Green smiled. “That’s why you’re going to give him a new partner. The new woman you just got from General Assignment? Sue Peters? I think she’d be a great fit for Gibbsie.”
Sullivan laughed without humour. “Where did you get that bright idea? She’ll scare him half to death.”
The idea had only just occurred to Green when he saw the new confidence in Gibbs. It was about time he took on a more senior role and began training others in that wonderful investigative nose. And who better than the cocky young detective who was clawing her way resolutely through the ranks. Learning to dot every i and cross every t under the meticulous tutelage of Bob Gibbs ought to slow her down a touch. As well as maybe make a decent investigator out of her.
But he said none of that to Sullivan, who was clearly irked by Green’s cavalier invasion into his territory yet again. “It’ll do them both good,” he replied instead, tossing a wink over his shoulder as he headed for the third floor. “I’d like a quick update after my meeting before I go home. And I’m leaving at three.”
“Three!” Sullivan’s tone registered his disbelief, for Green almost never left before six.
“I have to see a kid about a crucifix.”
* * *
Hannah flounced into the passenger seat and immediately changed the radio station from Green’s classic rock to extreme rock, casting him a look that dared him to object. Ignoring the bait, Green pulled out of the school drive and accelerated up Carling Avenue towards the Queensway. It was half past three, and the autumn sun was slanting through the window onto her face. She jerked the visor down and hid behind dark glasses.
“How was school?” he ventured neutrally.
“Kyle wasn’t there today.”
“Oh? Sick?”
She shrugged. “Seemed fine yesterday. Till you started asking him all those questions.”
“Well, we’ll try to make this like a game today. Make sure you explain to him that he hasn’t done anything wrong.”
“He understands English, Mike. He’s not an idiot. I mean—” She broke off, flushing.
“I know he isn’t, but I’m a police officer, and he may think that means he’s done something wrong. Tell him we just want him to help us figure out who the chain belongs to.”
To her credit, Hannah tried her best when they arrived at the McMartin farm. Kyle was in the barn, looking perfectly healthy as he mucked out stalls. The reek of manure clung to his clothes, and he seemed oblivious to the flies that swarmed around him. Green was struck by how big and muscular he was in his overalls and rubber boots. A boy’s mind in a body that was fast becoming a man’s. Green’s impression was reinforced by Kyle’s reaction to Hannah, which was pure adolescent male. Red-faced, tongue-tied and tripping over his limbs.
But as soon as she mentioned the crucifix, he started to wag his head back and forth.
“I don’t remember. I get mixed up.”
Green watched him carefully. “What were you doing when you found it?”
“Walking.”
“Morning or afternoon?”
Kyle began to shake his head when Hannah stepped in again. “Was lunch finished?”
A nod.
“Was dinner finished?”
“No. Not started.”
“Good.” She smiled and squeezed his hand. “Were you walking home from the village?”
“No.”
“Were you walking to the village?”
Kyle squirmed and looked away, shaking his head. Green picked up the cross-examination technique. He pointed towards the woods in the direction of the river. “Were you walking over there, Kyle?”
“Kyle’s not allowed to go in the woods, Mr. Green,” came a sharp voice from behind them, as Edna McMartin strode into view from the interior of the barn. Her grey hair stood on end and wisps of straw stuck to her clothes.
Kyle shook his head vigorously. “I didn’t. I didn’t go there.”
Her eyes were hostile, and Green felt all chance for cooperation slipping through his fingers. He thought he knew why; they had not informed her of their arrival nor asked permission to speak to her son. Kyle had come out to greet them and, hoping to keep the interview as casual as possible, they had simply slid right in.
He apologized to her as humbly as he could and explained the importance of pinpointing the discovery of the chain. “We believe the dead man was probably Derek Pettigrew and that this chain was lost by him shortly before his death. We’re trying to trace his movements leading up to his death.”
Edna McMartin fixed Kyle with a firm, unwavering gaze that Green suspected would see through anyone’s subterfuge. “Did you go to the woods near the river, Ky?”
