A Better Man

by Louise Penny

  “Give me a few minutes,” Zalmanowitz, the prosecutor, said to the Sûreté officers once the ambulance had left and order had been restored. “I’ll speak to the judge. Then we can talk.”

  Judge Pelletier had decided not to charge Monsieur Godin. Clearly sympathizing with the man. The father.

  “Merde, merde, merde,” muttered Beauvoir.

  “Merde,” added Lacoste.

  She’d been in another interview, to possibly take over command of Public Security, when word had reached her about what had happened in the courthouse.

  She’d hurried over, and now the three of them walked along the slushy cobblestoned streets outside the courthouse. In need of fresh air and to try to clear their heads.

  “A shitshow. What the fuck was that?” Beauvoir stopped, took a deep breath, closed his eyes, then opened them again. “Sorry. But really. What the fuck was that?”

  They circled the building in Old Montréal. Feeling the sun on their hot faces. And the fresh air in their lungs.

  They spoke a little, mostly curses from Beauvoir. Gamache, who had said almost nothing since the judge’s pronouncement, let them vent. While he walked and considered.

  Then they all fell silent, lost in their own thoughts. The same thoughts.

  Partly about what had gone wrong, mostly how to fix it.

  Beauvoir’s phone buzzed. A text from Zalmanowitz. As terse as the man.

  Meet me in my office.

  The three Sûreté officers were around the back of the building, but Gamache knew the way in, past the trash and recycling bins. After he’d pressed the button and stared into the camera, the door was unlocked. It helped that Gamache knew the guards by name and they knew him. After decades of trials. And tribulations.

  Beauvoir and Lacoste followed Gamache along grimy, ill-lit corridors. Taking the service elevator, they finally emerged into the gleaming marble hallway. The public face, hiding the smelly, dark underbelly of justice.

  “Well, that was a clusterfuck of a decision,” said Zalmanowitz, not bothering to get up or even look up from his laptop, as they entered. “I spoke to Judge Pelletier, who walked me through it.”

  “And?” asked Beauvoir.

  “And we’ll appeal, of course,” said the prosecutor.

  “Will we win?”

  “Hard to say.”

  “Try.”

  Now Zalmanowitz gave them his complete attention, turning from his screen. “Honestly? I doubt it. As much as we hate the decision, Judge Pelletier did her due diligence, even canvassing jurists across the country—”

  “But a poisonous tree?” interrupted Beauvoir. “Come on.”

  “I know. I can’t explain her interpretation. Well, I can. But it’s an incredibly narrow view of the law.”

  He rubbed his eyes and sighed. Then, looking up, he smiled weakly. “You know what they say about lawyers—”

  Gamache gave Beauvoir a warning glance.

  “—that we’re like children in the dark, imagining all the monsters.”

  It was, Gamache knew, a pretty apt description of his job, too.

  “Seems I missed one,” said the lawyer. “Two, really.”

  “We all did,” said Beauvoir.

  Zalmanowitz nodded his thanks for sharing the blame. “Judge Pelletier had latitude. It could have gone the other way, and I think she genuinely struggled with it. Especially since, as she privately told me, our case was a lock—”

  Beauvoir’s hands slammed down on the wooden arms of his chair, and he growled, “Jesus.”

  Getting up, he paced the room, trying to blow off the pent-up frustration. The others let him pace until he’d regained control of himself.

  Sitting back down, he didn’t apologize. But he did look directly at Zalmanowitz and say, “Someone needs to make sure Tracey gets what’s coming to him.”

  “We’re trying.”

  “Try harder.”

  “Look, you’re the ones who opened that duffel bag,” he said, his voice rising, his frustration getting away from him with every word. “Who let an inexperienced agent loose to goose-step around in that Instagram account—”

  Zalmanowitz stopped himself, with effort. Putting his hands out in front of him as though to protect them from his wrath.

  He sat back in his chair. Which bounced with the force of his body.

  Staring at Gamache, he saw that while the Chief Inspector’s tone had been civil so far, and his face calm, his jaw muscles were clamped tight.

  This was not a relaxed man. This was a man who was simply better at containing his emotions.

