Fifth Son Read Online Free PDF Page A

took the photo and recoiled in dismay. “This man is dead!”
    â€œThat’s why we’re anxious to reach the family. Have you the name and phone number of the real estate agent you dealt with?”
    Isabelle fetched a business card, which Sullivan took back to the car to make the call. The husband was eyeing the photo with almost morbid fascination.
    â€œCould that be the son?” Green prompted.
    He shivered and shook his head. “This man is more aged. The man we met was Robert Pettigrew, and he was only in his twenties. No beard, very pleasant-looking.”
    â€œPerhaps this is the father. You never met him?”
    â€œHe was in hospital. He had a stroke, the agent said. That’s why the son had to sell the farm so fast.” He cast an anxious glance at the vast unkempt meadow that surrounded them. In the distance, a copse of maples flamed red and gold against the blue sky. “The whole place is falling to pieces. Like nobody takes care of it since twenty years.”
    Green 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.
    â€œI 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.
    â€œYesterday, 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.”
    â€œIn 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.”
    â€œWhat’s beyond the trees?”
    â€œThe 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