The Husbands

by T. J. Brearton

  “It was found at Bogart Wesley church,” Kelly said.

  A blank expression. “Really? I live near there.”

  “Do you attend that church?”

  “No, I’m not . . . No, I’ve never been there. I drive past it all the time, but . . .” He looked away, and Kelly thought he was questioning his own sanity for a moment, wondering if he’d somehow left it there and forgotten. But he shook his head, as if answering his own question. “That makes no sense.”

  “Do you know anyone in that congregation?”

  He glanced up, then shook his head. “Not that I can think of.”

  “You’ve said you’ve gotten some angry emails — how about from a religious person?”

  “Sure, yes, some of those. But not anything overtly threatening. Just warning me, I guess. Some people get uncomfortable when you look too closely at these things.”

  “Mr. Grumett, in the neurological study of serial killers, it’s been shown time and again that many are dopamine deficient, or have suffered serious childhood trauma, including sexual molestation.”

  Orzo interjected. “Agent Roth, I wonder if—”

  “—things they never asked for — just what you’re talking about here — involuntary processes, past experiences and mental illnesses.” Kelly hurried to the question. “How can you condemn someone with a mental illness? It’s a neurological, biological problem. Would you say so?”

  “Should I have a lawyer?” Grumett asked.

  “I’d just like to know what you think.”

  “I was miles away from Island Park when that poor girl was murdered. I have records showing that I was on the phone precisely when they said she was shot and killed. If someone took my cell phone, I have no—”

  “The Park Killer has expressed ideas similar to those in your book.”

  “Well? He could be anyone! Many people have read my book, or seen my lectures online.”

  “Do you think neuroscience and psychology give violent offenders a pass?”

  “No! Of course not. But I do think the ideology that criminals have just made bad choices is undermined by research.” Grumett had gotten loud, his face red now. “And the idea that they’re somehow spiritually corrupt or going against God — these are becoming archaic concepts. Research has been done. We’ve seen people who rate high in psychopathy have problems with brain chemistry. Does that mean I endorse violent behavior? No.”

  She leaned toward him. “Should we still capture violent offenders and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law? Because I’ve got to tell you, I’d like to take the man who did this to Tammy Haig, Danica Payton — to Megan Archer and her ten-year-old son, and now to Jessica Carter-Spence — I’d like to put him in a chair and pull the switch.”

  The room went quiet and the air felt heavy, everything cramped.

  “You . . .” Grumett seemed to calm himself. When he spoke again he’d reverted to his more professional demeanor. “Do I think we need to reconsider some of the ways in which we deal with violent offenders? Yes. Is there room for criminal justice reform and can we include more science in our view and treatment of violent offenders? Certainly. But does that make me a . . .” His anger came back in a flash and he pushed back from the table. “I’d like to leave now. I’m not saying anything else unless you want to charge me with something and then only with my lawyer present.”

  * * *

  Once Grumett was gone from the building, Kelly watched the recording. She studied his body language. His eyes were on her and Orzo or he looked at the table or his hands. She was on the fence about how to judge his anxiety. He was most nervous when talking about his book. He’d displayed nervousness even before that, but being interviewed by three cops in a closed room was uncomfortable for anyone. So she’d made him comfortable, got him to elucidate, feel kinship.

  Then when she’d pushed, he’d become agitated and pushed back. Also normal behavior, especially for the innocent. Rather than controlling the conversation he’d allowed himself to be led right down Kelly’s path, and was triggered when his character was implicated.

  “And like he said, anyone could have read that book,” Orzo said later as they sat in the conference room to debrief. Dixon stood against the wall, arms folded, listening. Orzo continued, “I think he pissed someone off and they tried to incite Archer to go and kill him, thinking he was the murderer — Tammy Haig being his student is not a coincidence, because this guy is the target.”

  “But it leaves out the others,” Kelly said.

  “It does and it doesn’t,” Orzo said. “If maybe each of these victims were picked because there’s some other target, something he’s trying to get the victim’s husbands to do in each case . . .”

