The Husbands

by T. J. Brearton

  “It’s okay. I’m having a smoke. Talk to me.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut. “I went to the restaurant owned by Roger Payton. Think I recognized one of the customers and he must’ve known someone with local TV. But it could’ve come from anywhere.” She thought again about the waitress, Courtney, the jealousy in her attitude.

  “So, just that you’re a local girl? Or . . .”

  “It’s probably a matter of time before they start talking about my history.”

  Genarro was silent. “Okay. Well, we can deal with it. How you doing? You okay?”

  “I’m all right, yeah.” She made a fist with her free hand to quell the trembling.

  “Kelly, you’re one of my best people — you know that. I wouldn’t have sent you up there if I didn’t think you could handle it. But you’ve got to talk to me if this thing gets to be too much. This thing you do — and I don’t mean to get personal — you put on your armor and . . . I know you a little bit after eight years. Okay? I know what a decent person you are.”

  “All right, all right . . .”

  Neither of them spoke for a while. She heard a horn beep on his end. The sound of him breathing, puffing his cigarette.

  “Trudy is going to smell that.”

  “You get anything so far?”

  “I don’t know. The man who found Danica Payton never had a rifling test done on a weapon which could match the unsub’s.” She meant unknown subject. “I’m still on the first victim and I need to talk to her husband, Roger Payton, but he’s out of the area.”

  “Witnesses first, suspects later.”

  “Well, they handled Payton like a suspect but he’s still my best witness for the victim’s life, her behavior. I’ve got her family to look at but they’re half the Liverpool phonebook. And I’d like to get over to the other two crime scenes, talk to those investigators.”

  “I’ll call you in the morning and tell you what the deputy director says. If this reporter hassles you, tries to spin things because of your past, we’ll handle it. For now, just stay the course. Okay?”

  “Say congratulations to Trudy for me.”

  “Well the retirement is not set in stone yet, but she’s carrying bags of mortar. Talk to you tomorrow.”

  She hung up and tossed the phone on the bed a little too hard. It bounced off with a clunk. She ran the bath, planning to stay in for a half an hour but every time she closed her eyes she was brought back to the past. To five men standing and grinning and smoking cigarettes as she lay on the ground.

  Forget the bath. She did push-ups and sit-ups instead.

  Afterward, she found the menu on the desk and went through it, then called room service and ordered enough food to put her in a small coma. While she waited for them to bring it up she opened her laptop and confronted the photos: Danica Payton prone in the broomsedge, reaching for the lake. Megan Archer along the edge of the woods, her ten-year-old son beside her, pale gray face toward the sky looking like a flower unexpectedly cut from its stem.

  And then there was Tammy Haig, lying beside a creek in another park. You couldn’t see it, but a tiny life inside her. Kelly wondered if the killer had known.

  No evidence of sexual assault with any of the victims. Execution-style murders, no display on the bodies except for maybe a little dirt. They were shot in the backs of their heads. Crime scene techs had found tire tracks galore alongside Wheeler Road where the Archers had been slain, but it was a popular hunting spot. Nothing to go on.

  If it was a series, Haig was the first. There could have been more before her but Kelly doubted it. The killer made no real effort to hide the victims. Didn’t cut them up and bury them in pieces. Just shot them when no one was around and drove off. Nothing ceremonious, no ritual.

  She’d never really seen anything like it before — the whole thing seemed to have more in common with live shooters and sniper killings than serial murderers; even organized criminals tended to bury or dismember. This was just about the death. As if it were a means to some end.

  Maybe that was the ritual in and of itself. The signature.

  She started typing her thoughts into her case summary and psychological profile, worked until the food arrived, then ate enough to satisfy. By then it was approaching midnight. Sleep came quickly but only lasted four hours.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Thursday, November 29

  “Agent Roth?”

  She’d been woken up by her phone ringing. “Chief Broward,” she said, still half asleep.

  “I know it’s late. Or, early . . . I just, ah . . . I’m in Constantia.”

