The House Husband Read online

  But Teaghan doesn’t fully ease back into full-time mom mode. Part of her brain is still in detective mode, too, and can’t help thinking about the Pancoast murders. She’s been on the Job for ten years, on homicide for the past three, and can’t remember a case quite like this.

  “Hey, sweetie,” she coos. “How about we do a little googling?”

  An hour later, Teaghan is still holding the baby while she reads up on familicide, the word for the type of murder or murder-suicide that results in the death of at least one spouse and one or more children. Yeah, she didn’t know the word, either. But now that she does, she can’t seem to shake it loose from her mind.

  Familicide. Sounds like a poison you use when a family is infesting your home.

  Cases of familicide are rare. But surprisingly, they’re also the most common form of mass murder—even in this age of psychotic people carrying assault rifles into churches, clinics, schools, and movie theaters.

  Baby Christopher stirs a little. But it’s not Mommy who replies; instead, it’s Detective Beaumont, who really doesn’t want to be interrupted right now.

  “Shhh. Not now, kid.”

  With one hand, Teaghan does a news search for Philadelphia and familicide cases over the past five years. No hits—which is good news. But then she thinks about it. How many reporters would use the word familicide in a tabloid newspaper? A lot of reporters she knows don’t even get name spellings right. So she tries a search with Philadelphia, mass murder, and family.

  Tenths of a second later, Teaghan is shocked to see there were not just one but two other cases of familicide in Philadelphia. And both happened in the past six weeks, when she was out on maternity leave.

  “No way,” Teaghan says.

  The hard edge in her voice startles the baby, who erupts into a full, panicked wail.

  CHAPTER 11

  When you’re cooped up in the house all day with three life-forms under the age of ten, the internet can be a godsend.

  Yeah, I’m a stay-at-home dad whose wife works in a big, important office downtown, but it wasn’t always this way. I used to be a normal guy who liked to socialize with humans over the age of ten. I liked to gossip about work, and I enjoyed discussing how badly the Eagles were doing. I still crave shallow and mindless human interaction.

  Which is why the gods gave us social media.

  I don’t have many actual, true-blue, known-’em-since-kindergarten friends on Facebook. But the weird thing about Facebook is that you can pretty much be the Unabomber and end up with hundreds of “friends.” People see you comment on a buddy’s site, decide you don’t look and talk like a troglodyte, so they’ll toss you a friend request. I almost always accept, unless the “friend” looks suspiciously like a single lady from overseas searching for a husband. Job filled and then some, thank you very much.

  No, what I crave are details about other people’s families. They can make you feel better about what you’re doing—or infinitely worse.

  You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? C’mon, who hasn’t felt that burning envy when you see a “friend” and his family enjoying some lavish all-inclusive vacation on a Caribbean island? Or sitting down to a mouthwatering meal at an exclusive, pop-up, one-time-only restaurant run by a celebrity chef? Or engaging in some wild family sport like extreme caber tossing? (Hey, say what you want about the Scots, but any sport where you have to wear a skirt strikes me as extreme.)

  Then there are the other posts. The ones that make you feel sad, because some families…well, they’re stumbling.

  Or downright failing.

  It’s amazing what some people will share online.

  Like the stay-at-home mom who complains about having no sex life and jokes with her friends about having an affair with one of the young trainers at the ten-dollar-a-month gym she visits every morning after dropping the kids off at school.

  Or the married father of four who posts crude pornographic and racially insensitive jokes for his buddies. What happens when his daughter (Hannah, fourteen and cute, even in braces!) goes online and sees them?

  Or the workaholic, depressive mother of two who goes on and on about how she has no time for anything anymore. Hey, Mom, here’s a tip: stay offline and maybe enjoy your kids a bit more!

  People are crazy, I’m telling you.

  Sure, we all make mistakes. But what really bothers me is when innocent children get caught up in those mistakes. When I hold my baby girl, it hits me how defenseless she is. How she looks to us for everything, including her basic survival. What happens to babies who have royal jerks for parents? Or worse, older kids with awful parents who will someday grow up to be awful parents themselves, perpetuating this endless cycle of…

  Ah, listen to me. I don’t mean to get on the soapbox. I’m just trying to make the point that I don’t go on social media merely for the vicarious thrill. I’m worried about the families out there. So I scroll through post after post, looking for a family who might need my help.

  And thanks to my trip to the crime scene this morning, I might have lucked into one.

  The best part about social media is that it’s not like you’re watching a movie or a ball game. I can dive in for six minutes—or sixty, depending on how my day is going. Because one moment you’re wrapped up in someone else’s life, and the next you’ve got a child tugging on your sleeve, begging (whining a little) for you to head outside and roll a soccer ball at him a million times.

  Like right now.

  Yes, Jordan, Daddy will be more than happy to help you with your kicks. This old man still has a few tricks up his sleeve.

  CHAPTER 12

  Second day back on the Job, and it’s no easier for Teaghan to leave her baby boy at home with her husband.

  “Daddy will take good care of you, sweetheart,” she says softly. “You guys are going to have a good time.”

  Baby Christopher, however, doesn’t buy it. He responds with a new, pitiful round of shrill cries.

