Fifth Son Page 5

  Slowly, Robbie shook his head. “I thought it might be Tom, because he lives on the streets, and I imagine washing facilities would be somewhat limited.”

  “The streets here in Ottawa?” Sullivan asked.

  “Toronto. Last I heard he was living in a cardboard box under the Gardiner Expressway.”

  “How old would Tom be?”

  “Well, he’s twelve years older than me, so that makes him forty. In fact—” Robbie looked surprised, “his fortieth birthday was just last week.”

  “But you don’t think it’s Tom?”

  “It’s hard to tell from this, but Tom has a scruffier look, like he’s been battered a thousand times. He’s an alcoholic.”

  “The photo’s been touched up, so that might not show,” Sullivan said. “Did Tom ever sustain any broken bones, because those can be identified in the post mortem. As can scars or tattoos.”

  “I only saw him every few years, usually when he was in trouble. I confess I never looked very closely.”

  “What about your other brothers? I understand there are five of you?”

  “One’s dead. Died in a car crash fourteen years ago.” A spasm of pain crossed Robbie’s face. He withdrew a photo album from the bookcase beside the TV. “I haven’t seen the other two since I was eight, but I do have some pictures we can look at.” When he flipped open the album, the two detectives crowded around him, curious to get initial objective impressions of their own. Robbie leafed slowly through the pictures of smiling clusters of boys surrounding birthday cakes, perched atop tractors, posing with prize calves. Not exactly the cursed and tragic family that Sandy and the villagers had described yesterday, Green thought.

  “I haven’t looked at these in a long time,” Robbie said. “It always feels surreal to me, like someone else’s family.” He gestured to a photo of a smiling blonde woman showing off her dress. “I can’t believe my mother ever smiled like that. As a child, all I remember are long stares and silence. Hours and hours of silence. Anyway...there’s Tom.” He stopped at a photo of a teenage boy, handsome in the slick, big-haired style of the eighties. He had a saucy grin on his face and a possessive arm around a girl with stunning black hair cascading to her waist.

  “Good-looking guy,” Sullivan observed.

  “Yeah. Dad always said Tom had a mesmerizing way with women, which somehow passed me by.” He managed a smile that warmed his mournful eyes. “Although I don’t think he’s had much more luck keeping them in the long run than I have.”

  “What about Derek?” Green interjected, unable to restrain his curiosity. “Any pictures of him?”

  Robbie flipped through some pages. “His university graduation picture is the last—ah-hah!” He spread a page in triumph. A proud, self-conscious grad smiled out of the picture. The deep-set blue eyes were almost identical to Tom’s, although the hair was lighter brown and the jaw line softer. But the striking difference was in the personality. Tom shone through as cocksure and sensual, Derek as quiet and deep in thought.

  Sullivan held the photo side by side with the dead man’s, and they all studied it in silence. “How old would Derek be now?” Sullivan asked.

  Robbie narrowed his eyes to calculate before replying forty two.

  “When was the last time you heard from him?”

  Robbie shrugged. “I’ve never heard from him. I was only eight when he went away to graduate school in California, and we had no real relationship. My parents heard from him every now and then, but I don’t know when was the last time.”

  “Perhaps we might ask your father if he’s heard from him lately, and if Derek mentioned coming home?”

  The young man seemed to think a long time before answering, as if debating the wisdom of disclosing family matters. “My father can’t speak,” he said finally. “He’s had a serious stroke that left him without speech and paralyzed on one side. I think he understands a little, but he can only say one or two words with great effort.”

  Sullivan had stopped taking notes, no doubt regarding the father’s health as irrelevant, so Green jumped in before he could change the subject. “When did this happen?”

  “About three months ago. He’s still in hospital; the doctors at first thought he wouldn’t survive, and later they said he’d never be able to go home again. That’s why I sold the farm. I work here in the city, and I couldn’t manage the farm. Anyway, I always hated the place.”

  Green could see Sullivan starting to fidget. Sullivan was a no-nonsense, straight-ahead type of investigator who liked to stick to the point, gather the facts and move on. No dallying, unless he was playing a suspect on the line, and no wandering down side alleys. Green, however, felt there was a strange mystery in this family. The earlier photos painted a picture of a close, happy family who loved to celebrate together. But something had happened to change all that, and suddenly the eldest son moved to the opposite side of the continent, never to return, another son became a drunk, a third had died in a car crash, and a happy home had turned to silence. Now, twenty years later, had that prodigal son returned? What had drawn him back, and what—or who—had he encountered upon his return that he had ended up dead?

  “Any special reason why you hated the place?” Green asked gently.

  Robbie had been gazing at the picture of the farmhouse, taken years ago when the porch was straight, the trim white and the gardens lush with flowers. “Because my parents hated it. Because all they ever did was scream at each other, and my brothers left me all alone to cope with them.” He snapped the photo album shut and thrust it back in its slot. “I never cared to see my brothers, detectives, because they never cared for me. I hear from Tom about once a year, always when he needs me to bail him out of some mess. Bad debts, or a failed business scheme, or a bar brawl. I’m not a rich man. I’m a produce manager for Loblaws, I have two ex-wives and one little girl, and as you can see, I barely have a place to live. I’ve lent Tom money half a dozen times and never seen a penny back, plus he’s never once come up to help me with Mom or Dad.”