  The hotel clock read 4:18 a.m. What was Broward doing in the town where the Archers were murdered? “Okay . . .”

  “Severin called me a couple of hours ago. He had a lot to say. Well, first he told me that Ted Archer had an incident.”

  “An incident?”

  “He thought his family’s killer was texting him. Then someone called him, maybe the same person.”

  She sat up. A light rain ticked against the dark windows. “This just happened?”

  “Archer waited a day before calling Severin who then spent time trying to sort through it, he said, see what he could figure out before he called me. He thought maybe some nut was just messing around with Archer.”

  She got out of bed and feathered a hand over the heat from the radiator.

  “Ted Archer killed himself,” Broward said.

  She froze. “Ahh . . . no . . .”

  “They’re saying around eleven p.m.. Severin found him. He’d gone over there to talk, I guess tell him what he’d found out, knowing that Archer hasn’t been sleeping, you know, was up late.” Broward sounded morose and took a deep breath. “Archer did it with a shotgun. Real bad. Real bad stuff.”

  She didn’t say anything. Didn’t know what to say.

  “Agent Roth?”

  “Yeah, I’m here. I’m on my way.”

  * * *

  She pulled up to the little house in Constantia, police vehicles in the road and crowding the driveway. The Archer place was on the outskirts of town, a couple acres at least, views of rolling hills to the south. Dawn was just breaking. It was a pretty place without a caretaker, leaves in the yard, a boy’s bicycle fallen against a tree. She parked behind Broward and went in.

  The house was cold. Broward came up from the basement and handed her a pair of blue latex gloves. Behind him was an older guy, pushing retirement, his face pockmarked, heavy brown eyes. He stuck out his hand. “Louis Severin.”

  Severin jerked his head toward the kitchen and they went to stand beside a gas range. “I released the paramedics; county coroner is on the way.”

  There were dirty dishes in the sink and broken glass on the floor. Plates with congealed food on the dining table. The whole house smelled. There were two holes in the drywall near the table with smudges around them — punches.

  Severin saw she’d noticed them. “Ted did that. He’s been — well, he’s just been a complete wreck. As you’d imagine. CSS is down there finishing up, but it’s a pretty straightforward suicide. He tucked the barrel up under his chin and squeezed the trigger with his thumb.”

  Kelly saw some Lego toys scattered on the living room carpet. She imagined a man, alone in a house that once had been full of life. A husband and father without answers, rattling around in the mess, putting a gun to his head.

  “I didn’t know Ted’s family all that well,” Severin said. “I knew Ted a little bit. He was a volunteer fireman for about five or six years, stopped when his son started really getting into sports. He seemed like a good family man. But you never know.”

  She turned to Broward. “What about this thing with him being contacted by someone claiming to be the killer?”

  “I told her about it,” Broward said to Severin.

  “First I thought it was maybe someone messing with him,” Severin said, looking at Kelly. “But now with this . . . I wonder if Ted might’ve been staging something.” He opened his
arms. “I’m not saying he didn’t commit suicide. I saw the powder marks on his hand with my own eyes.”

  She considered it. “You think he faked the messages to conceal his guilt?”

  “But then the guilt got him anyway. Or he planned this from the outset and faked the messages so he’d seem innocent. You can do it with email. Set it up to send yourself texts that show up as a disposable number, or an unknown number. Right?”

  “I think it’s possible.”

  “Ted had multiple jobs going at one time, he went from one to the other. The witness who corroborated his alibi was a construction worker who could’ve gotten the time wrong. Ted could’ve easily swung round the preserve when he knew Megan and Colton were walking back from Colton’s school, popped ’em, and driven to another job site.”

  It didn’t quite wash for her — something was missing. “So do you think there’s a connection to the other victims? Did he know Tammy Haig or Danica Payton?”

  Severin looked at Broward, as if for support. Broward dropped his gaze to the floor. Then he leaned against the counter and looked up at Kelly. “What I think is that this is Oswego County, and here it looks like a possible murder-suicide.”

