Chapter 4 – Evan Abby

Essential Listening: Do What You Want, by OkGo

0o0

The fire had built up quickly, given the ready availability of fuel in the enclosed space of the garage. Witnesses said that there was only about a minute between the victims entering the structure and the fire getting hot enough to blow the garage door clean off, incinerating everything and everyone inside.

The Fire Department had had some trouble getting them out: the intense heat had fused parts of them to the car.

Hotch stalked through the wreckage, double-checking the facts with Garcia, back in Quantico.

Some days this was a job you could really come to hate.

"Thomas R Dunleivy, Dunbrook Development Group," he read aloud.

"On the list," said Garcia. "Okay, I'm sending you a file on the EDF leader: Evan Abby, forty-one, five foot eleven, one hundred and eighty-five pounds."

"Thanks, Garcia."

"Pardon me for asking, sir," she said. "But how do we even know he's involved?"

"We don't," Hotch explained. "That's why we're interviewing Abby at the crime scene. If he is the leader of the EDF, his reaction to all this should tell us exactly what we need to know."

He hung up, surveying the smoking ruins of the garage, Gideon by his side.

The lawn furniture and potted plants, still standing against all reason, put him in mind of his own backyard. For a moment, he could feel Mr Dunleivy's terror, trapped in an untenable situation, unable to save his kids as the sick bastard watched them burn.

"Where do you guys want it?" Vega asked, walking over from the coroner's van.

"This is the spot," said Hotch, glancing around. They had a good view of the house and garden from here – and so would Abby.

"When he arrives," said Gideon, "bring the fake bodies right past us, nice and slow. I want him to get a good look."

"Remind me to never play poker with you guys," said Vega, hurrying away to help his men stuff equipment into their spare body-bags.

"What do we have on this guy?" Gideon asked; there was a pause as Hotch stared down at the blackened chunk of shelving unit at his feet. "Hotch?" he asked again.

"What?" Hotch asked, his mind on Haley and his infant son.

"What do we have on the EDF leader?"

"Evan Abby, forty-one, divorced," Hotch listed, checking the file on his phone. "Father of Liam, fourteen. Environmental Engineer. Does consults on real estate projects. Has TIRKs with every company on the EDF list."

"I can't wait to meet him," said Gideon, watching Vega and his men wheeling laden gurneys out of sight – and not a moment too soon.

"Here he is," said Hotch, nodding towards the slim, serious looking man Agent Prentiss was escorting towards them.

"Mr Abby, these are special agents Jason Gideon and Aaron Hotchner," she said, as they came level.

"Mr Abby, thank you for coming," said Gideon, shaking the man's hand.

"Uh… Agent Prentiss said you needed my help with a LUST related fire?" he asked, looking around, bewildered.

Hotch nodded slightly; Prentiss had played her part well: Abby clearly had no clue why he was here.

"Yeah," said Gideon, heavily. "It's pretty bad." They watched as Abby's eyes followed the gurneys being wheeled nonchalantly past him. "Tom, Brad, Katie Dunleivy. All burned to death."

Abby stared after them, horrified.

"So," he said, forcing himself to look back at the agents, "where's the – uh – where's the leaking storage tank?"

"Katie was only twelve," said Hotch, trying to gauge his reaction. Abby's eyes dropped to the floor. "You've got a son about that age, don't you?"

The man's gaze snapped back up to Hotch's face, stunned.

"Do you know Tom Dunleivy?" Gideon asked; Abby stared at him, beginning to cotton on.

"What is this?" he asked slowly.

"He worked for Dunbrook Development Group," Gideon continued calmly.

"Why are you asking me these questions?" Abby asked; he seemed genuinely puzzled, but in their line of work you could never be too sure.

"You posted Dunbrook on your website," said Hotch.

"My website?" Abby was beginning to get flustered. "Look, I – I came down here voluntarily because I was told you needed help with a LUST related fire."

"Three fires," said Hotch, passing him some of the grislier crime scene photographs, one by one. "Three families." Abby visibly recoiled at the images, but Hotch went on handing them to him, needing to be certain. "Three fathers who worked for companies posted on your EDF website – all burned to death. You worked for these companies – every one on your list."

"Are you accusing me of a crime?"

"What do you think?" The expression on Abby's face shifted very rapidly from anger to horror as Gideon continued.

"Mr Abby, I support your cause. I reject these methods."

"Well, I don't know what cause or methods you're referring to," said Abby hotly.

"You created the site," said Hotch simply, "you posted the list. You're the leader of the EDF."

"Well, if you could prove that we wouldn't be having this conversation, would we?" he spat, making to leave.

