SURVIVORS (crime thriller books)

by T. J. Brearton

  “We should have had the sauce on the stove a while ago. The spaghetti’s going to be ready before it’s done, and we’ll be so hungry we’ll just eat it with butter.”

  “Fine by me.”

  She was still stirring. She took a taste of it. Who was this girl? With this spritely demeanor, this strange way of forming her words, this unknowable something about her. Who was she?

  Steam rose from the boiling spaghetti, and from the sauce, too. He watched her sprinkle in basil, oregano, salt and pepper.

  “I’m going to go see her tomorrow,” he said.

  “Me too. That’s why I’m here. There’s a picture Argon showed me once of the two of them. It’s like the only normal-looking picture I ever saw of him and Mena.”

  “Right.”

  “Well, when you see Mena’s room, you’ll understand her place needs a little brightening up. I wanted to grab that picture before the cops got their paws on it, or whoever. So, you going to come with me?”

  * * *

  They drank milk from pint glasses. Sloane had also whipped together a garden salad. It was going on eight in the evening, and they ate after patiently waiting for the sauce. Sloane was acting the perfectionist and complaining about every bite, about how you had to cook a sauce all day. Argon was like that, she said. Always had to do everything from scratch.

  “How did you meet him?” Brendan asked.

  He took a bite. The sauce tasted fine to him. It was all he could do to not wolf the thing down as fast as he could, noodles slapping his chin and sauce splattering his shirt.

  Her eyes clouded over for the first time since he’d met this strange, seemingly guileless girl.

  “Is that a bad subject?”

  “No. No, not at all. This is all just sad, you know?”

  She looked around the house then, as if suddenly feeling guilty that they were sitting there enjoying a dinner in Argon’s home. A man who had given them both quite a lot, of that Brendan was sure – Sloane had benefitted from Argon’s no-nonsense ways, his tough love, too.

  He tried to give her some time, which was growing more difficult with each passing moment. He needed to get back focused on what he’d come to do. Since arriving in Westchester County that afternoon, he’d only scratched the surface.

  “I’m sure you’ve noticed something a little different about me,” she said.

  Brendan felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Not so much because of awkwardness – over the years you learned to deal with people’s differences, their infirmities, their personalities, their opinions; you did your best to take it all at face value – but because of some diffuse fear he had, something she might say.

  “I did,” he said. “You like to cook spaghetti in reverse.”

  She attempted a smile. Her gaze dropped to her plate. She gently set down her fork and spoon, and picked up one of the paper towels (no napkins for Argon) and blotted her mouth with it.

  “So, I’m an abortion survivor.” She said it almost casually. Probably she had said that same phrase many times, to people like Brendan, who snuck furtive looks at her and wondered.

  He tried not to get too heavy, but the subject felt instantly oppressive. “How does that work?”

  Her eyes flipped up and cut into him, searching for any trace of disrespect. Her gaze revealed a different person. The young woman who had made spaghetti with him was playful, maybe even a little naïve-seeming. The one looking at him now would have no trouble jamming that spaghetti fork into his hand, he thought. Or maybe his head.

  “I mean, I don’t understand.”

  “A non-medically assisted abortion. It means I was fished out of a storm drain after my mother induced in an alley. I was four to five weeks premature. At least she didn’t try to flush me down a toilet, I guess. Like that Japanese baby.”

  Brendan fell silent. The image of an infant – a still gestating infant – being pulled from a storm drain, covered with rainwater and muck had him fully occupied. He did his best to dispel the horrible vision. He didn’t know where to look. He met her gaze at last, and he saw that the hardness he had witnessed in her was gone.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Trust me, I know that’s a lot to dump on someone. I’ve never gotten very good at it. You sure you want to hear this?”

  “Yes. Was it Argon who pulled you out? Who found you?”

  She nodded, and took a sip of milk. It left the faintest trace on her upper lip. Somehow that was a comforting sight, and Brendan felt his pulse easing.

