Fifth Son (29 page)

“You're not just talking about Derek's change of career choice, are you, Reverend?”

“It was a big dilemma for the lad,” Taylor continued as if Green hadn't spoken. “He'd been raised on the Bible, felt its teachings deep in his soul.”

“What teachings?” Green persisted.

“Eh? Oh, the straight and narrow and all that—”

Taylor placed a peculiar emphasis on the word “straight”, and with that hint, out of the blue an idea came to Green. It was novel and unexpected, yet brilliantly apt. “Are you saying Derek was gay?”

Taylor didn't reply, but he flinched as if retreating from the bald truth, and in that retreat Green had his answer. “That's it, isn't it? He confided that to you, and you didn't condemn him. Is that what the father couldn't stand? Is that why he took the family from the church?”

Taylor shut his eyes and leaned back in the chair, suddenly shrivelled and old. “How could I condemn it, son? That would be to condemn...” He stopped short of what Green suspected he was about to confess. Instead he opened his eyes to study Green helplessly. “Yes, I helped him. I listened, I interpreted the gospel to him, I tried to help him reconcile his two great loves—his love of God and his love of his fellow men. He tried to fight it, you know. As so many do. He met a young man at the university, but it took him a long time to admit what they felt for each other. After that broke up, he didn't come back to talk to me for a long time. He tried women, he tried celibacy, but you can't deny your nature.”

“Do you know if he was involved with anyone at the end?” Taylor nodded. “He came to see me. He looked like he'd been in a bar brawl. Said his father had caught them together and beat him up. Norm is a big man and had about fifty pounds on him, but Derek was very, very angry when I last saw him. He told me that was the last time, and if his Dad ever came at him again, he was going to give it back.”

Taylor's anger energized him, and he sat up straight, his brows quivering. “By the love of Jove, if that boy's been murdered, I wouldn't look past Norm Pettigrew if I were you!”

When Green climbed back into his car outside the seniors' home, it was past two o'clock, and his mind was reeling from mental overload and physical starvation. There was yet another message on his voice mail from Superintendent Jules requesting—no, demanding—his update. Green punched the delete button with a curse. Before he briefed Jules, he had to figure out what he himself thought.

Was it possible that Norm Pettigrew had killed his own son? A man who strapped his boys' hands when they masturbated, a man who invoked the wrath of God and the threat of hell to keep his boys in line? It was Norm who had beaten up Derek on the day Sophia met him in the woods. In Norm's world view, Derek's homosexuality would have constituted a mortal sin, an affront against his own authority as moral leader of his household and a threat to his vaunted stature in the community. To Norm, the sight of his son in the arms of another man would have been an abomination.

How much greater would his outrage have been if a few days later he'd discovered Derek was running away with his lover in open defiance of his orders? Had he intercepted the note and known what ‘our place' meant? The shed, of course! Where all the boys went to get away, where perhaps Derek had been waiting for his lover that day, only to come face to face with his father instead. And where, in the argument that erupted, this time Norm had found a weapon more lethal than his fists.

Green raced over the scenario in his mind, probing it for flaws. He felt he was getting close. The concrete details of the crime were filling in, the niggling inconsistencies ironing out. The theory explained Tom's hatred of his father and his comment “after all he made us do”. If Norm had made Tom clean up the bloodbath he himself had caused, and forced him to support the lie that Lawrence was to blame, no wonder Tom could barely stand the sight of him.

As exciting as this new theory was, however, there was one large, gaping flaw in it. Lawrence's death. For while Norman would have been sufficiently strong twenty years ago to overpower Derek, there was no way that the frail old man Green had met in the hospital was capable of chasing Lawrence up the tower to his death. A major flaw, for sure. But it was not essential that the same person killed both Derek and Lawrence. Perhaps Tom hadn't known his father killed Derek and had lived all these years with the belief that Lawrence had ruined all their lives. It still fit his character to go off the deep end at the sight of Lawrence.

