inside it was stocked with the latest in surveillance and communications devices. The two detectives logged in with the scribe before settling down at the work stations. The harvest from phone calls and email checks was meagre, however. On Green’s end, he was happy that Bob had not knocked the house down and that no murders or grievous crimes had cropped up in his absence. Sullivan was less delighted to learn that virtually nothing useful had turned up, either in the canvass of the town nor in the intensive search of the church grounds. Although the name Pettigrew had surfaced a few times, no one could be certain who the dead man was.
But no one would be surprised if it was a Pettigrew at the bottom of the tower. It was a cursed family, they said.
Sullivan logged off, stifled a yawn and headed to the door. “Time to get back to the city, Mike. We’ve got the current address on this Robbie, so I’ll take the photo to him after I drop you off. Hopefully, he’ll be able to ID his own brother and we can wrap this up, pending MacPhail’s autopsy report and the tox results. We’ve found no one who saw an altercation or another individual near the church, and the victim had no defensive wounds on his body, so it’s looking like a self-inflicted. There’s no evidence to suggest foul play was involved.”
“Except the broken wall and the torn piece of jacket,” Green countered. “That could suggest a struggle.”
Sullivan shrugged. “Not much of one, according to Ident. More consistent with him trying to climb over the wall.”
Maybe, Green thought, but there were a few more questions that needed answering before he would be willing to sign off on it. Such as why had the man returned, what was he searching for at his parents’ farm, why had he chosen that particular church?
And perhaps most importantly, how did he get in? Ident reported no evidence of forced entry, the huge padlock hadn’t been touched in years, and the back door had been locked when the police arrived. It was the self-locking kind that the victim might have pulled shut after his entry, but unless he had the skill to crack a combination lock, how had he unlocked the door in the first place?
All in all, it had been an intriguing day, Green thought as they drove back into the city. Manure aside, the air had been crisp and fresh, the fall colours spectacular. The pace out here was slower and the sense of history more vivid than the life he was accustomed to, yet it was important for the Major Crimes Squad to be sensitive to the difference. He felt less hurried and discouraged than he usually felt at the end of a typical office day, and he was quite looking forward to an evening with his family. Even the prospect of the dismantled kitchen did not bother him. Maybe they’d all go out to dinner and spend a bit of real time together.
But when he opened his front door, he found himself just in time to overhear the full blast of adolescent wrath.
“Forget it! You had no fucking business going through my things, and I’m not giving it back! Even if you ground me for a hundred years!”
Four
Sharon Green had staggered through the front door an hour earlier, her head pounding and her feet on fire. Hospital budget cuts were going to do her in. Psychiatric nursing had always been emotionally draining, but as the patients got sicker and their inpatient stays briefer, it was the physical exhaustion she noticed most. She had spent much of her shift trying to wrestle a three hundred pound depressive out of bed into a bath, and she felt rancid from head to toe.
Hannah’s bedroom door was closed, but the pulse of rock music shook the entire house. Something the girl had in common with her father, Sharon observed, surprised yet again by how similar they were, despite having been apart all Hannah’s life.
Sharon knocked on Hannah’s door and waited for an invitation, well aware of her tenuous status as stepmother. A grunt answered her, but in her frazzled state, that was enough. She peeked in.
“I’m ducking into the shower,” she said. “Would you please watch Tony for a few minutes?”
Hannah was sitting cross-legged on her bed, writing something which she snapped shut at the sight of Sharon. She smiled, not at Sharon but at Tony, who was squirming in her arms.
“I’ll take him out,” she said unexpectedly. “I want to mail a letter anyway.”
Sharon knew better than to question the motive for this minor miracle. It was enough that Hannah was volunteering to do something helpful.
Two minutes later, Sharon peeled off her clothes, then stopped at the entrance to the bathroom with dismay. It looked as if a hurricane had hit. The walls dripped moisture, the window and mirror were steamed up, three soggy towels lay scattered on the floor, and Hannah’s school clothes were in a lump outside the shower where she had stepped out of them. Sharon gritted her teeth. Resolutely, she opened the window, picked up the towels and tossed them into the hamper. She resisted the urge to fold the clothes; instead she scooped them up, carted them to Hannah’s room and tossed them on the bed. A gold chain slipped out and fell to the floor.
When she retrieved it and saw what it was, she hesitated. Mike would not be thrilled, but Hannah had been entirely raised by his ex-wife with, as the ex-wife was fond of pointing out, no help from him. If Ashley had seen fit to give Hannah an elaborate gold crucifix, who had the right to protest? Sharon turned the cross over and saw there was an inscription, delicate and worn, but still legible.
“To Derek, with all our love, Mother and Dad.”
She frowned. Hannah was a petite girl with elfin features and sparkling blue eyes. Sharon knew she had already cast her social net wide in the four months she’d been in Ottawa, but Sharon hadn’t realized she’d snared a boy in that time. Snared him so thoroughly that he’d given her a precious piece of personal jewellery.
Sharon put the crucifix on the dresser and headed into the shower. She said nothing when Hannah returned, waiting instead until the girl wandered into the kitchen an hour later, drawn by that unerring instinct of teenagers and pets for the impending arrival of food. Sharon offered her a carrot stick, which Hannah ignored.
“So who’s Derek?”
Hannah’s eyes flew wide in surprise. “What?”
“Derek. The boy who gave you the pendant.”
“Pendant?” Hannah seemed genuinely puzzled, then outrage replaced the surprise on her face. “You searched my room!”
“No, I cleaned up the bathroom.”
“But it was in my pocket!”
Sharon leaned against the counter, sensing that she was handling the situation all wrong. She sought for a way to salvage the scene. “Hannah, I wasn’t trying to be nosy. It fell out, and I wouldn’t mention it but—”
“Then don’t!”
“But it’s obviously something very meaningful from the boy’s parents, and I don’t think-”
“He gave it to me!”
“I know he did, and I’m sure his heart was in the right place.”
But Hannah was having none of it. She turned red, as if her very freedom were being challenged, and took a deep breath to launch into her counterstrike. At the very moment of that counterstrike, Green walked in. Hannah took one look at him and flounced out of the room. The whole house shook when her bedroom door slammed.
Green
