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 o
n 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.
Kettering had described her as “tough to pin down,” but faithful, for all he knew. And Brendan believed Kettering. It had been an important question, one that Brendan had carefully slid into their conversation, whether or not Kettering and Rebecca had been “exclusive.”
“I hope so,” Kettering had answered, and Brendan had felt something resonate. There was a sense of truth to that. It hadn’t sounded even remotely threatening, like “She better have been,” but really, a display of true male vulnerability. All a guy could do, in the end, was believe his woman would be faithful, and hope that she was.
If she was promiscuous in the general sense, then she was clandestine about it. Maybe she hooked up with absolute anonymity – that was still possible. Brendan knew very little about her life outside of the region. But it was only in the context of the region that Kettering had known her. It was certainly possible, even likely, that someone from her life outside the area had portaged in and done the deed, but Brendan just had a hard time wrapping his mind around Rebecca Heilshorn inviting some random person to her hideaway home in farm country, when she seemed to fiercely guard her privacy in other ways. Or was he missing the obvious? Had she just been cheating on Kettering, and that was it? Leading a double life of some kind?
It was someone specific who’d sent her the book. That was the feeling. Someone with real cause, and not just a previous sexual partner who wanted more from her.
The medical examiners had so far been unable to show conclusively that she had been raped. Rape wasn’t always so violent that it left marks, or anything for serology. Coercive sex was always possible, with an aggressor who covered his tracks well. But what was known definitively was that the victim had been stabbed multiple times in a savage fashion. The killer had been more than disgruntled; the killer had been absolutely enraged. Sadistic and brutal. It didn’t fit together, the idea of a “mild” almost invisible rape, and then a violent killing. It was almost as if there were two different aggressors at work.
Brendan drove past the residences on Floyd Avenue. They were Colonial, Victorian, Federalist. Mostly white or yellow with black shutters. Large pick-up trucks and minivans in the short driveways. A few people were out, wearing light coats. A mother pushed a stroller, and two young boys rode on their bikes. A person would never know that murder existed in a world this quiet and simple.
The air that blew in through the open window smelled of leaves and impending rain. Indeed, the clouds had knitted together overhead, and were ready to open.
The questioned gnawed at him. The reason for someone giving Rebecca this book was elusive. And how did he even know it had been given to her? The note said “Danice” after all. Didn’t that make it even more likely that she had been planning to give the book to someone, and just hadn’t gotten the chance?
He hoped and trusted that Delaney and Colinas were running the name Danice right now, and looking to match it with Rebecca.
“Eternally endured,” Brendan said softly as he drove.
What else would cause someone to have multiple sexual partners? Casual sex certainly wasn’t the worst possibility. Two consenting adults with mutual respect could, theoretically, “enjoy” their congress eternally. Sure, it would be better to spend eternity with that person you loved most, but it was possible to enjoy multiple partners, too.
So who wouldn’t enjoy their partners?
“Prostitutes,” he said to the empty interior of the Camry.
Prostitutes. Certainly a woman who had sex with innumerable partners over the years, likely deriving little to no enjoyment out of any of them, would be a candidate for suffering them eternally.
It would be hell, when you thought about it. All those men, all those experiences, repeated for eternity.
And, Brendan supposed, porn fell into the category, too. Porn was another form of prostitution. Most people didn’t think of it that way, but the people involved in porn got paid to have sex. That was the prostitution of their corpus, if you asked Brendan.
And, to C.S. Lewis’s thinking, the prostitution of their soul, too, for which there was no redemption.
As he headed back to Stanwix, still debating on whether or not it could work to drop in on Kettering, Brendan imagined the killer standing in the doorway of Rebecca Heilshorn’s home on the morning of Thursday the fourteenth.
Who was he? Kettering, in a fury driven by romantic rejection? This mystery man Eddie, come for retribution for his lack of custody over the daughter he shared with Rebecca? Kevin, her brother, who had been, as Delaney suggested, into some kinky incestuous relationship with his sister (which corresponded to Kettering’s description of her icy, isolated nature), upset she had broken it off? Or come back to break it off himself? Had he then turned the gun on Olivia Jane because he had told her about it in a moment of grief? Was he terrified of having the information about a sordid relationship with his sister come out in public?
The killer, standing there, alarms Rebecca, w
ho calls 911. Then the killer goes and gets a knife from the kitchen while Rebecca flees to her bedroom and shuts the door. Or maybe the killer already had the knife, and Rebecca had seen it, and her alarm prompted her to place the emergency call before seeking refuge in the bedroom.
The killer climbs the stairs, the knife glints in the early sun blooming in the windows of the clerestory room. He savagely kicks in the door. He tells her to get on the bed, now. He gets on top of her, but does not necessarily rape her. Instead, maybe, they have a brief and tense exchange. He asks her something, or he blames her, or he pleads with her, or he just starts slashing at her.
When it’s over, he goes through her drawers. Either it’s a slipshod attempt at making it look like a robbery, or there’s something he wants. Something he’s trying to find.
“Ah,” said Brendan.
If it was the killer who had given Rebecca the book, wouldn’t he have taken it back then? Why leave anything for the police that could be linked to him?
It seemed more and more likely that Rebecca had been the one to give the book to someone. That, or some third party calling her “Danice,” had given it to her. The former scenario sounded more probable, but Brendan still gave due consideration to the latter.
The killer then leaves the house. Does he burn the laptop and throw it in the shed? No, not enough time, and nothing was hot or freshly burned. The stuff had to have been burned in the fireplace the night before. Someone should ask the neighbor, Folwell, about any odd smells coming from the Heilshorn house that evening before the murder. Like burning plastic.
HABIT: a gripping detective thriller full of suspense Page 13