The Husbands Read online

  “But they’re spread out over time,” she said. “So maybe that doesn’t matter.”

  He watched her. “You don’t recognize any of the names? You’re from the area. Not Haig? How about Payton or Archer?”

  “No, sir. I don’t know any of the victims or their husbands.”

  “MO and ballistics match for each victim so it could be four people on one gun. Get the gun, get the perp. But the signature isn’t exactly jumping out. There’s three women, ages from twenty-one to forty, one pregnant, plus one ten-year-old boy. Nothing in common except that they were in isolated areas. Was it chance? Was it premediated? Is this guy just driving around looking for victims? That’s what we need to know.”

  Genarro got up and went over to the window. “So I’d like you to go up there. You’ve expressed a desire to get into the field, you’re a good researcher and I think you could use the experience. Consult with the lead investigators, offer what you can. There’s a federal prosecutor watching, named Starkey. He’ll pull up a chair when we need him. In the meantime, I’d start by touching base with Chief Broward in Liverpool.”

  “Liverpool’s tiny. He’s a police chief; a paper-pusher. Looks like the County MCU was involved.”

  “It was their crime scene unit on that second one, but I think Broward is your point person. He’s the one who called us.”

  She stayed sitting. The questions and concerns popped up too fast to inspect them all.

  Genarro said, “Broward used Law Enforcement Online to plug in everything from the three jurisdictions — crime scene descriptions, victim descriptive data, lab reports — I’ll forward it all on to you. I’ve talked to Broward, and he seems on the ball, but this is spread out over different jurisdictions; everybody seems friendly and sharing information but they’re . . . they punch out and go home at the end of the day.” Genarro meant that the people involved had lives. Kelly didn’t. She didn’t argue. He said, “I need you to analyze, check everything against their timeline and form your own investigative matrix. What do you think?”

  Don’t hesitate. “I’m good to go, sir.”

  He gave her a long look, almost paternal. “It’s getting cold up there. You still have a thick enough winter coat?”

  “I burned everything when I moved to Virginia, sir.”

  He blinked, hesitating. “I didn’t know you joked, Roth.”

  “There’s some truth to it, sir.”

  * * *

  Packing was a pain. She not only didn’t have a good winter coat, her buttery-leather boots wouldn’t last a day around those lakes and marshes. She took a break, drinking a cool beer on the screened-in terrace. It was warm in Virginia. Ribbons of mist floated beneath the large Laurel Oaks, the air scented with night-blooming gardenias.

  She wondered whether to tell her family she was coming. She’d been straight with Genarro — there was no conflict, she had nothing against Central New York, and what had happened to her there could’ve happened to her anywhere. But she’d chosen to stay in Stafford after completing FBI training and hooked up with the Behavioral Science Unit. One benefit was never having to go back home.

  Images from the crime scenes kept surfacing. She didn’t know if she was ready for this.

  She forced herself to finish packing. She’d buy a warmer winter jacket when she got there, give it away before she left.

  * * *

  Up ahead of the dawn, into her routine, first push-ups, then sit-ups, then pull-ups on the bar she’d bought for her rented apartment. Her flight was in four hours, it was still dark, but she was wide awake.

  She took a quick shower, rubbed the steam away from the mirror and looked at the scar running down her torso.

  There were jokes during training that she was out to prove women could do it better. They called her Clarice Starling, even though it’d been decades since The Silence of the Lambs. People couldn’t let it go, apparently. She didn’t look like Jodie Foster anyway, but had full lips, thick dark brown hair and her father’s hazel eyes.

  It was a breezy morning, climbing to sixty degrees when she boarded American Airlines Flight 4612 out of Reagan National Airport in D.C. headed for Syracuse, NY — a one-way ticket. The FBI was frugal, and she flew coach. The scheduled flight time was an hour and twenty minutes. The cabin was crowded — people still flying home from the Thanksgiving holiday.

  She had a seat in the back of the plane, which was quieter, though it smelled of urine. Kelly opened her laptop.