He swallowed and shook his head. “No, Mom. Never.”
“Then where did you find the chain?”
“I was walking to the village. Through the field.” Kyle pointed across a stubbled field towards the distant church spires of the village. Green studied him thoughtfully. The boy was lying; he had earlier denied this. But why?
“Why is Kyle not allowed to go in the woods?” he asked the mother casually.
“Because of the river, of course,” she answered in a tone that implied a silent “you idiot.”
“Of course. Have you lived on this farm long?”
“Long?” She snorted. “Is all my life long enough?”
Green felt as if he had hit a gold mine, if he could only figure out how to mine it. “Then you would have known the Pettigrew boys before they all left.”
Her gaze grew wary. “Some. We stay pretty busy on the farm.”
He turned abruptly towards Hannah. “Sorry, honey. I need to have a few words with Kyle’s mother inside. Do you think you and Kyle can amuse each other out here for a while?”
Poor choice of words, Green thought with a grimace as he ushered the reluctant mother into her house. She seemed as uneasy about leaving them alone as he was, no doubt for opposite reasons.
“I don’t know what I can tell you,” she said as she perched on the edge of her sofa, looking ready to bolt at any moment. Unlike last evening, she made no effort to remove the quilt or offer him a drink. “I haven’t seen any of the older children in years. And I never had much to do with him—” She jerked her head in the direction of the Pettigrew farm. “—since he started pickling himself in booze and bawling at the moon at three in the morning. Could hear it clear across to the village some nights.”
“Were you friends when the wife was alive?”
“Well, close enough when the boys were at school together. We were in the same church, and my Sandy was friends with their Lawrence—”
A distant bell of recognition rang in Green’s head. “Sandy Fitzpatrick? The real estate agent? He’s your son?”
Her lips formed a tight, wary line. “How do you know Sandy?”
Green gave her the short explanation—that Sandy had provided Robbie Pettigrew’s address. That seemed to satisfy her, for she nodded and actually volunteered some information. “Sandy’s father is dead, fell under the baler. Jeb McMartin is my second husband.”
Green absorbed the coincidences of village life. That made Sandy and Kyle brothers, despite the probable twenty-five year age gap. Both were burly and full of health, although beyond that he could see no resemblance.
Edna flushed, as if having two husbands somehow made her a harlot. “His boy needed a mother, and I needed a man about the farm. This life is hard, Inspector. You take from it what you have to.”
Green nodded sympathetically. “I understand life was hard for your neighbours as well. What can you tell me about Lawrence? Do you know where he is?”
“St. Lawrence Psychiatric Hospital in Brockville, last I heard.”
“What happened to him?”
“Went crazy. His folks locked him up.”
“How long ago was that?”
She pursed her lips as if dredging her memory. “In Grade Eleven. I remember because he and Sandy were in the same grade, and Lawrence just stopped
coming to school. Wandered around the place talking to himself, or suddenly you’d turn around and there he’d be standing, staring at you. Gave everybody the willies.” As the bearer of grim news, she seemed to lose her frostiness. “They tried to get him help up in Ottawa, and then one day they packed him into the family’s old pick-up and drove straight to Brockville. I don’t think the mother ever recovered, and then when her Benji was killed, well, that did her in.”
Green had a sinking feeling. A cursed family, the villagers had called them. “What do you mean?”
“Killed herself. Took years building to it, mind. Sinking deeper and deeper, with him not helping a bit, and poor little Robbie just raising himself. About ten, twelve years ago, I guess she figured he was raised enough, and so she called it quits.”
* * *
Green struggled to steer with one hand as he punched numbers into his cell phone with the other. Extreme rock pulsated through the car, and Hannah was bobbing her head with a secretive twinkle in her eyes.
“Do you want me to drive?” she shouted.
“In your dreams, honey.” She pulled what he recognized as a classic Hannah pout. Pro forma, with no outrage behind it.
