“’Course I did — there wasn’t anything on his phone.”
“Maybe he deleted it.”
“Maybe he made the whole thing up. Anyway, then Broward reviewed the tapes and called in the IAB and had them investigate me. This is what I’m telling you — cops aren’t even allowed to do their jobs anymore.”
Faber’s eye kept twitching. He was lying about something, maybe covering his own ass. “You ask me, the whole thing was a big show for Broward because he’s running this little department and can’t handle the case, there’s no one in cuffs, those brothers of hers keep turning up and demanding a suspect and so he throws me under the bus. Period. Throws me right under the bus. Like I said, Broward’s just another hand-holder, just wants to keep the pressure off of himself.”
“I’ve spent some time with Chief Broward and I don’t think he’d make decisions based on social pressure.”
“Oh — you don’t? In all your books, they don’t teach you about social pressure? Even I know that people fear social awkwardness more than they fear actual physical pain. Even I know that.”
“Not cops.” But she didn’t believe her own words.
* * *
Broward was sitting outside The Trading Post in his Liverpool police car. She knocked on the window and he looked up from his phone and smiled. She was thinking about him hiding something Faber did or said during the Roger Payton interviews.
Payton’s restaurant manager sat at the bar hunched over some paperwork and a coffee within arm’s reach. She climbed down from the bar stool as they approached. “You again.”
“Hey, Eileen. Can we get into Roger’s office, please?”
A bus boy swept the dining room around tables with overturned chairs. Pots and pans clashed in the kitchen. Eileen took them into the back and pushed open a door to a cramped room with no windows. She moved some things around to clear a path to Payton’s desk. “Roger hasn’t been here in a while. Excuse the mess.”
“Thanks Eileen,” Broward said. “Can you stick close in case we need anything?”
“Uh, sure.” She pulled the door shut.
Broward sat behind Payton’s desk. A few boxes were filled with framed pictures. There were oily marks on the walls where the pictures once hung.
“So what are we doing here?” Broward said.
“I think Payton was telling Faber the truth. I think he was contacted by someone, just like Archer.”
He seemed disappointed. “I thought you wanted to take a run at him. That’s why you’re asking me about his health? Like I said on the phone, how it looks — Danica Payton is the only victim without kids.”
“Were they trying? In Faber’s report he says he asked Danica’s mother and she said no.”
“Some other family thought maybe. The brothers thought she was.”
“I doubt she’s going to talk to her brothers about something like that.”
Broward shrugged and turned his head.
Kelly looked around some more at the filing boxes and stacks of papers filling the room. “Your County MCU took most of this into evidence, gave most of it back, finding no indication that Payton’s business was in the red, or he had any financial motive. And her life insurance policy wasn’t huge, either.”
Broward fixed her with a look. “Yeah but he ran.”
“He could have run to escape the TV crews and newspapers. And her brothers, constantly showing up, asking him questions. And with all due respect, you let him go. You couldn’t have liked him for it too much.”
He raised his arms. “What am I going to do?”
“You get the state police, you have him arrested when you have something to charge him with. But you didn’t, and you still don’t, and that’s my point.”
Broward looked hurt. “So what are we doing here if you think he’s innocent? You’re the one who called me, Kelly. Asking about Payton. I thought maybe because of the childless thing . . .”
“I think he’s been in touch with the killer just like I said from the beginning.”
Broward seemed to decide something. It was good enough for him to get to Payton even if they were coming at it from different angles. “So let’s go. I’ll go with you.”
“You and me? Don’t you have a department to run?”
“I have capable officers. Just give me an hour to clear the deck.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Broward was ready at 4 p.m. and they left Liverpool, headed for the Adirondacks. Dixon knew where she was going and had state police on alert in case anything jumped off. Even though the state police reported that Payton had been at his cabin every day for the past two weeks, he could have been using a second vehicle to get around if he was up to something. And there’d been only one victim since Payton had fled to Green Pond — Jessica Carter-Spence, so it was possible Payton had slipped the casual surveillance for just that one event.
They drove into the silvery evening, turned at the junction for 81 and continued north.
Kelly turned on the stereo and found a radio station.
Broward listened. “You’re a country girl? I wouldn’t have thought it. What is this? Waylon Jennings?”
“I never listened to Tori Amos.”
“I’m still in the same Dave Matthews Band phase. Sorry.”
She felt herself grinning, and realized it was mostly out of relief Broward wasn’t still stewing about her comments in Payton’s office.
They fell into silence and the odometer ticked off the miles. As they came into Watertown Kelly said, “This is where William Bath was born.”
“Billy Bath? He’s not from the ’Cuse?”
“He was twenty-seven when he killed a young boy and a girl here. He took a plea bargain, did twelve years for one charge of manslaughter and got paroled. He stayed in the state like he was supposed to but relocated to Syracuse.”
“I didn’t know that. Jesus, bet the parole board caught hell for that one. He wound up convicted of eleven more, was that it?”
“Mostly street workers. Never really had anything we could point to, no real reason for his crimes. And he writes to us.”
“Writes to you?”
