Fifth Son

by Barbara Fradkin

  Ten

  The flat monotony of farm fields whipped by as Sullivan drove down Highway 416 towards Brockville. His hand was steady on the wheel, and his gaze was fixed straight ahead, inscrutable behind his mirrored sunglasses. He knew Sue Peters was probably bursting with questions, but she betrayed no hint as she fiddled with the car radio for the sixth time. He let her fiddle. It was going to be a long drive, an hour each way even if he broke the speed limit, and he had no wish to fill it with idle chit-chat or station gossip he’d heard a hundred times. He had more important things to occupy his mind. A good buddy in the Deputy Chief ’s office had tipped him off on the promotions list last night, and this morning Sullivan was nursing the first hangover he’d had in years. He had forced himself past the rage stage now, past the “fuck them I quit” stage, past the hurt stage and the betrayed stage. He was now taking a cold, hard look at his future. He knew he’d come to a fork in the road, and like it or not—mostly not—he had a choice to make.

  That’s what he really wanted to talk about—this endless loop of doubt and discontent that ran through his thoughts— but there was no one to talk it over with. Not Green, who’d tell him that promotions sucked and he should stay in Major Crimes anyway. Certainly not this poised and assertive young woman beside him who, if she played her cards right, would reach Staff Sergeant before he did. She probably thought it mattered that they go down to Brockville, do a good job, unmask this historic murder, and tie the two deaths all up in a neat bow for the Crown.

  But it didn’t matter a flying fuck. Because even if there had been a murder twenty years ago—a big if—the alleged murderer was now dead, the mother was dead, the father was a vegetable, the only other remaining son was a useless drunk, and Robbie Pettigrew needed to know this secret like he needed his guts reamed out. What good was going to come of it, compared to the harm? Sullivan knew villages like Ashford Landing. A horrible secret like this would reverberate forever, condemned from the pulpit and whispered in the grocery aisles for years to come.

  He steered the car onto the 401 on-ramp and joined the torrent of transport trucks and speed demons racing along the Montreal-Toronto corridor. Not trusting his booze-sodden reflexes, he maintained a steady one hundred and ten kilometres an hour, as if the appearance of patience and calm could make him feel that way.

  The Brockville police station was a squat, square building just off the 401 on their way into town. After a brief courtesy call and a chat with the officer who’d taken Lawrence’s photo to the group home, Sullivan and Peters headed south through the historic core of the town, which had stood guard on the St. Lawrence River opposite New York State for over two centuries. Picking up the original river road, they headed east towards the hospital.

  As they turned onto the grounds of St. Lawrence Psychiatric Hospital, Sullivan did a double-take. He had expected an insane asylum built over a century ago to look more like the Bastille than an exclusive country resort, and was surprised to find a graceful, rambling, red brick castle set back amid rolling lawns and trees overlooking the river. Once he and Peters entered the front door, however, the worn tiles and chipped paint told a more accurate tale. Like many historic hospitals, it had been slated for closure by the belt-tightening Ontario Conservatives after gradually losing its clientele to better drug treatments and outpatient clinics. But people still got sick, and like most cops, Sullivan was all too familiar with what happens when a philosophical ideal, however noble, gets translated into real life. Of necessity, St. Lawrence Psychiatric continued to limp along, underfunded and shrunken in size, serving the revolving parade of chronically ill who fell through the gaping cracks in the supports.

  Green had paved the way, and less than five minutes after Sullivan identified himself at reception, he and Peters were ushered into the office of the Chief of Psychiatry, a man who looked like he’d risen from a slab at the morgue. Dr. Roddingham peered down his beaked nose at the signed release form from Robbie, clucked his tongue and shook his head.

  “You have to understand, Sergeant, I get several requests a month from investigators and lawyers wanting access to confidential files on the flimsiest of evidence. Psychiatric patients are the first to be suspected if anything happens in the community, and their rights fly out the window. So I insist on very strict protocols to safeguard our patients’ rights. I need a death certificate and a subpoena, at the very least a legal document attesting that this Robert Pettigrew is the official next of kin.”

