Harper Ross Legal Thrillers vol. 1-3

by Rachel Sinclair

  “She’s around. She’s been looking for you. She told me that she has some information about Steven.” He raised his eyebrow. “I’m interested to find out about that.”

  I cocked my head. “Do you remember Steven?”

  “Of course. He was my lover. I know, I know – people said nasty things about him. They said that he was a child rapist and a murderer and all that. And he was. He was. All those things. But I saw a different side to him. He was very loving with me. Very tender. I saw him for who he really was. He was my first. My first sexual experience and my first real love.” He nodded. “He was my first.” He looked sad. His eyes turned down to the floor, as if he was thinking back to that time.

  I bit my lip, not wanting to show judgment on what he was saying. I was going to have to approach this entire thing as a scientist. I had a lot to learn about DID, but I was determined that I was going to learn as much as I possibly could. “Mick,” I said. “Are you saying that Steven was your boyfriend? Is that why you stayed with him? Is that why you found boys and girls for him?”

  He shuddered. “Oh, I didn’t do that. Finding those young girls and boys. I wouldn’t participate in such sick practices. That was all Eli.” He shook his head. “I can’t stand Eli. He’s a worm. A druggie bastard. A worthless piece of shit. I didn’t want to share Steven, so why would I bring in more boys and girls for him to fuck? Eli got rid of the bodies, too.” He shuddered again. “No way would I do something like that.”

  I wondered about that. Why Eli wouldn’t have escaped, if he was the one who was getting the boys and girls for Steven. “How did Eli think about Steven?”

  “He hated him. Hated him. I always took over when it came to the fucking, though. But Eli was there for the rest of it.” He looked out the window. “Eli was the one who was there when Steven hung him up by his wrists for an entire weekend. Eli was the one who took the beatings with the belt. He took the burnings with the hot branding iron. Eli was forced to watch while Steven had sex with the young boys and girls. He was forced to be in the room when Steven had sex with these kids, and, if he closed his eyes, he was forced to take a scalding shower, so, of course, he watched. He watched when Steven gutted these kids like pigs. He dumped the bodies. He did all of that.”

  I then knew exactly how Eli and Mick split up their duties, and why Mick was homosexual. Mick was apparently created because Jack had a need to have an alter who loved gay sex, that way the raping of Mick seemed like love-making. Tender love-making. Eli, on the other hand, was tough enough to take the torture and abuse. He was tough enough to watch children being raped and murdered.

  I wondered if Eli was violent. And if he was violent, would he be violent enough to murder Father Kennedy? What would Father Kennedy have done to bring Eli out, though? Mick and Father Kennedy were apparently in love, but, then again, Mick felt that he was also in love with Steven. I wondered if the relationship between Father Kennedy and Mick had the same dynamic. Maybe Father Kennedy was actually raping Mick, and Eli came out and killed him?

  That was an inescapable thought that I had. If that were the case, then I would have no choice but to try for a NGRI plea for Jack. As much as that would kill me, that would be the only way to try this case. Not that I was going to give up, though. I still had hope that maybe somebody else did this and framed Jack.

  “Mick,” I said. “Can I talk to Eli?”

  “No,” he shook his head. “Eli can’t come out. Not now, and not ever.” He shook his head again for emphasis. “No. He can’t come out. Sorry.”

  “Why not? Does Eli know what happened with Father Kennedy?”

  Mick screwed up his face, his nose scrunching and his eyes twitching. I was disturbed by his reactions, to say the very least. “Mick, I’m asking you a question. Does Eli know what happened to Father Kennedy? Was he there when Father Kennedy was killed?”

  Mick opened his mouth, but, right at that moment, Albany came into the room. “Harper,” she said. “I’m glad you came.”

  I groaned. Albany came in right when I was possibly, possibly, going to find out what happened to Father Kennedy. Mick seemed to know about Eli, and appeared to know about Eli’s movements and Eli’s activities. Mick seemed to know what Eli knew and what Eli saw. He knew, but he was trying to hide Eli. He was making sure that Eli didn’t come out and tell me exactly what happened.