"Mr Abby, people are dying," said Gideon, stopping him in his tracks. "Children, Mr Abby. We know EDF strategy has always abhorred violence. I'm asking you, has EDF strategy changed?"

Evan Abby met Gideon's eyes dead on.

"No, it hasn't."

He turned and walked away from them, angry and disturbed.

"He could barely look at this," said Gideon, turning back to Hotch. "A serial arsonist wouldn't have been about to peel his eyes away."

"He's hiding something," said Hotch. "More than just his support for the EDF."

"Hey, it occurred to me," Prentiss began, "if all I knew about the EDF was that they went around burning down SUV dealerships and housing developments…"

"Well, that's a common misconception," Gideon allowed.

"That's my point," said Prentiss. "What if our profile is right and the UnSub had the same misconception? He wants to fit in, he wants people around him to appreciate what he does… Isn't it possible that the UnSub joined the EDF thinking…"

"It was an arsonists' club?" Hotch finished.

"Sure," said Gideon, nodding. "It's possible."

"If – if we gave Abby our UnSub's profile," said Vega, "couldn't he help us identify him?"

"We can't give Abby the profile," Hotch explained. "Not until we find out what he's hiding."

"Still," said Prentiss. "It seems Abby's our best chance of finding the UnSub."

"You want Abby or the ex-wife?" Gideon asked, watching Hotch closely.

"Abby," Hotch decided, stalking off towards the SUVs without a backwards glance. He heard Prentiss's footsteps hurrying after him. Surveillance wasn't his idea of a good time, and something about Abby's manner was bothering him. He had clearly been horrified by the fires, but had held back… perhaps he was protecting their UnSub.

It was going to be a long day.

0o0o0o0

Gideon watched the woman sitting across from him carefully.

She was the usual amount of nervous for someone who hasn't done anything wrong and is being unexpectedly interviewed by the FBI.

She held herself steady and erect but spoke softly, as if self-confidence was something she had had to re-learn.

Probably the result of the divorce, Gideon mused.

She wanted to help them. The trick here would be keeping the questions gentle. No need to distress this family too much, at least not until they knew that Abby was a part of it.

Her son, Liam, was outside. Ostensibly he was being interviewed by Morgan, but mostly he was keeping the kid entertained. He kept glancing through the window, worried about his mother.

"At Berkeley twenty years ago, Evan was a different person," said Mrs Abby sadly. "In every way: warm, funny, honest – even naive."

"What happened?" Gideon asked.

"We had school loans," Mrs Abby explained, sadly. "I got pregnant. His job…" she looked down for a moment, a weary expression on her face.

"Evan was an environmental consultant," Gideon encouraged. "Builders hired him to help them clean up their sites – make sure they were up to EPA code."

"Evan thought they wanted him to do the right thing," said Mrs Abby bitterly.

"Did he?"

"Well," she said slowly. "Developers don't care about mercury in the ground water. They just wanna pass inspection as fast and cheap as possible." She sighed, aware that this was the real reason her marriage had broken down. "He had a budget. It was never enough, but they didn't care how he spent it, as long as they passed inspection."

Gideon understood. A man with values could only betray them for so long before he lost himself. At least this explained Abby's involvement with the EDF.

"Well, how did Evan deal with that?" he asked her.

"He drank," she shrugged. "It got bad."

"How bad?"

"I thought he might hurt himself," said Mrs Abby, after a moment. "I didn't know if he could live with it."

Gideon nodded. That kind of rage could drive a man to do many things, but in this case it was unlikely to drive him to serial arson and murder. No. If Evan Abby was going to snap and murder someone it would be the people he dealt with directly at the companies, not random employees – and definitely not their families.

"How's his relationship with your son, Liam," he asked, nodding through the glass to the boy; Morgan was making him laugh now.

"He doesn't have one," said Mrs Abby, in a way that suggested that this was one thing she couldn't forgive. "I had to threaten to take him to court to get him to pay child support… It must have either scared the hell out of him or really pissed him off."

Gideon frowned.

"Why's that?"

"Because every Sunday night for the last nine months, he tosses two-thousand dollars cash through the mail slot." Gideon's frown deepened. That wasn't the action of a man filled with boiling rage. "He left us long before I threw him out."

It was the action of a man who felt he had nothing left to lose.

0o0o0o0

Prentiss watched Evan Abby climb out of his beaten up old car and tried not to eavesdrop on Hotch's phone-call. He seemed to be having one of those not-quite-arguments that couples had with Haley, and Emily didn't want to get involved.

"Honey, I don't know," he was saying. "I will – and I promise I'll make it up to you… Okay. I love you too."

He hung up with a sigh and Prentiss reflected that life as a singleton in the BAU was a good deal less complicated than she had first thought. Flying off at a moment's notice couldn't do any relationship much good in the long term.

