Fifth Son

by Barbara Fradkin

  Again that faint look of triumph. “I’ve checked that, sir. So far, nothing. He was an excellent student all through school and university, although he changed his major from physics to philosophy in his third year.”

  Green contemplated that information curiously. Changing from a hard science to the intangible study of truth suggested that Derek had undergone at least a mild identity crisis in his penultimate year, which had forced him to rethink his goals and aspirations. But such soul-searching was common— indeed, almost a rite of passage—for a serious student. Remembering Derek’s quiet, thoughtful grad photo, Green could see such a youth being drawn to the fundamental truthseeking of philosophy.

  Changing one’s intellectual identity, however, was hardly the same as changing one’s physical one. In any case, he would have had to register at Berkeley as Derek Pettigrew if he’d hoped to get in.

  “Bob, can you get Berkeley to check their admissions for 1984? See if in fact Derek Pettigrew applied and was expected to attend?”

  Gibbs reddened as an irrepressible smile crept across his face. His Adam’s apple bobbed. “I’ve put that request to them already, sir, but it will take a while.”

  “Good work. And I wouldn’t classify this as a failure. We’ve learned some very peculiar things about Derek Pettigrew. Keep it up. Now—the good news?”

  “Tom Pettigrew. He’s been much more visible. Toronto Police have a long sheet on him, mostly summary offences like theft under and causing disturbances. He’s also had a few businesses go belly-up, and he’s reneged on payments to creditors. Toronto faxed me this.”

  He unfolded a long print-out and Green scanned down the list of Tom’s contacts with the Toronto police. They showed the sorry state of Tom’s life. Police contacts had been few in the first ten years, but over time he had become involved more frequently in brawls, public intoxication, loitering and disturbing the peace. He’d been in and out of the Don Jail five times in the past year alone, but only one stint had been substantial; thirty days for his fourth conviction for theft under. Shoplifting from a liquor store on Jarvis Street.

  Scanning to the bottom of the list, Green saw that his most recent incarceration had been only a month ago, for causing a disturbance. He’d been released the next morning. As if reading his mind, Gibbs pointed to the entry.

  “I’m trying to contact the officer who handled the case, sir, to see if he knows where Tom is living. He’s listed as no fixed address, but he probably has his unofficial place. The officer will call me when he gets on duty this evening.”

  Gibbs had thawed considerably as he related the fruits of his labour, and now Green smiled at him. “If and when the Toronto police find him, I want them to pick him up, and I want you to go down there to interview him.”

  “By myself, sir?”

  Seeing a mixture of pleasure and apprehension on Gibbs’ face, Green shook his head. “If Toronto finds Tom before Brian heads back from Brockville tomorrow, I’ll send Brian on to meet you in Toronto. Always better to have two officers in on an interview.”

  Gibbs smiled like a puppy who’d been tossed a treat. Sometimes I handle things not too badly, Green thought, but we really must do something to toughen this boy up.

  * * *

  With both Gibbs and Sullivan dispatched, Green tried to settle back down to his paperwork, but the excitement of matching overtime requests with policy directives paled in comparison to the lure of missing Pettigrews. His thoughts returned to the strange tin can Isabelle Boisvert had unearthed in the thicket in her yard. Green recalled that the ground had been all dug up in patches over the interior of the thicket where the dead man had been seen, suggesting that he was searching for something. The tin can was caked with dirt and firmly rusted shut, as if it had been buried long ago.

  Assuming it was poor crazy Lawrence who had hidden the tin before he was sent to the psychiatric hospital, and assuming none of the other family members had known of its existence, it was almost certainly Lawrence who had been snooping in the yard and Lawrence who lay dead at the bottom of the church tower. The supervisor in Brockville had said he’d been missing for six weeks, and MacPhail had indicated that until recently the man had been well cared for. Which Lawrence certainly would have been, courtesy of Ontario’s health care system.

  Had Lawrence left Brockville and made his way by bus, thumb or foot all the way back to his childhood home? If so, why? What in that strange tin can collection had he been desperate to retrieve after all these years? Why had he fled to his old church? And most importantly, had he in his despair been driven to jump, or had someone pushed him?

