The Husbands

by T. J. Brearton

  What seemed clear were his criteria for certain locations and schedules — where they went and when. Not everyone took walks alone in remote places. Were there other potential victims he’d dismissed for not checking those boxes? And, if so, what was the pool he selected from?

  The killings had all happened within a fifty-mile radius. That was an area of 2,500 square miles. Too big to just come upon people at random and find the right ones. It had to be somewhere more concentrated. A hunting ground of sorts.

  She finished the egg, left the potatoes. She called Genarro from her car to run it past him. She wasn’t comfortable sharing her developing theories with Broward yet. The police here wanted answers, not conjecture.

  “You might be getting ahead of yourself,” Genarro said. “You’re assuming the victims aren’t picked for who they are. Or that there’s no other link between them.”

  “So far, there isn’t anything to indicate a relationship between victims. Broward had a list going and I stacked more on top of it with work histories, all known kin, past residences, department of public safety. I’ve been cross-referencing contacts and there’s not even a postal worker between them. They’re just too spread out for it to be about them, personally. It’s something arbitrary. He’s observing people somewhere. Following them.”

  “Okay, so, you’re the local tour guide . . .”

  She turned on the wipers to brush away a spittle of raindrops and looked at the diner. A little place like this one wasn’t going to offer many possibilities, it had to be something bigger. She thought about movie theaters, stadiums — watching the Orangemen play, maybe — hospitals . . . malls.

  Destiny USA had a grandiose name, but it was the sixth largest shopping mall in the country and the biggest in New York State. People visited from all over. And it wouldn’t be the first time a killer in the region had used a mall as a place to scout victims. But she needed more.

  “I’ll get back to you on that,” she said to Genarro.

  “Where you headed right now?”

  “To talk to the one victim’s husband either not dead or hiding out.”

  “Be careful.”

  * * *

  Blake Haig had gone back to work at Xylem Technologies after a mere two weeks of paid bereavement, but he worked a late shift and was still home at ten-thirty in the morning. Cream-white vinyl siding wrapped the single-story house, black shutters framed the windows fronting the street. Haig answered the door, thin and hollow-looking.

  “Kelly Roth,” she said. “Detective Orzo said I’d be stopping by?”

  “Yeah. Um, yes.” He glanced at her badge with a kind of disinterest, like he’d seen plenty already. “Come on in.”

  The place had an aura of stale cigarettes, and something burnt, like an unclean oven that had recooked stray bits of food a few times over.

  “Thank you for meeting with me,” Kelly said.

  “Sure.” He led them into a living room with two short couches, a recliner and a big-screen TV. Inlaid shelves held a few books.

  Kelly sat across from him. She reminded herself that his wife had been dead for seven months, a good amount of time for accurate recall to fade. “I know you’ve been through a lot of questions, a lot of interviews . . .”

  “I don’t mind. Whatever I can do to help.”

  “Thank you.” She looked at the spines of the books behind him. “You like to read?”

  “Not really. Well, I read non-fiction. About physics, superstructures, things like that.”

  “That’s interesting.”

  “Yeah.” He kept his gaze direct, his eyes half-lidded, as if sleepy.

  “I’d like to talk about Tammy a little bit. Is that all right?”

  “Whatever you need.”

  “It would be great if you could talk a little about your lives, what you liked to do together. Were you more homebodies or did you like to go out?”

  He looked away for a moment. “I’d say both. We could stay in and watch Netflix, order Chinese. Sometimes we went out.”

  “Where would you go?”

  “You know, to the Regal for a movie. Or have dinner. Or drag-racing.”

  “Drag-racing? Really?”

  “Yeah we did all that. Went to NASCAR a couple of times. Crash-up derbies. Tammy really liked it.”

  “Would you say you guys had a lot of friends?”

  “I don’t know. I think the cops . . . I mean the other detectives talked to all of her friends. Her classmates. Even some people she knew from her pregnancy classes.”

