Green leaned forward. “Then why did they all come back? Why was Lawrence rooting around in the farm yard that morning, looking for a treasure box he had buried twenty years ago?”
“We don’t know for sure that was him. It could have been Derek.”
Green shook his head. “Lawrence was there. The crucifix was found in the woods, and we know Lawrence had it. So he was there.”
Sullivan groaned. He was reaching for Green’s beer again when the waitress arrived with one of his own. She’d been serving there forever, still wearing a black mini skirt and a white blouse pulled tight across her breasts. The only sign of aging was the slow collection of wrinkles around her bright red lips and heavily shadowed eyes, which drank in Sullivan now with unconcealed lust.
“Hi, Sarge! Missed me, did you?”
Sullivan gave her the required grin. “Haven’t been able to sleep a wink, Alice.”
Her red lips drew back in a knowing smile. “Have to work on that. What’ll you have, love?”
Sullivan pointed to Green. “Same as him, only skip the hot peppers.”
She shook her head. “You gotta learn to live dangerously.”
“Eating with him is dangerous enough.”
Alice laughed, a throaty chuckle that made her cleavage quiver and her buttons strain, then she sashayed off towards the kitchen.
Sullivan’s smile faded as soon as her back was turned, and he slumped back in the booth. “I really just want to go home, Mike. It’s been a long day. Besides, Mary’s out showing a house, and that means Lizzie has to take Sean to hockey.”
“But we have to eat, right? And this way we can talk about the case too.”
“I don’t want to talk about the fucking case any more. Besides, don’t you have a few family obligations of your own?”
“Our kitchen is still in chaos. My end of the deal is that I pick up smoked meat, a rye and poppyseed strudel on my way out.” He grinned. “Sharon forgives a lot of sins for a fresh poppyseed strudel.”
“Sharon forgives a lot, period. The woman’s headed for sainthood.”
Green laughed. “Fortunately, not in all areas. But the sooner we figure out what the hell is going on, the sooner we both get home to our saintly wives.”
Sullivan took a deep slug of his beer and sighed. “Fine. I’m here anyway, so shoot.”
“I had a brief interview with Tom out at the farm,” Green began. “And he said the same thing Robbie told us. That Derek had sent postcards from some place in the States, but Tom’s had no personal contact with him in years. In fact, Tom said he came back to the farm house to find Derek’s address.”
“And you believe that? That doesn’t sound like you.”
Green sipped his own beer while he brought his irritation in check. He needed Sullivan to participate, not begrudge every second he had to sit there.
“Well, let’s assume it’s true and see where it takes us.” He began to tick off points on his fingers. “Let’s say twenty years ago, Tom was in love with Sophia and wrote her that letter begging for a second chance. We know Sophia disappeared shortly afterwards, and Derek never went to Berkeley as he was supposed to. That torn note suggests he had a secret lover he may have run off with. Maybe there was a huge fight over Sophia—remember that note had blood on it—and so Derek and Sophia dropped out of sight. Derek could have concealed his true whereabouts from his family and sent some postcards to reassure his mother, while he was living happily in the States with Sophia all these years.”
Sullivan signalled Alice for another draught. “I’d say you just put Tom at the top of our list of murder suspects. He never got his life back together after his big brother stole his girl, and he’s had plenty of time to build up a head of steam. So he dreams up a way to get Derek back up to the farm— probably told him about their father being sick—and he sets up the kill. Typical for a drunk. Blame everyone in the world for your failings except yourself.”
Green nodded impatiently. “I agree he’s up there. But some things don’t fit. First of all, if Tom murdered Derek, why did he ID the body so readily? Why not lie?”
Sullivan snorted. “He’s crafty. He’s been in the system often enough to know about dental matching and DNA. He knows we’d ID Derek eventually, and then it would look even more suspicious for him.”
“At the very least, why didn’t he say he couldn’t be sure after all these years? I watched his face, Brian. He was so shocked, there’s no way he could have made up a credible lie. If he had killed Derek, he’d have had lots of time to figure out what to say.”
