by E H Davis
My wife’s
Husband
A family thriller
Table of Contents
Title Page
My Wife's Husband
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Chapter Sixty-Two
Chapter Sixty-Three
Chapter Sixty-Four
Chapter Sixty-Five
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Epilogue
Afterword
“But in the murderer, such a murderer as a poet will condescend to, there must be raging some great storm of passion — jealousy, ambition, vengeance, hatred — which will create a hell within him; and into this hell we are to look.”
Thomas De Quincey, “On the Knocking on the Gate in Macbeth”
“Mortui vivos docent” — the dead teach the living
Dedication
To Jonathan, my son; my wife Chris;
my teachers, John Yount & Thomas Williams
PART ONE
Chapter One
Armand Laurent picked a summer night when the moon, in its last quarter, shrouded his hiding place in total darkness.
Dressed in black, lying in a thicket a hundred yards from the target, he was nearly invisible. He peered through his binoculars at the farmhouse. Dark except for a fluorescent lamp over the kitchen window. An hour had passed since the other lights in the house had been put out — enough time for all to be asleep. In prison he’d learned the virtues of Zen-like patience and stillness, and could endure long hours motionless, especially if it meant the difference between life and death.
He rose silently from his makeshift blind, stretching, flexing, untensing. He was a big man, six foot four, with a weightlifter’s bulked arms and chest, and a neck as wide as a fireplug. His massive head was tucked between his shoulders, like a prizefighter.
He patted his coat pockets, feeling for the rope cut in measured lengths, duct tape, and a folded commando knife. He had no need to check on his gun, a .44 magnum, tucked snugly into the small of his back.
He would have little trouble gaining entry through the sliding glass kitchen door at the back of the house. They always left it unlocked. He’d been watching for days, always arriving after dark, disappearing before dawn, careful not to leave any signs behind.
He was familiar with all their habits. They had a French bulldog he overheard them calling “Bruzza,” who usually slept indoors with the family. Sometimes they left him out, like tonight. Laurent had sedated him earlier with a tranquilizer-laced Big Mac, which he’d tossed into the doghouse.
All things were in place. This was his time, the night, with its comforting solitude. He was ready, come to take back what belonged to him. Because of what society, the law had done to him — years of incarceration for a crime he was innocent of — he no longer considered the consequences of his actions.
Once past the snoring dog, he slipped inside the kitchen by raising the sliding glass door a hair to reduce friction. He stood still, barely breathing, hidden from the cone of light above the sink, listening for sounds from the upstairs bedrooms.
Hugging the shadows, he made his way up the carpeted stairs to the second floor, where Corbin slept alongside Vivian in the master bedroom. Down the hall was the son, finally done with his Xbox marathon, signaled by the end of the flickering lightshow on his window shade.
Laurent led the way with his pistol. Though he’d had it in his possession only a few days, repeated handling made it feel familiar.
A step groaned under his weight and he stopped, listening for any sound before continuing.
How will Vivian react when she sees him now, transformed by the hard years served in her honor? Will she recognize him, truly see him — strip away the dross of jail to reveal the true face of the young lover he once was?
In his fantasy, she stirs from the warm bed of the usurper — her husband for almost as long as his imprisonment — and leaps with a joyful cry into his arms. They’ll make a new life — in Canada or Mexico, wherever. How could it be otherwise?
Of course, the boy, her son and Corbin’s — a geeky teen, Teddy she calls him — has to stay behind. She will understand that he’d be in the way. He pushed aside the thought of having his own son one day; didn’t know if there’d be room in their new lives.
As for Corbin, he’d provide the wherewithal, the cash, to make it all happen. And keep his mouth shut if he wanted to go on living.
Wrapped in equal parts of hope and rage, Laurent mounted the last few steps of the stairs, intent on trampling this union of man and wife, and replacing it with his own.
Chapter Two
Jens Corbin, middle-aged novelist of some note, slumbered deeply if uncomfortably, caught in the grip of a repeated dream, one which had haunted him since adolescence.
Despite all the trappings of success — winner of the prestigious Mystery Writers Poe Award, a book on the bestseller list (but not too recently), two homes and two late model cars, a son in private school and a handsome, talented, accomplished wife snoring beside him — he was troubled.
In that state between reverie and consciousness, when fragments of ideas mix with shards of the past, he rehashed certain events, ad nauseam, before launching into the dream.
Two teenage boys walk silently along a wooded path banked by oak and maple, branches fluttering with rust-colored leaves. They cradle scoped rifles in their arms, pointed down, like trained hunters. Whenever Jens, five years younger, anxious, inexperienced, begins babbling, older brother Nils hushes him with a severe glance. Jens, who hates hunting, did not want to come, but Nils insisted. Jens idolizes Nils.
