Kettering was growing agitated. “No, I didn’t think ‘instant family.’ I thought I could help them. I loved her. I loved both of them.”
“Have you made any attempts to get in touch with the daughter?”
“Absolutely not.”
“The family? Have you ever contacted the victim’s parents?”
“No.”
“How about her brother?”
Kettering hesitated for only a second. “Why would I contact her brother?”
“You haven’t answered the question.”
“No. I never contacted her brother.”
Brendan felt like Kettering had just uttered his first lie. He leaned toward the Sheriff. “Yeah, definitely a poly.”
Taber nodded. At the same time, the door opened behind them and Skene slipped in, quiet as a cat.
“Mr. Kettering, did you write something on the back of the family picture you’re in with Rebecca and Leah?”
“I was told this was going to be about me providing some helpful information about Rebecca. Okay? I’m sorry I didn’t bring it up before. I should have. That’s all I’ve been trying to do is help. I wanted to help her. Take her to the Winter Festival, bring the baby, bounce the baby on my knee. Okay? Fuck me for trying to do the right thing.”
“Mr. Kettering, it’s all right. Please, calm down.”
“And now you’re interrogating me as if I’m a suspect. I think maybe unless you are going to arrest me, I should go. I could have your badge.”
Brendan heard Skene swear under his breath. Brendan felt himself smirk. Skene was like the father who comes into the room right as the nudity or violence happens in the movie the teenager is watching on the TV.
Delaney did his best to smooth things over. “Okay, you’re right, I’m sorry.”
Colinas stepped away from the wall. “Mr. Kettering, we’re just trying to establish any connections between the evidence we have, and the life of the victim. You’re coming here today is very helpful. We know you just want to help, and that you wanted to help the victim, too. Do you think that someone would have written on the back of that photograph for a reason?”
“What does it say?”
Colinas glanced at Delaney, who nodded. “It says, ‘I was born under the black smoke of September.’ Crazy, right? Makes no sense to us. You ever heard of anything like that, Mr. Kettering?”
Everyone watched Kettering closely. “Never,” he seemed to say without guile.
Colinas seemed to get comfortable with the reins. “Think someone was jealous of you? Of what you had with Rebecca and the girl?”
“Of what we had? I had nothing but their fumes. I only saw the girl a dozen or so times; I’ve already told Detective Healy that. Mostly I chased after Rebecca. Okay? It’s a little humiliating.”
“Humiliating?” Colinas made a face. “Oh man, that’s all I know. Every woman in my life I chased over the river and through the woods. My wife only agreed to marry me after I’d run a marathon to win her over. I understand. But, see, to other people, it could have appeared effortless. You know? You’re sitting there, in a restaurant or something, and in comes this beautiful little family. That’s what you see. Handsome, successful hardware-store-owner Donald Kettering and this younger, beautiful woman with her precious daughter, all sitting down to some spaghetti. And what bliss they must be in. See? We don’t think about what might be beneath the surface. We like to feel bad about ourselves, so we make out other people to be happier.”
Everyone was quiet after Colinas’s little speech. In the viewing room, Skene grumbled something about State Detectives.
“No,” Kettering said at last. “I can’t think of anyone who might have been jealous.”
Brendan was never so sure of a balder lie. What was Kettering hiding? Who was he protecting?
Delaney piped up, his arms folded, foot still up on the chair. “What about Jason Pert?”
Kettering seemed to instantly grow upset again. “Look, I told you. Jason dropped a few things off once at the house. I was helping her remodel the master bedroom. I mean, it was brief. I was only working on it for two weeks. We broke up shortly after.”
“How did you break up? What were the circumstances?”
Brendan watched Kettering closely. The man’s face had grown long, his eyes drawn into his head, ringed with fatigue. “How does anyone break up? It’s not a lot of fun.”
“I understand, I understand. Can you tell me again, though, how you knew she was in pornography? Did she tell you? Was that why you broke up?”
“She wasn’t in pornography, okay? She did some videos. She never said why. She would never talk about it. We broke up because I proposed to her three times. On the third, I decided to give up. Okay? I believe in the sanctity of marriage. I did a lot of talking to the members of my church, and I searched my soul. In the end, I couldn’t keep chasing, couldn’t keep living that way.”
“Which church do you go to?”
“The Resurrection Life Church.”
Brendan felt a shiver of excitement. He pressed his lips together and kept listening.
“Ok, Mr. Kettering. Thing is, you’re saying a couple of things here. And I can dig it; women are complicated. You say that you chased Rebecca around trying to make her happy, but that she also needed you to help her get away from something – though she kept it a secret from you. So, what I’m especially unclear about is one thing. If she never talked about it, how did you know about the videos? ”
Kettering looked positively deflated now. His big, lunky frame seemed to try to shrink itself. It was hard, even, just to look at how uncomfortable he was. He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to: Kettering knew about the videos because he had watched them. And then one day, like a gift from the gods, the young woman shows up in the flesh.
“And was that why you didn’t say anything about this before?”
Kettering’s lower lip started to tremble. The men watched as the large, balding, small business owner began to cry.
