HABIT: a gripping detective thriller full of suspense

by T. J. Brearton

  He did a cursory check of the main part of the house, going through the kitchen, dining room and living room, not quite sure what he was looking for, just trying to calm down. He found some framed pictures on a bookcase. She liked to travel. Here was a picture of a younger Olivia standing alone on the Brooklyn Bridge with the World Trade Center in the background. Here was Olivia in an athletic outfit on top of some mountain or other, her arm around a woman who looked a bit like her. Her sister maybe. Brendan recalled some of their dinner conversation, but despite some basics, he realized he still didn’t know much about Olivia’s background.

  He supposed she didn’t know much about his, either.

  In another picture, she was dressed up, sitting at a table at some function or banquet, smiling along with four other people also dressed handsomely. There was one smaller frame, only three-by-five, showing Olivia holding a small baby in her arms, possibly a niece or a nephew. Then there were several photos elsewhere in the living room with pictures of people he didn’t recognize.

  At the back of the living room was the door to her office. He went to it and found it locked. He left it for now. He backtracked to the rear entrance where the stairs led up. He ascended to a short hallway which fed into a bathroom and two bedrooms. One of the bedrooms was a den, with a small settee by a window which overlooked the garden and the roof of her office below. The office was maybe an add-on to the original house, he thought, given this view of the design. There were more books here and some pictures on the wall. Most were scenic views. There was only one with people, and again he didn’t recognize the faces.

  He left the den and walked back down the hallway, and turned into the bathroom. One thing he remembered from Argon was that you found out the most about people from their bathrooms and their bedrooms. The living rooms were where people kept up appearances. The kitchens were usually just functional, the dining areas formal. In bathrooms you had the medicine cabinet, the products and appliances. Were they terribly vain and high maintenance, or was there just a toothbrush in a cup? Were they home a lot, or very little? Were the towels clean and packed away in a closet, or damp and on the floor? Olivia was somewhere in between. The bathroom was used regularly and she had a hair-straightening iron and the requisite conditioners and lotions. He felt a little bit guilty going through her stuff, but reminded himself that she had withheld critical information. Still, the right thing to do would have been to go into the Sheriff’s office and meet with Taber and Delaney about it, and go from there. Maybe get a warrant.

  But on what grounds? Because she had told one investigator, but not another, that she had once been a roommate of the deceased? No judge would go for that. No, it was better this way. Maybe emotionally-driven – he had to concede that to his own analysis of the situation – but better.

  There was nothing overtly incriminating in the medicine cabinet. Just Aspirin, vitamins, and plenty of lotion.

  He found one bottle which seemed out of place. It was children’s Tylenol. For infants.

  He considered it, turning it around in his hands. Maybe she was averse to strong medicine. Many people took baby aspirin, for instance. Or, maybe she had another reason.

  He put everything back the way it was and left the bathroom and was heading to the bedroom, when he heard a car pull up in the driveway.

  * * *

  He expected her to be irate. To be indignant about his presence in her home. Even to threaten to call his superiors. It seemed like something she would do, from what he’d come to know of her.

  Instead, however, she met him in the living room as she came in the front door, and her eyes only widened for a second. She took off her shoulder bag and set it down on the dining room table. Her gaze fell away from him, and she started towards the kitchen.

  He watched as she got down a drinking glass, poured in some ice cubes from the ice machine in the fridge, and then filled the glass with water from the tap. She took a long drink, and then looked at him again.

  “Hello, Detective Healy.”

  He said nothing. She left the kitchen and returned to the dining room table where she set down her water and removed the light jacket she was wearing. Then she bent and took her shoes off and stuck them by the front door, only a few feet from the window which Kevin Heilshorn’s bullets had smashed through, nearly killing them both.

  Brendan could feel his anger rising again.

  He stood there in the space between the kitchen, dining area, and living room and watched as she crossed in front of him, sipping her water, and sat on the couch.

  “Come on and sit down. I’m guessing this isn’t a social call.”

  He strode over towards her but didn’t sit. He could feel himself fuming.

  “What the fuck is the matter with you?”

  She blinked at him. She didn’t affect surprise or offense at his language. Her expression only conveyed curiosity, perhaps even concern. It infuriated him.

  “I guess you’re here because you found out I knew Rebecca Heilshorn.”

  “Yes,” he said. He clenched his teeth. “That’s why I’m here.”

  “You seem very angry.”

  He cocked his head. “Oh yeah?”

  “Yes.”

  “And why do you think I would be very angry? Huh? Would it have something to do with the fact that you have kept this information from me?”

  “Detective . . . Brendan, please sit.”

  “I don’t want to sit.”

  “I think it would help you be . . . less angry.”

  “I don’t want to be less angry.”

  “Ah,” she said. She took another sip of her water and then set the glass on the coffee table. She folded her hands on her lap and crossed her legs. She was wearing jeans and a hooded sweatshirt. She hadn’t come inside with any shopping bags.

  “Where have you been?”

  “That’s really none of your business.”

