Fifth Son Page 3

  Sullivan was just coming back from the car. Across the road behind him, a solitary tractor was chugging slowly along an open field, and the smell of manure wafted over the road. Green wrinkled up his nose. “Let’s hope this Pettigrew family grows corn, not cows.”

  Sullivan laughed. “That’s fertilizer, Green. Great stuff! The Pettigrew farm will be knee-deep in it, no matter what they grow.”

  * * *

  Fortunately, when Green and Sullivan turned down the long lane leading up to the Pettigrew farm house, there were no tractors to be seen. The country air was sharp and clean, despite a faint overlay of turpentine, a smell Green was all too familiar with these days. A minivan and a dusty turquoise Sunbird sat in the gravel drive and as Sullivan drew to a stop behind them, a tiny poodle burst through the front door, yapping.

  A young woman strode out, waving her arms. “Chouchou, stop! Assez!”

  The dog raced around the car like a frenzied cotton ball, growling and snapping every time Sullivan tried to open the door. Green knew better, having become somewhat more versed in the canine psyche since acquiring his oversized Humane Society reject. He showed the woman his badge through the window and sat in the car waiting for her to capture her dog. By the time she pounced on it and shoved it under her arm, she was panting as hard as it was. As she approached the car again, the odour of turpentine grew stronger and Green saw flecks of white paint on her hands. She leaned against the car, her chest heaving and her cheeks flushed. Even in tattered jeans and T-shirt with a paint smudge on her nose, she was a sexy, vibrant woman.

  “Sorry, officers. We just moved in, and Chouchou is...” She ended the explanation with a Gallic shrug. Her accent was slightly French Canadian, more in its cadence than its words. “He’ll be all right once he gets to know you. What is this about?”

  The two detectives exchanged quick glances before Sullivan took the lead. “We’re looking for Mr. or Mrs. Pettigrew.”

  She looked puzzled. “They were the previous owners, but they don’t live here any more.”

  “Can you tell us where we might reach them?”

  “We only met them one time. We communicated through a real estate agent.”

  “Qu’est-ce qui se passe?” A reedy young man appeared around the edge of the house carrying a leaf rake. He was smiling, but behind thick glasses his gaze was wary. “What’s going on?”

  “It’s the police looking for the former owners.”

  The detectives climbed out of the car and introduced themselves. Sullivan handed them his card, then indicated his notebook. “For our paperwork, could you give us your names?”

  Jacques and Isabelle Boisvert, the woman said, but they could be of little help since they had only met one of the sons.

  Sullivan pulled out the photo. “Is this the son?”

  Jacques took the photo and recoiled in dismay. “This man is dead!”

  “That’s why we’re anxious to reach the family. Have you the name and phone number of the real estate agent you dealt with?”

  Isabelle fetched a business card, which Sullivan took back to the car to make the call. The husband was eyeing the photo with almost morbid fascination.

  “Could that be the son?” Green prompted.

  He shivered and shook his head. “This man is more aged. The man we met was Robert Pettigrew, and he was only in his twenties. No beard, very pleasant-looking.”

  “Perhaps this is the father. You never met him?”

  “He was in hospital. He had a stroke, the agent said. That’s why the son had to sell the farm so fast.” He cast an anxious glance at the vast unkempt meadow that surrounded them. In the distance, a copse of maples flamed red and gold against the blue sky. “The whole place is falling to pieces. Like nobody takes care of it since twenty years.”

  Green appraised the house with his new expertise in disintegrating buildings. On closer inspection, he could see the tell-tale signs. The house was a stately, red brick Victorian with a steeply pitched roof. Its intricate wood trim had once been white but was now a weathered gray, and its windows were caked with grime. Roof shingles were lifting, and the front porch listed dangerously to one side.

  Isabelle had taken the photo and was studying it thoughtfully. As if hearing the bitterness in her husband’s voice, she gave his arm a quick squeeze. “We will make it beautiful, I promise you. Why don’t you take Chouchou in the back to work with you, and I will walk these gentlemen to their car.”