“I didn’t want . . . I loved her. How could you tell people about something like that? About the woman you loved? I didn’t want people to know that about her. It wasn’t who she really was . . .” He trailed off, sobbing.
Skene turned to Brendan and Sheriff Taber. The prosecutor was grinning like a hyena. “He saw her when he watched one of the videos himself. Then he recognized her when she showed up in Boonville, when she came into his hardware store.”
Taber nodded. He totally bought it. Brendan thought it was partly true. Skene turned and glared through the one-way glass, scenting blood. Then the prosecutor asked, “When do we bring in the kid? The employee?”
“Right now,” said Taber.
* * *
Jason Pert, just a kid, had little to offer. His story matched Kettering’s. As for the phone call, he said that Rebecca had called him in the weeks prior to her disappearance to ask him a question about the plumbing in the master bathroom. It was a little odd, because she and Mr. Kettering hadn’t been seeing each other for a long time, Pert said. But she said she just wanted to finish the master bathroom – she’d wanted to know if it was okay to hook up a “diaper sprayer” to the line coming into the toilet tank. Pert had told her he didn’t really know too much about plumbing, and that he no longer worked for Kettering. He was preparing for college in the fall and needed the few remaining weeks of summer to get things in order. He was going to UAlbany to enroll in business classes.
Delaney and Colinas grilled Pert about the nature of the phone call. How Rebecca had sounded, anything else she may have said. Pert said it was very brief, and that she sounded “normal.” They then asked him about the key. He said he had left the key in a drawer at the hardware store, where it had been usually kept. At that point Taber stepped out of the room to contact a deputy and have an officer stop into the hardware store and verify that the key was there.
Twenty minutes later, word came back that it was. It didn’t prove anything, Skene observed, except that
the kid was telling the truth about that one thing. Skene was hunting for another suspect to pin the murder on.
Pert agreed to be fingerprinted and have a sample of his blood taken and his shoe size determined. Kettering reluctantly agreed to the same tests. Then, since neither man was being charged, they were released. The whole thing had taken almost five hours.
After the interrogations were over, Brendan turned his attention to something else. He sat in his office and focused on obtaining as much medical information as he could on Rebecca. This was something else he would have done if he hadn’t been booted from the case and then brought back on in this clandestine fashion. Who was her doctor? Who delivered her baby, Leah? Did she have any conditions? He made several phone calls to area hospitals, and then hospitals in Westchester, and finally to the place of his own birth, St. Luke’s-Roosevelt. Lawrence Hospital, in Westchester, had a record of Rebecca’s birth, but nothing after that, and no information about her baby, Leah.
He supposed he would have some luck with that last question by talking to the deputy coroner. He called and found out that Heilshorn didn’t have any ostensible health conditions or sexually transmitted diseases. There were signs of a possible abortion, a birth, and certainly many sexual partners. The girl was being prepared for the arrival of her parents, and her subsequent identification by them. They would no doubt be pressing for arrangements for her funeral, and Clark, the coroner, was reluctant to give her up. With the investigation ongoing, she needed to stay in the morgue.
Brendan wondered about Rebecca’s phone call to the kid, Pert. If the teenager was to be believed, Rebecca had asked about a diaper sprayer. There was no biological indication that she was pregnant again, and three was a bit old for a child to still be in diapers, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t possible. Maybe little Leah was a late-bloomer.
Colinas knocked on the door, which was open.
“Come in.”
The State Detective, with the light brown skin, took a seat across from Brendan, where he had first sat two days before when he’d been inducted into the case.
“That was interesting,” said Colinas.
“It was.”
“Too bad we didn’t get anywhere.”
“We didn’t? There’s still all of the forensic data. Something may pop up.”
“You think that nineteen year-old kid did her in? Working for Kettering? He was desperate, jealous, and he has her taken care of? ‘If I can’t have her, nobody can have her?’ ”
Brendan leaned back in his chair. He had a pen in his hand and tapped it against his lip. Then he stuck it in his mouth. Maybe he could fool himself into believing it was a cigarette. “I don’t know.”
“I’ve got a theory,” said Colinas, sitting up straighter.
“Let’s hear it.”
“Kettering sees the girl in the porn video. He does his thing, you know, rubs one out, and then a few months later, holy shit, she’s standing there in his store.”
“That’s Skene’s inclination, too. But there’s a caveat; she doesn’t have the house yet.”
“Hmm. There is that.” Colinas furrowed his brow. “So Kettering’s description of how they met is bullshit?”
“I think so. I bet he saw her on the street. From afar. Something. And he worked his way into her life. Eventually he convinced her to have him help her make improvements on the house, and all of that.”
“But that still doesn’t make him our killer.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Brendan agreed, and sighed. “Just a guy caught in a very embarrassing situation.”
“Well, bear with me. She’s preggo at first, so she’s sort of out of the game. But, then, a couple months go by, the kid is born, and maybe she gets back into it. Kettering doesn’t like it now. Or, maybe he does. Maybe he wants to make his own videos . . .” Colinas trailed off. His inspiration faded. “Fuck. I don’t know. It feels like a dead end.”
Brendan smiled. “That’s your theory?”
Colinas looked wounded.
