The Husbands Read online

  THE HUSBANDS

  How far would you go to find out who killed your wife?

  T.J. BREARTON

  First published 2019

  Joffe Books, London

  www.joffebooks.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The spelling used is American English except where fidelity to the author’s rendering of accent or dialect supersedes this.

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  ©T. J. Brearton

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  EPILOGUE

  ALSO BY T.J. BREARTON

  For Oakley

  PROLOGUE

  How do you feel?

  The text message woke him up. His vision was fuzzy, bad dreams chasing him out of sleep. After reading the message a second time, he realized it originated from “No Caller ID.”

  Gray midday light came through the bedroom windows. The air smelled stale, like bad breath. It was one of the worst times of day.

  Actually, they were all the worst. The nights when the house was dead quiet, just the sound of the wind outside, the occasional pop as floorboards and joists contracted. The stolid morning air in the house, no smell of coffee, no foreheads to kiss before work. Noon, with its vast emptiness and aimlessness. He felt dead. Life was a prison.

  Ted wiped a hand over his face, sat up and picked up the phone.

  How do you feel?

  Probably a wrong number. Or someone from the funeral home, though it was too early for that, and too odd a question. Maybe someone from Megan’s family with a new phone? But a mobile number would’ve shown up. It could’ve been a reporter trying to hide their identity. There was one who’d already published two articles on the so-called Park Killer.

  Ted replied: Who is this?

  He swung his legs out of bed, the floor cold under his bare feet, and the phone vibrated in his hand.

  I want to know how you’re feeling.

  He stared at the words as a new message appeared.

  We should talk.

  He tapped out a response. Think U have wrong number.

  The reply was fast: No I don’t.

  Then: You’re Ted Archer.

  Ted felt the blood pulsing in his neck. He punched in another reply but the caller beat him to it.

  I killed your wife and son.

  Ted dropped the phone on the bed like it was on fire. He stared at it, then he snatched it up and called Detective Severin, but hung up before the call went through. Severin wouldn’t do anything.

  He paced the room, waiting, trying to think. He typed: Call me.

  And then added: If Ur who U say you are.

  The phone rang, the ring tone his wife had given him — “Sharp Dressed Man” by ZZ Top. As a joke. When she was alive. Ted could hardly move.

  At last he put the phone to his ear and answered. “Who are you?”

  “Ted,” a male voice said. “How are you feeling?”

  “Who are you?”

  “I told you.”

  Ted’s whole body shook. His vision faltered. “What’s your name?” This was the guy who’d killed Megan and Colton.

  “You’ll find out who I am. I promise you. First, listen.”

  “I’ll kill you,” Ted said. “I’ll kill you.” He couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  “I’ll let you kill me,” the caller said. “If you want to. That’s the point, Ted.”

  “What point? What point?” It was hard to breathe. He looked out the window, not really seeing. “I’ll . . . kill you.”

  “Ted . . .”

  “I’ll find you.”

  “Ted! You’re not . . . let me say this, because I have to be brief.”

  Ted took a deep breath. This might be his only chance. “I’m listening,” he said.

  “Good. I asked you how you’re feeling.”

  On the verge of blacking out. “I don’t know.”

  “Before I texted you. What about then?”

  “I was asleep.”

  “Before that. How have you—”

  “How do you think I’ve been feeling? What kind of — how do you think? They’re on my mind every second of every day.”

  “Ah! Let me interrupt you. I don’t have much time. Right there — you said it. They’re on your mind every second. And this is causing you pain. This is causing you suffering. There’s nothing physically assaulting you — it’s all in your mind.”

  What the hell was he talking about? Hang up. Call Severin. This guy has said all sorts of things that could mean something. Think like a cop. Maybe they can’t trace the number but—

  Ted pulled the phone away from his ear and stared, wondering if it had something like a call recorder on it. He’d never used one, but he didn’t know half of what his phone could do. Maybe something else? There was an old tape recorder around somewhere. He moved into the kitchen and started yanking out drawers.

  “Ted, healing is only possible when we stop heaping blame and shame upon ourselves. When we seek to understand the conditions shaping our lives and understand the mind for what it really is.”

  Listen to the voice — any accent? No. Is he excited? He sounds calm. Listen for background noise.

  “Ted, are you there?”

  He couldn’t find the tape recorder. He scrambled for a pen and paper. Keep him talking. “I don’t understand what you mean.”

  “I’m talking about the nature of the mind, Ted. The nature of suffering.”

  Ted found a pen, yanked off the cap with his teeth and started scribbling on an instruction manual for one of his tools.

  “What you’re experiencing right now, Ted. The pain you feel — you don’t have to.”