  That was it. He couldn’t take it any longer. He thought of Donald Kettering’s bright red face. He supposed his face was as red now, but he couldn’t help it. He yelled at her. “Yes it is my fucking business, Olivia. Yes it is. So is knowing that you were roommates at Cornell with the victim in a major homicide case. That you knew the man who tried to shoot and kill me. The man who I had to fucking shoot dead.”

  He was taking huge breaths now. He clenched his fist. He wanted to smash something. A preposterous thought occurred to him, a memory of childhood, of watching an old TV show. Hulk smash. It almost made him start laughing. But if he started laughing, he might not stop.

  “Brendan, please. Slow your breathing. In five minutes you won’t be so distressed.”

  “I won’t?”

  He remained standing. His muscles were tensed. His stomach throbbed. He felt ready to kill. Not Olivia, but something, someone.

  He saw the victim’s eyes looking back at him in the bedroom mirror.

  “No, I promise you. But, fine, stay standing. Whatever makes you . . . Whatever you want.”

  She uncrossed her legs and leaned forward, elbows on knees. She seemed to be waiting for him to get himself under control.

  It took a moment, but he could feel his pulse rate slowing, and he breathed more shallowly and gradually.

  “I want you to consider the following with a clear head. Can you do that? I’m not going to try to convince you of anything. I am just going to give you the facts. Okay?”

  He waited.

  “Okay. I have known Investigator Delaney for several years. I told you I know more people around here than you. I met him when I began offering services in grief counseling. Frankly, he used to hit on me. But, we’re past all that. So, he called on me when this all happened. You then brought Kevin to me. I attempted to do my job, which was to help him with the extremely fresh, extremely recent tragedy.”

  “Did you know him?”

  “I’d never met Kevin before Thursday.”

  He opened his mouth to ask her another question, but she cut him off.


  “Please just hear me out. I’ll answer your questions as best as I can as soon as I’m finished. And yes, I can see by your face that you’re irritated with the fact that I’m not able to tell you everything you want to hear, as soon as you want to hear it, but that is the nature of things. You’ll see why.”

  She took a breath. “Rebecca and I were roommates for one year. That you now know. Let’s just stay with that fact for a moment. You’re upset because I didn’t tell you. After you and I met, when you dropped off Kevin with me, we arranged to discuss that meeting. You wanted to know whether or not I thought he was guilty. But that’s not my field. I could only tell you about his state of mind, and he was indeed grief-stricken and addled. When we met here, that afternoon, I planned to share with you that I had known the victim, that I went to school with Rebecca. But we were interrupted.”

  “That’s one way to put it.”

  “Yes, that is one way to put it. As you know, that interruption led to a whole new chain of events. You and I were separated at the Department. I gave my statement, and then I left.”

  “You got in your car and drove away from me.”

  “I was instructed not to discuss anything with you, since you had done the shooting. I was told that if I did, I could be interfering with the internal investigation which necessarily follows an incident like the one with you and Kevin. The next day I was approached by the State Detectives. Colinas sought to question me about my relationship with Rebecca, which he had learned about from college records. At the same time, Detective Ritnowar was working the case on you and the shooting. Naturally, I called my lawyer before speaking with them. Not that I have anything to hide. But the matter seemed to grow quickly complicated, and I needed to be careful about anything I said. And then I was informed that you had been removed from the case. At that point, I mean, there was nothing I could say to you.”

  “Why? Why all of this . . . slinking around? I don’t understand.”

  “For one, Brendan, it’s because confidentiality extends beyond death.”

  She fell silent, allowing this to sink in. It took him only a moment.

  “Rebecca was your patient?”

  “My client. Yes.”

  He felt the anger returning. “And you didn’t feel compelled to share that either?”

  “Emotionally, yes, I did. But professionally, in fact, I am not compelled. My patients are confidential, and their sessions with me confidential, and remain so, even after death.”

  “Jesus Christ,” said Brendan. He at last broke out of his vigilant stance and started pacing back and forth. He ran a hand over his face. “And have you been served a warrant?”

  “Right now the State Detectives are seeking a warrant to review records of any medical history involving Rebecca, as she was under my care. But Rebecca was never institutionalized, never sent to any hospital. So, they won’t find much. My personal session notes are another story.”

  “This just makes no sense to me. This is a murder investigation, Olivia. What if your notes are able to reveal the identity of the killer? What if one look at them cracks this whole thing wide open?”

  She said nothing. She watched him pace.

  “It makes no sense,” he repeated. “I can understand that while a person is living they want things to be kept confidential. But she’s dead. She would want to have her killer found, don’t you think?”

  Again, Olivia said nothing, and Brendan found himself remembering something he had told Colinas.

  She protected her killer to protect her child.

  A second later he thought: I was born under the black smoke of September.

  “Jesus,” he said again.

  “You get very angry like this, Brendan, is that true?”

  “What? What the hell are you asking me?”

  “You didn’t just arbitrarily choose to leave behind your career in neurobiology and become a cop. That’s a substantial socioeconomic shift, and a very different kind of field. You didn’t just wake up one morning and decide take a pay cut, did you?”

  “What are you asking me? What are you doing?” His lips felt numb again. He wanted a cigarette.