  “I know, baby. Your mommy’s sad, too.”

  The ache is not just emotional. It’s physical, too. Her swollen breasts seem to want to feed her kid all the time. (At least today she remembers to pack her breast pump. And she doesn’t care if Diaz gives her grief about it, either.) Her arms want to hold Christopher close, even though they’re still sore from holding him in the middle of the night, and the weight on her body inflames her C-section scar, too. Motherhood—whatever doesn’t kill you makes you tired.

  But at least this morning she’s leaving their brownstone apartment with two addresses and a purpose.

  Namely, to figure out why there’s been a weird uptick in familicides here in the City of Brotherly Love. Did someone dump something in the water supply while she was on leave that made everyone go insane?

  The first address takes Teaghan to the Brewerytown neighborhood, a rapidly gentrifying area on the fringes of a not-so-great one. She squeezes into a parking spot on Girard Avenue, then walks up to the town house.

  The area is probably no more dangerous than her own in West Philly on the outskirts of Penn’s campus. But Teaghan’s out here without her partner, and the last thing she needs is to get blindsided. Once a city girl, always a city girl. You never, ever let your guard down.

  The neighborhood borders Fairmount Park, which is a bonus, and a lot of the row homes are big, with sturdy bones. Some urban professionals have been taking a chance on these kinds of places for years. You buy it cheap, fix it up, and hope the next hot new neighborhood springs to life around you.

  That was probably the strategy of successful Center City defense attorney W. Harold Posehn. He could have afforded any place in the city, probably even swank Rittenhouse Square. But he and his wife, with their three kids, opted for this big town house on a quiet street just off Girard. And they probably enjoyed it. For a while.

  Six weeks ago, however, Posehn’s wife drowned all three of their children in their claw-foot tub—including an infant—before stabbing her lawyer husband
with a butcher knife. Then she slashed her own wrists, lay down next to the bodies of her dead children, and waited for life to fade away.

  Teaghan shudders just thinking about it. And she’s not the kind of cop to shudder over a multiple homicide.

  And now here she is, visiting the scene of the crime just a month and a half later.

  The town house is still vacant, of course. Tough enough to sell a place this deep into Brewerytown on a good day, let alone one that was the site of a horribly violent crime. Earlier this morning, Teaghan called the Realtor, who grudgingly gave her the punch-in code for the front door. “Aren’t you people done with this place yet?” he complained. “I swear, it’s nonstop with you guys.” Teaghan bit her tongue and thanked him for his patience.

  Now that she’s on the front stoop, however, she finds herself wishing she’d never called in the first place. What does she hope to gain by seeing the murder scene?

  She punches in the code. The lock beeps twice. She turns the knob and opens the thick, heavily insulated door into a shockingly large living room. Though the interior has been stripped bare, it’s clear the Posehns put a lot of work into the place. This is exactly the kind of place she’d love for her, Charlie, and the baby someday.

  There’s a tool bag and a small wastebasket with junk-food wrappers and soda cans inside. The Realtor must have hired somebody to make the place immaculate again. Which only makes Teaghan realize she’s procrastinating. What she came to see is up a flight of stairs.

  The master bathroom, where it all happened.

  Ordinarily, it would be the kind of space any homeowner would dream of—pristine tiles, a huge double sink with a wide mirror and state-of-the-art fixtures. But the centerpiece is the claw-foot tub, big enough (Teaghan swears) to fit a small vehicle.

  But this is no dream room anymore. This is the scene of a nightmare.

  Teaghan can’t help herself. She kneels down on the hard tile (which is remarkably clean) and reaches out to touch the tub. They truly don’t make them like this anymore. The porcelain enamel is chilly under her fingertips. She can feel the unforgiving strength of the cast iron beneath.

  When they thrashed, did they feel the horrible, unyielding weight all around them? There was nowhere to go. Not down, not to the side. And up above was the person who was supposed to love them and protect them, but she was holding them down, her arms like iron, too…

  No.

  Teaghan can’t do this.

  She stands up and sprints back down the hall. She half stumbles down the flight of stairs and makes it out the front door just in time to vomit on the sidewalk.

  A second wave of nausea overwhelms her, which doesn’t make sense, until a moment later, when it’s followed by sharp, stabbing pains throughout her torso. For a few minutes, she’s not sure she’s going to be able to stay conscious. The world swims around her.

  Don’t push it, the doc said. And here she is, doing the exact opposite.

  CHAPTER 13

  Teaghan is feeling better by the time she makes it over to the scene of the second familicide.

  By “better” she means it doesn’t hurt quite as much to breathe. But she’s afraid to look at her belly scar for fear of what she’ll see down there.

  This neighborhood, Chestnut Hill, is a far cry from Brewerytown. This is the place to live when you can afford Rittenhouse Square but prefer a more suburban feel within the city limits. Politicians, professors, doctors, and lawyers have called this neighborhood home for generations. Even James Bond lived here. (Well, the ornithologist, after whom Ian Fleming named his famous spy.)

  But all of that class doesn’t mean Chestnut Hill residents always behave.