“But if Tom didn’t set this up, what made Derek suddenly decide to come home again?”
“Maybe his luck changed. MacPhail said the victim had fallen on hard times recently. Maybe his life fell apart, and he came back up here looking to reconnect.”
“At exactly the same time Tom shows up looking for his address? Come on, Mike, the coincidence is preposterous. Tom’s been playing us from the beginning, and you’ve been sitting on committees too long to recognize it.”
Green held his temper with an effort. He knew it was preposterous, and it didn’t help his mood to have Sullivan point it out. But at least Sullivan, as grumpy as he was, had begun to play the devil’s advocate Green needed him to be.
Alice appeared, balancing their platters in one hand and Sullivan’s second draught in the other. Green said nothing but watched uneasily as Sullivan downed a huge swig, for Sullivan’s bloodshot eyes and the foul temper that morning still worried him. He knew Sullivan usually kept to a strict two-drink limit in order to avoid the risk of alcoholism that ran in his genes. Sullivan prided himself on the achievements and respect he’d earned as a cop, but a man can only take the stress and disappointment so long.
But Green knew Sullivan well enough to recognize this was not the time to broach the reason for his mood. He needed to rekindle Sullivan’s enthusiasm and his passion for his work, so he searched for a way to draw him in. He gave Sullivan the time to douse his french fries in ketchup and shovel a fistful into his mouth before resuming.
“Of course the coincidence is preposterous,” Green said. “But you’re forgetting an even bigger coincidence. Lawrence was there too, and in my book he’s at least as good a murder suspect as Tom.”
Sullivan paused in the act of balancing succulent slices of smoked meat on his rye and looked at Green thoughtfully. “And what would be his motive after all these years?”
“Maybe revenge for locking him away all those years?”
Sullivan set down his precariously balanced sandwich and sat back. Green was glad to see that he’d abandoned his beer and was deep in thought. “But I’ve just spent the day talking to the Brockville people about him. They describe him as gentle and kind of childlike most of the time. Maybe he’d lash out if he got desperate, but he wasn’t really capable of that kind of long-term planning.”
“But Angie Hogencamp also told me that after a month of being off his meds, he’d be getting delusional again, so anything is possible. He might have started thinking about how they all betrayed him, and all those years might have seemed like yesterday to him.”
“We’re still stuck with the same question though, Mike. What brought Derek back? It’s just too big a coincidence to have three brothers show up in the same place twenty years later.”
“I agree there are still a lot of things that don’t fit.” Green paused, feeling more relaxed now that he had aired all his ideas. “I don’t know which brother killed Derek. But I do think if we’re ever going to get to the bottom of it, we’d better start taking a closer look at what Derek’s been up to all these years. And I think, just to verify Tom’s story, we should still have Angie Hogencamp up to see the body.”
* * *
At eight o’clock the next morning, Sullivan was scrolling through his emails, checking for urgent ones and half hoping he’d encounter one from HR that apologized for the mix-up and congratulated him on his promotion. It wasn’t there, of course, and th
e heaviness of the day settled upon him like a wet shroud when he reached the end of the list. Preempting him, Green had called an eight o’clock team briefing to plan the next stage of the investigation, and Sullivan was going to be late. With an effort he pulled out the Pettigrew file and picked up the phone to call Mrs. Hogencamp.
When she picked up, she sounded breathless and rushed.
“I’m so glad you called, Sergeant!” she exclaimed. “Your questions yesterday got me thinking. I don’t know if there was a girl or not, but Lawrence was obsessed about something sexual when he was first admitted. He kept rambling to the nurses about sin and something being an abomination, about how God punished sinners, and he tried to save them. It made no sense, and the doctors just called it word salad. Gibberish. But if you listened carefully, he did seem to be trying to explain something. Trying to tell us something that had happened.”
Sullivan flipped open his notebook, fully alert. Just when they thought they’d figured out what the case was all about, another ball came in from left field. Green was going to want every word. “Could you figure out what he was trying to say?”
