Sullivan’s Saturday morning found him at the police station at the crack of dawn as well, labouring over the paperwork needed to obtain the coroner’s warrant for the Boisverts’ front yard and for Scott’s landfill site, where the debris from the yard had been moved. Then the regional coroner had to be roused from his morning coffee to sign the warrant, which proved to be a cakewalk. With all Gibbs’ failed efforts to locate Derek and with Tom’s letter to Benji as the crowning touch, the doctor barely had to set down his coffee while he scribbled out his signature to set the excavation in motion.
The Boisverts had no objection to the execution of the warrant. From his place at Isabelle’s hospital bedside, Jacques waved his hands as if nothing could shock him anymore.
“Go ahead!” he exclaimed. “Dig! Dig the whole damn place! Je m’en fous! I’m not living there ever again!”
Isabelle, lying pale and weak against the pillows, did not even lift her groggy head to protest.
Upon leaving the hospital, Sullivan headed out of the city towards Scott’s dump site, which was located just north of Merrickville, another of the historic towns dotting the Rideau River. Unlike Ashford Landing, however, this one had remained prosperous by trading its original identity as a canal lock station for a modern one as a quaint heritage village for tourists and artists.
As he cruised south along the highway, Sullivan reflected on the number of people who, like the Boisverts, had left the congestion and high prices of the city for a little spread of green space and fresh air. It had an undeniable appeal. He owned a modest split-level on a city lot shoehorned into the suburb of Alta Vista. Every morning he backed out of his drive to join his neighbours in line for the red light on to Smythe Road. Every night he returned home to his barbeque on the back deck, the sound of his neighbours’ TV, and the frantic juggling of Sean’s hockey practices and Lizzie’s jazz lessons. All while Mary was out showing yet another house in the hope that this time she’d make a sale so they could pay for the goalie camp Sean needed.
Maybe it was time to make a change not just in his career but in his home as well. Maybe he could stand to live in the country again, if he didn’t have to farm the land. If he could just skidoo on it, hike and fish, teach his boys to hunt rabbits and listen to the hoot of the owls at night.
Scott’s business came upon him while he was still caught up in reverie, nearly causing him to miss the turn. He banked sharply and squealed the tires as he swung up the driveway to the massive chain link gate. In the distance, he could see a brick bungalow and a corrugated metal warehouse. Much to his annoyance, a heavy padlock held the gate locked, so he tried the old-fashioned country remedy; he leaned on his horn until the front door of the bungalow opened, and a large muscular man stuck his head out. He was wearing nothing but jeans and an undershirt, but reluctantly threw a flannel jacket on top before stomping down the slope to open the gate. His initial scowl turned to alarm at the sight of Sullivan’s badge.
“What’s this about, officer?” he asked as he hauled back the gate.
Sullivan handed him the warrant, which Scott peered at with a puzzled frown. He looked as if he’d just woken up two minutes earlier and couldn’t get his brain in gear. “All the contents from the Boisvert excavation? What in hell’s name do you want that stuff for?”
Sullivan pointed to the fine print.
Scott squinted. “Looking for bones, clothing, personal effects... What the fuck?”
“A team will be arriving shortly to sift through the stuff, sir. It shouldn’t take long, then we’ll be out of your hair. Now if you’ll just show me where it is.”
Sullivan had passed through the gate and gestured to the man to lead the way. Scott, now finally waking up, shook his head in disbelief. “The Boisvert woman was digging out there, but she never said anything about this! Holy fuck! I was just supposed to dig a foundation for the garage!”
Scott stopped by the house and pointed to a vast pile of bulldozed branches, dirt and rocks which extended into the gully behind his house. “It’s out in the corner over there. I haven’t had time to bulldoze it over, so it should be... Holy fuck! What happens if you find something? I mean, am I in trouble because...?”
“Not unless you’re knowingly concealing something,” Sullivan replied.
While Scott gaped, Sullivan set off across the property to the pile of debris that Scott had pointed out. The man lagged behind, fumbling in his pocket for his cell phone. He stabbed a button and cursed under his breath as he waited. Sullivan paused, tuning a sharp ear while pretending to examine the soil. In his line of work, it never paid to assume anyone was above suspicion.
“Sandy!” the man exclaimed. “Call me ASAP. Holy fuck, man! What the hell did you get me into?”
Green stood at the door of the command post and watched the pair climb out of the car onto the grassy shoulder. Gibbs headed straight for the truck with the eagerness of a puppy on the scent, but the woman hung back, shielding her eyes with a gloved hand as her gaze swept the village square. She tottered an instant on her spike-heeled boots and tugged her fur collar tighter around her neck before turning resolutely towards him.
Green held the door open for her as she clambered awkwardly up the steps. Inside, she paused and flicked her wary gaze around the gleaming chrome interior. She was all sinews and angles, with brassy tips on her black cropped hair and a harsh red slash of lipstick across her sallow face. She looked nothing like the lush, seductive teenager of twenty years ago, yet Green would have known her anywhere.
He extended his hand. “I’m Inspector Green. Thank you for coming, Ms. Vincelli.”