  “Anger, like everything else, is habitual. You know that. People who are quick to temper are that way because the circuitry keeps going that way, isn’t that it? You’ve been working on keeping it all under control though. Maybe you thought that by being a policeman you would be safe. It would be the safest place for you. Surrounded by the law, by duty. But the thing was, you couldn’t keep staying in the same place, the same city, the same house. So you took the job up here.”

  He felt sick. Goddamn it.

  “Olivia . . .” He felt weak in the knees. Brendan found himself sitting on the edge of the loveseat adjacent to the couch.

  “I’m very sorry,” she said, “that I haven’t been able to give you what you want. I am not trying to impede your investigation, or hurt you in any way. I am certainly not trying to be in the way of resolving this horrible crime. But this is my job. This is my life. I must honor the agreement I have with Rebecca, even after her death. Through the proper channels, all will be revealed. But you have to go through those channels, Brendan. This is the way it works.”

  She moved closer to him, resituating herself on the love seat.

  “In the meantime, I want to help you.”

  He lifted his head and looked at her. The sense of defeat he was feeling was starting to give way once more to ire.

  “I want you to talk to me about what happened to your wife and child. About what happened to you, Brendan. Not as a therapist, but as a friend. And I think it can help you with this case. I do. I may not be able to just hand you over my sessions with Rebecca. But I can talk with you.”

  She moved a little closer. “And trust me, I want to tell you. I want to tell you everything, because I care about Rebecca, and I care about you, too.”

  Her hand touched his leg and he abruptly stood up. He looked at her office door, the one that was locked.

  “We’ll get the warrant and subpoena your session notes. This bureaucratic bullshit has held up things long enough.”

  “It’s not up to you, Brendan.”

  He glared at her.

  “This is my case.”

  “My understanding is that Rebecca’s father is coming tomorrow, and you are to make yourself scarce. You told me that yourself. And you have this investigation of your own to deal with, about the shooting. That’s what you need to focus on, Brendan. Let the rest of this work itself out.”

  “With Rebecca’s killer out there? Walking around? Breathing air? I’m not taking a time-out to do a little soul searching.”

  He started towards the front door. He grasped the knob and then looked back around at her.

  “What’s with the children’s Tylenol? Expecting company? Jesus, for all I know, Alex Heilshorn is going to come over and have a tea party with you. Little Leah will run around, and say hi to Auntie Olivia.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” she said but suddenly looked less composed.

  “That’s about how much I can trust you, or anything you say.”

  He banged out the door and into the late day.

  * * *

  As he drove, his fury gradually waned. Dusk was creeping across the land. The Camry moved swiftly from farm country back into the ordered, residential streets outside of Rome.

  He formulated a timeline in his mind, with questions arising at every marker.

  Rebecca and Olivia meet at Cornell as undergrads. They rent a house together. Around the same time, Rebecca gets involved with some other people, people who lead her into the business of making those videos. Or did they come later?

  Did she already know these people? Were there even any people, or did she just up and decide to make erotic films one day?

  She drops out of school. She might have returned to Westchester for a while, but Brendan doubted it. He wasn’t quite sure why, but he imagined her father frowning on her return home. Or, more so
, her reluctance to return there herself. So, where does she go?

  Wherever it is, she meets Eddie Stemp. The two are married. They possibly conceive a child together – that’s Leah, now going on four years old.

  But six months years later, they divorce, before she’s even carried the baby to term. Stemp is a local man affiliated with a church in Rome. So, for that matter, is Kettering. Did she meet Stemp in the area? Or did she meet him elsewhere and the two moved here? If so, why would she stay in the area after the divorce? So Stemp could visit his daughter? It was altruistic, and unlikely, Brendan thought.

  He made a turn into a busy street. Something occurred to him: Maybe Stemp had something he could hold over her. Maybe he blackmailed her to stay.

  Still, Brendan felt hung up on why this area in the first place. But maybe that was because he felt his living here was random. He asked himself “why this place?” almost every day. Not that there was anything wrong with the area. There was a certain rugged charm in between the more central leatherstocking region and the Syracuse metropolitan area. There was a mélange of architectural styles, from Colonial to Federal, Victorian, and Georgian. There was a good deal of poverty, but the people had grit. Historically the region had suffered a great deal.

  Early stockaded villages had been settled by Dutch fur-traders. Merchant villages were often viciously attacked by marauding parties of French-Canadians and Indians. From Schenectady to Rome, villages were often built with defensive barriers of timbers driven side by side into the earth.

  Aggressors burnt villages to the ground. Inhabitants were killed, others were taken as prisoners, but the burgeoning region could not be stopped. Two years later, the Stockade was once again flourishing as a fur-trading outpost and a place of industry and commerce. The Dutch settlers endured, along with English and Scots, building robust, unyielding homes, the ones Brendan admired.

  He liked the idea of something fortified, something unyielding.

  He returned his mind to the timeline, but discovered that he had already come to the end of the lighted path. Rebecca used her parent’s money to buy a house. Her motivation for resettling in the area remained unclear. He did wonder, though, if it had to do with Olivia.