  “He did. It was his last year as a cop in White Plains.”

  “Where he spent six years before transferring up here.” Brendan felt good about at least knowing this. And he knew that Argon and Lawrence Taber had first met and become friends in White Plains – Taber was barely twenty at the time, quite a bit younger than Argon. But Brendan had never heard anything about Argon rescuing an infant. Jesus, the man was turning into something of a legend.

  She was nodding. “And he stayed with me – or I mean, he came to visit until I was healthy, and in foster care. Then, you know, we sort of lost touch.” She laughed at this, revealing her teeth, which were charmingly imperfect, featuring bicuspids that stuck out more than the others.

  “I was adopted quite young, and I had a good childhood; all that shit. My parents are older though? You know? They’re already in their sixties. Late sixties. And, so, whatever, you know, I got a little bit older and I started to question things. I’d forgotten about Argon. It’s not like my parents didn’t want him around, or he didn’t want to come around, but, you know what I mean? It would have been tough to do that, and they wanted to keep me protected from it all. Pretty understandable, I guess. Whatever. But I knew something was up. Something they weren’t telling me. I started going through their things. I was up in the attic – we have a nice big house, the attic is filled with clothes, beyond belief, boxes stacked to the peak of the roof. Really raises my histamines, being up there. My parents save everything. I knew if I looked long enough I would find it.”

  The story reminded Brendan of his current situation. Argon wasn’t exactly a pack rat – still, he hoped the man had kept whatever Taber was expecting to find and it wasn’t buried under ten years of taxes or deep in a closet full of bag pipes, discarded exercise gear, and Playboy magazines.

  “And I did. I found this news story, right? About a cop. Cop that pulled a baby out of a storm drain in White Plains. And there was Argon, you know, much skinnier, a lot skinnier, with this big, bushy moustache.”

  She laughed again. He liked her laugh.

  Then she grew still. She shrugged.

  “So, that’s how I knew. And I was angry with my parents, you know, anyway. ‘You kept this from me!’ All that business. I took the hurt I felt towards my biological mother, and I transferred it right onto them. I guess it had to go somewhere. But things just got worse from there. I started going out late. Typical teenage stuff, but then I had this extra edge. I just didn’t care about anything. And in the middle of it all, I met him again.”

  “Did your parents call him?”

  “No. They never really knew him. I mean, they knew of him, who he was, but they were anonymous to him. My adoption was kept confidential, that sort of thing. I mean, they were grateful for what he did, but it wasn’t like they thought they’d introduce themselves and keep him around in case I went psycho or something. They had no reason to think he could do anything about what I was going through. He was just some cop. But then he popped me for DUI a couple years ago.”

  “He knew who you were?”

  “Yeah, when he saw my ID.”

  Brendan sat back and frowned. Argon would have had no way of knowing the girl’s name, let alone what she would look like as a young adult – she’d been an infant when he’d last seen her.

  “How? No offense, but I don’t see how that’s possible.”

  “Well for one thing, he recognized my first name.” Sloane’s expression indicated that this was the one part of
her story that perhaps gave her some pleasure.

  “He knew it because he was the one who gave it to me.”

  When she read the incredulity on Brendan’s face, she elaborated.

  “Well, he suggested it. There were a couple of days when he was still around, while they were doing all of the paper work with child services and all of that. I guess he didn’t just want to keep calling me ‘the baby,’ or ‘the rescued abortion’ or something. So he nicknamed me Sloane. It’s a Scots-Irish name that means fighter.”

  Brendan felt something wash through him that was mildly pleasant. It was a feeling he had only recently experienced; the sense that his chest was expanding, the base of his head tingling a little.

  “And so it goes,” she said, now twirling some spaghetti again into her spoon. “I guess someone liked it and put it on the forms as my name. And when my parents adopted me, they kept it.” Her eyes flicked up to meet his. “And then, he kept tabs on me. Secretly. He knew my address, too. He wouldn’t tell me how, because I think he didn’t want to get anyone in any trouble, anyone who had helped him to find out.”

