Fifth Son. Barbara Fradkin
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appraised the house with his new expertise in disintegrating buildings. On closer inspection, he could see the tell-tale signs. The house was a stately, red brick Victorian with a steeply pitched roof. Its intricate wood trim had once been white but was now a weathered gray, and its windows were caked with grime. Roof shingles were lifting, and the front porch listed dangerously to one side.
Isabelle had taken the photo and was studying it thoughtfully. As if hearing the bitterness in her husband’s voice, she gave his arm a quick squeeze. “We will make it beautiful, I promise you. Why don’t you take Chouchou in the back to work with you, and I will walk these gentlemen to their car.”
With one last weary glance at his wife, Jacques slumped back around the house with the dog under one arm and the rake in the other. An oddly lifeless man to have snagged such a tantalizing woman, Green thought. Quietly, she gestured to the photo as she walked.
“I have seen this man. I didn’t want to say in front of Jacques, because he is negative enough about this place. He’s from Vanier, and he finds it very isolating here.”
I’ll just bet, Green thought. It would be a massive culture shock to move to this pastoral desolation from the close-knit clamour of the francophone inner city. “Where did you see this man?”
Isabelle nodded towards the right of the grounds and began to walk. About a hundred feet in front of the house was a rundown, square-timbered barn, and beside it, a wooden shed of similar vintage. But in the far corner of the yard opposite was an overgrown thicket of brush. It was here that Isabelle stopped.
“Yesterday, after Jacques left for church, Chouchou began to bark at something. It was fog outside, and frost on the ground, but I’m positive it was this man. He was in the brush here, ducking down, trying to hide. I thought he was a bum, and I yelled at him. He took off.”
“In what direction?”
Isabelle gestured towards the maple woods behind the farm house. “He went into those trees, and it’s the last I saw of him.”
“What’s beyond the trees?”
“The river. But there is a path along the shore through the trees, and I guess he escaped that way.”
Green peered through the dying foliage of the thicket where the man had hidden. Raspberry canes and scrub had been allowed to grow undisturbed for years, but there were signs that someone had been there recently. A path had been trampled into the centre, and the weeds had been flattened as if someone had lain there. Gingerly, Green got down on his hands and knees and crawled into the thicket, praying that he wouldn’t encounter any crawly things. In the middle of the thicket, charred wooden planking had been strewn about, and the grass had been dug up in little patches all over.
It looked for all the world as if someone had been searching for something.
* * *
Green gazed out the car window at the passing fields, deep in thought. In the distance, the ribbon of maple trees was slowly fading into the horizon.
“We should send an eager young constable out there to see where that path through the trees leads to,” he said.
Sullivan took his eyes off the road long enough to follow Green’s gaze. His eyes revealed nothing behind his mirrored sunglasses, but his lips twitched in a smile. “It leads to Ashford Landing.”
“How do you know?”
“That’s the way the country works. Farmers usually leave a border of trees along the river, and in the old days they’d bring their produce to the village either by boat or along the river’s edge in the shade. The Boisvert farm is about two kilometres from town. Perfect distance for foot paths.”
Green looked at the straight, flat road ahead of them. Why would the man go along the shore, he wondered, and have to contend with mud, cow crap, underbrush and swamp when he could walk straight along the road? Green could think of at least one good reason—to avoid being seen.
“So in all likelihood,” he said, “when our guy ran away from the farm yesterday morning, he got to the river and headed to Ashford Landing. Two kilometres, you said? That should have taken him no more than half an hour, which means he should have reached town before noon. MacPhail places the death after four p.m.”
“But remember he could have fallen earlier and bled for hours.”
“Okay, but he still might have been lurking around town for a couple of hours, which means he could have been seen.”
They had reached the outskirts of the village and Sullivan eased his foot off the accelerator, allowing them to coast over the crest and down into the tiny commercial centre. They passed the general store and the gas station before spotting a big yellow real estate agency sign on the lawn of a Victorian manor house painted a striking Wedgwood blue.
Sullivan had reached Sandy Fitzpatrick on his cell phone from the car, interrupting him in the middle of a showing. The agent had agreed to meet the detectives back at his office, but there was no answer when they rang the doorbell. An old silver Grand Am was tucked at the rear of the house, but the main drive was empty. Through the bay window, Green could see a large office with maps papering the walls and print-outs littering every surface. Looking up at the rambling size of the old home, he guessed that Sandy Fitzpatrick probably lived above his offices.
Sullivan was just returning to the car to check on the street canvassing when a late-model red pick-up revved around the corner and screeched into the drive. Out leaped a tall, muscular man whom Green estimated to be in his mid thirties. The man rushed at the detectives, his hand extended heartily.
“Sorry, officers. The house business—never a dull moment!” He lifted a huge ring of keys from his belt, selected one and unlocked the door with one expert twist. Inside his cluttered office, Green and Sullivan took the client chairs while Fitzpatrick went behind his desk. He flipped on his computer and punched the answering machine button before he’d even sat down. Then, as the first of sixteen messages began to drone, he looked at Sullivan sheepishly.
“Sorry, force of habit. No secretary, no partners, just me always rushing to stay on top of the business.” He paused the machine but couldn’t keep his eyes from straying to his email box briefly before he swung around.
“Okay!” He clasped both hands together on the desk before him like a man salivating to make a deal. “Is it about the body? It’s the talk of the town.”
Green couldn’t resist. “And what’s the town saying?”
“Some homeless guy?”
“No rumours as to his identity?” Green asked.
“None I heard. But what’s it got to do with the Pettigrew place?”
Green didn’t reply, reminding himself that it was Sullivan’s case and he ought to let him decide how to play it. Sullivan chose to play it casual.
“Who’s handling the sale of the church? Your firm?”
Fitzpatrick’s face fell. “Oh no! That’s a firm from Ottawa. I used to list that place, but...no one’s been able to sell it.”
“But you can access the key if you have a client. You have the combination to the lock box, right?”
“Well, I can get it. We can all get it. But I hardly ever show it. People want waterfront properties, not a musty old rock pile in the middle of town.”
Green glanced around the office. Despite the country clutter, it sported the latest in electronic gadgets. There were no pictures of wife and children, but Fitzpatrick clearly loved his expensive outdoor toys. Snowmobiles and four-by-fours were everywhere, and one photo showed him posing with a friend in front of a sleek, white motorboat, holding up a fish that must have been three feet long. Slimy-looking thing, Green thought with distaste, but the two men were grinning from ear to ear.
“I guess the waterfront business has been good to you, Mr. Fitzpatrick,” Green remarked.
“Please,