“Here’s something interesting. You remember what Kettering said about the church he goes to? Resurrection Life Church. Same as the one Eddie Stemp goes to.”
Colinas was nodding. “That’s right. That’s right.”
“How many of these churches are there in the area?”
“I’ll find out. Probably not many. May even only be the one.”
“Well, if it’s only the one, then we ought to have that second look at Stemp sooner than later.”
Colinas shot Brendan a look. Brendan amended, “Maybe you should have that look at Stemp again.”
Colinas started to get up. “What are you gonna do? What else is there with the porn thing?”
“Where did you get to with Rebecca’s Cornell records? Her roommates?”
“Uhm, we tracked down one, thanks to the Sheriff’s connection through Mark Overton.”
“Did you talk to her?”
Colinas turned to face Brendan directly, but he seemed to evade direct eye contact. Brendan frowned. “What is it?”
“Look, this whole thing, you know? Normally the State Police would take Rebecca’s homicide, but your Sheriff’s Department was first on scene, and I guess Delaney really made some noise to get it.”
“Colinas, what are you talking about?”
“I mean, so, we’re here to help, you know? But the thing with Kevin, that’s separate.”
“I know that. I don’t understand what …”
“I talked to my Detective Sergeant. This stuff, one case spills into the other. We’ve got to be careful. I knew this would come up when I found out about the roommate, so I asked. I can tell you – I’m compelled to tell you – but you’re not going to like it.”
“Spit it out, Rudy, Jesus. What did the roommate say?”
“I asked her the usual stuff. How Rebecca was as a student, a roommate, if she was heavy into partying, that sort of thing. It was pretty brief.”
“What did you get?”
“You know, not much. Rebecca was quiet, kept to herself, studious. No reason or explanation for dropping out so close to the end.”
“Did they stay in touch?”
“Uhm, the roommate was sort of vague. Said they bonded a little over some shopping and shared classes, but that was about it.”
“Well,” said Brendan, “I’ll have a few more questions for her, given what we’ve found since then.”
“Totally,” said Colinas.
“Can you give me her name, number, address?”
“This is the part you’re not going to like. Gimme a minute.”
Brendan felt the hairs rising along the nape of his neck. He watched Colinas leave and waited until he came back a minute later with a file. He dropped it on Brendan’s desk.
“There you go.”
Brendan opened it up and read the information on the first page.
It read: Olivia Jane, 6223 Route 365, Barneveld, NY.
“What the hell is this?”
Brendan stood looking at the file. His lips suddenly felt numb.
Colinas sighed. “That’s her roommate, sophomore year. Roommate was a senior. They shared a little house together.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before? Why did she say anything? My God.” Brendan rubbed his jaw. His whole body felt raw, scrubbed with gooseflesh.
“Like I said, it’s two separate cases cross-pollinating. I don’t know why she didn’t offer this earlier. We asked, of course, but she had a lawyer there, and the lawyer was worm-tonguing in her ear the whole time. So, you know, like I said, we asked her the standard questions. She said it was a long time ago. Rebecca was quiet, pretty normal, decent grades…” Colinas shrugged. At last he met Brendan’s gaze. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, right”
“What do you mean by that?”
Brendan jabbed the file with a finger. He felt betrayed, livid. “Colinas, this is the woman who served as our grief counselor for Kevin Heilshorn. She went to school with his sister
, Rebecca? For chrissakes, Delaney was the one who referred her. This is a mess.”
Colinas looked hurt. “I’m trying to help you out, buddy, best as I can. Yeah, it’s a jurisdictional clusterfuck, and this shit with the family, roommates, it gets messy. And when I met with Olivia Jane and her lawyer, another State Detective was with me. We couldn’t push her on the issue about not coming forward sooner, because that’s your case. The case we were working with Olivia Jane? The shooting of Kevin Heilshorn. And you’re the shooter in that case. So you can see the position I’m in.”
Brendan quickly grabbed up his stuff and left the office.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE / SUNDAY, 5:48 PM
He tried to drive at a reasonable speed, but couldn’t. He flew along the highway. He blew through traffic lights. Within minutes he was at Olivia Jane’s house. Her car was not in the driveway. He parked and went to the porch. The front door was locked. He walked around to the back of the house, trying to get his nerves under control. He didn’t let himself look at the garden, to where Kevin Heilshorn had fallen, gunned down by Brendan’s own hand.
Kevin knew her, after all, he thought.
Olivia would be in a lot of trouble. She had withheld vital information. If she had been roommates with the victim, Rebecca, she would very likely have known about Rebecca’s brother. It wasn’t clear why she wouldn’t have disclosed that information, but Brendan felt sure it had been a conscious act, nothing she had simply “failed to mention.”
It seemed like a virus. First Kettering and now Olivia who weren’t showing all of their cards. He wondered if it was something Investigators encountered a lot. He felt a twinge of embarrassment, but he couldn’t say why. Had he missed something due to his inexperience? Had he screwed up the very thing he was hired to do – to use his “good instincts” questioning persons of interest, getting information from them?
He found the back door unlocked and let himself into the house. It was quiet and cool inside and smelled of cleaning products.
HABIT: a gripping detective thriller full of suspense Page 19