“Albert. Got married. Divorced.” She sized him up with tired, pouchy eyes. “I heard you were looking for me. What’s this about?”
He glanced at the work stations sandwiched along the walls. The truck was a marvel of high-tech efficiency, but hardly a place to put a skittish witness at ease. “Let’s go across to the church where we’ll be more comfortable. Gibbs, if that stuff is drinkable,” he said, nodding towards a coffee pot hissing on the counter, “bring us some coffees and then join us, okay?”
Gibbs’ eyes were dancing with triumph, although by his own admission, he had played only a minor role in her surprise appearance. The Mediterranean grape vine must have been buzzing, for she had walked into the downtown headquarters on her own, asking to see him. Now she followed Green obediently across the square to the Anglican church, pausing only briefly on the alien threshold before joining Green in the small ante-room. She sank into the padded vinyl chair he offered her and crossed one lean, stocking-clad leg over the other, affecting a casual, slightly bored air. But her fingers betrayed her. Laden with rings and topped by inch-long crimson nails, they tapped a restless rhythm on the arm of the chair.
Green sat down in an adjacent chair, affecting a chatty mood that was nearly impossible in the watchful eye of a stained glass Jesus. “You’re a difficult person to track down,” he began amiably. “Where are you living now?”
Her fingers stopped. “Am I in trouble here?”
“Not at all. We’re hoping you can help us with an incident that occurred out here twenty years ago.”
“So this doesn’t have to do with Rocky? My ex?”
Green shook his head. “We need your address for our report, that’s all. Routine.”
“I was out west, but I’m back in Ottawa now.” She paused, like a woman who’d learned to choose her words carefully, then dictated her address. “I’ve been kinda keeping out of Rocky’s way. So what’s this incident you’re talking about?” Abruptly her eyes widened. “Twenty years... Jeeze, Tommy Pettigrew! The same Tom Pettigrew that abducted that kid on the news?”
“I understand you and he were close back then?”
She was still caught in the revelation. “I should have made the connection. That’s totally something Tommy would do. Jump in, do something wild, and then find himself in a mess. But what’s this got to do with twenty years ago?”
Briefly Green described Lawrence’s death, the discovery of the love letters, and the possibility that Derek had been murdered. Sophia reacted with pure, deathly pale, mouth- dropping horror, betraying no sign that she had any foreknowledge. Beneath the brassy style and the prickly façade, Green sensed a woman who cared. When Gibbs burst in with the coffee, she busied herself with cream and sugar for several minutes to regain control.
Once she’d had three unsteady sips, she shook her head in dismay. “So you think Lawrence killed Derek?”
“That’s the way the evidence is leaning,” Green replied. “Knowing the family as you did, what do you think?”
“Lorrie was a very sick puppy, but he was always a gentle kid. Sensitive and sweet. He couldn’t stand meanness, and I never saw him fight back, even when kids picked on him.”
The use of the diminutive name startled Green, for no one, not even Sandy or Tom, had referred to the dead man as Lorrie. It occurred to Green that the nicknames of the Pettigrew children implied a family warmth that belied the bitterness of their later lives. “But people in the village seemed afraid of him,” he said. “Some parents wouldn’t let their children go to the Pettigrew farm because of him.”
“That’s just because they didn’t know him. And anyway, he worshipped Derek! Derek was the only one in the family who was nice to him. Now if Lorrie was going to kill anyone, I would have bet Tommy.”
“Why?”
“Tommy was so mean to him. And...” She flushed, giving him yet another glimpse of the softer woman inside.
“And?”
“And Lorrie believed in being good. He wanted people to be pure.”
“Which Tom wasn’t?”
She chuckled. “Hardly. Poor Lorrie worried so much about Tommy’s soul. Tommy didn’t give a damn about his soul.”
“Yet you went out with him?”
“Yeah. I sure pick ’em.” She began to swing her leg up and down, and a wistful smile curved her lips. “Tommy was like riding a roller coaster; the lows were scary, but the highs were really, really amazing.”
Green told her about the love letter Tom had written her. “Why did you break up with him?”
She looked surprised to hear about the letter. “Tommy wrote something? Boy, he must have been more desperate than I thought. Poor Tommy. All he ever wanted was to be a somebody, but he couldn’t read worth a damn, so he flunked out of high school and then got fired from all his jobs because of his temper.”
Green thought of Isabelle Boisvert and the boy in the back of Tom’s truck. Deftly he changed gears. “Tell me about his temper.”
“He wouldn’t learn to take crap, you know? Life is full of crap, from the Grade Two teacher who sticks you in the corner to the boss who yells because you ordered the wrong screw. Tommy’s gotta make an argument out of everything. And when we’d go out, any guy that looked at me sideways, Tommy would take him on.”
“Was he ever violent?”
“Sometimes, if the other guy wanted to push it too. Lots of times, Tommy would go home at night with a bloody nose.” A vivid picture was beginning to emerge in Green’s mind of family life at the Pettigrew farm. Of wild, headstrong Tom and gentle, timid Lawrence, of parents struggling to cope with the clashing spirits of their many sons. “What about Derek? Was he more like Lawrence or Tom?”