  Everything on the murders had been uploaded before she left — digital versions of what cops called “murder books” — copies of field reports, medical examiner’s reports, interviews and witness statements, CSS reports and a few crime scene diagrams originally done in pencil and scanned. She also had with her the online versions of the two newspaper articles which had very little to go on besides rumor and fear.

  Tammy Haig was twenty-one. Her husband Blake, twenty-five, worked as a Utility Assembler for Xylem, a water technology company. Tammy was a psychology student at Wells College. They’d been expecting their first child.

  According to the husband, who worked nights, Tammy often stopped at Island Park on the way home from her evening class. She had entered the nearby convenience store at precisely 8:22 p.m. on Wednesday, April 25, to get something to eat. The jogger who’d found her dead in the creek claimed the Fitbit he’d been wearing had said 9:28. The medical examiner put time of death at 8:30, with homicide as the cause.

  The next victim was Danica Payton, thirty-three years old. At age sixteen — then Danica Harbaugh — she’d been top of the swim team at Liverpool High School. As a young woman she competed regularly in the Ironman competition, posting some of the fastest swim times recorded. She was pretty; full lips and broad shoulders, a mass of auburn hair.

  After an injury derailed her athletic career, she married Roger Payton, an older man from Baldwinsville. Roger had been working at a restaurant called The Trading Post since he was eighteen, from dishwasher to manager to owner. They went hiking and kayaking and traveled together, married seven years.

  Like Tammy Haig, Danica had a habit of spending time in a park near her home. She’d been murdered there, left beside Onondaga Lake among the cattails and marsh grass, hidden from view of vehicles zipping past on the parkway, but not far from them — just seventy yards.

  There was no obvious connection between the two women. They never knew each other and were only joined in death.

  The Archers were the most recent victims. Mother and son. They’d been shot to death along the edge of a nature preserve. No connections to the other victims.

  Megan Archer had been walking her son home from school on a warm autumn afternoon. They did this on days when the weather was good. The husband, Ted Archer, said this was probably the last time they’d walk together before spring. If the weather had been bad, they might not have taken the route. They might still be alive.

  Funny, the little things.

  In each case, time of death was either pinpointed circumstantially or by physical evidence narrowing it down. Danica Payton had been last seen at her restaurant at approximately six thirty and had been shot between 7 and 9 p.m. on the night of August 18, a Saturday. The murder of the Archers was twelve days ago, Friday November 16. Their time of death approximately 3:30 p.m.

  Kelly thought about the times and dates — ages, too — each murdered woman was older than the previous one. She spent a few minutes plugging contact info for the lead investigators into her phone, then closed the laptop and rubbed her face. They were flying above the clouds. The sun was on the other side of the cabin, dazzling above all the white.

  Then as the plane descended, the clouds grew thick and dark.

  * * *

  Raining in Syracuse — nothing new there. The weather people expected it to become snow by nightfall. She picked up the keys for the rental from the Alamo kiosk and walked into the lot, pulling her suitcase behind her and covering her head with a gift shop newspaper, looking for s
pace number 16. The Mazda was the most low-key car they offered — light brown, no bells or whistles, like something her father would’ve driven. She loaded her bag and drove from the airport to the hotel, two miles away, checked into her room, dried her damp hair, plugged in her laptop, and went out to find some food.

  Near St. Luke’s Hospital was a Thai place on an otherwise desolate, wet street. It was still early. She found a table in the corner with a view of the door and ordered the Tom Kha Kai, enjoying some peace until the waitress returned and struck up a conversation.

  “Are you a medical student?”

  “No.”

  “We get lots of students in here, and nurses and doctors.”

  Kelly looked out the window. Danica Payton, she thought, the former athlete, would be first.

  The waitress hovered by the table, as if waiting for Kelly to keep up her end of the small talk bargain. She tried on a smile for the waitress, who blinked twice and walked away.

  Back in the hotel room, she phoned the Liverpool Police Department and left a message for Chief Broward. She took out her laptop and opened the Danica Payton file since Broward was in charge of that case.