  His face was growing red as the pent-up anger spilled out. “But then last week, out of the blue he calls me and freaks out when I tell him I sold the house. He hasn’t been back to visit or help out, but suddenly he’s swearing at me and saying I had no right to sell it, and he had important stuff in the basement there, and...” He broke off as a thought occurred to him, and he waved at the dead man’s photo in disgust. “That’s probably Tom, coming up to get his important stuff and being so goddamn drunk he fell off the church.”

  “What was the important stuff?” Green asked.

  “Who the hell knows? I told him there wasn’t a goddamn thing worth having in that house when I sold it. Just a bunch of old boxes full of junk.”

  Green removed the crucifix from his pocket and held it out. “Do you recognize this?”

  Robbie checked himself, as if embarrassed that he had lost control, and he took the chain with a puzzled frown. “Did you find this on the body?”

  “No, but it was found in the vicinity. Derek is an unusual name, and the engraving looks old.”

  “I don’t recognize it, but I hardly remember Derek, let alone what he wore.”

  When Green asked if any of the rest of them had been given crucifixes by their parents, Robbie shook his head. “I believe my parents used to be very religious, but they weren’t much for jewellery, especially expensive stuff like that. We had no money to spare. I know Derek had to work two jobs and win a scholarship to go to university.”

  Sullivan had already closed his notebook and was edging toward the door, but Green took the photo album out again and began to examine the photos of Derek with his magnifying glass. No sign of a crucifix. Perhaps it was under his shirt, rather than being worn as a fashion statement, as they were today. He felt vaguely dissatisfied that he couldn’t connect this loose end, but he was still convinced that it connected somewhere. Patience, he told himself as he rose to join Sullivan at the door. When Hannah found out from Kyle where De
rek had lost his crucifix, that might shed some light on what had led him from his childhood farm house to his death in the church yard. It was only once they were back in the car heading across Billings Bridge towards downtown, that Green remembered.

  “Jesus, Brian. There was another son. We forgot the fifth son!”

  Five

  For the first time since her impetuous decision to purchase the Pettigrew farm, Isabelle Boisvert felt overwhelmed. A surly Jacques had gone into the village for supplies, and she was sitting on the front porch with her mid-morning coffee, taking advantage of the rare October warmth to contemplate the bounty of her land. But all she could see was work. The porch sagged beneath her feet, its wood planks rotting away, and across the expanse of barren weedy yard, the two wooden outbuildings were collapsing beneath the weight of time. And inside its spectacular red brick exterior, the house was just as bad. The plaster walls were crumbling, and all the beautiful oak woodwork had been painted over with cheap white paint that had cracked and flaked.

  In the distance, the maple trees by the river shone crimson and gold. She tried to remind herself that this was why she’d bought the property. She’d known it would be a labour of love, but owning a hundred acres of land and forest with over a thousand feet of wooded river frontage had seemed like a dream worth labouring for. Jacques had been reluctantly persuaded by its investment value, but she hoped to raise horses, perhaps one day have an equestrian school and make enough money that they could both quit their civil service jobs and dispense with the frustrating commute to the city altogether.

  For now, to pay for all the repairs, they needed their jobs more than ever. To save money, she and Jacques were trying to do much of the work themselves. Unlike Jacques, she had grown up in the country and hoped that working with her hands would somehow return her to her roots. But today she didn’t know where to start. Jacques wanted to attack the interior of the house, where they would be confined for most of the long, upcoming winter months.

  But the warm weather would soon be over, and with it all chance to tackle the outside. They hoped to have a professional builder restore the main barn in the spring, so she could use it for her horses. But the little tool shed looked beyond repair, and even worse was the eyesore of bushes and burnt planking that sat at the edge of the yard. Jacques was anxious to bulldoze it over and build a garage for the cars before winter struck, but that cost money that was sorely needed for other things. It looked as if no one had spent a penny on the place in years.

  She didn’t know how Mr. Pettigrew had earned his money once he no longer farmed the land, but the man had managed to consume an astonishing quantity of booze. They had found closets full of empty bottles everywhere and had spent a whole day simply carting bottles to the local dump.

  Once, long ago, someone with skill and devotion had ministered to the house, for beneath the flaking paint, the woodwork was intricately hand-carved and the hardwood cabinetry bore an expert craftsman’s touch. But then, quite abruptly, it seemed as if the family had stopped caring. The basement had been abandoned in a half-finished state with pine planking erected on half the walls, but only two-by-four framing on the rest. It was all dried and warped now, and someday she would have to rip it all out and start from scratch.

  But not today. Today she would tackle the charred, overgrown eyesore in the front yard that was ruining her view from the porch. That way she could have a huge autumn bonfire like the ones she remembered from her childhood.