  He tried to listen and write down what the caller had already said at the same time. His writing was a mess. He threw the pen aside. “You sound like a shrink.” Where is he? That’s the most important thing.

  Ted said, “Maybe certain people — you know — they get stuff like that, get into these ideas you’re talking about. But not where I live . . .”

  He waited for the killer to give something away.

  “That’s a fair point. People go to church. They go to work. They raise families. They’re lost in their delusions.”

  The mention of raising a family produced a familiar sensation, one he’d gotten used to over the past two weeks: an elevator in freefall, stomach floating. It was true he thought about his wife and son incessantly, but it wasn’t exactly continuous. He could preoccupy himself for fleeting moments; he could punch the wall, he could run until h
is chest exploded, or just lose himself for a few seconds in some automatic activity like brushing his teeth, but when reality crashed back in, it often felt like falling. Like dying. Like hell re-forming around him.

  Silence.

  “Hello?”

  Quieter than before: “Ted. I asked you how you were feeling. But I actually know how you’re feeling — you feel sick and lost. You were all wrapped up in your family, in who you thought you were, and now that’s gone. But you gotta see the bigger picture here. The disease of identity causes more pain and suffering than any pathogen. It promotes hate and greed and war.”

  Ted was barely listening now. Instinct took over. He headed out of the bedroom, toward the stairs, the basement, the shotgun and box of double-ought shells.

  “It’s a problem for all mankind,” the voice continued. “You know what I mean? What do you think a vaccine is? You have to produce a little disease in order to have the cure. The death of your family will help inoculate the planet.”

  Ted switched on the light and bounded down the stairs. Feeling better than he’d felt in days. A spark of something. Purpose.

  In his ear, the killer kept going. “It will be hard for you — it will be the greatest challenge of your life, Ted, but you’ve got everything to gain. And really — literally — nothing left to lose. You see what I mean? You’re now an empty cup.”

  “Uh-huh. I get it.”

  “I gotta go, Ted. But I’ll keep my promise. I’ll tell you who I am. You’ll know — I promise you that. Unless you call the police. If you try anything, you’ll never get that chance. It has to be just you and me. If you talk to the police, I’ll never call you again. They’ll never catch me and you’ll never find me or have the opportunity to kill me.”

  “I don’t understand . . . I don’t believe you.”

  “You can believe me because I’m confident. I’m confident because I’m sure that by the time we’re done, you’ll no longer feel the need.”

  “What?”

  Ted found the shotgun, took it down from the exposed joists. He held it barrel-up in one hand, phone in the other. Think. The guy was local to the region, maybe. He was from here.

  Ted said, “You’re not going to turn yourself in. You can’t convince me my family deserved to die. I’ll never hear from you again. Just tell me now.”

  There was a silence. “Ted. If I fail, then my death at your hands is the correct outcome.”

  Ted sat down with the shotgun across his legs. He felt too heavy to stand. There was a stray sock beside the dryer. His little boy’s sock. Ted felt like throwing up. He tried to load a shotshell but his hands were shaking.

  The caller’s voice was soft now, almost soothing. “Maybe it will help to think of me as crazy. I’m crazy enough to have killed your wife and son and then called you to tell you. You should believe I’m crazy enough to do exactly what I’m saying.”

  The call ended.

  PART ONE

  Are you truly a good person, or are you merely afraid?

  Maybe it’s men with heroic courage who eschew society to become outlaws while cowards follow the rules.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Tuesday, November 27

  Kelly stopped reading when her phone rang. She thought about letting the voicemail pick up but leaned over and checked the number. Then she took a quick hit of her coffee and answered. “Kelly Roth.”

  “Good morning,” Genarro said. “Got something for you.”

  She closed the file and sat up straighter. “Okay, sir.”

  “Good news first or bad news? Well, both could be bad news depending on how you feel about Central New York.”

  She drew a quick breath. “I feel fine about it, sir.”

  “Some guys up there have sent information to ViCAP and are looking for a consultation. These are separate homicides and in different jurisdictions. Two women and one woman and child. There’s also . . . I’d like you to come in, have a look.”

  “All right, sir.”

  “See you in ten, my office.”

  He hung up. Kelly slowly put the phone back in the cradle. She swept aside the document she’d been reading — a psychopath’s mind unspooled on paper. Killers like Billy Bath weren’t legally allowed to profit from memoirs or biographies, but Bath had produced copious personal manifestos. Captured after killing eleven women, he’d then felt the urge to write down all his thoughts, and give them to the FBI to study.

  She clipped her ID to her suit jacket and grabbed her valise. She took the skyway across to the main building for CIRG — the Critical Incident Response Group — four stories up.

