. No one touches any of those women. Never. Ever.”

  “Us?” asked Beauvoir. “You?”

  “You don’t think I do this out of the goodness of my heart?”

  Beauvoir did not think that.

  “Listen, Chief.” She almost spit the word out. “Doctors go home and beat their wives. Lawyers. Cops. There’s a huge instance of abuse from cops.” She glared at him in what he realized, with some shock, was a warning. Maybe even an accusation.

  “My father was a judge,” she continued, “and inside our big old house in our respectable neighborhood, he beat us kids. And worse. I married a banker at eighteen, to get away, and guess what? He beat me, too. Then he’d bring me flowers and jewelry and he’d cry. He’d sob and say how sorry he was. And that he’d be a better husband. He’d never do it again. And you know what?” Her eyes opened wide as she stared at Beauvoir. “I believed him. Because I wanted to. Because I had to. I put on the beautiful silk scarf he brought me, to hide the bruises, and went to the country club for lunch.”

  She let that sink in.

  “Without realizing it, we go to what’s familiar. When I finally told my best friend, she didn’t believe me. No one did. They didn’t want to know. There was only one shelter here at the time. Overflowing. But they took me in and gave me a mattress on the floor. I slept on it for three months. First time in my life I felt safe. You know why it’s safe? Not because the cops protect us but because we look after ourselves. We make sure it is.”

  “‘We’ the workers?”

  “‘We’ every woman there. You asked if we have a weapon? We do. And you gave it to us, with every blow. Every bruise. Every broken bone. It’s the toy at the bottom of the cereal box.” She clunked her mug down on the table so hard that tea shot out the top and other patrons looked over.

  “Rage,” said Beauvoir.

  “Baseball bats,” said Madame Fleury. “Next time you see a group of women in a park practicing their swings, you think about that.”

  She wiped up the spilled tea with a thin paper napkin, then pointed to the words Gamache had just written in his notebook. “What you just wrote is true, but no excuse. Cycle of abuse. My husband was beaten by his father. He saw his mother hit. But he was an adult when he hit me, and responsible for his own actions. They all are. After a beating they feel horrible and buy presents and promise to be better men, but they don’t change. They don’t grow up. They remain out-of-control children in a man’s body.”

  “Simone,” said Gamache, “a bag was found on the side of the river with some of her belongings in it, but it was a strange assortment. Summer clothing. Medication she probably didn’t need anymore.”

  “So?”

  “We’re wondering if she packed it herself.”

  Madame Fleury considered. “Might’ve, in a panic. Some women leave suddenly, just take off. But most have thought about it for a while. They have a bag packed and hidden, ready to grab. I had one packed for almost a year before I got up the courage to leave.”

  Beauvoir tried to imagine Simone Fleury as a frightened young woman. But then, he knew that few people would look at him and imagine the wreckage he’d crawled out of, not all that long ago.

  Madame Fleury glanced at her watch. “I’m leaving. My hairdresser doesn’t like it when I’m late. If you need anything else, you know how to reach me.”

  And leave she did. Armand did not offer her his hand, and she did not offer him hers.

  But Beauvoir did. As a sort of peace offering.

  Simone Fleury looked at it and walked away.

  “She thinks every man’s an abuser,” said Beauvoir, dropping his hand to his side. “That’s unfair.”

  “She was beaten by two men she trusted. That’s unfair. She works with abused women every day. She’s surrounded by it. It’s incredible she can even bring herself to look at us, never mind talk to us in anything close to a civil manner.” Gamache nodded toward Beauvoir’s hand, which was at his side, his fingers relaxed into a loose fist. “What would you do if a weapon were thrust at you?”

  Beauvoir looked down. He saw a hand. One that wrote notes, and chopped vegetables, and bathed his son. But Madame Fleury saw something else.

  Twenty-six thousand calls a year, he thought.

  As they stepped into the sunshine and the unseasonably warm April day, Beauvoir instinctively scanned the faces and realized with some amazement why he always did that.

  He was unconsciously looking for danger. Always. He saw potential threats everywhere. In everyone. In the elderly man across the way, with that bag. In the kids laughing and shoving each other. In the SUV heading a little too quickly down the main street.

  Suppose …

  It had become second nature. Hardwired into him.

  Jean-Guy Beauvoir knew that every person had a killer inside them.

  And Madame Fleury knew that every man had an abuser inside of him.

  Both were unfair. But such was their experience. And conditioning.

  That was one of the many reasons he had to leave. Had to escape the Sûreté and get far, far away.

From a world filled with threats. He longed to see a kinder world.

  He realized it might be too late. Too much damage might’ve already been done. But Jean-Guy Beauvoir had to try to break free.