  She stretched, tossed the dregs of her coffee on the ground and headed for the tool shed, where she’d seen a number of battered tools, perhaps among them the axe and crowbar she would need for the job. However, inside she found a small scythe, a hammer, and a handful of rusty saws, but no axe or sledgehammer big enough to do the job. She searched the barn and house to no avail. Making a note to buy a decent axe, she set to work with a shovel, hacking away at the woody stems and prying loose the roots. In less than an hour, she had a pile of branches and planking ready to burn.

  She was just getting down on her hands and knees to wrench out a stubborn root when a flash of turquoise caught her eye, and she saw Jacques’ Cavalier speeding down their lane in a plume of dust. She felt an odd mix of feelings. Frustration that he persisted in driving on the country roads as if he were on the Queensway, delight at the prospect of his company, and apprehension that she might be in for another hour’s worth of bitching about country life. He’d left that morning in a foul humour, threatening to move in with his brother Jean Marc in Orleans.

  When he leaped from the car, however, his eyes were wide, and he chattered in staccato French as he removed grocery bags from the car.

  “This house, Isabelle! Everyone in the village is talking about it! That man who died at the church was one of the Pettigrews. A hundred years ago they owned all the land from here to the village, and they used to be big leaders. In the church, in the town. That little church the man died in, that was a major one in town, but there was a split in the movement when a new priest came. They talk like it was yesterday, but it was twenty-five years ago. Some went to the Anglican Church and some—”

  She took some bags from him, set them on the counter and silenced him with a kiss. When Jacques began to talk religion, he lost her. “Is this important?”

  He was not to be deterred, and his tone acquired an urgency. “What’s important is that this family, the Pettigrews, they helped build that church, but they left it too, and everyone says that’s when things started to get really bizarre. One of the sons went so crazy they had to lock him up. The mother was afraid he was possessed, and this house—”

  Isabelle looked at him with alarm. Jacques had a deeply religious core and had not totally shaken off the strong Catholic indoctrination of his childhood among the priests. If he started believing that the house was haunted—or worse, possessed—she might never be able to persuade him to feel at home.

  She slipped into his arms and took his face in her hands. “Chéri, this is our home now. We’ll take it apart, every board and wall, and we’ll make it ours.”

  A frisson passed through him. “But they are everywhere! Their initials are still carved on the windowsills, their names are glued to the bedroom walls. And the worst thing—” He paused. “Isabelle, they said the wife hung herself in the very room where we are sleeping!”

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes after leaving Robbie’s apartment, Sullivan was inching the Impala through the Glebe in bumper to bumper traffic. To save time, Green radioed ahead to Gibbs, but before he could even relay his request, the young constable’s stutter burst over the wire.

  “I—I’m afraid I struck out on Derek Pettigrew’s dentist, sir. Seems the man who used to treat the family died about ten years ago, and the old files have been destroyed. So we have no dental ID.”

  Green sighed. That meant they would have to identify the body by process of elimination. He instructed Gibbs to find out as much background as he could about the Pettigrew family. Gibbs was Green’s favourite gofer, eager, tireless, relentless and intelligent to boot. By the time the two detectives reached the Major Crimes Squad room, he had not just the full names, but the dates and places of birth and death of four generations of Pettigrews.

  “I’m sorry I don’t have all the current addresses yet, sir, but I’m working on it. None of them are in the system.”

  Green had doubted they would be, for until amalgamation a few years ago, Ashford Landing had been under the jurisdiction of the Ontario Provincial Police. He advised him to check with the OPP.

  “I already did, sir.” Gibbs smiled and met his eyes. The kid’s finally getting some confidence, Green thought with relief. Gibbs had a wonderful investigative nose, but he was scared of his own shadow, which was a major drawback in Criminal Investigations. “They’ve nothing on them either, sir. Except for one son, Benjamin, victim of a one-car fatal in 1990.”

  “Any particulars?”

  “It was labelled driver error, but the ac
cident occurred at one-thirty in the morning, so alcohol might have been a factor. Although County Road 2 is pretty dark and deserted at that time of night.”

  County Road 2 is also pretty straight, Green thought, remembering their recent drives along the road leading to Ashford Landing. He looked at Benjamin’s date of birth and did a quick calculation. Benjamin had died on his twenty-first birthday, possibly on his way home from one too many celebrations. Green felt a twinge of sorrow for the beleaguered family. Had this been the tragedy that had turned their lives upside down?

  He returned his attention to Gibbs’s notes. Benjamin had been the second youngest son, but still seven years older than Robbie. The mother had died twelve years ago, two years after Benjamin. Gibbs had not yet been able to track down any additional details beyond the name and birth date of the remaining three sons. Derek, Tom and Lawrence. Green pointed to their names.

  “Concentrate on Derek, but just to be thorough, see if you can locate the present whereabouts of all three—or at least their most recent known address. Lawrence would be the fifth son we forgot to ask about. Check if Robbie Pettigrew or any of the villagers know where he went. Let Brian know if you find anything useful.”

  After Gibbs had scurried off, Sullivan eyed Green with disapproval. “You just gave him the work of two officers. You know, just because he’ll do it, it doesn’t mean you should ask him to.”