“To the FBI. Like he wants to be heard.”
“What’s he write?”
“It’s similar in some ways to the stuff our killer is saying. The stuff in Grumett’s book. That’s there’s no real identity, no true free will.”
“So he’s a socialist.”
Kelly’s smile quickly faded. “Only thing you could say stood out about Bath was that he was tall, six foot five. That’s why everyone called him Billy Bath — it sounds like a basketball player, I guess. His real name is Clarence William Bath.” She turned on her headlights now that it was full dark.
Broward thought about it. “So when he got inside, he starts writing — writes this manifesto about seeing beyond the pale, seeing the falseness of society. Sounds like our guy. Yeah. Has this need to preach. These killings are his sermons. What got Bath into it? There had to be something that set him off. Maybe you just never found it.”
Or, maybe Severin, Faber, even agent Webber, were right — the why didn’t matter. “Bath was narcissistic. Hence the writing. But where that narcissism came from . . . born with it? A reaction to something that’s too hard to see? Anyway, if there’s a reason our guy is espousing the ideas found in Grumett’s book it’s because he’s identifying with it. Using it almost like a religious text.”
“A religious text . . .”
“I remember a lot of Bath’s ideas. He says if you see yourself as an individual, if you identify with a group or cause of an idea, then you become resistant to change. He says it’s the source of all conflict in the world. That identity is the true Original Sin. Eve became conscious when she ate the apple, and so began suffering.”
“Poetic,” Broward said. “So he’s saving all of us, huh? And if we find a copy of Grumett’s book in Payton’s cabin, dog-eared and underlined? What then?”
“Then I call Dixon an
d we treat Payton as a threat and get state police Troop B behind us and we arrest him.”
He was quiet a moment. “You go around with all this in your head?”
“Comes with the job.”
“And you want to know why these killers do what they do.”
She thought about her answer but didn’t speak for a while. “To be honest I think it helps me to help others.”
But she hadn’t been able to help Jessica Carter-Spence.
And there was someone else he was after now — this killer was always working. The thought made her feel sick.
“I need to pull over.”
She pulled off onto the shoulder and got out in the dark. A light snow was drifting down from a starless, black sky, revealed in the cone of headlights stabbing out into the cloak of darkness.
She stretched her legs and took in the fresh cold air.
Broward got out. “Okay?”
“I’m good.” She hurried back to the car and started rolling again as Broward closed his door.
* * *
Payton’s cabin sat back a ways from route 30 in a grove of pines and aspen. The place was unlit but a trail of smoke issued from the chimney. They rolled to a stop in the dirt driveway and a pair of flood lamps on the corner of the cabin snapped to life, bleaching everything in a cold white light. Kelly grabbed her gun in its holster and fastened it to her belt. Broward got out and opened his gun — he carried a revolver like an old-time lawman — checked the cylinder and then snapped it closed.
A light turned on inside the house, then another. The surroundings were so quiet Kelly could hear the wood creaking as someone came toward the front door. Water lapped against a hidden shore — probably Green Pond.
She and Broward stayed in the driveway between the car and the cabin entrance until finally a lock was drawn and the door opened. Roger Payton, large and sleepy-looking, darkened the doorway.
Broward stayed where he was, holding his revolver with the barrel pointed down, his trigger finger against the action. “Hey, Roger.”
“Hey, Chief.”
“How you doing?”
Payton raised a hand to shield his eyes from the area light and looked at Kelly. “Can’t complain. You brought the FBI?”
“This is Agent Kelly Roth. We’d like to have a quick talk with you, Roger. Can we come in?”
* * *
It was a mess. The cabin could have been cozy — timber framed with exposed beams and knotty pine walls, scratched-up wood floors covered with braided rugs, a large woodstove, comfy old furniture in the living room, a large farm table in the kitchen. But after two weeks of living there on his own, things had deteriorated. The kitchen smelled like rotten meat, the floors were dirty, and what looked like mice shit covered a little bit of everything.
They’d holstered their weapons and Broward sat across from Payton. Kelly remained standing. “So,” Broward said. “What’s new?”
Payton unscrewed the cap from the bourbon and poured some into a tumbler. He looked at it a moment then raised it to his lips and drank. He set down the glass and stared at the bottle.
“I used to not drink. I had nine years not drinking. Now I am. That’s new.” He turned his attention to Broward and kept it there. His skin was pockmarked but he wasn’t an ugly man. Life had been ugly to him. “I didn’t do AA. Probably should have. You know what they say — they say someone who isn’t going to AA is only a dry drunk, doing it white-knuckle. But with Dani and the restaurant, it kept me sober.” He looked around a minute and then poured another drink and held the glass and his upper lip started to twitch like he was getting angry. “The night after she was killed, I didn’t even think about it. I just went behind the bar and took down a bottle. There were people around. No one said anything. What could they say?”
“Nothing,” Broward said.
Kelly spoke up after they’d fallen into an uneasy silence. “Mr. Payton, I met with Detective Faber earlier today.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s an asshole, excuse the language.”
“What do you think he told me?”
