Fifth Son (6 page)

At eight o'clock the next morning, Green parked his car in the underground parking lot of the police station and made a mad dash for the elevator, clutching a bagel in one hand and a cup of Starbucks highest octane coffee in the other. When he disembarked on the second floor, he was relieved to see Brian Sullivan still at his desk, scrolling through his emails. Sullivan was an impossibly early riser and liked to get his investigations rolling before most of the world was even awake. Green signalled towards his office as he strode by.

The Major Crimes Squad room bustled with activity as the new shift checked in and reviewed the fruits of a night on the streets. In his office, Green was greeted by a pile of phone messages and post-it notes as well as a full voice mail box. The implications were clear; a middle management inspector abandoned his desk for an entire day at his own peril.

He was flipping through his phone messages for dire emergencies when Sullivan loomed in his doorway. He was already shrugging his jacket over his massive linebacker frame, and he grinned at the sight of Green's overflowing desk.

Green silenced him with a scowl. “How did the
ID
go on the Ashford Landing John Doe?”

Sullivan shook his head. “Robert Pettigrew wasn't home last night. But the autopsy's set for ten, so I'm sending over the new detective. Might as well get her feet wet. I've got Bob Gibbs trying to track down the dentist who used to work that neck of the woods. I'm just on my way out to see Robert Pettigrew again. Ident's cleaned up the photo, so he should be able to identify it.”

Green took the crucifix out of his desk. “I'd like to see if he can identify this, too. Apparently one of the older brothers was named Derek.”

Sullivan reached to take it, but Green pulled it away. “I'd like to do it.” Seeing Sullivan's raised eyebrow, he explained about Hannah's involvement and the fragility of their key witness to the discovery.

Sullivan surveyed Green's desk. “Suit yourself, Mike. But I'd say you're good for at least two hours here, and this can't wait.”

“Half hour tops. Then I'll be set to go.”

True to his word, half an hour later Green logged off his computer, rounded up Sullivan, and together they set off. Robert Pettigrew lived on the tenth floor of a shabby apartment block in Alta Vista which would have been tolerable had it been on the north side overlooking the grassy shoreline of the Rideau River. Unfortunately, his minuscule apartment faced west over four lanes of Bank Street and the Billings Bridge Mall parking lot. Stale grease permeated the hallways.

The moment Robert Pettigrew opened his door, Green was struck by his resemblance to the dead man. In front of them stood a younger, handsomer, clean-shaven version, but the blue eyes and the sharp cheekbones were the same. There could no longer be any doubt that the man on the slab in the morgue was a Pettigrew.

Robbie introduced himself with a moist handshake and a nervous laugh. When Sullivan explained the purpose of the visit and produced the photo, he blanched and sank onto the sofa.

Sullivan took the lead. “Do you recognize the man?”

“No. Yes. Well, it looks like my father when he was younger.”

“Is it one of your older brothers?”

Colour began to return to Robbie's face. “I haven't seen my brothers in many years. Ohmigod, let me think.” He stood abruptly and carried the photo over to the light. While they waited, Green absorbed impressions about the room. It was neat and uncluttered, but the furniture was heavy, dark and worn, the carpet on the floor stained and threadbare. There were no pictures of family, or smiling children, or even his father. On the wall was a single framed print of Van Gogh's
Sunflower
—a splash of cheer in an otherwise bare and melancholy room. The room had a makeshift feel, as if Robbie had never wanted to live there.

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 Derek 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!”

F
or
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.