  “Or this is for our benefit — we’re the ones he’s messing with now. Grumett is a nice piece of bait for us.”

  They all thought about it quietly until Kelly said, “At any rate I’d like to take another look at all of his students.”

  “Tammy Haig was in his spring class,” Orzo said. “He’s got a whole new crop of fall semester students. Maybe one or two failed or something and has to retake the class but otherwise they’re all new. If someone from his current class took his phone, we haven’t seen any of those people that we know of.”

  “Then we look at anyone repeating the class.”

  “And he teaches multiple courses. So we’re talking about a hundred, hundred and fifty people. New faces we haven’t even looked at.”

  “Let’s stick to the Intro to Psychology class she was in. I’d like to look at the student interviews from the fall. How did you do it?”

  “We did it over a two-day period starting with the next class, that Friday after she was killed. Grumett let us take them one at a time. It’s a two-hour class, we got half the first night, then we followed up with the rest the next week, on the Wednesday class.”

  “And every student enrolled was in attendance both days?”

  Orzo blew out some air. “Ah, it’s been a while. If memory serves, two women were absent on the Friday. The next week they showed up, we got them, and one male student was out. But we’d already got him. We got them all. Thirty-eight of them. Twenty-five women, thirteen men. Since they were all the last to see her alive, we got statements from every one of them and it’s all on video.”

  Dixon looked at Orzo. “Grumett could have had someone place the hardline call. Did you ever contact the daughter he was talking to?”

  “No. Look — you heard the guy. He pissed off the military with his book. Goes back to what I said all along: he’s ex-military. He gets a hold of Grumett’s book and all these ideas about people being helpless . . . whatevers. Victims of circumstance, all that. He sent links to Archer’s phone! Said, this is who I am. He wanted Archer to go after Grumett.”

  “What does Tammy Haig have to do with that?” Dixon asked. “She’s just a student. A pregnant young woman. She didn’t write the book, she’s got nothing to do with Archer.”

  “Because reading that shit flipped some switch in the dark part of his brain,” Orzo said. “You know, I’m not saying this guy was just minding his business and knitting sweaters and then the book sent him off into psychosis. Maybe he’s got PTSD. Shit, maybe he lost his family when he went over to Iraq. Or Afghanistan. Like Agent Roth said, he’s had his own major loss and he’s acting out. Tammy Haig happened to be the perfect first victim because of what Roth has been saying all along — her routine, her period of vulnerability, going alone to Island Park.”

  Orzo’s brown eyes were big and watery, his color high. Everyone was getting agitated.

  Calmly, Kelly asked, “What about someone auditing the psych class?”

  Orzo waved his hands in the air. “I asked about that. If someone came in, sat in the back, Grumett didn’t notice. Anyone could have walked in off the street.”

  “Well, let’s make sure the phone call to his daughter is solid,” Kelly said. “But I’ve got to tell you, I think this is a chalk outline Gr
umett is supposed to lie down in.”

  “Me too,” Orzo said. “I don’t see this old guy for it.” He shook his head. “Sorry, but nope.”

  She looked at the frozen image of Grumett with his hands on the table. The text had been sent just as she and Dixon got going on the mall. Like they were getting close, and the killer threw them a red herring. If it were true, he was somehow privy to the FBI’s moves. Which meant discretion was even more important.

  “Check with the school,” she said to Orzo, “find out if anyone could have slipped in and audited that class, check the registry, check video.”

  “Can do. And I can get a list of all students from each of his classes and see who drives what. And I’ll check it against arrest records, too.”

  “That’s good. But we’re not looking for drunk and disorderly, I don’t think. Our guy is quiet.”

  “He’s ex-military,” Orzo repeated, and flicked a look at Dixon.

