The Architect (4 page)

A tear started down her cheek. She wiped it away. “Or maybe you just like causing people pain.”

He blew he was causing her pain. For a psychiatrist to be any good, he has to be willing to corner you, close off the easy exits, even when it hurts. It’s supposed to.

They stared at each other for several seconds.

“I really don’t care if you know,” Groupmann said, finally. “I don’t care if the whole goddamn world knows.” Her lip began to quiver. “My husband was gay.” She looked down, hugged herself. “That was definitely not part of the plan.”

Clevenger waited until Groupmann seemed to be in control. “When did you find out?” he asked her.

“Around the time we moved here from Carmel.” She looked at Clevenger. “A little over four years ago.”

“How?”

“He sat me down one night and told me. He pulled out all the old clichés: How he’d been ‘living a lie.” He ‘didn’t want to pretend anymore.” It ‘had nothing to do with me.””

“Did he have a... partner?”

She cringed. “I didn’t ask. He didn’t tell. But I doubt he would have confessed he was gay if all he’d done was fantasize about it. I don’t think we ended up in San Francisco by accident.”

“That was your husband’s idea?”

“He said he ‘fell in love” with this property. I’ve never wanted to know what he really fell in love with here.”

“Did you think about leaving him?” Clevenger said.

“Sure,” Groupmann said.

“But...”

“The kids were younger, in new schools, with new friends. We didn’t want them to have to deal with a divorce, headlines in the papers, whatever. And I...” She shook her head.

“You... ?”

“I really could have used you back then.”

Clevenger stayed silent.

She shrugged. “I already had my own life. Jeff and I hadn’t been good together—in
that
way—for a couple years before he told me what was going on. I had pretty much moved on.”

“To another relationship.”

“Yes,” she said, her voice warmer, as though thinking of her lover.

Clevenger put two and two together. ‘The man in the kitchen with your children?”

“That’s right. David.”

He heard real tenderness in her voice. “So you and your husband decided to live together, separately,” he said. “You had David. He had... whoever “

“That’s putting a very positive spin on it,” she said. “We lived a lie.”

The bitterness was back in her tone. “It wore on you,” Clevenger said.

“It basically wore us out”

“How so?”

“We had chosen new partners. Jeff had a whole new lifestyle. We tried the friendship routine, but it’s hard to be friends when you feel abandoned or tricked or whatever”

“Who had a harder time of it?”

“I think we were about equal on that. Neither of us did well with it.”

That didn’t add up. Groupmann’s husband had radically altered the family structure by declaring his sexual orientation. Why should he resent his wife expressing hers? “What problem did your husband have with your new relationship?” Clevenger asked.

“He thought I could have chosen someone else.”

“He didn’t like David”

“It was much worse than that,” she said.

Clevenger looked at her askance, urging her to say more.

“He loved him” She paused. “David was Jeffrey’s favorite toother. They were twins.”

SEVEN

Looking at David Groupmann
took a little getting used to. Clevenger had seen photos of his identical twin— dissected—before leaving Quantico. Here was a living, breathing copy.

They were sitting in the leather club chairs in the library. Shauna Groupmann had gone for a walk with the children. Clevenger could see them strolling hand-in-hand in the gardens beyond the patio.

“It was incredibly complicated, or incredibly simple, depending on how you looked at it,” Groupmann told Clevenger, in a smooth, deep voice. He was a willowy man, more elegant than masculine, with deeply tanned skin and a full head of brown hair, combed straight back. His eyes were much darker, nearly black. He wore a sky-blue Lacoste jersey, chinos, and deck shoes.

“Which way did you look at it?” Clevenger asked him.

“Before Jeff came out of the closet, I felt pretty much disgusted with myself,” he said. “If anyone had
ever told me I’d be having an affair with my brother’s wife, I would have told them they were crazy. It tore me up. I couldn’t sleep. I lost fifteen, twenty pounds. I mean, we were very close. The whole twin thing... talking over one another, finishing each other’s sentences.” He shook his head. “I loved Jeff. We only had each other—no brothers or sisters. I felt like the worst person on earth.”

“Then why?”