Haley must have the patience of a saint, she thought.

"Everything okay?" she asked.

"Yeah."

Unconvinced, she let it go; the team practically lived together as it was, Hotch was entitled to some measure of privacy.

"You know," she said, changing the subject. "For a guy claiming to be innocent, he's acting pretty guilty."

"Never underestimate the effect of being confronted by the FBI will have on a suspect," said Hotch.

Prentiss bit down a smile: he was practically quoting from the BAU manual.

"I don't think he's affected," she said. "I think he's freaked out." She gestured out of the window at the building they were parked in front of. "In the time we've been watching him, he's packed his belongings into cardboard boxes, hit his attorney's office and four banks."

"It does look like he's getting ready to run," Hotch agreed.

"The question is: what do we do?"

They watched as Abby got back in his crappy car and drove off.

"For now, nothing," said Hotch, starting up the engine. "We just watch."

0o0

It had been a long, tedious day of following Evan Abby around. Prentiss had cramp in places it shouldn't be feasible to get cramp, and they had very little to show for it.

They were sat outside his house now, in open defiance of the 'No Parking' sign Hotch had stopped in front of.

He had headed home after leaving the last bank and they had been waiting here ever since, wondering what he would do. Although she knew it wasn't, in some ways the whole thing seemed like a waste of valuable time. Aside from his string of seemingly suspicious errands earlier in the day, Abby had done nothing particularly interesting.

Except, it seemed, make rather a lot of phone calls.

People had been arriving in twos and threes for the last hour, gathering in what seemed to be Abby's dining room. They could make out their silhouettes through the curtains.

"All those people," Prentiss speculated. "No booze or music. That's either a very lame going away party or an EDF meeting."

"We need to set surveillance up," Hotch said, nodding towards the house. "Grab your camera."

"Where should I set up?"

"Right here," Hotch instructed. "He's hiding something. We don't have a warrant, we don't have surprise…"

And we've spent way too long sitting in this damn' car, Prentiss added mentally, suspecting that her boss was just as bored as she was.

"You want to intimidate him," she surmised.

"I want another chance to find out what he's hiding."

This could go one of two ways, Emily reflected as she turned the camera on and messed with the settings. Either way they'd get a reaction from Abby, and that was what they were counting on.

"Okay," she said, aiming her camera at the house. It didn't take long for the EDF members to emerge.

None of them looked particularly happy.

"Smile, everybody," Hotch muttered.

Emily managed to get some good head shots despite the low light – God she loved the FBI's access to top of the range equipment – before Abby spotted them and stormed across his front lawn towards them.

"Oh, wow," said Emily, putting the camera down. "It looks like intimidation worked."

They got out of the SUV to meet him; if you're going to harass somebody, do it with confidence.

"So, what is it with you?" Abby asked, infuriated. "Shoving a bunch of dead kids in my face wasn't enough? Thought I needed a little harassment, too? It's over, alright? I denounced the fires and the people responsible for them, and I just disbanded the EDF," he nodded at the departing figures disappearing down the quiet suburban street.

"If the EDF had nothing to do with the fires then why would you disband?" Prentiss asked but he ignored her, instead directing his anger towards Hotch. She made an effort not to roll her eyes at the typical post-divorce, mid-life male behaviour. After all, they were making sure he had a really bad day, and nobody was perfect.

"Do you have kids, Agent Hotchner?"

"I have a son, like you."

"Good," said Abby. "Then I'm going to tell you this, one father to another: I started the EDF for my son, and yours. Not to have some other guy's son burn to death."

He turned to Prentiss, clearly still angry.

"I hope your pictures come out," he said, before stalking back to his house, shaking his head.

"Prentiss, does he look like he weighs one eighty-five to you?" he asked, head to one side.

"One sixty-five, maybe."

Hotch frowned.

"Why would he hold a meeting when he knew we were watching?" she asked.

"He wanted us to see it," said Hotch, as they moved back towards the SUV. "He wanted to make sure that we saw him trying to do the right thing."

"You don't believe him?" Prentiss asked. Abby had seemed pretty earnest to her.

"I don't know," said Hotch, keeping his thoughts to himself.

Prentiss nodded.

"He seemed pretty angry for a guy who's trying to do the right thing," she allowed, getting into the car.

"That's why we need to get those photos to Garcia," said Hotch.

"What do you mean?"

"Either he's angry because he's guilty and we're onto him," said Hotch, and Emily nodded, following his line of thought. "Or he's angry because his attempts to do the right thing with the EDF have gotten people killed. But either way…"

"The arsonist was here tonight," she finished for him, pulling on her seatbelt.