  As they walked by the window of the café, he glanced in and saw the young waitress clearing their mugs and picking up the money they’d left.

  She looked at him and quickly dropped her eyes.

  Jean-Guy Beauvoir returned his gaze to the road ahead. Scanning it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  @MyrnaLanders: I love @ClaraMorrow works. They’re genius.

  @ClaraMorrow: Thanks @MyrnaLanders, but you sent this to me privately. Did you mean to? I’m sitting with you in the bistro. Oh, oh. Here comes Ruth. Look busy!

  @MyrnaLanders: #ClaraSucks Merde.

  @ClaraMorrow: @MyrnaLanders That one you put out on the public twitter feed. You just agreed with everyone who says my art is shit.

  @MyrnaLanders: #ClaraSucks Did I? Fuck

  @ClaraMorrow: @MyrnaLanders Please stop.

  The incident room in Three Pines was filled with the aroma of wet socks, sweat, cilantro, and lime.

  Olivier and Gabri moved aside the firefighting equipment and set out the ginger-garlic chicken soup, sandwiches, and drinks.

  Along with the senior officers, there were the more junior agents. Cloutier and the big guy. Cameron. They suspected he’d eat lots.

  “Any news on the flooding?” Isabelle Lacoste asked.

  “Here?” asked Olivier. “The Bella Bella’s gone down. Thank God.”

  “Across the province,” said Isabelle.

  “Only what we see on the news,” said Gabri. “You probably know more than we do.”

  “Maybe not,” she said. “We’ve been busy.”

  “Well, according to CBC, they’re digging huge trenches to divert some rivers,” said Gabri. “That must’ve been where you got the idea from, Armand.”

  “Good,” said Gamache, and exhaled. “Good news.”

  “Did you see the Deputy Premier in the scrum when that reporter asked about it?” said Olivier.

  Gabri and Olivier reenacted, with some exaggeration, Gamache suspected, the Deputy Premier’s face as it went from bafflement to anger to confidence when he was told it seemed to be working.

  “And then, just as he’d said he was in the meeting where it’d been decided to dig, another journalist asked about the angry farmers whose fields were now flooded,” said Gabri.

  His face fell into an expression somehow combining annoyance and obsequiousness.

  “Poor man,” said Olivier, putting linen napkins on the table. Beauvoir watched all this and wondered if they’d pull a candelabra out of the hamper next. “Can’t win.”

  While food was being organized, Gamache picked up a landline and went into the storage room. No need for the others to hear this call.

  “Alouette Organization,” came the cheery voice.

  “The general manager, please.”

  “I’m afraid he’s in a meeting. Can I take a message?”

  “If you could ask him to step out for a moment, this won’t take long.”

  Gamache explained who he was, and a minute or so later the phone was picked up.

  They talked for less than a minute. When Gamache hung up, he thought for a moment, then returned to the table.

  Olivier and Gabri had left, and now, as they ate, the Sûreté officers compared notes.

  “So this Gerald Bertrand denies knowing Vivienne Godin,” said Beauvoir.

  “Oui.” Lacoste picked up an egg salad sandwich on a fresh baguette, spiked with just a little curry, poached raisins, and arugula. “He says it was a wrong number. Says she was slurring her words and upset. Probably drunk.”

  Beauvoir casually reached out and took the peanut butter, honey, and banana sandwich on crusty white bread after noticing Cloutier also eyeing it.

  “Not drunk,” said Gamache. “Beaten. The coroner’s report says she’d had a few ounces, but not intoxication level.” He passed around hard copies of the preliminary report. “The slurring was probably from being hit.”

  He put down his sandwich.

  “Nothing more from Dr. Harris?” asked Lacoste after quickly scanning the coroner’s report.

  Beauvoir checked the emails again and shook his head. “Nothing. What else did you find?”

  “Gerald Bertrand’s alibi checks out,” said Agent Cloutier. “His friends confirm they were over at his place watching the hockey game on Saturday night. They arrived just before seven. None of them knew anything about Bertrand having an affair with Vivienne Godin. In fact, none had even heard of her.”

  “The other thing is the baby,” said Lacoste. “He was looking after his niece until six on Saturday night. Not much time to meet Vivienne on the bridge and get home before his friends arrived.”

  “You don’t think it was him, do you?” said Beauvoir, sitting back in his chair and taking a large bite of the sandwich.

  “No,” admitted Lacoste. “I think logistically it would’ve been tough, but I also believe he’s telling the truth. I saw him with his niece. He likes kids. I think if his lover had told him she was pregnant, he might not have been thrilled, but he wouldn’t have killed her and the baby.”