  Three weeks ago, a sixty-year-old society matron named Eleanor Cooke decided to spike some soup with arsenic and serve it to her husband and four children—two of them grown adults—at their weekly family dinner. After Eleanor watched her family struggle, writhe on the floor, and finally die, she apparently took an overdose of painkillers to end her own life, while an LP of classical music played in the background. The fourth movement of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony no. 6, to be precise. It was allegedly still playing when responding officers kicked down the front door hours later.

  The tabloid report didn’t mention what kind of soup she served.

  But the reporter did detail the Cooke family’s squabbles over inheritance money, which was the source of much local gossip over the years.

  That is probably why the Realtor hung up on Teaghan when she called earlier this morning to ask about gaining access to the home.

  But Teaghan doesn’t need to see the kitchen or the dining room to know that something’s off here. As she stands in front of the $3.3 million Bells Mill Road spread (seven bedrooms, eight bathrooms), she finds herself wondering why Mrs. Cooke would decide to end the family line right here on a chilly Sunday evening.

  It doesn’t make sense. You spend your life building up all of this—the family, the estate, the cars, the possessions—only to wake up one morning and decide to blow everything out of existence with a pot of soup?

  What mother could ever do that to her babies, even if they were grown-ups and behaving like brats?

  Teaghan looks up at the house, struggling to wrap her mind around it.

  What if it wasn’t Mrs. Cooke? What if someone read the same tabloid report Teaghan did and was inspired by the Brewerytown killings to settle an old grudge?

  CHAPTER 14

  I’m not too proud to admit it.

  Sometimes you just have to bribe them.

  When I pick Jordan and Jonathan up from school (a private Quaker institution, just as our Founding Fathers intended), I promise to take them for frozen yogurt if—and only if—they’ll stay quiet while Daddy takes them for a short drive.

  They happily agree. Even baby Jennifer—clearly following the lead of her older brothers—seems to add her consent. Adults may be addicted to things like alcohol and nicotine, but nothing gets kids jonesing like the promise of a little fro-yo with as many toppings as they want. (Well, within reason.)

  In truth, the drive is pretty far from home, all the way up in a corner of the city that I don’t know too well. The phone’s GPS tells me it can take up to forty-five minutes, depending on traffic. And the best route is along the infamous Roosevelt Boulevard, which is a twelve-lane highway of sheer mayhem. It makes me nervous to be driving on it with the kids. But any other way will take forever, and my bribe—no matter how sweet—has its natural limits.

  Fox Chase is in Northeast Philadelphia, home to a lot of cops, firefighters, and blue-collar workers. I never thought my adventures would lead me up here, but hey, sometimes you can’t predict how life will go, you know?

  Fox Chase is surprisingly nice and clean, with a few single homes scattered among the twins. The family I’m curious about lives in one of the singles, a three-bedroom rancher, definitely within the range of the husband’s salary. They look like they live comfortably. There are toy trucks and little action figures scattered on the front lawn and a swing set out back. I drive around the block a few times, and I admit, I’m pretty jealous of the yard.

  But like any parent knows, appearances can be very deceiving.

  Because if my internet research is right, then the husband has been messing around with a coworker. The wife knows, sadly, but she bottles it up and takes her frustration out on her kids. Which is not cool. At all.

  I think I’m going to have to pay them a visit tonight, after my own wife gets home. The drive up Roosevelt Boulevard shouldn’t be too bad after 9:00 p.m. And if I tuck my revolver away in the back of the car ahead of time, that should save me a few minutes.

  But first, as promised…

  It’s time for some fro-yo, kids!

  CHAPTER 15

  At long last, baby Christopher goes down for the count. Maybe even for longer than thirty minutes this time. (Who knows? Miracles do happen.) And Charlie’s downstairs pounding away on his laptop, so he won’t be up to bother Tea
ghan, either.

  She takes advantage of the silence (however brief it may be) and pumps some breast milk. She’s almost used to the whirring and sucking and wheezing of the machine, so much so that if she’s not paying enough attention, her milk will overflow. Which is a huge pain, not to mention sort of embarrassing.

  But Teaghan’s got enough of a handle on it that she can focus on some work while she supplies tomorrow’s baby buffet. She places her laptop on the kitchen table right next to the breast pump and wonders what her grandmother (God rest her soul) would think of this setup. You need two machines to feed your baby? What madness is this?

  Yeah, it all seems crazy to me, too, Nana.

  Teaghan scrolls through online articles about the Fairmount and Chestnut Hill murder-suicides, hoping to stumble across a detail or two she missed on her first read. She doesn’t want to go requesting the case files unless she has something solid. Otherwise, she’s just sticking her nose into somebody else’s case, and no detective likes that.

  Logically, Teaghan knows that the cases are very different. There are no obvious social or business connections between the Cookes and the Posehns, the methods vary, and the motives appear solid—horrible as they might be. Still, Posehn was a Center City lawyer and most likely traveled in well-heeled circles. It’s not inconceivable that someone in the Cooke family orbit would have known him personally. Did Posehn’s death somehow expose a deep, dark Cooke family secret? And someone decided the whole tribe had to go?