  “I’m sorry.” Zalmanowitz took a deep breath and looked at the three investigators. “This isn’t your fault.”

  “Of course it is,” snapped Beauvoir. “I fucked up.”

  “So did I,” said Gamache. “I’m the one who actually opened the duffel bag.”

  “And I let Agent Cloutier pursue the Instagram account. Even encouraged her,” said Lacoste, shaking her head.

  “None of us looks good in this,” Zalmanowitz admitted. “I’m the lawyer, the prosecutor. I should’ve seen that there might be a problem. But I didn’t.”

  Now he rubbed his face with his hands. Trying to erase his expression of defeat.

  “That is true. This’s mostly your fault,” said Beauvoir, and when the prosecutor looked at him, Beauvoir smiled. And Zalmanowitz gave one gruff laugh.

  Truce.

  “As I said, I’ll file an appeal,” said the prosecutor. “But that’ll take months to be heard. The poisonous tree is the most damaging ruling. It’s just unfortunate that so much stems from something so early on. It affects almost every bit of evidence.”

  “‘Unfortunate’ isn’t the word,” said Lacoste.

  Zalmanowitz nodded. “Her decision on the poisonous tree sits right on the boundary, which is why no other judge will overturn her ruling. And you’d better note it, because it’ll become case law from now on. And affect all other searches. But”—now he leaned forward, arms on his desk—“the more gnarly decision, by her own private admission, concerns the social-media issue.”

  “The Instagram account,” said Lacoste, pulling her chair closer to the desk.

  “Exactly. Judge Pelletier’s right, of course, that courts are struggling to figure out the laws around social media. The government’s working on legislation, but it’s controversial and sensitive, and you know how politicians love those two things.”

  He waited for their laugh of appreciation. Instead all he got were three glum stares.

  “If this judgment stands,” he went on, “it’ll redefine boundaries.”

  “But it’s not right,” said Beauvoir. “It ties our hands when it comes to social-media accounts. It pretty much locks us out and lets people do anything they want.”

  “As they can in the privacy of their own homes,” said Zalmanowitz. “That’s the analogy she’s using. As Pierre Elliott Trudeau said when he was Prime Minister, the government has no place in the bedrooms of the nation.”

  “But there are limits,” said Gamache. “Assault, child pornography, murder. Just because people do it in the privacy of their homes doesn’t mean they’re beyond the reach of law. But I also know we aren’t solving anything by going over and over this. A decision was reached. You’ll appeal. In the meantime, Carl Tracey is free. Do we have other evidence, untainted, that can be used?”

  “Vivienne called her father that day, to say she was finally leaving Tracey,” said Beauvoir. “That sure suggests she was afraid.”

  “There’s the evidence of Agent Cameron, who responded to Vivienne’s 911 calls,” said Lacoste. “It was clear there was abuse.”

  “But not clear enough for him to actually bring Tracey in. He didn’t feel it met the ‘reasonable suspicion’ test. Besides, abuse isn’t murder. What else do we have?”

  “There’s that young man, what’s his name,” said Beauvoir. “The one she called over and over the day she was killed.”

  “Gerald Bertra

nd,” said Lacoste. “He claims it was a wrong number.”

  “And you believe him?” asked Zalmanowitz.

  “Yes, I think I do. We checked him out, and there’s absolutely nothing connecting him to Vivienne or Tracey. I think she wrote the number down wrong.”

  “What number was she calling again?” asked Gamache.

  Lacoste gave it to him.

  “I don’t understand why, if she was so afraid, she didn’t ask her father to come get her,” said Zalmanowitz.

  “He offered,” said Gamache. “But she said it was too dangerous, that she had to choose her time carefully.”

  “So she feared for her life?” said Zalmanowitz. “She told her father that?”

  Gamache considered, remembering that first conversation with Godin, in his home in Ste.-Agathe. “Not specifically. I think she was afraid and let him know that, but not for her life. I think if she’d told him that, Monsieur Godin would have definitely gone to get her. He didn’t want to make it worse or trigger any violence. So he stayed home.”

  “That poor man,” said Zalmanowitz. “How do you live with yourself?”

  There was no answering that.