  “I’ve been looking through those interviews. Everyone really thought highly of her.”

  He met her eyes with the same directness but his gaze was lifeless.

  “I have an important question to ask you,” she said.

  “Okay.”

  “Has anyone ever called or texted you claiming responsibility for what happened to Tammy?”

  He smiled for the first time then laughed, just a burst of breath. “Are you serious?”

  “I am. Anything? Even a missed call from a strange number?”

  “Oh I get missed calls. You can never escape telemarketers. I had one message the other day, some guy pretending to know me — he wanted to talk about some investment opportunity. I can’t imagine that sort of thing working, but it must if people are doing it . . .” He looked down at his hands, as if embarrassed about telling her this. “Anyway, I turned my phone over to the Auburn police and they went through it and they have a list of all the numbers and incoming and outgoing calls.”

  “But since then. Since you got the phone back.”

  “No. No one has called me.”

  She gambled. “Because the husband of another victim might have been contacted by someone claiming to be responsible.”

  “Really.” No reaction.

  She nodded. Then she slowly got to her feet. “You mind if I have a look around?”

  “Sure,” he said, rising. “Not much to look at, though. The police took some of Tammy’s things and I’ve given everything else to her family or to Goodwill, that sort of thing.”

  She pointed at the shelves. “Not the books, though.”

  “No, not the ones I like, I guess.”

  It was a sad, short tour. Blake Haig moved at a single unhurried speed, more like an old man than someone just turned twenty-six. He flipped on the lights in each room: kitchen, a bit messy; master bedroom, bed unmade, clothes and boots on the floor and nothing feminine about any of it. She suspected the second, empty bedroom might’ve once been intended as a nursery — just some baby blue smudges of paint left on the ceiling. The rest had been painted over industrial gray.

  He opened a door from the hallway leading into the garage where his Dodge truck sat parked. Tools on the walls, a workbench, some boxes, trash bins. After she said, “Thanks,” he clicked off the light and shut the door.

  Bathroom next. A rumpled towel hung from the shower door and a single toothbrush on the sink. A small dining room off the kitchen with a farm-style table and hardwood floor, nails jutting from the drywall where pictures had likely hung. There were no traces of Tammy Haig. The place had become a bachelor pad.

  “There’s one other room,” he said, and showed her a pantry, shelves on each side with foodstuffs and a door to the backyard. “That’s it.” He pulled the string to shut the light. She backed away and let him walk ahead through the kitchen and followed him. He stopped between the couches and waited until she took the couch again before he sat down.

  For the first time he looked lost in thought, his eyes unfocused, then he blinked back into the present. “What did he say?”

  “Sorry?”

  “You said someone might’ve called the husband of one of the other victims.”

  “Yeah, we can’t be sure. He might’ve been, ah . . . well, I can’t really comment on it.”

  “You think it was real?”

  It was an interesting assumption.

  “Like I said, I’m sorry, I can’t—” />
  “I’ve never heard of anything like that. Someone kills your family and then calls you up — have you ever heard of anything like that?”

  “No.”

  They lapsed into silence, Kelly evaluating how smart Blake Haig was. His interest was piqued, but maybe anyone’s would be. She’d dangled as much bait as she could without compromising things. On the other hand, if Haig was in contact with the killer, and he passed on that law enforcement knew or suspected about the phone calls, it might filter out, something might change and confirm the correspondence.

  He was looking at her. “Do you, like, study killers and all that?”

  “That’s part of what I do, yeah. I study narcissistic psychopathic personalities. I try to find patterns that can predict if someone like this might strike again, when and where it might happen.”

  “You think this is going to happen again?”

  “After your wife it happened two more times.”

  “What are the patterns?”

  “Well, the act, the motivation for the act. The why.” She hesitated, adding, “In some cases a person actually wants to get caught. They can’t stop, but some part of them knows that they need to. They might leave something behind that helps the investigation, and it might be conscious or not. They might even reach out.”