  With one last weary glance at his wife, Jacques slumped back around the house with the dog under one arm and the rake in the other. An oddly lifeless man to have snagged such a tantalizing woman, Green thought. Quietly, she gestured to the photo as she walked.

  “I have seen this man. I didn’t want to say in front of Jacques, because he is negative enough about this place. He’s from Vanier, and he finds it very isolating here.”

  I’ll just bet, Green thought. It would be a massive culture shock to move to this pastoral desolation from the close-knit clamour of the francophone inner city. “Where did you see this man?”

  Isabelle nodded towards the right of the grounds and began to walk. About a hundred feet in front of the house was a rundown, square-timbered barn, and beside it, a wooden shed of similar vintage. But in the far corner of the yard opposite was an overgrown thicket of brush. It was here that Isabelle stopped.

  “Yesterday, after Jacques left for church, Chouchou began to bark at something. It was fog outside, and frost on the ground, but I’m positive it was this man. He was in the brush here, ducking down, trying to hide. I thought he was a bum, and I yelled at him. He took off.”

  “In what direction?”

  Isabelle gestured towards the maple woods behind the farm house. “He went into those trees, and it’s the last I saw of him.”

  “What’s beyond the trees?”

  “The river. But there is a path along the shore through the trees, and I guess he escaped that way.”

  Green peered through the dying foliage of the thicket where the man had hidden. Raspberry canes and scrub had been allowed to grow undisturbed for years, but there were signs that someone had been there recently. A path had been trampled into the centre, and the weeds had been flattened as if someone had lain there. Gingerly, Green got down on his hands and knees and crawled into the thicket, praying that he wouldn’t encounter any crawly things. In the middle of the thicket, charred wooden planking had been strewn about, and the grass had been dug up in little patches all over.

  It looked for all the world as if someone had been searching for something.

  * * *

  Green gazed out the car window at the passing fields, deep in thought. In the distance, the ribbon of maple trees was slowly fading into the horizon.

  “We should send an eager young constable out there to see where that path through the trees leads to,” he said.

  Sullivan took his eyes off the road long enough to follow Green’s gaze. His eyes revealed nothing behind his mirrored sunglasses, but his lips twitched in a smile. “It leads to Ashford Landing.”

  “How do you know?”

  “That’s the way the country works. Farmers usually leave a border of trees along the river, and in the old days they’d bring their produce to the village either by boat or along the river’s edge in the shade. The Boisvert farm is about two kilometres from town. Perfect distance for foot paths.”

  Green looked at the straight, flat road ahead of them. Why would the man go along the shore, he wondered, and have to contend with mud, cow crap, underbrush and swamp when he could walk straight along the road? Green could think of at least one good reason—to avoid being seen.

  “So in all likelihood,” he said, “when our guy ran away from the farm yesterday morning, he got to the river and headed to Ashford Landing. Two kilometres, you said? That should have taken him no more than half an hour, which means he should have reached town before noon. MacPhail places the death after four p.m.”

  “But remember he co
uld have fallen earlier and bled for hours.”

  “Okay, but he still might have been lurking around town for a couple of hours, which means he could have been seen.”

  They had reached the outskirts of the village and Sullivan eased his foot off the accelerator, allowing them to coast over the crest and down into the tiny commercial centre. They passed the general store and the gas station before spotting a big yellow real estate agency sign on the lawn of a Victorian manor house painted a striking Wedgwood blue.

  Sullivan had reached Sandy Fitzpatrick on his cell phone from the car, interrupting him in the middle of a showing. The agent had agreed to meet the detectives back at his office, but there was no answer when they rang the doorbell. An old silver Grand Am was tucked at the rear of the house, but the main drive was empty. Through the bay window, Green could see a large office with maps papering the walls and print-outs littering every surface. Looking up at the rambling size of the old home, he guessed that Sandy Fitzpatrick probably lived above his offices.

