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“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.