  Danica’s parents lived in the area. She had two brothers, Russell and Matthew Harbaugh. Each with records — both DUIs. They liked to have a good time. There were lots of relatives in Syracuse and its many suburbs and outlying small towns. Her husband Roger, by contrast, was an only child of divorce.

  Kelly watched the interviews with Danica’s brothers. They were both big guys, beefy and muscular, Russell wearing a leather jacket, Matthew in a nylon zip-up. Talking about their dead sister, the siblings were quiet and attentive. Both had credible alibis.

  She watched the Roger Payton tape next. Danica’s husband slouched in his seat and buried his head in his hands. He repeatedly wiped at his eyes and looked devastated. If it was a performance, it was a good one. But the interviewing detective was pushy.

  Detective Faber had positioned himself off-camera, just his shoulder visible and sometimes part of his head. “I know how it is, right? I got a wife who doesn’t work either, you know what I mean? You’re out there busting your ass — I mean you and me, we’re both putting in long, hard hours, you know . . . and then she asks for this, or she asks for that. She’s got your credit card. And I know your restaurant has been . . . look, we both know about this economy.”

  Roger Payton kept shaking his head. “No. We’re fine. Nothing like that.”

  “I know what it’s like, is what I’m saying. There are days I just as soon cut her loose. Let her see what it’s like on her own. She’s got nothing to do except spend my money and complain about where I go or what I do. It passes through your mind, you’re human — that’s all I’m saying. A little insurance money, no more nagging . . .”

  “I didn’t kill my wife.”

  And on it went, Faber hoping to lure Payton into admitting something. The tape lasted several hours.

  Her phone buzzed on the table. Liverpool Police. She answered, “This is Agent Kelly Roth.”

  “Agent Roth.” He sounded out of breath. “Chief Broward.”

  “Hello.”

  “Thanks for getting here so fast. So how do we do this? You want to come down to the station or—”

  “I’d like to look at the body and visit the crime scene.”

  He hesitated. “Well, crime scene’s kinda . . . Everything’s been photo-docked, everything’s been to the lab and come back . . .”

  “I’d like to have a look anyway. Will Detective Faber be meeting me?”

  “Uh, no. I, ah . . . I’ll be meeting you myself, then, I guess. So I’ll see you over there and — what else? You said you wanted to view the victim.”

  “You still have a body, I hope.”

  “No, no — I mean, yes, we do. Absolutely we do. Just . . .” Broward trailed off and breathed into the phone for a minute.

  “Chief Broward?”

  “So I thought — I don’t know — I thought you were maybe going to, like, teach a class kind of a thing. Tell us what to look out for. You’re a profiler, right? You teach a class down there at the FBI headquarters? Is that it?”

  Kelly got up from the small table and paced the room. “I did start teaching, yes. I’m not exactly a profiler. There’s no real ‘profiling division’ with the FBI, but what I’m here for, Chief Broward—”

  “You can call me Rob, if you want.”

  “I’m here to help you. Whatever you feel will best serve you and your team, that’s what I want to do. We can meet as soon as you can gather everybody up, and I can tell you what I think at this point . . .”

  And what did she think? Nothing, not yet, and premature guesses didn’t help in a field detractors still called FBI voodoo. There was no clairvoyance. There was analysis, modeling, and prediction.

  “But it wouldn’t be much more than you already know — I’ve only seen what you’ve entered into the system, what you sent my SAC at the BU.”

  “Um — say that again, now?”

  “I mean my supervisor at the FBI.” She stopped pacing and shut her eyes, pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and finger. Too much time sitting in an office, too much time with her head in books, going from Stafford to her home in Nokesville and back again. She didn’t even have a cat, let alone keep friends. She was rusty with people.

  She opened her eyes. “What I mean is, I think I can best help you if I have a chance to look at everything myself.”

  “I got you.”

  Take it easy, Kelly-bell.

  Her father’s voice in her head.

  Just go easy. You’ll be all right.

  I don’t know how I’m going to be able to do this. I don’t know if I can do this . . .