  Sullivan was just returning to the car to check on the street canvassing when a late-model red pick-up revved around the corner and screeched into the drive. Out leaped a tall, muscular man whom Green estimated to be in his mid thirties. The man rushed at the detectives, his hand extended heartily.

  “Sorry, officers. The house business—never a dull moment!” He lifted a huge ring of keys from his belt, selected one and unlocked the door with one expert twist. Inside his cluttered office, Green and Sullivan took the client chairs while Fitzpatrick went behind his desk. He flipped on his computer and punched the answering machine button before he’d even sat down. Then, as the first of sixteen messages began to drone, he looked at Sullivan sheepishly.

  “Sorry, force of habit. No secretary, no partners, just me always rushing to stay on top of the business.” He paused the machine but couldn’t keep his eyes from straying to his email box briefly before he swung around.

  “Okay!” He clasped both hands together on the desk before him like a man salivating to make a deal. “Is it about the body? It’s the talk of the town.”

  Green couldn’t resist. “And what’s the town saying?”

  “Some homeless guy?”

  “No rumours as to his identity?” Green asked.

  “None I heard. But what’s it got to do with the Pettigrew place?”

  Green didn’t reply, reminding himself that it was Sullivan’s case and he ought to let him decide how to play it. Sullivan chose to play it casual.

  “Who’s handling the sale of the church? Your firm?”

  Fitzpatrick’s face fell. “Oh no! That’s a firm from Ottawa. I used to list that place, but...no one’s been able to sell it.”

  “But you can access the key if you have a client. You have the combination to the lock box, right?”

  “Well, I can get it. We can all get it. But I hardly ever show it. People want waterfront properties, not a musty old rock pile in the middle of town.”

  Green glanced around the office. Despite the country clutter, it sported the latest in electronic gadgets. There were no pictures of wife and children, but Fitzpatrick clearly loved his expensive outdoor toys. Snowmobiles and four-by-fours were everywhere, and one photo showed him posing with a friend in front of a sleek, white motorboat, holding up a fish that must have been three feet long. Slimy-looking thing, Green thought with distaste, but the two men were grinning from ear to ear.

  “I guess the waterfront business has been good to you, Mr. Fitzpatrick,” Green remarked.

  “Please, call me Sandy. Good investment, in today’s times. People are snapping it up all over Ontario. If you detectives are interested—”

  Sullivan stepped in to head off the sales pitch. “What can you tell us about the Pettigrews?”

  Sandy looked startled at the sudden change, then his face took on a regretful air. “What can I say? Sad, sad situation. The great-great-grandfather hacked the farm out of the wilderness himself back in the early eighteen hundreds, and his grandson built that brick house in the 1890s. Raised dairy cattle, owned the creamery here in town, had the best stud bulls in the county. Now they’re all gone, and the farm’s been bought by a civil servant from Ottawa, who’s not going to raise a single head.”

  “What can you tell us about the more recent Pettigrews?” Sullivan asked. “Did you know them?”

  “Oh yeah, everybody knew them. I went to school with the Pettigrew boys, and the adjacent farm is still in my family, thank God. What do you want to know for?” His jaw dropped. “Oh my God, was the dead man a Pettigrew?”

  “Who’s been living there recently?”

  “Just—just the old man. And Robbie off and on. He’s the youngest. There were five boys, so it gets confusing. But all the others...well...”

  “Do you know where the others are?”

  Sandy stared across the table at them in silence, his hearty façade quite gone. “If you think one of them is the body in the churchyard, I want to know, because they used to be friends of mine.”

  Sullivan laid the photo on the desk without a word. Sandy stared at it fixedly, his colour slowly draining from his face.

  “Holy crap,” he muttered. “What a mess.”

  “Can you recognize him?”

  Sandy wagged his head back and forth helplessly. “It might be one of the boys. It’s hard to tell from this, and I haven’t seen them in a long time.”

  “Have you got their current addresses? Or any idea where they are?”