They spot a matted knoll where a deer herd was bedded down for the night. They go on alert, following spoor and the trail of waist-high broken branches, leading deeper into the woods. The thunder of the herd fleeing at their scent, trampling
brush and snapping low tree limbs, sets them swinging their rifles up. But the deer are already gone. A ghostly silence descends in their wake, gathering, growing with menace.
He stirred restlessly in his sleep, moaned, rising up through the stages of REM as he tried to stop the familiar nightmare.
And with it, the knowledge that he killed his older brother that day.
Chapter Three
In the Corbin’s bedroom, hidden in the shadows cast by an inconstant moon, Laurent observed Vivian toss an arm and a leg carelessly over Corbin, a gesture at once familiar and intimate, intended to rouse him from his nightmare.
With growing horror, Laurent watched as she began to massage the crotch of the man he’d convinced himself she only tolerated — not loved — as a means to an end. That end being their reunion. No fool, he’d long ago accepted the inevitability of their coupling, but never expected to be condemned to acknowledge, let alone witness it.
Hadn’t she kept an ember of their love alive over the years, just as he, faithfully, had fanned his in the solitude of his prison cell? Hadn’t she read the letters he’d mailed her in the last few weeks, announcing, after years of silence, his release from Concord State and his arrival in Portsmouth, to be with her? Wasn’t she expecting him?
He was unable to look away as Corbin responded to her ministrations. Eyes clenched, Corbin embraced her in a ceremony of love that both aroused and repulsed Laurent, especially when he saw how willingly she responded, even dominated their lovemaking.
In a welter of nausea, Laurent aimed his pistol at the proverbial double-backed creature, an icon of lovers as old as original sin. He aimed first at Vivian, writhing atop her lover, then at Corbin, as they switched places.
How could she? How could she?
His pain carried him from the room, down the carpeted stairs, out the sliding kitchen door. He left it open, unsure if he was coming back that night to finish the job. Unsure what the job was, exactly, now that everything had turned to ashes.
Stumbling into the woods, his gun hand smacked against his thigh.
A shot rang out, booming, seemingly without end.
He ran into the night.
Chapter Four
Unable to stem the tide of recriminations that always accompanied his nightmare, Jens slipped silently from the bed, careful not to disturb Vivian, a light sleeper. Her back to him, she slumbered on, cheating him of the chance to see her face, see if a faint trace of their lovemaking lingered.
She’d surprised him by taking the initiative last night. And though he hadn’t expected, or received in the aftermath, any indication of a truce in their ongoing cold war, let alone pillow talk expressing rekindled love, still he would have welcomed a softly spoken word from her, accompanied by a goodnight kiss on the lips. Instead, she’d turned away abruptly and begun snoring.
He stepped into the bathroom and gently closed the door. Stared at himself in the mirror, ran his hands through his hair, noting again with dismay his receding hairline and sprinkling of salt-and-pepper rising from his sideburns. There were liver-colored dark bags under his eyes. He back-handed the stubble on his cheeks and decided to shave, even though it was Saturday and he was taking Teddy up to their log cabin in Jackson. The stubble made him look old, like a wizened reprobate — not the best foot to put forward when trying to bond with your teenage son. He turned on the tap, splashed hot water on his face, lathered up.
A muffled “Pop!” sounded distantly from somewhere in the woods behind the house. Early morning poachers jacking a deer caught in their headlights? He imagined a pair of local yahoos capitalizing on the serendipitous moment, after a long night of doping and drinking.
Jens pulled aside the curtain and looked into the backyard, still dark. Nothing.
He went back to his shaving, resolved to investigate the woods later, check his assumption about poachers. It occurred to him that the “pop” he’d heard, or thought he’d heard, lacked the resonance of a rifle crack as the bullet broke the sound barrier, followed by the lingering thump of the round fired. It was a “sound worm” that he knew only too well from his nightmares. Pistol, then? Could mean a wounded deer. He’d definitely have to investigate.
But he forgot all about it in the rush to have breakfast with Teddy and say goodbye to Vivian, who’d deigned to drag herself out of bed and see them off, so they could get on the Kancamagus Highway north before the tourists.
Evil had come calling. An apt complication for a fictional character, but not for a man with a stake in life.
Chapter Five
Teddy, also a light sleeper, overwrought by the electronic games he was obsessed with, especially those featuring hard men, efficient killers, like Desmond Miles from Assassin’s Creed, came downstairs to investigate the noise that had awakened him.