  One foot in front of the other, Bell. Don’t overthink it. One foot in front of the other, just like anything else. Same way you’ve gotten through all the rest of it.

  CHAPTER TWO

  She drove to Onondaga Park, on the north end of the long, narrow lake, and stood looking out at the smokestacks across the water. Her watch said it was after twelve — Broward was late.

  Throughout the park were wooden benches, somewhat randomly placed, each bearing a dedication to a lost loved one. James Axelrod, Beloved Father. Margaret Stone, May She Rest in Peace. Henny McNamara, Who Will Be Missed Forever. The last time she’d been here there’d been a dozen or so benches; there were four or five times that now. Life moved on, death didn’t stop.

  A Liverpool PD car came in off the parkway, rolled to a stop on the dirt parking area. Broward was younger than she’d expected, tall and fit, dressed in jeans and a white police chief shirt and a thick parka. He smiled as he approached and stuck out his hand. “Rob Broward.”

  “Kelly Roth,” she said.

  “Flight okay coming up?”

  “It was good, yeah.”

  His gaze lingered. “It stayed in the air I guess, right? Never been a big fan of flying, myself — like my feet on the ground.” He shook his head and then looked toward the water’s edge and flapped a hand. “So, over here.”

  Coming in from the parkway, there was the dirt lot, a short span of mown grass, then a wall of tall, golden marsh grass hemming the lake. The air smelled slightly fishy; a breeze came through, hissing as it ruffled the stiff vegetation. Broward walked a few paces then stopped. “Okay, right in here.” He pointed. “Danica Payton was around this spot, face down. Mostly obscured from the road, sort of half in the broomsedge here. The guy who found her comes here in the evenings sometimes around dusk, shoots duck. We all know him — he had us going there the first few times he’d come out — someone reported shots and we come down here, find the guy hunting, middle of suburbia, duck calls and everything. He was all ready for us though — he says, ‘Hunting waterfowl is under federal jurisdiction.’” Broward chuckled again and scratched his mustache. “Good guy. He’s a good guy, Joel McKenna. Think he just likes to get away from the wife and kids when he can. But he’s a real
sportsman . . . did you know that — duck-hunting, or, ah, waterfowl — that’s a federal thing?”

  “I did.” She lowered down onto her haunches. Broward was a talker. But that was okay. She could think when people were talking. “Her husband hadn’t reported her missing, then.”

  “No, no. I thought that was in the report.”

  “Just confirming it with you.”

  “Yeah — Roger was busy with the restaurant, just expected she’d be home when he got there later.”

  Kelly touched a stalk of broomsedge, golden grass as tall as she was with a brush-like tip. “And the fact that the duck hunter, Joel, he sometimes fires a weapon down here — that accounts for why no one called in hearing a shot?”

  “It might be, yeah. Most likely. We weren’t able to find any witnesses, no one who said they heard it. But a .30-30 is pretty loud. At the press conference we announced a hotline and asked if anyone had been driving this route between six thirty and seven thirty on the night of, if they heard anything, saw anything, to call it in. We’re a small city but we get thirty-six thousand vehicles passing through here on a daily basis — we got over fifty calls, witnesses described ten different vehicles, including a black van. It’s pretty dark over here. And there was no one else in the park, not anywhere near this spot, anyway. Someone was way up along the lake, walking their dog, said they heard something they thought was fireworks; kids shooting off poppers. Even when the park gets a lot of visitors in the busy season, this strip along in here — not so much.”

  “Just people like Joel the duck hunter. Or kids with fireworks.”

  Broward looked down at her.

  Kelly asked, “Which way was Danica facing? From the pictures it’s hard to tell.”

  “She was, ah . . .” He stepped into the tall grass, pushing it aside, then circled around. He lay down in the weeds, his head toward the water. “She was just like this.” He put one arm up above his head, as if reaching for the lake, twenty feet away. His other arm was tight against his torso. His head was to the side.

  Broward got back on his feet. “Best I could impersonate a chalk outline.”