“Back home I had my learner’s permit.”
“And we’ll have this discussion when you’re back in regular school.”
“I like Alternate Ed. The kids are way cooler, and I get to do this part-time work in the real world.”
He flicked off the radio and turned his attention to Gibbs, who had finally answered his phone. It was nearly five o’clock, but Green had known the man would still be hard at work. Green filled him in on Edna’s revelation about Lawrence Pettigrew.
“I’m ahead of you, sir,” Gibbs said. “One of the villagers told me, and I’ve already contacted the hospital personnel.”
Which is why I love you, Green thought with admiration. “What’s the news?”
“He was in St. Lawrence Psychiatric Hospital from 1984 till 2000, but he’s been in a supervised group home since then until just a couple of months ago.”
“What happened a couple of months ago?”
“He graduated to monitored independence, sir. Whatever that means. I’m trying to reach those people now.”
“Good. Let me know as soon as you find him. We’re looking for an absolute positive sighting in the past forty-eight hours to rule him out.”
Green rang off and found Hannah eyeing him with the faintest smile on her pixie face. She was so tiny and innocent looking, it was hard to believe she packed such a punch.
“If I hadn’t been in Alternate Ed, I wouldn’t have met Kyle. And if I hadn’t met Kyle, you’d never have found out the truth about that gold crucifix.”
“Okay, I’ll bite. What did he tell you?”
“Without his mother breathing down his neck, he told me the truth about where he found it.”
It was Green’s turn to smile. “I thought he might.”
Her eyes narrowed suspiciously, and Green’s smile broadened. “He found it in the woods on the way to the village, didn’t he?”
She nodded. “There’s a path running along the river, which starts at the next farm and runs past the McMartin farm into the village. He found it somewhere near the village.”
“On the ground?”
“Yes, just lying in the leaves.”
Green considered the implications. If Derek had lost that chain twenty years ago, it would probably have been found by other travellers or buried under layers of leaves and debris during the intervening years. To be found so easily by a boy strolling along the path, it had to have been dropped there recently. Perhaps on the very day the mystery man was spotted at the farm by Isabelle Boisvert.
Green winked at her. “I’ll make you a sleuth yet. Do you mind a little side trip?”
“Where?”
“To talk to Kyle’s older half-brother. He was a friend of the Pettigrew brothers years ago.”
“But Dad!”
It was the first time she’d called him Dad, and his jaw dropped before he could stop himself. Quickly, she scowled. “I’ve got homework to do and friends to call.”
“Fifteen minutes, tops. Promise.” And without giving her time to protest, he pulled into Sandy’s drive.
The realtor was even more frazzled than he had been a day earlier. Before Green could explain his visit, Sandy launched into a grilling of his own.
“It is true? They’re saying it was Derek in the church yard!”
“Who’s saying?”
“Everyone. I heard it from Harvey at the grocery store, who heard it from my stepfather.”
“You saw the picture. Did it look like Derek?”
“I haven’t see him in twenty years, and I was only seventeen when he left.” Sandy scrubbed his hands over his face distractedly. “I always assumed Derek was off having a successful life somewhere. But all the boys looked alike. Miniature clones of their father. It was their personalities that differed a great deal.”
Green settled into one of the client chairs and pulled out his notebook casually. He’d left Hannah in the car, blasting out the latest Disturbed album. “I understand you were Lawrence’s friend. What can you tell me about him? What was life like back then?”
Sandy drew two deep breaths as if forcing himself to settle. He twirled his pen restlessly while he gathered his thoughts. “Lawrence... Such a sad case. We used to play together all the time, build forts in the woods and pretend they were starships. He was a gentle, sensitive, imaginative boy who was cruelly teased, not only by the other boors around here but by his own brother Tom. Tom was all brawn, no brains, and proud of it. He ran with a pack of troublemakers in town who used to beat Lawrence and me up regularly.”
“Did Lawrence become schizophrenic?” It was a diagnosis that seemed to fit the symptoms Green had heard.