  Green pondered the contents of the tin can. A feather, a half dozen caps, some condoms, an antique key, a note, and a fragment of a love letter to a girl called Sophia. The handwriting of the letter had an uneven, childish quality, with spelling mistakes galore. Perhaps Lawrence had written the letter when he was a young, bumbling teenager hopelessly in love with Sophia. And perhaps he had kept that love alive through twenty years, dreaming of the day he returned to find her waiting for him.

  Except she wouldn’t have been waiting, of course. While he languished in a psychiatric hospital, suspended forever in adolescent yearning, she had probably married, borne children, and become deeply immersed in a rich, demanding family life.

  Green’s instincts quickened. It was a long shot, perhaps, but it made sense. What else but a woman could draw a man back to his despised and long-abandoned roots, and what else but a woman could plunge him into suicidal despair?

  He glanced at his watch, which registered nearly one o’clock. A lunch break was in order, combined with an impromptu visit to the troops still conducting interviews in Ashford Landing. And perhaps a short side trip of his own to find out the identity of Sophia.

  Seven

  Sandy Fitzpatrick was a man whose every emotion showed on his face, an unfortunate trait for someone engaged in sales but a windfall for Green. Even before Sandy skidded his pickup to a complete stop in the gravel outside the Boisvert house, his bewilderment and alarm were etched on his ruddy face.

  Green had phoned him en route to ask him to meet him at the farm and had himself arrived only five minutes earlier. Isabelle had been showing him where she’d found the tin, and they were both knee-deep in the tangle of brush and dying raspberry canes when Sandy arrived. He vaulted down from his truck, dressed in a hunting vest, big rubber boots and thick work gloves. As he clumped over towards them, he replaced his alarm with his familiar hearty grin.

  “Is there a problem, Isabelle? I hope you’re not doing all this work yourself!”

  Before she could answer, Green extended his hand amiably. “Sandy, thank you for coming. You used to visit here as a child, so your recollections might be very useful to our investigation. Do you recall what if anything was located here?”

  Sandy’s brows shot up. “Here in this brush? Why?”

  “Mrs. Boisvert found some remnants of burned planking which suggests it may have been a firepit.”

  “It was a shed. Built as a carriage house originally, but it burned down years ago.”

  “What was the shed used for?”

  Sandy shrugged. “Nothing much. Balers and plows and that, back when the farm was more productive. But for years before it burned down, it was pretty much...” He looked at Isabelle sympathetically. “I know it’s an eyesore. If you like, I can get a construction buddy of mine—”

  “What was it used for twenty years ago?” Sandy coloured as if embarrassed. “Well, when we were kids, we all used to play in it, pretend it was a fort or a secret hide-out. It was mostly filled with hay, and there was a beautiful antique horse carriage. The leather was all cracked, but with the right care... Anyway, we used to bring old blankets inside and have sleep-overs.”

  “We?”

  “Lawrence and me. Lawrence loved that shed, and when he got sicker, he hung out there more and more, although the other boys liked it too. To get away from their parents.”

  “Wh
en did it burn down?”

  Sandy scratched his nose with his massive glove. “So long ago I can’t remember.”

  “Before or after Lawrence was sent away?”

  Sandy stared off towards the river as if the answer could be found in the ribbon of gold and red along the edge. He looked uncomfortable at being forced to dredge up old times. “About the same time,” he said finally. “I’m not sure exactly, because I’d stopped coming here.”

  “Why?”

  “Well...my mother was the protective type, and she got it in her head that Lawrence was dangerous.” With that admission came some anger. “But now that I’m thinking about it, that shed burned down right about the time Lawrence was taken away, because I remember seeing the smoke. It was early May, and the leaves were just budding on the trees, so you could see a lot easier across the fields. The shed was old, and the hay inside was dry as a bone, so the place went up like a bonfire.”