  “Come on in, Roth.” Genarro was pushing sixty. He wore a spotless dark blue suit, his hair coiffed into a gray-black swoop. He didn’t get up.

  She sat down opposite him.

  “So,” Genarro said. He pushed a file across his desk. “I’m going to show you Auburn Police Department first. This was seven months ago.”

  Kelly flipped through the file. Pictures of a woman, face-down in a creek.

  “That’s at a spot outside Auburn called Island Park, at the top of Owasco Lake. She was killed late evening, mid-week. There’s a gas station about a hundred yards away, attendant thought he heard a firecracker, but it was a jogger who found her about an hour later. CSS recovered a single .30-30 casing about ten yards from the body. Medical examiner extracted the projectile and the ballistics are consistent with the casing. No sexual assault.”

  Kelly scanned the report, swallowed, and looked up at Genarro. “Victim was pregnant.”

  “Eight weeks. They went to her husband first — something like this screams husband or dejected lover — but the husband was at work, and it seems solid. He works for a company called Xylem and they keep good records. He’s on camera at his job during the shooting. No evident motive.”

  Genarro pushed another file toward her. She looked at the new photos.

  “Second victim,” Genarro said. “Three months ago. This is on the east side of Onondaga Lake. Different lake, sounds similar, but you knew that. Crime-scene did an adequate job, bagged the hands, scoured the scene. Once again, found a .30-30 casing nearby, no fingerprints. Otherwise some beer cans and cigarette butts they brought in for DNA. Also no evidence of sexual assault. Apparently some local duck hunter found her.”

  Kelly looked up from the photos of the dead woman lying in tall grass. “Onondaga Lake is in the middle of the suburbs.”

  “He’s some local guy, that’s his spot. Cops know him — he’s friendly with Liverpool Police, called them direct.” Genarro shifted in his seat. The lines around his eyes stood out against his otherwise smooth skin. “So, at this point, after the second victim, nobody’s talking about a connection yet. For one, she’s not pregnant. The detective in Liverpool came down hard on the husband, too, grilled him for a couple of days. Multiple witnesses claim he spent all night at the restaurant he owns, but she was found in close proximity, less than a mile away.”

  Kelly looked at the female victim in the golden marsh grass, face-down with dirt scattered over her. The next pictures showed close-ups of various body parts. Same MO — shot in the head.

  “Again they couldn’t get anything on the husband so they let him go. With this guy, maybe all the media coverage, I don’t know — he took off.”

  “Took off?”

  “He’s got a cabin on Green Pond in the Adirondacks. State troopers have been keeping an eye on him up there.”

  Genarro slid the final file across the desk. “Last one. This is a double. And it’s rough — there’s a juvenile.”

  The woman was on the ground, fully clothed, blood matting one side of her brown hair like chocolate syrup. Beside her was a young boy on his back, small gray face toward the sky, missing an eye.

  Kelly put the photos back in the folder, mindful of the slight trembling in her hands, and skimmed the autopsy reports. The woman was forty. Her son was ten.

  “This one was in Constantia,” Genarro said, “eleven days a
go. Similar shots to the back of the head, like a witness execution.”

  “And with a .30-30,” Kelly said. “That’s a pretty common load for game hunting. And these hunters keep showing up at the crime scenes . . .”

  “Different type though — deer hunters. They made the emergency call and local deputies responded. It crossed my mind for a minute, too — but it is deer season, and the mother and son were found along a hunting area, so the coincidence is moot. Plus, the duck hunter who found the other one in the tall grass there — he uses shotshells, not jacketed bullets.”

  She looked up at Genarro. “So how did they end up finally linking these? I assume if we’ve been called, someone linked them. Because of the media?”

  He folded his hands together. “In part. The police have kept the information about caliber and bullet casings left at the scenes out of any press conferences. But Broward — that’s the chief of police in Liverpool — knows a guy from Constantia. Somebody’s married to somebody in their families. Broward’s sister, I think, is married to a Constantia cop named Severin. Anyway, it came up over Thanksgiving, everybody together, talking shop. They compared cases then did some digging around and found out about the Auburn case — the one from seven months ago. That’s when they got together on it and called us.”

  She went back through each file, checking dates, locations. “So they hadn’t connected any of these before Thanksgiving; before the twenty-second?”

  “Day after. Broward and Severin were together, talking, and that’s when they hit on it. They called to run it through the database yesterday. Media got a hold of the story on the third killing right about the same time, but there’s only been a couple of articles, and they focus on similarity of locations, so they’re calling him the ‘Park Killer’ since they all happened in some kind of state or local park.”

  “There’s a direction to it,” she said, picturing a map in her mind. “Auburn is southwest of Liverpool, Constantia is northeast.”

  He lifted his eyebrows and said nothing.