  Then again, maybe I didn’t really want to know what happened. I didn’t want to know that maybe Eli killed Father Kennedy. If I knew that, then there was going to be an issue. I couldn’t possibly go for a full acquittal if Eli killed Father Kennedy, because, in the end, it was actually Jack killing the priest. I needed Jack to be absolutely innocent. I didn’t want to hear anything else.

  Albany and I quickly hugged and then she sat down. “I wanted you to know what I’ve been finding out from Lady Starlight,” Albany said.

  I nodded my head, trying hard to humor her. She meant well. I knew that she did. But I just couldn’t get into her ramblings about her psychic and her tarot cards and all of that. It was just such hokum to me.

  “What did you find out from her?” I asked Albany.

  “She told me that Steven Heaney isn’t dead.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  I rolled my eyes. “He isn’t dead? What the Hell is that supposed to mean? If he’s not dead, then who is it who is in Steven Heaney’s grave? Who was it that the newspapers were talking about when they announced that Steven Heaney had been found dead in his home? Tell me that, Albany?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know the answers to all those questions, Harper. I only know what she told me. I only know that she told me that Steven Heaney wasn’t deceased at all. See, I tried to get in touch with Steven myself, the other night. I thought that he might have some answers for me on who killed Father Kennedy.” Her voice turned down to a whisper, and both Mick and I leaned forward. Mick was watching Albany with interest in his eyes, but he wasn’t saying anything. It looked like he was thinking about what she was saying – his hand was on his chin, and his blue eyes were trained on her like a laser.

  I leaned back in my chair. “Okay. You tried to get in touch with a dead man. I see. What did you do – light candles and chant? Get a Ouji Board out to ask him questions? How did you try to contact him?”

  She raised her right eyebrow. “Go ahead and make fun. Just go ahead. You know I don’t mess around with Ouji Boards. Prominent Demonologists have written books about how those things bring demons into people’s houses.”

  “Demonologists? There are actually people who try to track down demons, things which don’t exist?” I was ready, right then and there, to get up and leave, but I didn’t want to insult Albany, so I stayed. But that was the only reason why I stayed.

  “Listen, Harper, I don’t insult you and what you do. Why do you have to insult me? Don’t you take your little girls to a Catholic Church every Sunday? Don’t you?”

  “Well, yes,” I said. “I do. It’s something that I believe in. Why do you ask?”

  “I believe in spirits and demons and Tarot and angels and my ability to speak with the dead. You believe in the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. Neither of us can have any concrete proof of what we believe in, at least not enough to satisfy each other. So, why don’t you respect my belief and I’ll respect yours, and we can both call it good. How’s that?”

  I was chastised, so I nodded my head. “Okay. I’m sorry. Now, please, Albany, please tell me about your trying to contact Steven Heaney.”

  “Well, that was just it. I thought for sure that Steven Heaney would be around. That he would have attached himself to Uncle Jack, I mean Uncle Mick, because Eli was the one who allegedly killed him. And, since Eli is a part of Uncle Jack, then Steven Heaney would be attached to Jack’s body.”

  I was slow on the uptake, because I just let her ramble on. But two seconds later, my head almost spun around. “Wait, what? What are you talking about, that Eli was the one who killed Steven Heaney? Steven Heaney died of a h
eart attack. Didn’t he?”

  Albany shook her head. “Harper, you really need to do some more research on this whole case. I know that you haven’t really started getting into your defense of Uncle Jack just yet, but you need to get up to speed. No, Steven Heaney didn’t die of a heart attack. I mean, he’s not dead at all, but the story was never that he died of a heart attack. The story was the Eli killed Steven Heaney, when Steven told Eli that he, Steven, was going to have to kill Mary. Eli killed him. He was never charged in the case, though, because the police figured that Eli, or Jack, had suffered enough, and they didn’t want to drag him through a trial. They didn’t want to traumatize him further, so they simply believed his story that he killed Steven Heaney when he was in the middle of strangling Mary, and no charges were ever filed. But that’s what happened.”