  Green pondered the implications. He sensed that something bad had happened that spring of 1984, something that had so upset the family that they had committed their child to a mental hospital and severed all contact with him. Something that had so frightened Lawrence that he panicked at the mere mention of returning home.

  Had the shed burned down accidentally, or had Lawrence set it on fire? “Did Lawrence or any of the other boys play with fire in there?”

  “Not Lawrence. But Tom smoked in there. Their mother was very strict, and she wouldn’t have any smoking or drinking in the house—”

  “I thought the father was a heavy drinker.”

  “That was later. In those days, he was a real holy roller. He used to—” Sandy paused as if weighing the wisdom of revealing such private details, then once again anger seemed to urge him on. “He used to keep all the boys in line with a strap. Most of them toed the line, but Tom fought him every inch of the way. He’d sneak out to the shed to smoke, did marijuana there too, with his gang of loser buddies and all the girls he could get his hands on. The horse carriage came in mighty handy.”

  Green went to his car to retrieve the tin can. Before he could even open the evidence bag, Sandy’s eyes widened in astonishment.

  “Lawrence’s magic box!”

  Green spread the items out on the hood of his car. Each of them had been bagged individually now to prevent contamination, but the contents were still clear. He picked up the bird skull and asked if Lawrence ever killed small animals.

  “Oh, no, Lawrence loved birds! He loved to watch them fly overhead. He thought they were angels from God. When he was little, Lawrence thought God sat on those fluffy clouds up there next to Jack in the Beanstalk.” Sandy smiled wistfully at the memory, then picked up the bag with the feather. “He collected bird feathers because he thought they could ward off Satan, and when he got sicker...” His smile faded and his eyes grew sad as he fingered the bottle caps. “He developed strange rituals to drive away Satan.”

  Green’s instincts began to tingle. “What sort of rituals?” The sharpness of his tone must have betrayed him, for Sandy drew back, furrowing his brow. “He wasn’t a violent person, wouldn’t in a million years hurt anyone. He’d only cut himself. He thought the feather could purify him and keep evil away. It sounds...creepy, I know, but it was only a tiny bit of blood.”

  Creepy doesn’t begin to describe it, thought Green, but he kept his expression neutral. Close scrutiny revealed a few flakes of rusty residue on the feather, similar in colour to the smudge on the torn note. Green had assumed the note was simply dirty, but now he grabbed his magnifying glass for a closer look. This time he detected the fine circular traces of a fingerprint in the smudge. Finally, something Ident could sink its teeth into! He looked back at Sandy, pondering the significance of a fingerprint etched in blood on a torn fragment of a note. The first question was—whose blood?

  He slid the note out of view casually. “Did he ever try to purify anyone else? His brothers, for example?”

  “I remember he drove his brothers crazy. He prayed over them, confiscated their things. He stole cigarettes and porn magazines the boys had hidden in their rooms. He spied on their girlfriends.”

  All of which could create a powder keg in the household, Green reflected. “Did he himself have a girlfriend?”

  Sandy’s eyebrows shot up and a smile broke his taut features. “Good Lord, no. Lawrence would never know how to handle a real live girl.”

  “Could there have been a girl he loved from afar? Or imagined he had a relationship with?”

  “It’s possible, I suppose. But why...?” Sandy’s voice trailed off as his gaze travelled from the tin can to the tangled brush. “The body is Lawrence, isn’t it?”

  “Possibly.” Green picked up the evidence bag containing the love letter. “Do you remember a girl named Sophia?”

  Sandy looked sad as he studied the letter. “There was a girl in our grade, who lived in Richmond. Pretty girl with long black hair.”

  “Last name?”

  He shrugged. He’d been scrutinizing the letter, turning it over. “I seem to remember she was Tom’s girl, though. I don’t think Lawrence wrote this.”

  Green handed him the scrap of paper with the fingerprint. “This is another handwriting, maybe to the same girl. Could that be from Lawrence?”

  Sandy stared at the simple note. “Holy crap,” he whispered.

  Green waited, but Sandy didn’t elaborate. Simply shook his head as he handed the note back. “What?” Green prompted, wondering if he’d recognized the smudge for what it was.