  Sullivan sighed. Green and his goddamn wild goose chases. “We don’t suspect Lawrence of doing anything, and we’re not looking for evidence to be used in court. We believe the man is deceased, and we’re looking for information on his recent activities and his state of mind when you last examined him.” Sullivan paused before trying to slide the next sentence by unnoticed. “As well as for information about the circumstances of his original admission.”

  Dr. Roddingham proved more alive that he looked. His cadaverous eyes narrowed. “Why?”

  Why indeed, thought Sullivan wearily through the jackhammers in his head. He fished for straws. “Because that may shed light on the reason for his return, and who he may have visited on his return.”

  Roddingham’s eyes narrowed further. “You think he may have been murdered?”

  “No, sir,” Sullivan countered quickly, thinking just what he needed—another overactive imagination. “We’re just questioning whether he was frightened or upset by someone. I understand he hadn’t seen his family in twenty years.”

  Roddingham seemed to be weighing his position, no doubt sorting through the maze of regulations governing disclosure. He tapped his lips absently as if to stop himself saying anything.

  “As to the former request, we will need his treating psychiatrist to answer that. As to the latter, we will need his old charts. I will not permit you to inspect them, but I will see if there is any useful information I can share.” He reached for the phone and issued two terse orders to his secretary. He winced, apparently at one of her answers, and hung up. “Dr. Assad will be with us shortly from another wing. The chart will take a few minutes.”

  Dr. Assad must have broken the record for the hundred yard dash, Sullivan reflected, for his footsteps could be heard clattering down the hall overhead, and barely a minute later he burst through the door, dark-eyed, dishevelled and struggling for breath. He was a small man with a pencil mustache and goatee that made him look like a rat. As he listened to Roddingham’s request, his nose twitched as if testing the air for danger. He made all the right noises when he heard about Lawrence’s death, but protested at the suggestion of suicide.

  “There was nothing in his behaviour to indicate that!” he exclaimed. “He’s only been in my care for four years since he moved to the group home, but I read his previous psychiatrist’s discharge note carefully. Last spring, when we moved him to independent living, he was as good as he was going to get after almost twenty years of institutional care. Mentally he was a child, but then we’d never let him grow up. Worse, we regressed him—”

  “Dr. Assad.” Dr. Roddingham’s voice, though deceptively quiet, cut like a whip. “The police merely want to know if, in your professional opinion, he might have been suicidal.”

  “I have no way of knowing, I haven’t seen him since June. I’d have to examine him, which of course is not possible now.”

  “June!” Peters exclaimed before Sullivan could shut her up. He decided to let the challenge lie.

  Assad pressed his lips together in a thin line. “I have three hundred outpatients on my caseload, madame. The treatment for his illness is medication, and my job is to ensure the drug and dosage are optimal. Medically his condition was stable; all that was needed was routine monitoring and lab work.”

  Sullivan reasserted control. “What about his life, his friends? What was he doing with his time?”

  “We discussed symptoms and side effects, not living habits. In any case, he’d be more likely to confide that sort of thing in the
group home workers who monitored his progress.”

  The door opened to admit Roddingham’s secretary, carrying several thick, dog-eared charts which she plunked on Roddingham’s desk. With visible relief, Assad seized the most recent and began to leaf through it. Buttressed by his paperwork, his voice took on a new confidence.

  “My latest chart note is dated June 19—oriented in all three spheres, no hallucinations or disorganized speech. Not very talkative, flat affect. Certainly no signs of trouble there. I recommended he continue his olanzapine.”

  “What do you mean by flat affect?” Sullivan asked.

  Roddingham took over as if the role of professor was second nature to him. “Affect is visible emotion. Schizophrenic patients, especially in the chronic phase of their illness, often have a flatness to them rather suggestive of robots. They lack spark and spontaneity.”