  Sloane set the utensils down without taking a bite. “After my DUI, Argon encouraged me to get into meetings. And after a few meetings, he had me over here for coffee. And we would just hang out, you know, and talk. I recently had a relapse, and he saw me through it.”

  And just like that, this girl who was both light on her feet and tough as nails showed the first bit of emotion, and she started to cry.

  Brendan stayed where he was for a moment, not sure of the right thing to do. Then he pulled his chair around to get closer to her, and placed a hand gently on the back of her neck.

  They sat like that for about a minute until there was a scratching at the door, and a muffled meowing.

  Sloane lifted her head up.

  “We should let the cat back in.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE / Sunday, 8:20 PM

  Jennifer Aiken ate dinner alone at a restaurant in a suburb called Pleasantville. She wanted to put some distance between herself and the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women, but hadn’t wanted to lose the pieces of information jockeying for attention in her head.

  Had Olivia Jane rattled her? Maybe. Maybe Jennifer, who had a plan to keep control of the situation, had realized that there was no such possibility when it came to interviewing a murderer like Jane – the conversation took on a life of its own. She needed to capture as much of it as she could, and so seated herself at a table-for-one in the quiet downtown area of Pleasantville, as night draped itself over the city. She ordered an herbal tea and chicken with penne and wrote from memory into one of her notebooks.

  Jane was well-versed in her rights and had been advised by her attorney not to allow any recording devices during the interview. Jennifer could have gone above the lawyer’s head – a very capable, tuned-up sort – but she’d opted not to get into the yard of paperwork over it. And she hadn’t wanted to waste any time, either. The assembly of the task force case had stalled several times in the last two years.

  Olivia Jane had some interesting things to say about Brendan Healy. Healy had been the way Jennifer planned to break into Olivia Jane’s mind, and it had worked – in a fashion. In researching Jane’s case, Jennifer had gotten the impression that Olivia Jane and Brendan Healy had spent significant time together, and that, despite everything, there may have been feelings between them.

  If that was true, Olivia showed no signs of regret, and betrayed no lingering affection for the detective. Instead, she had repeatedly cut him down. Olivia Jane had painted a vivid picture of Brendan Healy as a broken, haunted addict with no business in the police force. She related what she called her professional opinion of Brendan Healy as an obsessive and volatile man who had no earthly place as a police detective.

  “He wasn’t even a cop to begin with,” Jane had said in disparagement. “He went to school for neuroscience. Why is it always that the most educated types seem to lack basic common sense?”

  Jennifer had gotten the impression that Jane was playing a game, more to find out what information Jennifer herself might have, than to condemn Healy; probing for pressure points, triggers, anything which might make the agent give something away.

  It made sense. The one thing Jennifer was able to confirm from the interview was that Olivia Jane was scared about what might happen to her. Given her co-conspirator, Reginald Forrester, had been poisoned in County, that wasn’t surprising. Olivia Jane was as cold-blooded as they came, but she was still human enough that she had survival instincts. If Healy was the sleight of hand Jennifer had used, the main trick was to exploit this fear in Olivia Jane. But how to do so within the limits of the law? The Justice Department had the power to move all sorts of mountains, but threatening the safety of anyone – even a convicted murderer – was not on the list of legitimate procedures. Not outright, anyway. So, Jennifer had played coy, let Olivia Jane come to her.

  “Here’s what I know,” Jennifer had said, uncrossing her shiny legs and leaning forward, gripping the phone, “A girl was murdered who does not fit the usual profile of a sex worker. She was an educated, upwardly mobile, born-and-bred citizen of the United States. Yet you – allegedly – got her into a black market operation called XList. Why? Well, something compelled her. And I’ve asked myself, I’ve gone over and over this: What? I wonder: did you do such a head shrink on her, was that it? And she gets pregnant while she’s in this . . . service. That’s another thing. And still she is compelled. Because now there is leverage. She has a child. Her second. Because her first, I’m thinking, is living with the parents. With Alexander and Greta Heilshorn.