  “I...these shreds of the past, they seem to speak volumes.”

  “What volumes?”

  Sandy shrugged and pulled his gloves back on his hands vigorously. “I was just a kid, but it makes you wonder what all was going on. All those horny boys, pretty girls, secret liaisons, the father going on about sin—”

  “And Lawrence wandering around in the middle of it, crazy as a loon,” Green finished grimly. More than ever, he was convinced that Lawrence’s return, and his death, were linked to events long ago. “Where might I find this Sophia?”

  “I haven’t seen her in years. Not since high school.”

  Green scooped up the evidence bags and returned them to the car. “Then let’s check your high school year book. That will give us a name.”

  When they arrived at Sandy’s house, they discovered the real estate office open and Edna McMartin firmly ensconced behind the desk. She was holding forth on the phone, arguing with someone about pies for the church bake sale. Sandy had to wait while she cast her vote for pumpkin, then she signed off and turned to her son with a smile. Which, Green noted, he didn’t return.

  “Church business again, Mom? On my business phone?”

  Her jaw thrust out. “Sandy, you won’t make any money if you never have anyone in the office to answer inquiries. I’ve taken three calls already this afternoon.”

  “That’s what the answering machine is for, Mom.”

  “People don’t like talking to machines,” she countered. “I made one appointment for you, which I’ll take if you don’t have time.” She fixed her gaze on Green pointedly, and her smile vanished. “Buying a country house, Detective?”

  Sandy glanced at Green. “Perhaps we should do this upstairs.” Edna was instantly alert, her shrewd eyes narrowing. Ready to protect yet another of her babies from my intrusion, Green thought, even if this baby was nudging forty and clearly unappreciative of her efforts. Yet the friction might be interesting, and many a secret inadvertently slipped out in the heat of a family dispute. Besides, no one in the village was likely to know more about the Pettigrew secrets than their long-time neighbours.

  Green dropped into the client’s chair and looked up at Sandy casually. “Why don’t you bring all your yearbooks down here, and I’ll keep your mother out of trouble.”

  Sandy opened his mouth to protest but thought better of it. Flushing, he turned around and clumped upstairs.

  “Yearbooks?” Edna’s lips pursed
warily.

  “We’re trying to gather some background on Lawrence Pettigrew.” He smiled amiably. “I understand Sandy was a good friend of Lawrence growing up, but at some point you forbade your son to go over there anymore. Why?”

  Her eyes grew shuttered, and she folded her arms over her chest. Green held up a soothing hand. “Not being critical, just wondering.”

  “Because the boy was a dangerous lunatic.”

  She was still bristling, so Green cast about for a means to soften her. “I know he was schizophrenic, and I’m not questioning the family’s decision. I’m sure his illness was very hard on them. But I’m wondering if you know what happened. Perhaps Lawrence’s mother confided in you?”

  “What does all this matter now? Lawrence is dead. That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it? He’s thrown himself off that old church tower, and as far as I’m concerned, good riddance.”

  Green kept his expression friendly with an effort. “Why did you forbid your son to go over there?”

  She pressed her lips together stubbornly, but he waited her out with his notebook poised and his gaze steady. Finally she seemed to relent. “Even Katherine was afraid of him. And afraid for Robbie, who was only a young lad. She told me one day Lawrence threw out all the knives in the house because knives were evil. Another time he cut up Derek’s sheets because, well, frankly, they were dirtied. But the final straw was Tom’s centrefolds. Tom had them taped on his wall, and Lawrence slashed all the girls’ bodies with a razor. Would you want your small child growing up with that?”

  Dismayed, Green stopped writing. The deeper he dug in this family, the more sinister the picture became. Edna was watching him as if daring him to come to the madman’s defence.

  “No, I wouldn’t,” he replied truthfully. “Do you recall the circumstances surrounding the fire that destroyed the shed?”

  She had just begun to relax, but now she stiffened in surprise. “What the dickens has the shed got to do with anything?”

  Green explained about Lawrence’s recent visit to the place where the shed had been.