Groupmann looked down. “They were already having serious problems. Jeff wasn’t involved with the kids as much as Shauna expected—work was everything to him—but that was just part of it. There was no passion there. Zero. Not that that’s a green light, I know.” He looked back at Clevenger. “I don’t have a decent answer. If I had to guess, I’d say that deep down I’ve known most of my life what Jeff finally admitted to himself—and Shauna. I noticed things even when we were kids. I’d turn around to look at a girl; he wouldn’t. He was popular, played football at Andover and Yale—you know, the whole package—but he didn’t date much. The few girls he took out told me they liked him because he didn’t push them. Maybe a little kissing. Maybe. That was it.” He smirked. “I actually convinced myself at one point that he was alright with me and Shauna, that he kind of wanted it to happen, to let him off the hook.”

“When was that?”

“When it started, about six years ago. I was living a couple of miles away from them in Carmel. There were times when Jeff was out of the country raising capital or whatever, and he’d send me to look at a piece
of land or a building in Chicago, Philly, Boston, to get my take on it Sometimes he’d want Shauna’s opinion, too. So he’d charter a jet and fly us out together, put us up in the same hotel The energy between us was... phenomenal. I don’t see how he could have missed it”

“You were working for him at the time?”

“Just helping out I’m an artist. The little I know about real estate I learned from my brother.”

Helping out
was one way to look at it “What kind of artist are you?”

“Bullshit artist, can’t you tell?” He rolled his eyes. “I’m a painter.”

The one-liner convinced Clevenger that David Groupmann wasn’t grieving any more than Shauna Groupmann—at least, not in any usual way. “You’ve been able to make a success of it?” he asked him.

“I think a number of my paintings have been successful,” he said. “That’s the only kind of success I care about”

Meaning he hadn’t made much money. All well and good But it also meant that his brother had been the financial success in the family. And the famous one. Until now. Now David Groupmann had it all—his brother’s wife, full access to his multimillion-dollar house, maybe even access to his fortune. “What happened to your relationship with your brother once he knew about you and Shauna?” Clevenger asked.

“We went from being inseparable to being cordial.” He stopped, pressed his lips together, rubbed his eyes. “That really is bullshit He barely put up with me. He could hardly lode at me.”

Groupmann was finally showing some emotion.
Clevenger wanted to push him, to see how much anger might have brewed beneath the surface of his strained relationship with his brother. “You were trading your relationship with Jeff for the love of a woman, who happened to be his wife. Putting up with you could be seen as heroic.”

“There’s no excuse for what I did,” Groupmann said plainly. “None. Maybe we just were too much alike. Maybe that explains it. Like I said, I don’t know.”

“Say more.”

“We both loved her,” he said. “He loved her enough to betray his nature, have kids with her, stay with her almost fifteen years. And I loved her enough to betray him. Bottom line: I’m straight; he was gay. So maybe in some terrible way, what happened made some kind of sense.”

“And now that he’s dead...” Clevenger pushed.

“I never wished for that,” Groupmann shot back. “Never.” He looked away, shook his head. “But I have to believe he would have wanted his family taken care of.”

“Are you two planning to move in together?” Clevenger asked him.

“Not right away.”

“I see.”

He looked Clevenger in the eyes. “There’s no sense pretending anymore. Shauna and I were meant for each other. She and my brother weren’t. So who gets the blame? God?”

EIGHT

Loren and Lexi Groupmann
hugged their uncle David as he left the library, then took seats on the couch across from Clevenger. Loren hadn’t wanted to be interviewed without his older sister present, which seemed entirely normal for a ten-year-old, especially one who had just lost his father.

“Mom said you’re a psychiatrist?” Lexi asked Clevenger.

She had her mother’s sense of decorum, but her features were all Groupmann—the thick, brown hair, the brown-black, impenetrable eyes. “That’s right,” Clevenger said.

“But you work for the FBI,” she said.

“I help them understand violent people. Sometimes I help them find violent people.”

“Like whoever... hurt Dad,” she said. “And the others.”

“Yes,” Clevenger said.

Loren started to tap his foot on the floor. He was a
gaunt, pale boy with his mother’s dirty-blond hair, green eyes, and fine features. “A profiler,” he whispered.

“Are you okay?” Lexi asked him, laying a hand on his thigh.

Loren glanced at Clevenger, shrugged.

“Do you have something to say, Loren?” Clevenger asked gently.

The boy half-squinted at him. “Are any of us in trouble?”

