Page 143 of A Better Man

Sûreté, video, kids.

Gamache, video, shooting.

“I coulda shot you, you know,” said Toby. “Payback. For what you did.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Toby sat back and crossed his arms. “You weren’t worth the bullet. And you sure aren’t worth dying for. He’da killed me.”

He nodded to Cameron, who was staring at the boy.

“You got that right,” said Cameron.

Toby turned back to the older man. With the gray hair. And that nasty scar by his temple. That made him so recognizable.

The cop’s face wasn’t so much wrinkled as lined. From a great distance, from half a century away, he looked to the boy like a man broken and pieced back together.

Humpty Dumpty. Who’d had a great fall.

“Patron,” said Beauvoir from the other desk, breaking into Toby’s thoughts.

His voice was hushed. Almost a whisper.

Annie was working from home in Montréal. Studying for the French law admission exams.

A friend from her firm in Montréal had sent a link. And a warning. But, of course, she had to look.

Clicking on it, she watched. Blood draining from her face.

Honoré, on her knee, was also watching. But she quickly took him away, placing him in his playpen. Then she returned to her laptop, approaching it warily.

The screen was paused on an image of her father.

Her eyes were wide. Her breathing shallow. She muted the sound and hit play.

Reine-Marie covered her mouth with her hand and closed her eyes. The bruise on her face forgotten, she now felt as though she’d been hit, hard, in the gut.

Then, opening them again, she asked Myrna to go back to the beginning.

“Are you sure?” Myrna asked.

They’d gone up to Myrna’s loft over the bookstore, where the internet was most stable. Annie had sent the link. She knew that her mother would want to know. To be warned about what was out there.

In the few minutes it had taken the women to get upstairs, more and more messages had come in from friends who were alarmed and upset. Who wanted to warn both her and Armand.

Myrna and Clara were in the loft with her. As were Olivier and Gabri. Ruth was sitting beside her in front of the computer, her veined hand holding Reine-Marie’s.

“Please,” said Reine-Marie.

Myrna clicked, and the short video played again.

“Do you mind if we use your meeting room?” Beauvoir asked the station commander, who, on seeing him at her door, clicked her computer closed. And reddened. But not before Beauvoir had heard the telltale sound of muffled gunfire coming from her laptop.

“Not at all.”

Beauvoir closed the door to the private office and placed his laptop on the table. Gamache stood beside him, staring at the frozen image on the screen. It was of himself, in flak jacket. Weapon out. And raised. Eyes sharp. Preparing to shoot.

“It’s bad,” said Beauvoir.