  Must be contagious, Sullivan thought wryly. “So you’re saying he was neither happy nor sad.”

  “Not overtly. Of course—” Roddingham paused and blinked his reptilian eyes slowly. “There’s no telling how he felt inside. He may have felt quite empty. That’s not uncommon either.”

  “Ten per cent of schizophrenics do kill themselves,” Assad added helpfully.

  Sullivan eased into the topic of Green’s interest carefully. “What about delusions? I understand he had been quite preoccupied with good and evil.”

  Roddingham had begun paging through one of Lawrence’s earlier charts and did not look up when Assad cast him a glance for guidance. Without any, Assad chose to equivocate. “He was always a religious man, with a simple view of right and wrong. However, I would call his interest obsessional, not delusional.”

  “But if he stopped taking his medication six weeks ago, could he not become delusional again?”

  Assad’s eyes lit as he saw a way out from under his burden of responsibility. “Of course, without monitoring and treatment, I can’t predict what he might do. That’s very possible.”

  “Was there a potential for him to become dangerous?”

  Roddingham looked up with alarm and clearly decided it was time to resume command. “Off the record? Certainly he has the potential. He’s a paranoid schizophrenic, and it depends on what form his delusions and hallucinations take. However, the vast majority of schizophrenics are not dangerous, and the law does not allow us to lock up indefinitely a patient who might someday, potentially, become violent.” He perused a chart slowly. “In his earlier charts, there were numerous incidents of agitation when he had to be restrained to protect himself or others. But there is no record of his actually inflicting physical harm.”

  Sullivan nodded casually at the file Roddingham was studying. “What do the records say about his admission? Did his parents report any incidents of violence?”

  Roddingham paused to scrutinize something in the chart and looked up with surprise. “On the contrary. Here’s your answer. The reason they gave for wanting him committed was that he tried to kill himself.”

  Sullivan’s headache receded before his sudden surge of interest. “What were the circumstances?”

  “He tried to hang himself. Very nearly succeeded, from the look of it. Still had the marks around his neck when he arrived.”

  * * *

  Sullivan shut his eyes and leaned his head back against the plastic booth at McDonalds, letting the shriek of small children wash over him as he waited for Peters to bring their food. He had taken one look at the crowd lined five deep at the counters and quickly accepted her offer to help. If she wanted to score some Brownie points with him, who was he to stop her? Thankfully, she’d been quiet on the drive from the hospital to the McDonalds near the police station, which allowed him to gather his thoughts, but he knew she was brimming with questions she was too proud to ask. He’d soon have to turn on his teaching skills. How many years had he been breaking in rookies? Too many, for sure.

  Sue Peters was an army brat who’d grown up in a house full of brothers on army bases around the world. She seemed comfortable in the company of men, but Sullivan suspected a small part of her still felt she had something to prove in a man’s world. She was determined to look good, even at the expense of asking how. He’d seen it before in cops of both sexes who thought they always had to be in control, and he wasn’t keen to be the one to break her in.

  Something thumped on the table, and he opened his eyes to see Peters shrug off her jacket and drop into the booth opposite. She slurped her coke with a flourish.

  “What do you think of that shrink, eh, Sarge? The Arab guy? Weasely bastard, I don’t think he remembered our guy at all!”

  Sullivan winced. Where to begin? With the Arab, the shrink or the Sarge? He chose to start with her prejudices.

  “Dr. Assad has a large caseload. I suspect he wanted to make sure he had his facts straight before he committed himself. And Detective,” he leaned his large frame towards her to make sure he had her attention, “exact language is essential in investigative work. Dr. Assad is a psychiatrist, not a shrink, and his ethnic background is of absolutely no relevance to this investigation.”

  To her credit, she flushed as she busied herself dousing vinegar on her fries. Finally, she shrugged. “I didn’t mean anything by it. All the guys...”