“Ah, come on . . .”
“Help us to understand, Mr. Payton.”
“Help you to understand . . . Help you to understand . . .” Payton took a drink. “Well, if you talked to Faber then you know what I said to him.”
“You told him — off the record — that someone had contacted you.”
Payton turned his face away and stared into the kitchen. “Dani was a good wife. A great wife.”
Kelly shared a glance with Broward as Payton continued.
“But I think something happens to a person when they have what happened to her, losing her ticket to ride like that, getting injured. She had this whole plan, this whole map of her life, and then it all went away. And she never really felt she could measure up. Not again.” He smiled and looked down and laughed softly to himself. “That’s how she wound up with me, if you want to put a point to it. She settled.”
“Mr. Payton, could you talk about this person who called you? Or texted you?”
He looked at Kelly for a long time. His dark hair was curly, greasy from being unwashed, gray around his ears. “Dani was taking meds, too. But you probably know that. We had this thing, right, where I’d say that Dani had gone slumming with me, you know? She’d dropped a weight class. I mean, you’ve seen her. She was just a knockout. Smart as hell, funny — could’ve had any guy.”
“She was a beautiful woman,” Broward agreed.
After another silence, Kelly sensed their talk was over. “Mr. Payton?”
“Mmm?” He stared past her, lost.
“Did the man who killed Dani call you?”
Payton took a drink. “Yeah, he called me.”
She looked at Broward then back to Payton, her stomach clenching. “When did he call you?”
“He texted me not long after he killed her.” Payton nodded slowly to himself then drummed the table with his fingers and bit his lower lip and looked around.
Broward leaned forward. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you? Because I saw you one time for about five minutes before you left me alone with Faber in that room for three days. And when I did tell him, he said I was crazy.”
“Why did you ask for the recording to be shut off?” Kelly asked, but she knew the answer.
Payton jammed a look at her. “Faber had been trying to label me as the guy. He kept saying, ‘we’re just trying to eliminate you,’ but then he was coming at me with all this about how I might’ve had her killed for the insurance.”
“Okay, but—”
“You want to know why I didn’t tell anybody? Because the guy who killed Dani said he was going to give himself up. To me. He swore up and down he was going to tell me who he was and I thought, what if it’s true? But I couldn’t say anything. That would break the deal.”
Kelly’s mind raced. On the one hand, Payton’s story fit with the texts on Ted Archer’s phone and what she’d come to see as the killer’s signature — his manipulation of the men. On the other hand, Payton seemed disturbed on multiple levels. An unreliable witness, crazy or not. But if he was mentally disturbed it was possible he’d lied about receiving messages from the killer and instead been the one to contact Ted Archer. Maybe he even believed his own delusion, like Faber thought.
“Do you have any record of your communication with this person?”
“I erased it all.”
“Since then, since Faber, since you’ve been up here — has he been in contact with you?”
No answer for a few seconds, then he looked down and nodded. “He called.”
“When?”
“But I didn’t have any way to record it or anything.”
“When did he call you?”
“Just recently. Few days ago.”
“I’d like to see your phone please.”
“Yeah, I’ll go get it. Just a second.”
Broward jumped in. “So he says he’ll give himself up, you can’t call us, and you go with it — just in case. But did you believe it? Do you? Do you really think you’ve been talking to Dani’s killer?”
“He said things that weren’t in the papers.”
“Like what?” Broward snapped.
And Kelly knew before Payton answered.
“He said that he left behind bullet casings,” Payton said. “He said that the first time we talked. They said ‘30-30 WIN’ on them.”
She moved a little closer to Payton. “How did you know that was true?”
“I asked. I pulled it out of Faber. When the guy first called me, it was right in the middle of all these interrogations. I told Faber I needed to know if there were any leads. And he told me about the casings.”
“Bullshit,” Broward said. “No way. Sorry, Roger . . .”
But Kelly believed him — she’d felt Faber was hiding something. She put a hand up to silence Broward and focused on Payton. “Why would Detective Faber tell you that?”
“He thought he was going to catch me in something. I don’t know.”
“Kelly,” Broward said, sounding upset. “This is—”
“And that’s when you told Faber about being contacted?”
Payton was only looking at her now. “Yeah.”
She could smell the alcohol. And musty woodwork. And Payton, a sour sweat like he hadn’t showered for a while. “Has he ever told you who he is?”
“No.”
Broward got up from the table. “Kelly, can we talk for a minute?”
She told him to hang on. “Do you have any ideas?” she asked Payton.
“I don’t.”
“So you’re being contacted by your wife’s killer, he warns you not to talk, you’re sure it’s him because of what he knows about the casings, then you have Faber turn off the camera? Now there’s no proof . . .”
“Here’s what I thought, okay? I didn’t want a record of it. Of course I wanted to tell someone. This guy said if I said anything, he’d never give himself up and never be caught. That he’d do it again to other people. So I asked Faber to shut the recording off. I thought Faber would help me. But he didn’t believe me. How’s that, huh? How’s that for police work?”
The Husbands Page 21