Lexi smiled a nervous smile. “No one’s in trouble, Lore. Mom said he needs to know more about Daddy to—”

Clevenger held up a hand. “Why would you think that, Loren?” he asked. “Are you worried someone here could be in trouble?”

“I’ve just sera stuff on TV,” Loren said.

“He watches way too many crime shows,” Lexi told Clevenger.

“They always think it’s somebody in the family” Loren said ‘Then, half the time, they find out they were wrong. But it’s too late, because the person already committed suicide or got executed or killed by the real killer or—”

“This isn’t TV,” his sister said. She grinned at Clevenger. “He’s such a weirdo, sometimes.” She mussed up Loren’s hair. “You’re so weird.”

Lexi was displaying the same odd sense of detachment from tragedy that Clevenger had seen in her mother and uncle. There was certainly no shortage of unusual grief reactions in the family. “Are you scared of anyone here?” Clevenger asked Loren.

The boy started tapping his foot again. “Kind of,” he said.

“Who?” Clevenger asked.

He shrugged. “You, I guess.”

“He works with the police,” Lexi said. “He’s like the guy they call in to—”

“Why are you afraid of me?” Clevenger asked him.

He looked at Clevenger, but said nothing.

Clevenger stayed silent, waiting.

Loren’s eyes began to fill up.

Clevenger slowly leaned forward. “It’s alright, buddy. Whatever it is, it’s alright. You can tell me anything.”

“I don’t want you to ruin anything,” Loren said. “I just want to be happy. I want everything to be good now.”

Talk about unusual grief reactions.

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TEN

Clevenger left the Groupmann
estate at 4:50 P.M., PST. Shauna Groupmann had called a car service to take him to the Cloud Marina, where the president of her husband’s construction company was waiting to be interviewed by him. He got in. The car pulled away.

He checked his cell phone. He’d gotten fourteen new calls, including seven from North Anderson and three from his assistant, Amy Moffitt, at the Boston Forensics office. He checked text messages. The first was from Anderson. He’d never gotten one from him before. He clicked on it:

F—
Call me re Billy—N

Clevenger’s mind raced. Had Billy been hurt, hurt himself, overdosed? He dialed Anderson. “Frank,” Anderson answered. “What’s upT” “It’s about Billy.”

It’s about Billy
. Even that much beating around the bush was rare for Anderson. “Just tell me.”

“He got drunk, drove up to Newburyport this morning.”

“Is anyone hurt? The baby ...”

“Jake’s fine. He got into it with Casey. I guess she laced into him about not being around—”

Now Clevenger’s head was spinning. “Tell me he didn’t...”

“He didn’t hit her, but he punched a pretty good hole in her bedroom wall. She says he kept screaming about her setting him up, trapping him, whatever. She tried to get out of there, but he wouldn’t let her leave. Sounds like he was mixing it up—booze and marijuana, maybe more.”

Clevenger looked out at the Golden Gate Bridge, shimmering in the late afternoon sun. Its timeless beauty made what he was hearing sound that much uglier. “Is she alright?”

“Shaken up. She called 911 when he finally stormed out. Half the Newburyport Police Department responded. Rob Vacher, Keith Carter, the whole crew.”

“Did she file?” Clevenger asked.

“Better believe it.”

“209A. Domestic assault.”

“And kidnapping. He kept her there five or ten minutes, but that’s enough to trigger the statute. Then he took off in his car and got pulled over for blowing through a stop sign.”

“DWI,” Clevenger said.

“And resisting arrest.”

“He ran?”

“No.” Anderson paused. “He took on four cops.”

The bottom fell out of Clevenger’s stomach. Where was this story going to end? Was Billy dead? “North, if you’re trying to let me down easy...”

“Let you down...”

“Just tell me?” His voice cracked. “Is he alive?”

“Alive?
Of course he’s alive. What the... ? He’s at the Middleton jail. They set bail at twenty grand.”

Clevenger closed his eyes, hung his head. He was always waiting to hear the worst about Billy. It had been that way for years—the constant feeling of impending doom, the constant batde to bring light to a life that seemed to tend, almost inexorably, toward darkness. That’s what you’re up against when you try to turn a story built on early chapters full of suffering. Kids are less resilient than people think. “Have you seen him?” he asked Anderson.