Finding the kitchen door open, he examined it for a break-in, found none, and stepped out onto the porch, ready to vanquish any and all, weaponless except for his wiry arms and legs, which he imagined were registered weapons of destruction.
This image of himself as a fearless warrior was the alter-ego he privately cultivated. He hadn’t told his dad yet, but he planned to join the Marines out of high school. Good thing, as he was failing most subjects except for physical education, but was willing to pass them for the Marines.
Satisfied that the noise he’d heard was likely a jet on maneuvers from the nearby airport breaking the sound barrier, he was about to return to the comfort of his bed when he noticed that Bruzza, a barker, was oddly quiet in the wake of the boom, whatever it was.
He found the dog inside his doghouse, snoring loudly, his jowly head resting on black and tan paws. Lost in thought, Teddy hit his head on the low roof, forgetting to duck.
That’s when he saw it — a thin wedge of pickle in the far corner, chewed and discarded.
Really?
He backed out, the pickle gingerly held. Oddly, it was still moist. At once he recognized it as coming from a McDonald’s burger.
Now, where the fuck did this come from? he wondered, peering into the bleak woods, looking for an intruder who may have — what? — shared his late-night snack with Bruzza.
Baffled, he plunged a few steps into the woods, then halted, restrained by darkness, wishing he had night goggles like a proper warrior.
“You out there, fucker,” he hissed, spooking himself. More boldly: “I’ll get you, you bastard.” He pointed an imaginary gun into the dark. “Come out!”
No answer was forthcoming, only silence wrapped in mystery, the kind that Teddy had to come to relish.
Like about his mother’s letters from a man named Laurent that he’d been intercepting for the past few months. Had she really been with a convicted murderer before marrying Dad? What else didn’t he know about her?
And what did that make him?
Chapter Six
By the time Jens and Teddy had breakfasted, said their goodbyes to Vivian and Bruzza, and loaded up the Subaru with their fishing gear, clothes, and a carton of Teddy’s Xbox and games, Laurent was just emerging from the woods onto Calef Highway.
He was exhausted from his fiasco at the Corbins’ and his long ramble through the woods and farmlands. He’d taken the long way out to avoid the farmhouses and barns where armed citizens, alerted by watchdogs, might not take kindly to a suspicious-looking trespasser on their property in the middle of the night.
At one farm, he’d been attacked by a German Shepherd. In the scramble to get away, he’d lost his gun — adding to his failure. He doubted he would find it even now, in daylight.
Then, it had taken him hours to get to the Shell Station on 125 near Epping. Happy to find the garage open for business, the bay doors up, the ratcheting mechanics’ drills humming purposefully within, he waved to the clerk at the register inside the station and mimed restroom?
The cashier gave him a cursory nod, indicating with his thumb that the bathroom around back was open and he was free to use to it. Though his scowl suggested he’d be happier
if Laurent bought something to justify its use.
Laurent waved back, mimed drinking coffee, and went around back. Like roadside gas stations most everywhere, the dank bathroom stunk of urine and trucker perspiration. He relieved himself and washed up at the grease-smeared sink, inured to like facilities in prison.
He eyed himself in the mirror, wondering how he’d let his well-planned home invasion at Vivian’s go south. He hadn’t anticipated his reaction to her being in bed with Corbin. He dried his face and hands with toilet paper, finding no towels in the dispenser.
Refreshed in spite of everything, he pushed out of the bathroom and turned the corner to the station to get coffee and a sweet roll.
And pulled back suddenly when he saw Corbin gassing up his Subaru at the pump. The boy, Teddy, was entering the store. Before Corbin looked his way, Laurent withdrew to the bushes alongside the garage and made himself invisible.
He watched, boiling with rage, wrestling with his impulse to carjack Corbin and take him back to the house in Lee, force him to give up the goods, while Vivian watched.
But he knew better than to act in broad daylight with witnesses present.
Instead, he surrendered to fantasies about what he was going to do Corbin when the time came. He knew he needed a plan. A way to get at him. Through the boy?
Just then Teddy loped to the car, a bottle of water in each hand, and opened the door on the passenger’s side.
“Want a water, Dad?”
Corbin, shaking his head, replaced the nozzle on the pump. He went to the hatchback and fished around in the bags, emerging with two apples.
Laurent thought of all the years this Sancho had been sleeping with his wife.
Before he knew it, he’d picked up a baseball-sized rock and hurled it at Corbin’s head with all his might.
Corbin, lowering the hatchback, incidentally ducked.
The hatchback closed just as Laurent’s projectile bounced off the window, fissuring it with a loud pop. The rock skittered away unseen into the bushes as Corbin flinched away from the sudden noise.