The mention of Derek erased the wistful smile from her lips. She dropped her eyes sadly. “I can’t believe he’s dead. What a waste! Everybody thought Derek would be a somebody. He was so smart. Like Lorrie, he’d never fight, kept everything in. But he was strong inside himself, you know? Like he knew where he was going and could leave all this family stuff behind.”
“Was Tom jealous of him?”
“Oh, totally!”
“Did he have reason? Over you, I mean?”
She shook her head, but alarm flashed across her face. “There was nothing there! Derek and me talked a bit. One day, especially, I was going out to the farm and—” She clamped her hand to her mouth in dismay. “Mamma mia,” she murmured.
“What?”
“Nothing. I just thought what if... No.” She whipped her head back and forth, as if to chase the thought away.
Green leaned forward sharply. “What if what?”
She chewed her lower lip and splayed her fingers to rearrange each ring in turn. Green waited until she finally made up her own mind. “One day I was going out to see Tommy, and I took the river path because it was dry enough.”
“When was this?”
“Just before I broke up with Tommy and left town.”
“When was that? Spring of ’84?”
She nodded. “May. Derek was just back from the university, maybe a couple of weeks. He was getting ready to go to the States.” She looked up in horror. “Jeez, you mean... he never even left?”
“Looks that way.” Green curbed his impatience with an effort, sensing the case was about to break open before his eyes. “Please go on, Sophia. You were going out to meet Tom.”
She nodded. Absently, her crimson nails carved deep indentations into the vinyl arms of the chair. “I heard yelling in the distance from the farm. Men’s voices, really loud. It made me nervous, because I knew Tommy and his father argued a lot, and it always put Tommy in a rotten mood. I didn’t really want to see him if he was so mad. So I waited in the woods, and suddenly I saw Derek coming down the path. He was kind of running, kind of limping, but his head was down so he didn’t see me. When he reached this big tree—the old maple with the tree fort in it—he leaned against it and started bawling. He had a big bruise on his cheek and kinda cradled himself like every sob hurt. I never seen a guy so upset, so I asked him what was wrong. That was the main time we really talked. He said he didn’t know what to do with his life, ’cause everything he wanted was against what his family believed, and he had to get out of here if he was going to survive.”
“Did he say who beat him up?”
She shook her head, but the crimson nails dug deeper, as if to suppress her unvoiced fear. “He talked about wanting to help people, maybe be a minister, but the kind that preached the true message that Jesus gave. Not the tight-ass, unforgiving types his family liked. But he didn’t know where he could go. We’d had a couple of talks before about how his parents wanted him to be an engineer, but he wanted to help people. Build spiritual bridges, he said. Not physical ones.” She blushed at the unfamiliar sound of the words from her lips. “Derek always had his head in the clouds.”
“Doesn’t sound like enough reason for a beating, or for tears.”
“Well, I think there was a woman too. That he loved, but couldn’t have.”
Green perked up. Maybe the mysterious “S” Derek was supposed to run away with. “Any name?”
“No, I just got the feeling it couldn’t work out.”
Green eyed her thoughtfully. She had relaxed slightly and was trying to smooth out the dents she’d made in the vinyl, but she still seemed spooked. Something about Derek’s beating and Tom’s jealousy troubled her. Because Lawrence had intercepted the note about catching the bus, perhaps she had never learned the full depth of Derek’s feeling. Could it be that she was just now putting the signals together?
“Do you think that woman might have been you?” he asked. “And that Tom suspected it?”
She looked shocked. “Oh Jeez, no! I mean...if Derek liked me, he never let on.”
Despite her pretense at shock, Green wasn’t convinced. “But you thought Tom gave him the beating because of you, right? Is that why you broke up with him?”
She looked up from her fingers to give him a reproachful frown, as if he was making her face possibilities she preferred to avoid. “Tommy saw us talking in the woods,” she muttered. “He saw me put my arm around Derek. He freaked out. I don’t know if he beat up Derek, but his freak-out scared me enough that I thought ‘I need to get out of here’. So I told Tommy it was over and then I asked my parents to put me on the first plane over to Italy.” She smiled. “Believe me, they were only too happy. Nona Vincelli was already fixing up the bedroom in Orvieto.”
Green’s instincts were screaming. Whatever the true extent of Sophia’s and Derek’s relationship, the final fateful days before the tragedy were slowly coming to light and the mystery of the stolen notes was falling into place. Tom—wild, dangerous Tom—had been in love with Sophia and insanely jealous of his older brother’s friendship with her. Then Derek was beaten up, Sophia suspected Tom was responsible, therefore she broke up with him. Lawrence stole Tom’s letter begging for a second chance, and Sophia left town, leaving a desperate, vengeful Tom blaming...who? Derek, who had stolen her affections? Or Lawrence, who had thwarted Tom’s attempt to win her back?
A number of questions remained unanswered. Namely, had Tom known that Lawrence stole his letter? Who had actually beaten up Derek, and who was the real object of his love? But one thing was becoming increasing clear, Green realized with a shiver of foreboding. Of all the members of the family, Lawrence was not the one with the most rage and the most compelling reason to murder Derek. Tom was.