Sandy’s face hardened in anger. “It was his father drove him over the edge. The old man shoved religion down all the kids’ throats, but some of them took it more to heart than others. Lawrence started obsessing about sin and worrying that people were damned to hellfire and brimstone if they didn’t purify themselves. Can you imagine—a house full of healthy teenage boys and Lawrence was obsessing about sin? He used to hide their condoms and spy on them. I tried to help, but as he got sicker, he started to retreat more and more. Stopped coming to school, shut himself up in the shed for hours on end, performing his rituals. It was spooky. Finally, it got so bad the family just snapped and committed him.”
“Was this before or after Derek went away?”
“Right after. I think that’s why they went ahead with the hospital. Derek had always protected Lawrence and stood up for him, especially against Tom. Look, these were country people, they didn’t understand what was happening to Lawrence. None of us did. It’s only afterwards I did some reading about schizophrenia, but back then we were just scared and angry at him.”
“Except Derek?”
“Well, Derek was—” Sandy paused as if searching for words. “I was only a kid, but I remember how smart he seemed. He was in university, and he knew so much about the world. When he left, I think Lawrence probably flipped out, and the family grabbed the chance to ship him out of their hair.”
“Have you seen or heard anything about him since?”
Sandy shook his head. Green sensed a little regret, even shame, in his tone. “Not a word. Sometimes folks would ask the Pettigrews how he was doing, but they never said much, just that it wouldn’t be good for him to have visitors. Not that anyone wanted to visit the poor guy.”
“What about Derek? Ever see him?”
Sandy’s expression grew shuttered. “No, but he always said he wouldn’t come back.”
“You mean he discussed it with you?”
“Oh no, that’s just what I heard. He hated the farm. Country wasn’t his thing. Beneath him.”
“Did he have any friends here that he might have kept in touch with?”
“University friends, maybe?
But no one here in the village. Although of course, I hardly knew him.”
Outside, Hannah leaned on the Subaru horn, making Sandy jump. Green moved to get up and fancied he saw relief cross the other man’s face. Green thanked him for his help and then paused for one last question.
“Can you think of any reason or circumstance that would have drawn any of the brothers back home right at this moment, after an absence of twenty years?”
Sandy had risen to usher Green out, and now he hovered restlessly in the doorway. “Their father’s illness, perhaps? Or selling the family farm?”
It was possible, Green thought as he made his way out to confront Hannah. But as far as anyone was willing to admit, only one of them besides Robbie knew their father was ill and the farm sold.
Tom
* * *
Isabelle could not return to her work in the yard until late in the afternoon, after a lunch break and a stint helping Jacques strip the blue flowered wallpaper from their bedroom. He had attacked the task with a frenzy, as if determined to banish the mother’s ghost before he spent another night in the house. He’d been right; all the bedrooms held the memories of decades of family life. In one bedroom, they discovered lists of girls’ names carved on the window sill, and on another sill “DP loves...” with the initials vigorously scratched out.
“A teenage love affair that ended badly,” Isabelle joked as they sanded down the marks.
Jacques pointed to the lengthy list of girls on the other window. “This guy evidently didn’t take his grandes amours so seriously.”
After two bedrooms, even Jacques agreed they’d both breathed enough dust for one day, and he headed into the city to check paint stores. The afternoon was still crisp and sunny, so Isabelle retrieved her shovel and returned to the thicket. Tearing up the weeds and decaying planks, she encountered more slugs and earwigs than she ever cared to, and she was about to give up in disgust when her hand struck something hard. She dug around it and levered the shovel under it until she finally unearthed a small tin can with the lid rusted on tight. It rattled when she shook it, as if there were several loose objects inside. Soot smudged her hands where she had gripped it, and the label was illegible beneath the black. She studied the hole it had come from. This was no accident. The hole was deep and clearly covered by charred floorboards. Someone had deliberately lifted a floorboard and buried the can underneath.
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