  “So,” said Zalmanowitz after a pause. “Vivienne was obviously afraid of her husband.”

  “Oui. Afraid of what he’d do if he knew she was leaving—”

  “But wait a minute.” Zalmanowitz raised his hand to stop Gamache. “According to the girlfriend, Pauline Vachon, Tracey wanted to get rid of her. Wouldn’t her leaving solve the problem, and then they wouldn’t have to kill her? Why not just let her go? He didn’t really have to kill her.”

  “He might not have realized she planned to leave,” said Beauvoir. “He says she told him, but does that really seem likely?”

  It did not.

  “So you think he killed her without knowing she was leaving anyway?” asked Zalmanowitz.

  “Even if he knew, Tracey still had a motive,” said Gamache. “He admitted to me he had no intention of giving half the home to her. Or to support the child.”

  He told them about his exchange in the kitchen when Tracey admitted that Vivienne’s leaving and taking half the farm with her was a pretty good motive.

  “So there’s your answer,” said Beauvoir. “Tracey’s violent. Drunk. He planned to kill her, and he did. The fact she was going to leave anyway only drove him more crazy.”

  “And the bag?” asked Zalmanowitz. “How did it get into the river? Who packed it?”

  “We think Tracey did,” said Beauvoir. “Based on strange things in the bag and the private message to Vachon.”

  “Stuff’s in the bag,” Lacoste read from her notes. “Everything’s ready. Will be done tonight. I promise.”

  Zalmanowitz sighed. “Damning. And completely inadmissible. But what I don’t get is if she did plan to leave, like she told her father, why didn’t she pack the bag? Oh, never mind.” He flung himself back in the chair again and threw up his hands. “It’s all academic. The duffel bag is out of bounds. It’s as though the bag never existed.”

  “Non,” said Beauvoir. “It’s as though we didn’t find it. But it happened. And now we need to find another way to get him.”

  They looked at him. Beauvoir had climbed out of his outrage, more determined than ever. Far from defeated.

  They’d get Carl Tracey. Somehow.

  The prosecutor leaned forward again, drew his notepad toward him, and picked up a pen.

  “Right. What we can use is Carl Tracey’s first statement to you,” the prosecutor said to Gamache. “That was before the bag or the body was found.”

  “And we have the first interview with Homer Godin, when Vivienne was still missing,” said Beauvoir. “And we have the phone records that led us to Gerald Bertrand.”

  They went back over and over those conversations.

  Tracey saying Vivienne was drunk and abusive.

  Tracey claiming she was having affairs.

  That she told him the baby wasn’t his and that she was leaving him. That she’d gone off with some lover.

  Tracey admitting to hitting her that Saturday night. And then going into his studio with a bottle, getting wasted, and passing out. When he woke up, she was gone.

  “Okay,” said Zalmanowitz. “That’s his version of what happened. We know it’s all bullshit. How did he seem to you, Armand, when you first spoke to him?”

  Gamache thought back. It seemed months ago now, not mere days. “Belligerent. Violent.”

  He described the pitchfork and the shouts to get off the property.

  “Not very cooperative,” said Zalmanowitz. “The one good moment from a shitty day was the judge asking Tracey why he didn’t want you to open the duffel bag, if he was so worried about his wife. It’s a good question. A telling question. It must eat her up to have to release him. But you know, something’s bothering me. After meeting Tracey and hearing more about him, I can understand him killing someone. What I don’t understand is the method.”

  “How so?” asked Gamache.

  “Wouldn’t you expect this fellow to do something stupid and brutal?”

  “Throwing his pregnant wife off a bridge to be battered and drowned in a freezing river isn’t brutal enough for you?” asked Lacoste.

  Zalmanowitz regarded her. “No. It’s not. Given his history, I’d have expected something simpler. More hands-on. Beating her to death. Shooting her. Hitting her with a shovel and burying her. Why throw her off a bridge half a kilometer away?”

  “Maybe it was Pauline Vachon’s idea,” said Lacoste. “She seems smart.”

  “No messages to support that it was her idea?”

  “Where she suggests throwing Vivienne off the bridge?” asked Lacoste. “Yes, but we decided not to show you.”