  “What an interesting role he played, Mr. Heilshorn. Right? He rides in on his jet and he sort of takes over the investigation. We know he spoke with Brendan Healy. We know he warned Mr. Healy about the dangers of pursuing his daughter’s killers. Precisely because the infant was being held. Ostensibly because of other children being used to keep women in this servitude.”

  Jennifer tapped a pen thoughtfully against her lower lip and rolled her eyes to the ceiling. There were dark brown water stains on the textured tiles.

  “But that just never quite sat right with me: Heilshorn, and how he was involved, and how he tried to micromanage the investigation. A grieving father, I can understand. A grieving father with money and an ego, I can understand that, too. But there’s just something missing. And then there’s this thing you say to Brendan Healy when you’re first locked up in Oneida County: ‘Titan is so entwined with the government that you’ll never get it free.’ I can only assume that Titan is muscle for XList. But to say something like that. That’s . . . I don’t know – what do you think?” And she returned her gaze to Olivia.

  Olivia’s eyes were sharp and intelligent. “I never met Heilshorn.”

  “Me neither. But don’t you think it’s curious? I mean, I know you can’t be indiscreet, and talk about a patient, but I’m sure Rebecca Heilshorn had all sorts of things to say about him. Who paid for her therapy, did she, or did her father?”

  “Why?”

  Olivia Jane was just going to stonewall, Jennifer thought. Fine. She leaned forward, dropping her shoulders, taking a different tack.

  “How about this? Let me share with you a little theory I’ve got cooking. Okay?”

  “This should be good.”

  “Heilshorn is involved with XList, Titan, whatever you want to call it. He’s a major investor in several medical technology and pharmaceutical companies. And he’s politically involved; he made a large donation to a recent gubernatorial campaign. Nothing too incriminating right there, other than the usual money-buys-influence. But, I think there’s more. Why don’t you help me out?”

  She looked through the bulletproof glass at Olivia Jane. Jane’s face was unreadable.

  Jennifer pressed further. “Let’s just go with it, okay? Let’s say that Alexander Heilshorn, a wealthy doctor, with major connections to big business, to congress, and from what
my research has shown, even to the military, let’s say that he’s got something to do with XList, or its muscle, Titan, with its tentacles reaching into legit businesses where it can launder money. And he’s lending support to key officeholders. But the politicians have to march to his beat once the money is there. And they’ll take it, sure; the government is broke.” She was really hamming it up now. “All that money borrowed from China, all that interest to repay, all those bonds issued which offer a rate of return to investors, and people can’t turn over their income fast enough – oh, and the people with the big bucks, they avoid capital gains like the plague and hide two thirds of the money they’ve got offshore.”

  “You work for the Department of Justice?”

  “That’s right.”

  “They must love you.”

  “They do.” Jennifer affected a smile. The truth was, these ideas scared her a little. The idea that her own Justice Department felt inadequate to handle certain prosecutions, it kept her up nights. But for the moment she needed a role to play, a way to keep the dialogue going.

  “Let’s say crime, bad as it is and all of that – boo, hiss – crime feeds the economy. Just like anything else. It’s a revenue stream for those who know how to work it. Right? You’ve got to keep criminals in play, though – they’re an important part of what’s keeping this country afloat in a sea of debt. And let’s just say that – don’t tell anyone I’m going on like this – that America is not so much a popular democracy anymore as it is a corporate-controlled plutocracy. Like Russia and its oligarchs, but with better PR. With me? You’re a big company, and you’re legally bound to make money for your shareholders, you support politicians that dance to your tune. Maybe this guy favors cap & trade, maybe this other guy loves tort reform. So, we have our lobbying industry. Politician X gets a boatload of money, provided he endorses those bills and legislation favoring corporate interests. But, that’s the rub, they have to follow through. If they don’t . . .”

  Jane’s face remained inscrutable.