  She let that hang in the air as she studied the pictures on the refrigerator: Colton Archer in a football jersey, taking a knee, helmet in his hands, big grin on his face; a science fair certificate — honorable mention; a math test, graded 98 percent with red ink. A big family gathering, Fourth of July probably, Colton and Megan and Ted crowded in with the others. A younger Colton on a bicycle, in motion. Some scenic shots, as if taken on a hike or while camping.

  “Come on, let’s go down,” Severin said.

  Kelly followed him down the creaking stairs. Blood and the smell of a gunshot. The basement contained a boiler, a workbench, a pile of materials — cut lumber, siding, sheet metal — sporting equipment, a washer and dryer. Archer’s body was in front of the washing machine. The blood was concentrated around the dead man’s head. There was more congealed on the floor joists above and what looked like a splash of vomit nearby. Crime scene people were still moving around in white suits and masks. Severin led Kelly and Broward single file and knew where to step and stop.

  “He threw up?” Kelly asked.

  “Maybe just prior, yeah. Getting up the nerve.” Severn pointed up at a spot where the copper plumbing and two wooden braces ran perpendicular to the floor joists in places. Two gun bags were tucked against the ceiling, one of them sagging — empty. “Archer used the shotgun on himself — the other gun tucked up there is a Winchester Model 94. Shoots .30-30.”

  He reached up and unzipped the stiff gun bag, enough for her to see an old lever-action rifle.

  “If he’s got a box of Federal 150 hidden beneath his workbench, I don’t know what else to say. Too much of a coincidence for me.” Severin zipped the bag and their eyes met. “I don’t know about you.”

  She nodded and turned away from the weight in his eyes, watched as a technician took a picture of the body and the room exploded with light.

  Say it, Kelly-bell. Go ahead and say it.

  “So as part of the initial death investigation for Megan and Colton Archer, you didn’t have a crime scene unit go through the house? Not until now, after his apparent suicide.”

  Severin sniffed. He crossed his arms. “I knew Ted Archer was in possession of a Winchester rifle. He volunteered that information during our interview.”

  “He volunteered it — but at that point you knew .30-30 casings had been recovered from both the Haig and Payton crime scenes. Did he know about that?” Kelly asked.

  Broward interjected, “That information was not reported in the news. They only said ‘gunshot wounds’ — we never released information on the caliber, or the casings left behind at the scenes.”

  “But you were talking. You two.”

  “You can watch the video if you like, Agent Roth,” Severin said. “Ted wanted to fully cooperate. He’s friendly with some guys on the force, he knows how an investigation goes. Anyway, we came in, we seized Megan Archer’s laptop and her phone and checked to see who might be talking to her. We did the same with the boy’s iPad and phone. I had a look around. No, I did not request a special forensic unit at the house. I came with Detective Epps, we took pictures and measurements of a few things, and we did advise Mr. Archer to leave things as they were while we conducted our investigation.”

  “You had two deaths, ruled homicides by the medical examiner in each district. Casings with ‘30-30 WIN’ stamped around the firing pin . . .”

  Severin squared off with her, his nostrils flared. “We hadn’t completed autopsies, we had no ballistics yet. We weren’t even talking about Haig. I ran the investigation. I’m sorry if you don’t like how I ran it. This was a guy everyone knew with no history of mental illness and no record who liked to hunt deer and small game. In the midst of talking to us, he offered that he had a Winchester 94 among his firearms. For all we know, he confessed it out of a guilty conscience.”

  “Detective Severin,” she said softly. “I’m not judging how you ran your investigation, I’m just clarifying. And now you’re planning to search the house and you think you’ll find ammunition that’s a ballistic match for the victims.”

  “Maybe — I don’t know — but how does this look? Looks pretty cut and dry to me. I regret not finding the box of ammunition before now, but I didn’t think Ted would do something like this. Kill himself. No one did.”

  “Was he ever evaluated?” She looked to both of them. “Did a grief counselor or therapist ever speak to Mr. Archer, assess him, find out if he was a danger to himself?”