  Gamache looked at Beauvoir to continue the questioning but saw he was struggling to chew the sandwich, his mouth apparently glued almost shut.

  “So the other possibility is that he was telling the truth,” said Gamache, picking up the mantle. “He didn’t know her. Which means Vivienne was calling the wrong number. But over and over?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “I wonder who she was trying to call?” he said. “They were made in a cluster, right? At six fifteen.”

  “Starting then. There were four calls over ten minutes. All to Bertrand’s number.”

  “Strange to have called the same wrong number over and over,” said Gamache. “Once, maybe, if you hit the wrong button. We’ve all done it. But to make the same mistake over and over? Even if disoriented you’d think she’d hit different numbers.”

  “What do you think it means?” asked Lacoste.

  Once again Gamache looked at Beauvoir, who was now regretting not the sandwich itself but taking such a huge bite. Jean-Guy chewed more vigorously and gestured to Gamache to continue.

  “I think,” he said, “that Vivienne was given a number to call but had written it down wrong. So while she was dialing correctly, she didn’t realize she was calling the wrong number. Was there a piece of paper found on her body, with a number?”

  “No,” said Lacoste. “In her wallet we found paper, but it was wet through. Disintegrated.”

  “Nothing legible?”

  “No.”

  “But that explains why she kept making the same mistake,” said Cloutier, nodding. “She wrote it down wrong and didn’t realize that. So who did she think she was calling?”

  “I’m not willing to give up on Bertrand yet,” said Beauvoir, finally swallowing. “What you say is true. She can’t have made exactly the same mistake over and over. So maybe it wasn’t a mistake at all. She meant to call Bertrand and did. We have no idea what she actually said to him. Someone met her on that bridge, and she’d have had to arrange it. I think he’s lying. I’ll put an agent on his place.”

  “There is something else,” said Lacoste. “Something Agent Cloutier here discovered.”

  She turned, like a proud parent, to the older woman.

  This was the accountant’s moment to shine. Lysette Cloutier gathered her notes.

  “Vivienne Godin might be having an affair, but her husband certainly was.”

  “How do you know?” asked Beauvoir.

  “The internet,” said Cloutier.

  “Wikipedia?” asked Beauvoir, half joking, half dreading the answer.

  “Non,” laughed Cloutier. “Google.”

  Beauvoir opened his mouth, but Lacoste jumped in. “Let her explain.”

  “Since Tracey doesn’t have internet at home,” said Cloutier, “but does have a website and a social-media presence, it seemed pretty obvious someone was doing it for him, so I tracked down the IP address and found her. I then went onto his public Instagram account and convinced her to give me access to their private account.”

  “How did you do that?” asked Beauvoir.

  “I set up a dummy website and Instagram account. NouveauGalerie. Said I was a gallery owner looking for new artists. I needed to communicate in private and to see more of Carl Tracey’s work.”

  “So she gave you access to their private account, not knowing who you were?” said Gamache.

  “Smart,” said Beauvoir.

  “Merci.” She smiled and looked at Isabelle Lacoste, who nodded encouragement. “This’s what I found.”

  She turned her laptop around for Beauvoir and Gamache to see the photos of Tracey and Vachon together. It was obvious they were lovers.

  They scrolled through the pictures and read the private messages between Carl Tracey and Pauline Vachon.

  “Look at this one,” said Cloutier. “She’s a drunken slut. You deserve better. That’s from Pauline. Pretty clear.”

  “Of an affair,” said Gamache. “Maybe. But murder?”

  “Look here, patron,” said Lacoste. “On the day of the murder.”

  Both Beauvoir and Gamache leaned closer to the laptop as she found the posts sent Saturday around midday.

  Stuff’s in the bag. Everything’s ready. Will be done tonight. I promise. That from Carl Tracey.

  And Pauline Vachon’s reply: Finally. Good luck. Don’t mess it up.

  Beauvoir sat back and exhaled. “I promise. Jesus. So this Vachon was in on it.”

  “More than that,” said Lacoste. “I think it was her idea.”

  “Well, her encouragement anyway,” said Gamache.

  “Enough to charge her with being an accomplice,” said Beauvoir.

  “Is it enough to arrest him for murder?” asked Cloutier.

  “I doubt it,” said Lacoste, and she turned to Beauvoir. “What do you think?”

  “I think it’s turning into a very strong circumstantial case. And that might be the best we can do. Any jury would be able to follow this evidence directly to Tracey. The admitted abuse, these photos and posts clearly showing he was having an affair, the fact, admitted here, that he packed her bag.” He stopped to think. “That might explain the summer clothes. He just took things at random or maybe took things he knew Vivienne wouldn’t miss.”

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