Two plausible scenarios for Derek's death, two possible killers. Twenty years of deception, anguish or wilful amnesia. But even if the excavation uncovered Derek's bones, even if the
OPP
caught Tom and brought him in for questioning, how would they ever get at the truth? After twenty years, any physical evidence that had actually survived the fire would have been degraded by the elements.

Except Lawrence's airtight tin can and the unidentified bloody fingerprint. That pesky little piece of evidence that refused to fit anywhere.

Green reached for the phone excitedly. Lyle Cunningham and his partner would be out at the excavation site, but with any luck, someone else in the Ident Unit would be slaving over samples in the lab. Sure enough, Sergeant Lou Paquette's booze-ravaged voice growled through the wires after the third ring. His first reaction upon hearing Green's request was a flat no, but Green was ready for him.

“This is shaping up to be a major kidnapping-double homicide, Lou, with both us and the
OPP
in on the search. Before I call Superintendent Jules to update him on our progress, I want to have all our bases covered. We can't wait till Cunningham's free; I need to know
ASAP
if the guy we're pursuing is a killer as well as a kidnapper. I need to assess degree of risk and advise the
OPP
if they should call in their Tactical boys.”

The mention of all the high-powered interest did the trick. With dark references to Cunningham's displeasure, Paquette agreed to take Norman Pettigrew's fingerprints at the hospital and compare them to the bloody print on the note.

“But you break the news to Cunny,” he added as a parting shot. “You know what a control freak he is.”

I will, Green promised as he hung up. Later. He had to eat, but even more crucially he had to brief Jules. The man had scattered enough messages around that he could no longer be ignored. And to judge from his tone when Green reached him at home, his patience had already been well exceeded.

“Thank you for your promptness,” Jules said, deadpan. “I am still technically in charge of this division, Mike, at least until Monday. And you'll find Barbara Devine is keen to be kept informed.”

More than keen, Green thought grimly. As he outlined the current state of the case, he eased the Impala into gear and backed out of the Nursing Supervisor's parking spot. A man of normally few words, Jules didn't say a thing while Green summarized his quandary about the lack of evidence and witnesses to differentiate the two possible suspects.

“What about the boy?” he asked when Green finished.

“Kyle?”

“No. The youngest son.”

“Robbie?” Green was taken aback, for Jules must have retained every word he'd uttered. The man still had a mind like a surgical scalpel. “He was only eight when the first homicide occurred.”

“Eight-year-olds can remember,” Jules said. “Besides, I understand he's been calling all around downstairs demanding to know what's going on.”

Green winced in dismay. Events had unfolded so fast over the past twenty-four hours that he'd forgotten all about Robbie Pettigrew. He left the man sputtering over the telephone about Tom absconding with his money, but that infraction was trivial compared to the ensuing cascade of catastrophes Tom had wrought. Robbie would have seen the news of Isabelle's assault, Kyle's abduction and the massive manhunt in the country side. The poor man deserved an explanation before he also learned about the search for Derek's body in the front yard of his childhood home.

“I'll phone him right away,” Green said. He had to pull off the road to look up Robbie's number, but was lucky enough to catch the man on his first try. It proved already too late to cushion the shock.

“What in the name of God is going on, Inspector!” Robbie cried at a voice level to shatter glass. Green jerked the phone away several inches. “I just got a call from Jacques Boisvert! He wants to annul the sale, he's threatening to sue. What's this about my brother being buried in the yard? I've been standing by the phone waiting for your call for hours. I'm going crazy, Green!”

Green suppressed a weary groan. This was a complication he didn't need, and a phone call wasn't going to suffice; the man deserved better than that. Besides, as Jules had pointed out, eight-year-olds sometimes remembered things. Even if they didn't know it.

“Are you up to driving, Robbie? I'm near Manotick, so why don't I meet you there for a sandwich?”

“I can't eat, for God's sake!”

Who's talking about you, Green thought, but behaved himself. “Coffee then. At the pub on—”

“I want to go out to the farm.”

Oh, fuck. “Not a good idea, Robbie. It's a restricted area right now. Let's sit down someplace relaxing, and I'll bring you up to date.”