  He’d settled back into his watchful self. Maybe his reserved self. He presented as open and guileless, but she sensed something practiced about it.

  Her phone vibrated in her pocket. “Sorry. Let me just see what this is.” She dug it out and saw the incoming call was from Detective Orzo with Auburn PD but let it go to voicemail.

  She stood up and said, “Mr. Haig, I have to get going.” He got off the couch and they shook hands briefly, his grip dry and light. “I may need you to come in, speak to myself and a few other officers.”

  He scowled. “Today?”

  “No, I don’t think so. But I’ll be in touch and we’ll accommodate your work schedule.”

  “You think it will help?”

  “I know you’ve already spoken to Detective Orzo and his team here in Auburn. And I know when someone like me comes in, it seems like a duplication of efforts. But we want to do everything we can to find out who did this.”

  She studied his response. Did her being here dredge painful memories? Had seven months of living alone made him numb? Was he hiding something?

  She handed him a card. “And if you think of anything in the meantime, or you just want to talk, don’t hesitate to contact me. Whatever it is, even if you feel it’s unimportant. I’m sure you got the same pitch from the others, but it’s true — there are no insignificant details with something like this. And I’m not taking anything away from the other investigators, but they’re busy police with multiple ongoing cases — this is all I’m here to do and I won’t stop until I have answers.”

  It was meant to be comforting but she wondered if she’d overstepped. Or even lied. Was she here until the bitter end, or was she still hoping to get just enough to load into a presentation, lay it off on the local police? She burned to be gone from these haunted streets and old memories, back to her quiet, solitary life.

  He moved to the front door and opened it up. “Like I said, anything I can do.”

  Kelly stepped onto the front stoop. She turned back to Haig and said, “I also wanted to let you know I’m going to visit the place where Tammy was found.”

  “Okay. Good luck.”

  “Thanks again.”

  Back in the Mazda, she cranked the heat and called Detective Orzo with Auburn PD.

  “I can meet you at Island Park in ten, fifteen minutes,” Orzo said. “That work for you?”

  “I’m just a minute or two away.”

  “See you there.”

  She pulled away from the curb, giving a look back at the Haig house.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The wind skated over the grainy beach sand at the north end of Owasco Lake, breaking apart the morning mist and carrying scents of fish into Island Park. The creek saddled the park, making it an island, hence the name. Only a dog walker and a couple of teenage kids in hooded jackets. Kelly stood there thinking about being an introvert in a world that idolized extroversion. She wondered if Blake Haig was like she was — seemed so. Or, perhaps also like her, a traumatic event had diverted him onto a different path.

  The crime scene was no longer roped off but she had a rough idea where it was. She walked until she was amid a grove of eastern cottonwood with the branches lashing in the strong breeze and looked down at the sluggish creek, the shallow water where Haig’s body had been found. The crime scene photos had showed her at an odd angle, upper body face down in the water, legs up behind her on the rocky bank. The spot was less than a mile from Haig’s house on Van Duyne Ave. If Tammy Haig had gone home after her evening class, she might still be alive. Or perhaps the killer would’ve bided his time, waited for another opportunity.

  He seemed patient.

  An unmarked car pulled in to the parking lot about forty yards away and Detective Orzo got out. He saw her and raised a hand, then ducked back into his vehicle, pulled out a coffee and walked over with his gray tie flapping and dark hair blowing in the offshore wind. A blue suit framed his narrow shoulders, the buttons of his shirt straining against a protuberant belly. Smiling, he extended his hand. “Nice to meet you.”

  “You, too. Thanks for coming.”

  The smile faded as he looked around. “Yeah. Well.”

  “Can you walk me through it?”

  He nodded, took a sip of his coffee. “So, this is where she was, right down there. When she was shot she fell forward, tumbled down the bank there and came to rest on the edge of the creek. That’s about it.”

  “How did the jogger find her?”

