Habit (13 page)

Taber set down his coffee. “But we had to make a deal with him. For the sake of the girl, this poor girl, we had to make a deal that would do the best for the investigation. Plus, it is completely routine to have you take an administrative leave, or a temporary duty assignment. In this situation, we think it’s best for you and all involved if you just take a few days. IACP will be following up with you next week, and Police Psychological Services are very thorough.”

Brendan felt the hairs on the back of his neck start to prick up, as if by electricity. His eyes flicked back and forth between the two men across from him, both of whom now wore hangdog expressions. “You made a deal with him? What deal?”

Taber glanced at Delaney, as if suggesting he answer. Delaney did. “That if you’re off the case, he’ll let us pursue things the way we know best, and won’t interfere. We didn’t have to tell you any of this, you know. The Sheriff could have just invoked a mandatory psych leave.”

Taber cut his eyes at Delaney with an expression that said,
Enough now.
Then he turned to Brendan. “Otherwise, he’s going to make things hell for us. He’s a grieving father with a lot of money and power. It’s the last thing we need up our ass while we’re trying to figure this all out.”

Both of them fell silent. They seemed to feel their explanation and presentation was sufficient, and now they waited for the diplomatic response from Brendan.

Brendan’s mind was whirring. He saw Kevin Heilshorn lying in the garden, drenched in his own blood. He saw Olivia Jane as she had been standing on the porch just moments ago. And he saw Rebecca Heilshorn: her reflection staring back at him as he first set foot on the crime scene, a time which already felt like long ago.

Brendan opened his mouth, and closed it. He picked up the napkin in front of him and wiped his lips with it. He started gathering up his notes, and stuffing them back into the binder. Delaney and Taber watched this like they were witnessing something embarrassing, or ugly. Both men kept glancing away. When he was finished, Brendan pushed the binder towards Delaney.

“There you go,” he said.

Delaney made a conciliatory face but said nothing. Finally, the Sheriff spoke up.

“I want you to take the rest of the day,” he said, “And then the weekend. On Monday, hopefully this thing will have all blown over.”

“Shit,” said Delaney. “With any luck, we’ll have it all wrapped by then anyway.”

“You can start fresh at the top of the week. I’ve got other things for you to look into anyway.” Sheriff Taber smiled and tried to look helpful.

Brendan reached down to the booth bench and grabbed the manila envelope. He set it on top of his binder. Neither Taber nor Delaney seemed to pay it any mind.

“Eddie Stemp is your next person of interest,” he told them.

Both men reacted; Delaney tilted his head, Taber’s eyes widened a little.

“He’s the owner of the laptop which I found burned in the garage. Like I said before, Delaney, the laptop you have could be something, could also be a dummy. We couldn’t get anything but the serial number from the damaged computer, but Eddie Stemp is the man it was registered to. It’s also possible he is the father of Rebecca’s daughter, Leah – that’s in Donald Kettering’s statement.”

Brendan slid out of the booth as the waitress came over with Delaney’s meal. She put it down in front of him, along with a set of utensils wrapped in a white napkin.

“Can I at least keep my gun?” Brendan looked at Taber.

Taber nodded. Brendan looked at the two of them still sitting there, both of them avoiding eye contact with him. Then he turned and left.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN / FRIDAY, 11:16 AM

“Motherfuckers,” Brendan said inside his Toyota Camry. He remained motionless for a moment, the car idling, then dropped it into gear and pulled away from the diner.

His first real case, and it was being pried from his hands by relatives of the victim. He felt frayed, as if someone had come and forced him to shut down construction on a new house he was building, leaving him in empty rooms with bare studs and the wind blowing through.

He drove home, holding onto his anger and resentment. His thoughts were a mess veiled behind a red curtain. By the time he pulled into the driveway of his modest rented house, his ire had only increased.

Then he looked at the stout little Colonial he’d been calling home for the past three months, and was reminded of something.

In a crime like this, there was nothing more critical than determining what a victim was doing in the hours leading up to the incident. So far, there had been nothing to go on. The neighbor, Folwell, reported seeing the vehicle the day before the murder, but couldn’t recall if it had been there the day before that. He had made a general observation that the car sometimes appeared, and sometimes was not there, and mostly he paid no attention. He’d never met his neighbor across the road.

Donald Kettering had claimed that he and Rebecca Heilshorn had been anything but a sociable couple. She preferred quiet evenings at home. So much so that Brendan got the impression that if Kettering were to really insist that they went out, she would threaten to break it off with him. He was sure such a scenario had taken place, maybe more than once. It was a strong hunch.