  Dixon paced the room. “But why point to Grumett? Why are we saying someone else pointed to him? Why can’t he be our guy? Because he’s older? I know I’m not the expert here, but I think Grumett looked about ready to have a heart attack. Maybe I’m out of line, but I can pretty easily picture him sitting somewhere, sipping his coffee, watching people he’s going to kill.”

  Broward, sitting in the back, spoke up for the first time. “I don’t think he was talking to Archer, or thought he was. He knows Archer is dead. This is him talking to us directly. This is him saying, ‘Poor me, I’m a victim of my biology.’ He’s saying he can’t help himself. He does this and it puts the men in the same boat — they’ve got this monumental thing they can’t control now; they’ve lost their wives, their kids. Like he’s preaching.”

  Kelly kept her eyes on the frozen image of Grumett. “Maybe he slept with her,” she said.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Grumett had been thrown in her path. It wasn’t a killer giving himself away, it was a game, and she’d felt it in her bones from the moment the priest had stepped out of the church and flattened himself against the stone wall. The real lead was still Destiny. But she and Orzo were mostly alone in their thinking.

  Dixon had posted twenty-four-hour surveillance on Adam Grumett. Two agents just to track his movements. He didn’t want them to tag the professor’s car with a GPS, he wanted eyes-on the entire time. He’d sent Grumett’s phone to the lab in Quantico. No one, not even Dixon, expected prints. But the lab would feed them information on his outgoing and incoming mobile calls for the past year.

  “You suggested he could have slept with Tammy Haig,” Dixon said as they rode the elevator to their hotel rooms. “His phone was at the church — the texts from this morning can be traced to it. He taught one of the victims — the first one. I mean, what more do you want?”

  “Motive.”

  Dixon threw up his hands. “He’s in love with her and she won’t leave her husband and so he kills her. Motive. He’s got crazy ideas about how she’s a victim of her own conditioning or some shit. Motive. I mean when he calls the Archer guy he spouts lines from his book.”

  “From the blurb of his book. On the Amazon page. Anyone could have seen that or parroted that. And that’s a different case you’re talking about — Megan and Colton Archer. Then there’s Danica Payton. Is he sleeping with all these women? I’m not seeing this tweed-wearing sixty-something college teacher going around shooting people, Mark. He’s bait.”

  “But why him? Why throw it on him?”

  “To screw us up.”

  “You’re giving out too much credit. Like I said, our killer is just a man.”

  “And maybe you’re not giving him enough.”

  Dixon fell silent after that. He shook his head. “I don’t care if Grumett denies the affair — I mean he denies it, right?”

  “Orzo went back to his house a half hour after the interview with Ingram and they asked him and yeah, he vehemently denies it.”

  “Well maybe because he teaches at a college that’s out of money and he’s clinging to his job by his fingernails, tenure or not. It gets out he’s had an affair with a student — you know how this goes — ten more former students will come forward — this guy is done. Publisher drops his book, he resigns from teaching, he’s over. Spends the rest of his life dealing with the shame he likes to write about.”

  She looked at her reflection in the elevator doors, then watched herself split in two when they opened. “You could be right,” she said, stepping out into the hall.

  Dixon looked around to make sure they were alone. “And what about Blake Haig?”

  “Same problem. He’s got tight alibis, and he’s been out chasing down his own suspects with the Harbaugh brothers.”

  “Well, it sticks,” Dixon said. He opened his room door. “We move all available surveillance onto the professor and watch him like a hawk.”

  “With two agents on Grumett, three more working the tip-line calls, local cops busy following up on Grumett’s alibi and Wells students, it leaves little manpower for the Destiny watch.”

  Dixon only looked at her then went into his room.

  She sat on her bed with her head in her hands. Took off her boots and rubbed her feet. The sleeve of her shirt was somehow torn at the elbow and she changed clothes. The day had started at 3 a.m., talking to Dixon in his room. A morning briefing, a trip to Destiny, then the texts to Archer’s phone, subsequent rush to the church and interview with Adam Grumett. It was going on 7 p.m. But she couldn’t rest now.