  “All the guys don’t. I don’t. All we have is our reputation for professionalism and objectivity, Detective. In court and with witnesses, without that reputation we’re useless.” He took a large bite of his Big Mac, leaving her to mull that over for a few minutes. After he’d polished off more than half his burger, he picked up his coke and leaned back, feeling slightly revived and ready to begin.

  “What did you make of the interview back at the hospital?”

  She met his gaze levelly, as if she was still smarting from his reprimand. “They didn’t tell us much, considering the guy’s been living in that place over half his life. Makes you wonder if he was much more than just a number in a bed.” She shook her head. “What a pathetic, wasted life.”

  “I think you’ll find the group home can tell us more this afternoon. That staff would have lived with him day in and out. But we did learn one useful thing.”

  “What? That he tried to kill himself?”

  Sullivan nodded. “It isn’t quite what the Inspector was looking for, but it does confirm his suspicion that something bad happened in the family back then.”

  “Maybe he just went off the deep end for no reason. After all, he is a psycho.”

  Sullivan fixed her a silent glare, and she threw her hands up in frustration. “Another word off limits? Sarge, how can we do this job if we don’t blow off some steam among our own kind? I wouldn’t use psycho on the stand.”

  “Disrespect is disrespect. Just as I’m Sergeant, not Sarge.”

  Two spots of colour flamed her cheeks, but she said nothing, lapsing instead into a frosty silence that lasted the rest of his Big Mac. He cursed his hangover and his own stupidity in choosing to bring her along. Christ, how the hell had she made the force, let alone detective?

  “Peters, you have a choice here this afternoon,” he said. “You can grow up, act like a professional, and set your investigative mind to this case, or you can catch a cab to the Voyageur bus station, and leave me to do my job.” He picked up the tray and stood up. “I’m going to the john. Your choice if you meet me outside in the car. Or not.”

  He knew she’d be in the car, of course, but he hoped she’d leave the attitude inside. Sure enough, when he emerged from the building, she was sitting obediently in the passenger seat, staring straight ahead. He knew her pride had taken a beating, so he refrained from comment. As he eased the car into gear, she took out her notebook. Her tone was subdued.

  “I’d like permission to conduct the interview with the group home supervisor, sir. At least the first part.”

  “Why?”

  “She’s a woman. She might feel more comfortable with me.”

  Sullivan wondered if she was implying he was a blunt, lumbering oaf
, but decided she’d never in a million years be that subtle. “What questions do you plan to ask?”

  They worked on her list of questions as they drove to the group home, which was located in an older, blue-collar neighbourhood not far from the hospital. Peters gradually relaxed as she put her mind to the task, and Sullivan was able to catch a glimpse of a promising investigative mind. He nonetheless reserved his decision on the interview until he had gleaned his initial impression of Mrs. Hogencamp.

  He wasn’t sure what he expected a group home supervisor to be like—a stout, no-nonsense matron, perhaps—but the reality took him aback. She was a wiry, frenetic bird of a woman whose fiery henna hair clashed with her pink spandex jumpsuit and her red finger nails. She looked as if she belonged in an aerobics studio, but they found her in the kitchen of the old converted home, shepherding her bewildered assistants through the preparation of dinner with a gentle, patient hand.

  The minute Peters introduced herself, however, Mrs. Hogencamp stiffened, and Sullivan could almost smell her fear. Of what? he wondered as she ushered them out of earshot into a small office at the back of the house. On closer viewing, he saw that she was older than her attire would suggest; fine wrinkles webbed her eyes, and her skin was beginning to crepe around her neck. Her voice had the texture of coarse gravel. Given her defensive stance, he decided to handle the initial questions himself.

  “It’s beginning to look like the dead man up in Ottawa may in fact be Lawrence Pettigrew,” he began gravely, explaining that they had already talked to the doctors at the hospital. “Any information you can give us about his recent activities would be helpful.”

  She studied her red nails. “Poor Lawrence. I don’t know what I can tell you. He was fine the last time I saw him. The doctors had judged that he was well enough to live independently and he was to come here once a week for a group.”