They’d gone to dinner a few times, he’d said, and once to the mall on what he dubbed “their anniversary” (though Brendan doubted Rebecca had acknowledged as much). What was she doing with a man like Kettering anyway? Passing the time? Brendan supposed everyone had needs. It had been two years since he had felt the warmth of another person, and there were times he’d felt inclined to just make something happen. People needed people. Maybe Rebecca was lonely, even in her self-imposed isolation.

Yet, her test results indicated that she was likely to have had numerous sexual partners. If she was so liberal with herself otherwise, why had she been so reluctant with Kettering? Maybe she’d had a bad experience; been abused by Stemp or someone else. Or maybe Kettering just hadn’t been her cup of tea. Someone from her sexual past, Brendan thought, had murdered her.

For all any of the investigators knew, Rebecca had driven up from Westchester – or somewhere else for that matter – the day before. She had spent the night alone, and in the morning, she’d seen the killer come to the door, had placed the call to 911, and the rest was history.

The case required more information about Rebecca Heilshorn’s life outside of the region. Who was she elsewhere? Surely she had friends, even enemies, in other parts of the world. Chances were she was liquid, and highly mobile. But, it was beyond Brendan’s grasp now. Wasn’t it?

What jogged this thinking, though, was looking at the house he was renting. Kettering had talked about Rebecca coming in for some home-improvement hardware. He said it was how they met. But Rebecca had yet to go to closing on the Bloomingdale farm, according to Kettering. In the interim, she’d been staying in a rental property; perhaps she’d grown tired of hotels. Kettering had described a house just outside of Boonville.

For some reason, Brendan’s mind fixed there now. Maybe because it was the only thread connecting Rebecca to a life here prior to the murder.

Still, it was from over two years ago. Even if the owner of the property remembered Rebecca, it might not have any bearing on what had happened to her. Then again, it might. Just like Rebecca needed Kettering’s body next to her on some cold nights, she likely needed a friend, too. Someone to talk to.

Brendan sighed. He’d lost his appetite halfway through the conversation with Taber and Delaney.
You could barely call it a conversation
, he thought.
They shotgunned me.

He couldn’t blame them, though, much as he might want to. Especially Delaney, giving Brendan that dead mackerel look. Son of a bitch.

The anger bubbled back up, and Brendan was suddenly afraid he didn’t know what to do. He had a weekend ahead of him where questions would dance endlessly in his head. It would drive him nuts, sitting around.

The image of a bottle flashed in his mind. He could feel the sting of alcohol touching his lips, and the prickly warmth of it slide down his throat and balloon in his stomach, full of comfort and numbing love.

He turned to his cell phone then and flipped through his contacts. He lit a cigarette and dialed the one man he thought could help him.

But the old cop, Seamus Argon, didn’t answer his phone.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN / SATURDAY, 8:14 AM

The night had featured staccato moments of fitful sleep. At one point Brendan woke up and was sure he felt a hand on his head, cool to the touch. It wasn’t the memory of his wife, however. The hand touching him was quite large. It had been the solitary comforting moment in an otherwise tormented night. His dreams were a macabre highlights reel of the past 48 hours, the reflection of Rebecca Heilshorn in the dresser mirror, her eyes wide and haunted; Kevin, her brother, dying in the garden, his dark blood smattered along the fronds of summer squash. His wife and daughter were strangely absent from the surreal episodes, when they were usually the stars of the show. He couldn’t remember the last time he had spent a night without their restless souls in his mind.

In the morning he made coffee. He’d bought a can of Folgers months before, when he’d first moved in, and had only used it once or twice, since he was usually out the door bright and early and bought his coffee on the road. The brewed coffee this morning tasted like dishwater, and so he added more grinds and tried again. The next batch was no better, only tasting bitter and burnt.

He headed out for coffee in his sweatpants and a t-shirt which read:
METAL HEART
. The day was cloudy and grim, the temperature somewhere in the mid-sixties. As he drove he considered his situation. He felt a bit surreal, like a character in a movie. Along with most everyone else, he’d seen the stories where cops got thrown off the case by their superiors. And there was often some rich guy, like Alexander Heilshorn, who either thwarted the detective on the case, causing general havoc throughout the investigation, or became a benefactor of sorts. But, while the stories might repeat themselves, they drew from real life. Reality was stranger than fiction, anyway. One could consider the Lindberg case, the recent Main Line case or even the wild Patty Hearst scenario which had her posing with an AK-47, to verify the absurd nature of the human crime drama. There were too many bizarre cases in the world to count.

On his way through the Dunkin Donuts drive through, Brendan had an idea. After getting his coffee and egg white sandwich (it flopped in his grip like rubber matting), he drove to Rome to find a bookstore.