  Back at the command center, Kelly read the Destiny reports from the past six hours — a dozen people flagged. Men lingering alone on a bench in a baseball cap, two of those. A man taking pictures outside the Build-A-Bear Workshop. One sitting alone by the play area for a half an hour, no kids of his own. They’d been pulled aside by Apex’s security people, questioned and released, told that cops were searching for a missing man fitting their description.

  Kelly shook the papers at Dixon, who’d returned half an hour after she had. “I need to have a look at these before they get cut loose.”

  Dixon leaned on a desk with his knuckles, reading something to himself off the computer screen and not looking at her. “You want to chase down all the tip leads, too?”

  “I’m not interested in what someone thinks of their neighbor.”

  “Neither am I. But we’ve got mall security — twenty-five on staff, plus a half dozen off-duty cops, three agents, and there’s no way we can cover this on our own.”

  “No Jeep or Taurus in the lot?”

  “We’ve run seventeen through DMV. But we’ve got nothing to cross-reference. Why is our guy middle-aged? Grumett is in his sixties. And if you don’t think it’s him, why couldn’t it be a student at Wells College? There’re over two hundred thousand university students within the trade area of this place. Even that would be better than a pool of millions. Any school, any student. Give me something, Roth. Please. Because right now I might as well be watching static on a TV and looking for alien messages.”

  * * *

  Kelly retreated back to the hotel at 11 p.m. She booted up her laptop and stuck in the thumb drive containing interviews with the students from Grumett’s spring Intro to Psychology class.

  Thirteen men, ages 19 to 43. The Auburn PD interview room was typical for local departments — cramped and over-bright, which was why she’d made her adjustments to the lighting and arrangement of seating. Narcissists had similar tells: they acted bored, studied their fingernails, toyed with the police, tried to dominate and direct the conversation. When she interviewed, she wanted the suspects to think that the cops were inept, all thumbs and guesses. And a seat at the head of the table made them feel important.

  Orzo wasn’t bad in the box, but he had a way of posturing, like most cops did, acting like he was on top of everything. She watched his first interview with a student:

  “What’s your major?”

  “Uh, undeclared.”

  “What are you interested in
?”

  “You know. Lotta things.” The twenty-two-year-old student looked like his main interests were pool halls and drinking.

  Next. She skipped ahead.

  Overweight and shy, this twenty-year-old student wanted to be a counselor someday. “In what capacity?” Orzo asked.

  “Maybe high school guidance counselor. But I could also try to go all the way to Master’s and get a job with the county doing licensed mental health counseling. I’m not sure yet.” Kelly squinted at the grainy image and heard the shakiness in the student’s voice.

  “Do you remember Tammy Haig?”

  “Yeah. I mean, she sat in front of me most days.”

  “Ever follow her home?”

  Come on, Orzo. Kelly thought. Easy, hot stuff.

  The heavyset student’s flushed cheeks showed on the video. “What? No. Not at all. No.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Ah, I live with my parents.”

  Next. Kelly advanced to another digital file.

  Eighteen years old, slouchy and doe-eyed, looking like he’d never seen the inside of a police station before. She watched for a minute until he inadvertently farted on camera, then excused himself and looked mortified. Next. Following him was a twenty-one-year-old African-American who was a bundle of nerves. Next. The forty-three year old was enrolled part-time and had taken the psych 101 class as a required humanities course. “Mr. Keesing,” Orzo asked, “what do you do for a living?”

  “I sold my business, decided to go back to school.”

  “What was your business?”

  “Cleaning company.”

  “And what are you studying at Wells?”

  Keesing looked fit, in a crisp white shirt and blue jeans, he acted casual, leaning back in the chair. “At the moment I’m just taking the basics. Trying different things.”

  “Are you a hunter?”

  “Am I a hunter? No, sir. When I was little I had a BB gun. I shot at some squirrels. Does that count?”

  Kelly looked closer and caught his sly smile.