Page 23 of A Better Man

Was he still doing it, only now in a Sûreté uniform?

Once in the car, following Agent Cameron’s vehicle, Gamache asked Agent Cloutier, “What do you think of him?”

“Cameron? I don’t know.”

“Think about it.”

She thought. “He called her Madame Godin, but when he got angry, he called her Vivienne.”

“Oui. When you spoke with him this morning, did you mention she was pregnant?”

Cloutier went back over the conversation. “No.”

“I see.”

And yet, thought Gamache, Agent Cameron knew that Vivienne was going to have a baby.

Now, how was that?

As they got closer to the farmhouse, the wipers pushing the wet flakes off the windshield, Agent Cloutier did what she always did in times of extreme stress.

Two times four is eight.

Three times five is fifteen.

Her times tables. Laid out neatly, in rows and columns.

Five times four is …

Her meditation. Her happy place. No chaos could survive in the tightly packed numbers. Everything in its place. In its home. Safe. Predictable. Known. Every question had an answer.

Twenty.

Terrible things did not happen to the pregnant daughter of an old friend, in the times table.

Six times six is …

Only, Cloutier knew, something had happened. And it was up to them to find the answer.

… thirty-six.

Thirty-six hours Vivienne was now missing.

CHAPTER SIX

“What do you think?” Gabri asked Clara as they stood on the stone bridge and looked into the Rivière Bella Bella below.

He had to speak up, over the roar.

The water rushing beneath them, so clear and gentle in summer, was seething. Frothing with brown foam and great chunks of ice and tree limbs swept into it in the spring runoff.

All very natural. All very predictable.

But there was a problem.

There was too much of it. Too much water. Too much ice. Far too much forest swirling in the waters.

Gabri and Clara turned around and looked downriver.