“That he’d somehow failed. That Satan had taken control and had to be destroyed.”
Sullivan groaned. Satan. There was a bad guy for you. “And did you figure out who this Satan figure was?”
“No, but he kept saying he had to go back home to get Satan.”
“Did he mention any of his brothers in these ramblings?”
“He mentioned several names over and over, but I can’t remember them all. It’s been such a long time.”
“Try, Mrs. Hogencamp. This is very important.”
“Oh, dear.” Sullivan listened to the sound of her muttering to herself. “Tommy? Derry, something like that.”
“Derek?” Sullivan asked carefully.
“Derry, Lorrie—oh dear, I forget.”
“What about girls? Anyone called Sophia?”
“Oh yes!” Mrs. Hogencamp’s voice rose with excitement. “That’s when he’d get really agitated. That’s when the Satan and sex and abomination would come in. His passion was actually quite scary.”
“I’m not an expert in schizophrenia, Mrs. Hogencamp, so I need your help. Based on what you know of him, say he liked a girl and he surprised one of his brothers in bed with her. Would that trigger this Satan and abomination rant?”
“The boys had a very strict upbringing,” she said. “Probably sex outside of marriage would be a very serious sin. If Lawrence had been aroused by a girl, he would have seen himself as dirty and evil. If he found his brother acting on those desires he loathed and repressed in himself...yes, he certainly would consider it an abomination.”
Sullivan hesitated, searching for the most neutral phrase so he would not put words in her mouth. “What would he be likely to do? Kill himself?”
“It depends on how much self-loathing he had for his own sexual urges.” She paused, her uncertainty returning. Sullivan could feel her retreating. “It’s complicated to speculate. I hardly feel qualified...”
“Guess.”
“He’s a paranoid. Betrayal and revenge are central to their delusions. I think, if he were going to kill himself, he’d be much more likely to take one or both of them with him.”
* * *
Back in the days when Green was in the field, his briefings had been one of the highlights of Sullivan’s day. Green had a way of getting the big picture and seeing how the evidence fit together that was pure genius. Even his wild flights of fancy proved right more often than not. In his field days, he loved to pace in front of the chalkboard, surrounded by crime scene photos and witness statements, scribbling points and drawing arrows back and forth until his case summary looked like a massive drunken spider’s web. However, Bob Gibbs had long since demonstrated the power of computer software to project the case discussion onto a screen and to underline, highlight, and link ideas so that everyone could decipher them. Furthermore, at the end, the discussion and action plans were neatly summarized on a file in a disc, rather than erased with the next shift. So Green continued to pace, but he had replaced his chalk with a laser pointer and relinquished the recording role to Gibbs.
By the time Sullivan finally reached the briefing room after his phone call, Gibbs had a neat diagram projected onto the screen at the end of the room. In the centre of the web was a big circle marked “Derek?”, and “murder/suicide” Around them like satellites were bubbles containing the names of witnesses and family members, with questions to be answered. Green was just pointing to Derek’s bubble on the screen.
“Detective Peters, I want you to—” He broke off as he spotted Sullivan, and he raised a questioning brow. Whether the question was personal or professional, Sullivan wasn’t sure. The man was far too astute not to have noticed his black mood.
“Any developments?” Green asked with careful ambiguity.
Briefly, Sullivan summarized his phone conversation with Angela Hogencamp. He caught the glint of triumph in Green’s eyes, but this time it only served to depress him, for Green had said all along that Sophia was at the bottom of things. Why was the damn man right so much of the time?
“Bingo,” Green said. “You’ve got a relationship with Mrs. Hogencamp, so I think you should pursue things at her end. Get her up here to view the body. I want you to show her Robbie’s photo album too. It has pictures of all the brothers, and maybe she can tell if any of them visited Lawrence in recent months. As for these other tasks,” he waved his pointer across the screen. “Can you think of any avenues of investigation that I’ve missed?”
