Fifth Son. Barbara Fradkin
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.
She remembered the man she’d seen rummaging around here in the thicket. Perhaps he was looking for this! She felt a flutter of excitement. It might be jewellery or coins, perhaps something even more valuable. This is an old home; an ordinary artifact might be worth a lot of money. Whether she kept it or turned it over to Robert Pettigrew, she would decide later, once she’d seen what it was.
With the help of some oil and a screwdriver, she began very slowly to work the lid loose. It was stubborn and loosening it took an interminable time. Finally, with one last pop, the lid came off. Isabelle peered inside and her eagerness died abruptly.
Six metal bottle caps, a white feather, a box of condoms, two slips of paper, a brass key, and the final object—a small white sphere. She turned the sphere over in her fingers curiously until she was looking at it head on, and saw two tiny holes and the remnants of a beak. It was the skull of a tiny bird.
Isabelle snatched her fingers away as if they’d been burned. The bird skull tumbled into the dirt next to the can. Horror crawled over her skin, and she sat back on her heels, staring at the object, in the grip of an irrational fear. Had the man come back to the farm for this? For a dozen condoms, a bunch of useless junk and a bird skull?
She scooped up the contents, returned them to the tin and pressed the lid down tightly before heading into the house to find Sergeant Sullivan’s card. She wasn’t sure what the significance of the tin was, but she knew the police had better have a look at