  For one brief moment, Zalmanowitz believed her, then lowered his brows.

  “Of course there weren’t,” said Lacoste. “They must’ve come up with the plan when they were together. We’ve canvassed the neighbors. A few saw him entering her place last week. She says that was for business.”

  “Right,” said the prosecutor. “And even if there were explicit posts, describing it in detail, we couldn’t use them, thanks to NouveauGalerie and that agent.”

  “It wasn’t her fault,” Lacoste repeated. “Like I said, she ran it by me and I approved. Encouraged her, even. So lay off her.”

  “Okay, sorry, you’re right,” said Zalmanowitz. “Back to the bridge. How did Tracey even get Vivienne there?”

  “The coroner thinks the most likely explanation is that he beat her senseless at home, put her in the car, and drove her to the bridge,” said Beauvoir. “Her blood on the car handle and steering wheel might’ve come from her blood on his hands.”

  “But that doesn’t explain his boot prints,” said the prosecutor. “How would they get under the car if he drove her there?”

  “Made when he was scouting the place, maybe,” said Beauvoir. “We don’t really know the details. And probably never will. Another possibility is that part of what Tracey said is true. Vivienne arranged to meet her lover on the bridge. Tracey overheard and got there first.”

  “Okay,” said Lacoste. “But then, what happened to the lover? And when did she call him? There were only five calls out of the house that day. Four to what we think is a wrong number and one to her father.”

  “You said you believed Bertrand when he said he didn’t know her,” said Gamache. “Is it possible you were wrong?”

  Lacoste considered. “It’s always possible.”

  Gamache nodded, even as he recognized it for what it was. Desperation. But sometimes that uncovered something useful.

  And they had precious little left to them except desperation.

  “All right, let’s walk through it,” said the prosecutor. “Vivienne is afraid. She calls her father, telling him she’s leaving her husband but has to choose her time. That evening Tracey beats her senseless, and then, either thinking she’s dead or trying to work up the courage to finally kill her, he goes into his studio and gets drunk.”

  “Then Vivienne regains consciousness and calls Bertrand, her lover,” said Beauvoir. “Begging for help. Telling him to meet her on the bridge. But this Bertrand fellow doesn’t show up. She was a fling to him, nothing more. He sure didn’t want to get involved with a pregnant woman running from a dangerous husband.”

  “Vivienne gets in the car and drives herself there,” said the prosecutor. “Bertrand doesn’t show, but Tracey does. He’s waiting for her. He throws her off the bridge and tosses the bag in. The one he’d already packed, according to the posts.”

  “There is another possibility,” said Gamache. They turned to him, and he sat forward. “That Bertrand did show up.”

  “Go on,” said Zalmanowitz.

  “Suppose Tracey didn’t pack the bag, but Vivienne did. Suppose she called Bertrand, telling him to meet her on the bridge.”

  “Why there?” asked the prosecutor.

  “Maybe that’s where they always met,” said Gamache. “She shows up and waits for him.”

  As he spoke, the cold, dark April evening appeared before them. Vivienne Godin, bruised from Tracey’s latest and last beating, stands on the bridge. Bertrand’s headlights appear down the disused dirt road. Little more than a path.

  He gets out, and she tells him she’s pregnant. Maybe even that the baby is his. She might have even believed it.

  Tells him she’s leaving her abusive husband and needs his help.

  And then Bertrand snaps. Sees his frat-boy life changing completely. In panic, he pushes her backward. Into the railing. It breaks, and, to his horror, she falls.

  Beauvoir, Lacoste, Zalmanowitz sat in silence, once again imagining Vivienne’s face as she hung in the air between the bridge and the water. Then disappeared.

  “To cover his tracks, he throws her bag in after her,” said Beauvoir.

  “Or maybe she had it in her hand or over her shoulder,” said Lacoste. “And it went in with her.”

  “But what about Tracey’s boot prints under Vivienne’s car?” asked Zalmanowitz.

  “Maybe they weren’t Tracey’s,” said Gamache. “It’s a pretty common boot. Monsieur Béliveau even sells it in his general store in Three Pines. And it’s a standard size for a man. Ten.”

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