You know fucking well there aren’t any, Sullivan thought. Since when do you miss anything? And since when does it matter what I think anyway? I’m only the officer of record on the goddamn case.
His scowl must have given him away, because before he could shake his head, Green walked over, laid a page of notes in front of him and headed out the door. “Okay. I got the briefing started while we were waiting for you, but I leave you to it. I was going to suggest Peters track down Derek’s old college friends and Gibbs carry on looking for Sophia. But whatever you think is best.”
Sullivan felt a prick of shame for his childish thoughts. He pushed back the bleakness with an effort as he studied the screen. “Any thoughts on the Pettigrew father? We don’t have much on him. I can pop by the hospital after I pick up Robbie’s album.”
“No need,” said Green cheerfully. “I thought I’d fit him in myself during my lunch hour. The hospital’s not far from my house, so I can drop in on Bob the contractor.” With a grin, he ducked out the door.
It took Sullivan fifteen minutes to complete the briefing. He had no qualms about sending Gibbs off with an Italian translator to phone all the Vincellis in the small Tuscany town where Sophia had supposedly been sent. But he wanted to talk Peters through every step of her inquiry before he unleashed her on the educated, well-spoken and politically correct crowd at Carleton University. No psychos, shrinks and the like, not a hint of cop bluster or arrogance. Ask politely, listen to the answers, and always thank them for their help.
He could tell from her pout that she was insulted by the tight leash, but he had no patience for egos. Let her prove him wrong by doing a first-rate job. After he’d dispatched her, he was heading back to his desk to call Mrs. Hogencamp again when he spotted Green watching him through his half open door. Green cocked his head to signal him to come in. Sullivan hesitated, bristling at the prospect of more Green meddling. But instead, when he finally entered the office, Green rose to shut the door behind him. He looked grave.
“Brian, I didn’t want you to hear this from anyone else. Adam Jules is being transferred to East Division and Barbara Devine is taking over CID.”
Sullivan groaned inwardly. They were going to have a conversation he didn’t want to have. Not now. Not when he was still feeling crapped on and sold short. Adam Jules would be a loss; he was a cop’s cop, who knew and respected every job under his command. Barbara De
vine was a joke. Smart, tenacious and political, but nowhere near ready to run the most technically demanding and emotionally brutal division in the entire force. But today, none of that mattered. Nothing mattered, because for the first time in twenty years, his job didn’t matter. And he was afraid that if Green made him talk about it, he’d tell him exactly that.
Green was watching him keenly, so Sullivan kept his expression as deadpan as he could. “Worse for you than for me,” he said. “You’re closer to the angels.”
“And Gaetan Larocque is the new staff sergeant.”
“I knew that,” Sullivan said, to head off any expression of condolence.
“I was afraid you did. Tough break, Brian.”
“Not your fault. Not anyone’s fault, just the way the goddamn system works. A quota of this, a balance of that, bilingualism always an asset. Whether the guy actually knows dick all about investigating major crimes doesn’t matter.”
“Larocque’s a solid investigator. He’ll learn. And you’ll still be as indispensable around here as you always were. Probably more so.”
“Yeah, training yet another rookie cop how to conduct a professional interview.” Sullivan slumped in the chair and put his feet on the desk. Fuck it, they were going to have this conversation after all. “I’ve been thinking maybe I need to move on.”
Green looked at the ceiling. Sighed and shook his head.
“I’ve been in this unit twelve of my twenty-one years on the force, Mike. Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe they don’t see me as diverse enough.”
“Brian, this place can’t run without you. Not with Devine at the helm and Larocque parading the troops.”
Sullivan smiled wryly. “The place will learn to get along. They’ve got you.”
“But there’s nothing like Major Crimes. What are you going to do? High Tech? Auto Theft?”
“Maybe. I’ll look around, see what I like. There are lots of ways of being a cop, Green, and a couple of short stints in other positions would bulk up my CV. So when another staff sergeant opening comes along...”
Fifth Son Page 15