He’d given over the copy of
The Screwtape Letters
to Delaney. It was mandatory to turn over any evidence if you were taken off a case.

He could practically recite the highlighted passage from memory; he’d looked at it so many times. But he wanted to read the whole book.

He knew of one bookstore in Rome, called Pack Rats. Within ten minutes, he was standing in his sweatpants and t-shirt examining the section of the store on Philosophy and Spirituality. Not finding the C.S. Lewis book, he asked the teenager working the counter. The teenage girl said they didn’t carry that particular book, but she would be happy to order it and have it here in five to eight business days.

Brendan said no thank you and asked for directions to the next bookstore.

“Uhm, there’s Galaxy Comics.”

“I don’t think they’ll have it,” Brendan replied.

She looked around as if to see who was watching, and then she lowered her voice, “You can probably order it on Kindle.”

He whispered back, “I don’t have a Kindle. Isn’t there, like, a Borders around here?”

She blinked at him and then stood up straighter, and elevated her voice to normal speaking level. “Borders closed years ago. Like, the whole thing. The chain, or whatever.”

“Oh. Right. I remember that. Well, look, short of going out and buying a Kindle . . .”

“You can download Kindle for your PC, too.”

Brendan smiled. “You’re a salesperson for the wrong business.” He winked and started walking away.

“Okay,” she said, sounding challenged. “You can, like, try the Bookstore Resur.”

He stopped and looked back. “What’s that?”

“The, uhm, Bookstore of the Resurrection Life Church.”

* * *

As directed, he drove down Turin Street past Fort Stanwix Park and made the left onto Floyd Avenue. The bookstore was in the same building as the Resurrection Life Church. It was a single story structure set back in a sizeable parking lot. There was a cathedral ceiling and large windows over the main entrance. The bookstore was off to the left side. Brendan parked the Camry and went inside.

He found a man of about his own age organizing a stack of books near the back of the room. On the shelves were many Bibles, and books by Christian writers like St. Thomas Aquinas, Lee Strobel, Tim Lahaye, and Rick Warren.

“Oh, C.S. Lewis,” said the man tending the books. “Absolutely.” He stood up and walked over to one of the sets of shelves and waved his hand in front of them in a show of display. “We don’t carry the
Narnia
books, but we have
Mere Christianity
,
The Great Divorce
, and here, the one you asked about,
The Screwtape Letters.
This one is my favorite.”

He pulled the book, one of a dozen or so copies, from the shelf and looked at it admiringly for a moment before handing it to Brendan. In that time, Brendan regarded the man. He was slender and angular, with prominent cheekbones, and wide-set eyes. His hair was black, and his eyes were startlingly blue. He was dressed in loose-fitting black clothes.

“Anything else you might be looking for?”

“No, this is fine, thank you.”

The man paused, looking at Brendan, as though trying to read him. Brendan realized how he must appear. His hair was unkempt, his clothing disheveled. He hadn’t even showered. His breath undoubtedly reeked of coffee and cigarettes. The man blinked at him.

“Are you a member of the Church?”

“No. How much for the book?”

“There’s a twenty percent discount for members.”

“I see. No, thanks; I’m not a member.”

The clerk offered a tepid smile and then seemed to decide something. He started walking towards the front of the store, and Brendan followed. There was a counter and a computer there, and the clerk rang up the purchase. “I joined just a few years ago,” he said as he looked at the screen. He took the book and used a scanner on the UPC symbol and then slipped it into a brown paper bag. “Best decision I ever made. That’s eleven ninety-eight with tax.”

Brendan reached into his sweatpants pocket and dug out his wallet. He found a ten dollar bill, but no more cash. He opted for his debit card and swiped it through the console at the counter.

“Are you a fan of C.S. Lewis?”

“No.” Brendan realized he was being a bit standoffish, and corrected himself. “Well, becoming so. I recently took an interest.”

The man seemed genuinely pleased as they finished their transaction. “Well good for you. It’s best to stay productive, and busy. You know what they say – Nero fiddled while Rome burned.”

Brendan forced himself to return the man’s smile, nodded, and left the store.

* * *

Back in the Camry, he sat in the parking lot and took the book out of the paper bag. He started flipping through the pages, seeking the spot where the note to “Danice” had referenced a specific passage which had been underlined in pencil. After a few moments, he found it. His memory proved good; he already knew it word for word.

“‘
The truth is that wherever a man lies with a woman, there, whether they like it or not, a transcendental relation is set between them which must be eternally enjoyed or eternally endured
.’”