Green had tried to sound soothing, but even so, Robbie peeled into the pub parking lot half an hour later, suggesting he must have virtually sprouted wings. He was wide-eyed and flying on adrenaline. Green sketched as brief and understated a picture of the case as he could manage, but Robbie grew whiter with every detail. By the end, tears brimmed in his eyes, and he clutched his head in his hands.

“Ohmigod, ohmigod,” he whispered over and over, beginning to hyperventilate.

Green glanced around the little pub. He had chosen a booth tucked around the corner near the kitchen, and fortunately the mid-afternoon crowd was thin, so no one was paying them any heed. He searched in vain for a paper bag, but finally had to improvise.

“Take it easy. Cup your hands around your mouth and breathe. Don't talk, just breathe.”

Robbie raised shaking hands to his face and tried to breathe. A lone tear spilled over and travelled down his cheek.

“We don't know anything for sure,” Green said. “We haven't even found a body yet, let alone identified it as Derek.”

“But it's going to be there,” Robbie said. “You know that. Tom's letter, the fire, the axes—it all fits! Ohmigod! To think this happened, and the whole fucking family just buried it!” He pressed his hands to his eyes, fighting emotion. Rage or grief, Green wasn't sure. Probably a little of both. “I thought it was all my fault! All my fault that my father drank, that my mother killed herself, that no one would play with me and there were no flowers in the garden and no tree fort in the woods. I thought they didn't care! I was the extra son, the accident that nobody really wanted. I used to look at those pictures in the album, and I saw how happy they used to be, but never with me.” Tears poured down now, mingling unnoticed with the torrent of words. “And all along it was this fucking...!”

He groped at the air in a futile search for a word monstrous enough to describe the event. For a moment he was struck dumb, then he dropped his hands and took a deep breath. “You may not know the body is there, but I do. I even know how he was killed. We never had axes at the farm after that, not even when I insisted. When I bought an axe once to split wood, Dad threw it in the river and went on a two-day bender. I wanted to rebuild the shed instead of leaving that eyesore, but Mum nearly flipped her lid.” He raised ravaged eyes to Green. “I've lived with this for twenty years, Inspector. I know it's true. I've never known why, but this... Mum, Benji...” His voice snagged. “This explains it all.”

Green steeled himself to insert his first cautious probe. He was no expert in trauma cases nor in the recovery of childhood memory, but he'd seen enough trauma victims in his time to venture a try. At all costs, he had to avoid suggestive or leading questions.

“Do you remember anything at all about it, Robbie? Anything about that day?”

Robbie nodded. “I remember the fire. I had nightmares about fires for years. I was locked in my room—I guess Mom and Dad wanted me safe and out of the way—but I remember the noise of the flames. They roared and crackled like thunder. I'd never heard a fire so loud. I remember being scared my parents would get hurt. And it stank. A horrible stink I'll never forget. Sweet, putrid, so sharp it clung to your nose and stayed in the air for days, even after they put the fire out.”

Burnt flesh does have a stink all its own, Green thought grimly. “Do you remember them putting it out?”

“I couldn't see, because my bedroom was at the back, but I remember people screaming. Ohmigod, everyone was screaming. And there was a...” He stopped, his eyes narrowing as if he were casting his thoughts deep into forgotten corners of his mind. “There was one sound coming from a bedroom nearby. A high-pitched wailing, like someone keening, that went on all night. Nobody came. Not to get me, not to stop the keening. I was so scared I curled up under my bed. It was very hot in the house, and I was afraid it was burning up too. Ohmigod, I haven't thought about this in years!”

“It might help us if you can remember how the fire started.”

Robbie was shaking his head. “That's all that sticks in my mind. The fire raging.”

“Was it day or night?”

Robbie picked up his cup in both hands, tried to take a sip but couldn't steady the cup. With a grimace, he cradled it as if to warm his hands. “It must have been day when it started because I remember it gradually getting darker in my room. And all I could see was this spooky orange glow on the trees.”