  “He waived any of that. And we had no grounds to make him do it.”

  “Can I please see the text messages?”

  Severin stared a moment then patted his jacket and dug out a small notebook and flipped a few pages. He handed it to her. “I wrote them down.”

  “I’ll take it upstairs if that’s all right.”

  “Be my guest.”

  She’d had enough of Severin’s testosterone. And it was better to smell the spoiled food in the kitchen than the dead man’s vomit and blood in the basement.

  Severin’s handwriting was sloppy but she made out:

  How do you feel?

  Who is this?

  I want to know how you’re feeling. We should talk.

  Think you have the wrong number.

  No I don’t. You’re Ted Archer. I killed your wife and son.

  That was it. According to Severin’s notes, approximately half a minute later Archer had received a call from an unlisted number and the call lasted four and a half minutes.

  She left the notebook on the table beside a plate of congealed egg. The boy’s room was messy but the bed was made, football trophies on the dresser, a Minecraft poster on the wall and a poster of two football players in Syracuse Orangemen uniforms, looking like father and son. She moved into the master bedroom. Ted Archer had jammed two pillows under the bed covers, like he’d used them as a makeshift body to sleep against. His own pillow held a dent in the middle from his final night.

  A third bedroom had been converted into an office. She pushed some papers around on the desk, thinking if Ted Archer knew the other victims, Haig and Payton, then maybe Severin was right — maybe Ted Archer was a killer. The idea that Archer had fake-texted himself using a laptop? Time would tell.

  But if the texts and phone call were real, she didn’t think the tormenter was random. How do you feel? It was direct. A killer who possibly got off on the emotions of the bereaved. It might be why the MO seemed almost perfunctory — the real thrill was in the aftermath. Maybe toying with the family members. Watching them suffer. Even make them look guilty.

  Amid the paperwork on the desk was a progress report from Colton’s first ten weeks of fifth grade. He excelled in Math, not so hot in English. A stack of receipts showed purchases from a local store, and some sporting equipment from Dick’s Sporting Goods, more
receipts for Ted Archer’s general contracting business.

  She heard someone coming down the hall and when Broward appeared in the doorway she asked, “Did Archer’s call log show a phone call?”

  “Yeah, four minutes and twenty-seven seconds. But for that you could use the same burner phone with a blocked ID and let the connection last for a bit. Or there’s this thing you can do apparently where you sync a phone with a computer and make calls that way. So your second phone is controlled by the computer. I don’t know. Severin can explain it better.”

  She met Broward in the doorway. “Is that what he’s going with, then, officially? Ted Archer killed his family, and then faked communications from someone else claiming responsibility before killing himself?”

  “I mean, I know this doesn’t line up with Haig and Payton, but it makes some sense. Fake a couple of texts, then say there’s a phone call and write the script yourself.” He looked past her into the room. “Severin plans to take the gun in and test it. If the rifling matches, then all the speculation is moot.”

  “The Winchester is a common gun, like you said.”

  “Probably fifty percent of hunters own a short rancher. I have one. So?”

  She took a step back. “So far we’ve gotten shooter distance from bullet damage to tissue, beveling around the entrance wounds, and patterns in gunpowder residue. A smart killer might know we’ll be able to make these determinations, and learn the caliber. But he’s left behind the casings anyway — why? That’s just icing on the cake. If our guy is in a car, then he’s even picking up the spent casings and tossing them out for us to find. No fingerprints, so he’s loading while wearing gloves. He could be deliberately leaving the casings.”

  “To point to Archer, maybe? All victims killed by a gun like the one he owns?”

  “I think that’s unlikely. I think there’s another link, something we haven’t seen yet. At least Severin will take the weapon in, shoot it, look at the rifling pattern and compare it to the projectiles from the other victims. But I’d like to call in my own forensic firearm and toolmark examiner. We can use him for Joel McKenna’s gun, too.” She looked at Broward, waited for the pushback.