He set the book on his lap, holding the page open. He thought about this, as he had been thinking about if off and on for the past day. The sentence seemed to be saying that sex was not to be taken lightly, that much was obvious. There were not-so-subtle implications that where the sexual congress was not the right choice, it would have to be eternally “endured,” as in a hellish way. Every sexual partner a person had would be linked to them eternally. So you needed to be prudent in your decision to take partners, if not downright chaste. The data suggested that Rebecca Heilshorn had not been very chaste. And obviously, only having sex with your husband or wife was the ideal. Clearly a religious idea.

But, it also didn’t have to be a religious idea. Brendan looked at the book again and thought about a more secular application, so to speak. What if this passage had been referenced by a scorned lover? What if that was who had given the book to Rebecca? Someone she had been with once and then rejected. This could be a way for that rebuffed lover to say, “Once you’ve been with me, you’ll always have to be with me.” You’ll always have to endure me. It was a classic situation of, “If I can’t have you, no one can,” only with this subtle variation.

That reinforced the idea of possible suspects in the ex-lover stable. This, though, was nothing ground-breaking. Most crimes of this nature were crimes of passion, more often than not perpetrated by past or present lovers, family, or friends, like Delaney had said. In this case, there was Donald Kettering. He certainly fit the profile of a rejected lover. He’d gone from cracking jokes and being a man proud of his business and community to veritably morose when talking about Rebecca, a woman he found, “hard to pin down.” If anyone had a reason to feel unloved, unappreciated, it was him. Brendan wished he’d asked the man about the book. Maybe that was the key. Maybe a return visit to ask Kettering what he knew about
The Screwtape Letters
could unpack a few things from the man’s closet.

Was he really going to do that though? Brendan lit a cigarette and rolled down the window. Was he really going to go running around and performing an investigation when he’d been removed from the case? In real life, hotshot renegade cops didn’t go off against their superior’s orders and magically solve the crime. Instead, they got suspended, or fired. They could even be brought up on obstruction charges.

Still, what if, just as a civilian, he should happen to stop by the hardware store for some home improvement materials? He was renting the house in Stanwix, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t gotten the go-ahead from the owner to paint the bedroom. He could just swing by, pick up some paint, ask Donald for some advice on water-based brands, and maybe casually bring up the book he’d been reading,
The Screwtape Letters.
While he was in Boonville he could drop by the place Rebecca had rented a couple years prior and inquire about its availability.

Brendan suddenly laughed out loud, and clamped a hand over his mouth. Smoke issued from his nostrils. He got himself under control and shook his head slowly. It was all ridiculous. Even if he did find something out in either case, in Kettering’s reaction to the book, or by visiting the rental property, how would he explain it to Sheriff Taber or Delaney? They would never buy that he was making idle chit-chat with the ex-lover of the deceased about a book that was involved in the investigation of her murder, or that he was thinking of moving to a house in Boonville, ten miles further away from his job.

His smile faded and he grew serious again and looked at the book. He riffled the pages. He decided to think about it in another way.

Besides an unrequited lover, who or what else might have prompted the book to come into Rebecca’s possession, and why? What else was there? The sentence was cautionary. It was a presentation of a moral or, spiritual truth. Sex was not just carnality – it was infused with the spiritual life of a person. It affected the soul, the part of the being that was eternal. It was a warning against frivolous copulation.

In what ways did a person think of sex as frivolous? Well, certainly casual sex, an attitude arriving in the sixties and having never left, was a large part of modern society. They called it now a “hook-up culture,” and it was said that women especially had come to see casual sex as part of their independence. Modern women, outperforming men in many areas of education and myriad job sectors didn’t want to suddenly get bogged down in a marriage, and kids. So they kept it casual with their sexual counterparts. They were now just as noncommittal as men, according to certain studies and articles.

So the C.S. Lewis reference could be a response to that. Rebecca could have been keeping her relationships at a distance and having sex when and where she wanted to. It made sense when you considered Donald Kettering. But what didn’t add up was him describing her as frigid. Of course, a man describing a woman as frigid when she didn’t want to have sex with him meant very little. That was a Factual Attribution Error which men were famous for making. A woman who rejected them once, was a bitch; who refused sex, was a cold fish; who cheated on them, was a slut. It was unfair any which way.

Brendan mashed the cigarette out in the ashtray. This last idea hung in his mind.

If the book wasn’t sent by a scorned lover, or a religious zealot, who did that leave? More importantly, what reasons, other than discouraging casual sex, might someone have for passing the text to Rebecca?

Brendan turned the key in the ignition and dropped the Camry into drive. He turned out of the parking lot and back onto Floyd Ave, heading northeast.

If she was promiscuous, that was one thing. But so far there were no known relationships, at least in the area, besides Kettering and mystery man Eddie, the alleged father of Rebecca’s little girl.