  Sandy’s eyes strayed to the photo again, and he stared at it in bewilderment. “When I was growing up, they were a happy family. Religious and strict, but happy. I used to love to play over there. But they’ve had more tragedies than any family was ever meant to bear—one by one they left home, until in the end all that remained was Robbie and his father.”

  “Could this be Robbie?”

  Sandy shook his head firmly. “Robbie’s much younger than the others. In his late twenties, I’d say. But I haven’t seen any of the others since they were in their teens or early twenties, so it’s impossible to know. I mean, that’s twenty years ago.” Sandy eyed the photo again with a shiver of distaste. “Poor Robbie. Now he’ll have one more thing to contend with. Some guys never get an even break.”

  When Green and Sullivan emerged from Sandy’s office, it was past five o’clock and the autumn sun was sinking fast. Green realized a quick check with both home and office was in order, to ensure that no major crises had occurred in either place while they’d been vacationing in the country. Sullivan, meanwhile, wanted to check on the progress his team had made in the village.

  The massive white truck that served as a mobile command post had arrived and sat on the grassy verge opposite the church. On the outside, it looked like an oversized chip wagon, but inside it was stocked with the latest in surveillance and communications devices. The two detectives logged in with the scribe before settling down at the work stations. The harvest from phone calls and email checks was meagre, however. On Green’s end, he was happy that Bob had not knocked the house down and that no murders or grievous crimes had cropped up in his absence. Sullivan was less delighted to learn that virtually nothing useful had turned up, either in the canvass of the town nor in the intensive search of the church grounds. Although the name Pettigrew had surfaced a few times, no one could be certain who the dead man was.

  But no one would be surprised if it was a Pettigrew at the bottom of the tower. It was a cursed family, they said.

  Sullivan logged off, stifled a yawn and headed to the door. “Time to get back to the city, Mike. We’ve got the current address on this Robbie, so I’ll take the photo to him after I drop you off. Hopefully, he’ll be able to ID his own brother and we can wrap this up, pending MacPhail’s autopsy report and the tox results. We’ve found no one who saw an altercation or another individual near the church, and the victim had no defensive wounds on his body, so it’s looking like a self-inflicted. There’s no evidence to suggest foul
play was involved.”

  “Except the broken wall and the torn piece of jacket,” Green countered. “That could suggest a struggle.”

  Sullivan shrugged. “Not much of one, according to Ident. More consistent with him trying to climb over the wall.”

  Maybe, Green thought, but there were a few more questions that needed answering before he would be willing to sign off on it. Such as why had the man returned, what was he searching for at his parents’ farm, why had he chosen that particular church?

  And perhaps most importantly, how did he get in? Ident reported no evidence of forced entry, the huge padlock hadn’t been touched in years, and the back door had been locked when the police arrived. It was the self-locking kind that the victim might have pulled shut after his entry, but unless he had the skill to crack a combination lock, how had he unlocked the door in the first place?

  All in all, it had been an intriguing day, Green thought as they drove back into the city. Manure aside, the air had been crisp and fresh, the fall colours spectacular. The pace out here was slower and the sense of history more vivid than the life he was accustomed to, yet it was important for the Major Crimes Squad to be sensitive to the difference. He felt less hurried and discouraged than he usually felt at the end of a typical office day, and he was quite looking forward to an evening with his family. Even the prospect of the dismantled kitchen did not bother him. Maybe they’d all go out to dinner and spend a bit of real time together.

  But when he opened his front door, he found himself just in time to overhear the full blast of adolescent wrath.

  “Forget it! You had no fucking business going through my things, and I’m not giving it back! Even if you ground me for a hundred years!”

  Four

  Sharon Green had staggered through the front door an hour earlier, her head pounding and her feet on fire. Hospital budget cuts were going to do her in. Psychiatric nursing had always been emotionally draining, but as the patients got sicker and their inpatient stays briefer, it was the physical exhaustion she noticed most. She had spent much of her shift trying to wrestle a three hundred pound depressive out of bed into a bath, and she felt rancid from head to toe.