  “He was a little embarrassed. Took some time to get it out of him — turns out he’d walked over to the edge of the creek to relieve himself. You know, take a leak. Then he saw her. So . . . anyway, as you probably know by now, she was taking a night class at Wells, and her professor, guy named Grumett, confirmed she left right at end of class, eight p.m. She’s on her way home, stops into the convenience store over there — you can just see it, past those trees.” He pointed, took another drink from his paper cup. “We pulled video from the gas pumps and inside the store. Camera inside shows the victim coming in at 8:22 p.m. Went in, bought her donut, came out and walked over here. Clerk at the gas station heard the shot a few minutes later, thought nothing of it — not in this neighborhood. Otherwise no witnesses. We looked at everyone else on video from an hour prior and fifteen minutes after and were able to ID everyone who used the pump or made debit or credit card purchases inside. We talked to all of them — they’re on the list. We also had three people that used cash only. Clerk tried to remember the purchases and thought one bought a pack of cigarettes, couldn’t remember the other two.”

  “So no ID on them because of the cash. How about facial recognition?”

  “No, not in the system, no records.”

  “I’d like a look at that footage and that list.”

  Orzo started for another sip of the coffee, stopped and gave her a look.

  “Trust me,” she said, “I’m not here thinking I can do anything better. I’m here because Chief Broward in Liverpool called in the request and my job is to take a look at everything fresh.”

  “No, no, I understand. I was just thinking, there’s not much to go on with the MO. There’s no display on the bodies, there’s a significant age range, there are children involved. How’s that work? I thought the FBI had separate units for crimes against children and crimes against adults.”

  “We do. I’m in both.” Close enough to the truth. “That’s why they sent me.”

  “Well, that’s good.”

  She cleared her throat and continued. “You interviewed Haig . . .”

  “Correct. Totally voluntary, he waived counsel — we weren’t charging him with anything. Blake Haig was at work until midnight.
A regular shift. That’s why she took night classes.” Orzo looked off over the lake. “They were a happy couple.”

  “You knew them?”

  “No, but you could tell. He was just in total shock. He just . . .” Orzo took his free hand and ran it across his jaw. “God he was just beside himself. Could barely bring himself to ID her body, didn’t want to discuss the autopsy, none of it. He blamed himself, said he should’ve made her carry a gun. He’d asked her to, but she’d refused. I told him I doubted it would’ve made any difference, someone coming up behind you with a rifle.”

  “He owns guns?”

  “One handgun he keeps for home defense. The one he wanted her to take.”

  “Anyone around here not own a gun?”

  “I hear you. That’s life in paradise.”

  Kelly looked over the spot some more thought about a killer pulling up, parked about where they were.

  She walked toward the cars and Orzo followed. When she reached the car she turned around, facing the lake. Then she paced it out back to the spot where Tammy had been standing. Thirty, thirty-five yards. He was a good shot. But it was still close enough that she might’ve noticed someone. Kelly thought again about the killer rolling along behind Megan Archer and her son as they walked along Wheeler Road. “When someone pulls up,” Kelly said, “especially if it’s at night, you look. Even if it’s day. You just do.”

  Orzo said, “Right, I figure she glances over, notices the car there, but can’t really see in. Maybe she pays no attention, or maybe she’s a little nervous. If she’s nervous she might freeze up, not know what to do. Or, could be she recognizes the vehicle, meaning she knows the person, and it puts her at ease. But I don’t think so.”

  “There’s a streetlamp over there — how far does it reach at night?”

  “This part is pretty shadowed.” Orzo had stopped beside her.

  “So she’s kind of in the dark. At thirty, thirty-five yards.”

  He looked around, squinting some more. “I mean either way it’s a tough target to hit if you’re an amateur. If you’re a marksman, that’s better. If you’re a sharpshooter, ex-military, that’s when you’ve got the confidence to just pull up, take aim. That’s been my theory. You probably read that in the report.”