HABIT: a gripping detective thriller full of suspense

by T. J. Brearton

  “I can meet with you tomorrow,” she said.

  He paused. He looked at her across the short distance, twenty feet or so, between them. She was wearing grey slacks and a white dress shirt, the short collar open and revealing her neck and collar bones; and a grey vest, buttoned. Her hair was pulled up, her face open, and tired. She looked exhausted and pretty at the same time.

  “That would be great,” Brendan said.

  “Around noon?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Okay.” She left the porch without lingering and went back inside.

  Brendan stood on the walkway for a moment after the door closed and then resumed walking back to his car. Bostrom was gaping. “Did you just score a date, Detective Healy? Gonna roast the broomstick or what?”

  Brendan ignored the remark, but felt the corner of his mouth curl up a little. He passed Bostrom in his vehicle and got back into the Camry.

  * * *

  Brendan ate by himself at a diner near the department, which was often populated by policemen and construction workers. At ten-thirty, hardly anyone was around. He spread his notes out on the table and ordered a coffee, an omelet with ham and cheese, toast, bacon, and hash browns. He doubted he would finish it all, but he’d felt ravenous when he ordered.

  He worked his case notes for a while and ate. Then he took out his phone, found Colinas’s phone number, and called him up.

  “Rudy Colinas,” said the State Detective.

  “Colinas. Healy.”

  “You get hit by those reporters on your way out?”

  Brendan had managed to slip by them this time. “No. Why?”

  “There’s more of them. From Syracuse, Albany, and word is, on the way from New York. I guess Heilshorn, the dad, he’s a big time doctor in the city. Someone in his office overheard something, maybe Heilshorn talking to the coroner, some nurse, who knows, and the press knows and is on their way. He’s a pretty big deal, I guess. He apparently saved some woman’s blue-baby by injecting it with oxygen, or something. You believe that? It lived for thirty minutes without taking a breath.”

  “So who’s making a statement?”

  “Skene. Your Oneida Senior Prosecutor. He’s on his way, he says, press conference in about an hour. I guarantee you he’s waiting for New York press to show up.”

  Brendan put his head in his free hand and massaged his temples. He imagined the headline: Cop Shoots Son of Wealthy Doctor While Investigating Daughter’s Murder. This was getting worse by the second. He wasn’t going to be able to carry on an efficient investigation this way, and Delaney would know it. It was Delaney’s call, anyway. They were short on detectives, yes, but they were already adding in people from the State, and they could pull on city investigators too, from Utica and Rome.

  While he was thinking these depressing thoughts, he heard Colinas rustling about on the other end. Colinas said “What?” then, “Yeah, okay.”

  “What’s going on?”

  Colinas came back over with a clearer voice. “Delaney and Taber want to meet with you. Where are you?”

  “I’m at the diner.”

  “He’s at the diner,” Colinas said, once more with his mouth not quite to the phone. Back again: “Okay, yeah. Stay there. They’ll be right over.” He added, “Hey, good luck.”

  Then, just when Brendan was about to hang up the call, Colinas blurted something. “Oh! I found out about the serial number.” There was genuine excitement in the State Detective’s voice.

  “Tell me.”

  “You’re going to love it. The laptop that got melted to shit is registered to user ‘Eddie Stemp.’ ”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m not. Think that’s our Eddie?”

  “Either that or it’s one hell of a coincidence. And from what those older, bitter cops all tell you, there’s no such thing.”

  “Ha. Right. So, not bad. Two birds, one stone.”

  “Thanks, Colinas.”

  “You bet.”

  Brendan hung up.

  * * *

  Delaney was red-faced when he came into the diner. Apparently he’d hustled his ass. Taber, younger and in better shape, didn’t look so out of breath.

  They sat down across from Brendan. The waitress appeared.

  “Just coffee,” said Taber. Delaney asked to see a menu. They waited while Delaney traced his finger along the menu, a long laminated sheet with pictures and descriptions on both sides. He flipped it over, examined it, and then flipped it back again. Finally, he looked at Brendan’s plate, which was mostly cleared, and said, “Whatever he had.”

  The waitress left. Brendan looked at his two superiors expectantly, but he was already bracing himself for the inevitable. They would deliver the news that he was off the case and on administrative leave, he’d plead why he needed to continue, they would explain the particulars to him, and that it was non-negotiable anyway. They would blame bureaucracy, and talk to him about his mental health.

  “Heilshorn called shortly after you left,” Taber said.

  “You spoke to him?”

  “I did.” Taber gave Delaney a look. The two men were almost comical, both of them considerably large individuals, crammed into one side of the booth next to each other. “He’s not pleased.”

  “Oh?” Brendan figured he might as well pay the check and leave.

  “He’s not,” Taber went on. “He wants to bring in his own investigators.”

  Brendan opened his mouth to say something, he wasn’t sure what. Maybe, Okay, you can find me at home if you need me, staring at a dark wall. The thought of drinking passed through his mind, like a reflex, and he even thought he could taste the whiskey on his tongue. It filled him with a kind of nauseating warmth, and an excitement, like the idea of getting suddenly rich.

  “It’s liable to turn into a fucking circus,” said Delaney before Brendan had the chance to speak.

  “But we’re not going to let it,” said Taber.

  Brendan regarded the two men. “How does he think he can bring in his own investigators? P.I.s, you mean?”

  Taber was nodding. “Yes. He has a private investigator. Jerry Brown. Maybe more than him. Not only do we have to, by law, allow them to adjunct the investigation, but Heilshorn is putting in calls to determine which detectives will work the case up here.”

  “That’s insane. Who does he think he is?”

  “He’s a very wealthy man,” said Taber.

  “Oh Jesus. Why does it always have to be, ‘He’s a very wealthy man’?”

  Both Taber and Delaney looked at Brendan like they didn’t quite understand the reference. Brendan asked, “Don’t you guys ever go to the movies? It’s always some rich family. It’s never a movie about a poor family.”

  Taber blinked. “I went to see the Expendables II. My son took me. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, all those guys.”

  Brendan suddenly laughed. Taber was so matter-of-fact, Brendan had to wonder if there was a figurative bone in the Sheriff’s earnest body.

  “I’m surprised your son knows who those guys are,” Delaney interjected. “How old is Tom? Eighteen?”

  Taber was nodding. “Eighteen. Freshman at UAlbany. Oh, he knows who they are, I guess.”

  They quickly returned their attention from this little digression back to Brendan. At the same time, Taber’s coffee came. “Thank you,” he said absently, and leaned into the table. “We said, ‘We’re not taking Healy off the case.’ ”

  “ ‘Fuck this guy,’ we said,” Delaney chimed in.

  Brendan gaped at his two superior officers.

  “You did what you had to do, you held your own in the line of duty,” said Delaney. “Who knows what was going through this Kevin-kid’s head. You saw how he was – grief stricken and mentally unstable. We know you did what any good cop would have done. And we told Heilshorn that, with all due respect, he was just too upset to see it. That we needed to keep you on the case because you’ve been a part of it, every moment since i
t began.”

  “For the last thirty hours,” Taber added. He sipped his coffee.

  It took Brendan a moment, but then he waited for the penny to drop.

  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 ha
d 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.