  “Now, why didn’t mom tell me about that little tidbit of information? I really should have known about that. She told me that Steven Heaney died of a heart attack.”

  Albany shook her head. “Mom has always wanted to protect Jack, so she will never tell anybody the truth about what happened. She won’t tell the truth, even though everyone knows the truth, because it was all in the papers when Jack escaped from that house of horrors. But you need to know everything, because only if you know everything will you be able to really defend Uncle Jack on these murder charges.”

  I sighed. “Okay. Go ahead. Tell me what else I need to know. What’s this about Steven Heaney not actually being dead? If Eli killed Steven Heaney, then he’s dead. What am I missing here?”

  “I don’t know yet. I don’t know. All that I know was that I did a ritual to try to communicate with Steven, and I couldn’t. So I saw Lady Starlight. She’s one of the top psychics in the Western Hemisphere. I know that you think that she’s a crock, and all of that, but, trust me, she’s been right on the money all along. And she did her own ritual, and she informed me that she couldn’t contact him either. So, she told me that Steven wasn’t dead after all.”

  “Oh, I see. I see. Just because Lady Starlight couldn’t contact him, that means that he’s not dead. Well, I guess that settles it then. Steven Heaney is still alive.”

  “Again, I hear the sarcasm in your voice,” Albany said. “And I don’t appreciate it. You need to have an open mind about this. You need to figure out if what I’m saying is true. If it is true, then there is the chance that you can crack the case.”

  “How is that going to crack the case? I mean, really. How will it crack the case? I guess I don’t even understand what you’re trying to get at.”

  “I don’t know, either, but I think that the Steven Heaney angle is significant. Maybe you can find out if there was a connection between Father Kennedy and Steven Heaney and go from there. Maybe Steven Heaney was behind it all.”

  “Or maybe his ghost came and killed Father Kennedy. Did you ever think about that?”

  At that, Albany got up. “Come back and speak with me when you have more of an open mind. Okay? At the moment, I’m going to go and find people who might actually be willing to listen to me about all of this.”

  “I’m sorry, Albany. I’m really sorry. But you have to understand – I deal with facts. Cold, hard facts. Facts are the only things that matter in a court of law. Not hunches. Not emotion, although you have to produce an emotional response in juries if you ever want to succeed in court. But facts are what wins cases. This entire thing sounds like hokum to me.”

  “Whatever. Listen, I gotta go. I’ll see ya later, sis.”

  At that, she went out the French doors, which led into the kitchen.

  I turned to face Mick. “Mick,” I said. “Can you do anything about Eli? Can you try to talk to him and bring him around?” I knew that Eli, of all of Jack’s personalities, would be the most likely personality that would know exactly what happened to Steven Heaney. He would be the one that I would need to speak with to try to get to the bottom of all of it.

  It was then that I saw the subtle changes in Jack. He no longer had his legs crossed. Mick tended to sit like a woman, with one leg crossed completely over the other. However, Jack no longer was sitting like that. Rather, he was sitting with both of his feet planted firmly on the floor. He took off his glasses and looked at them with wonder – as if he was trying to figure out why he would be wearing a pair of glasses in the first place. He then looked at me with a quizzical look on his face. “June Bug,” he said. “Where am I?” He looked around. “I see that I’m at Claire’s house. Why am I here? How did I get here?”

  My heart broke as I saw Uncle Jack hang his head and then put his face in his hands. His head was shaking, back and forth, back and forth, and I could hear tiny sobs coming out of him. “Oh my God, I’m losing so much time again. So much time. The last thing I remember, I was talking to you in the jail, and now I’m here. I don’t know what happened. What’s happening to me? What’s happening to me?”

  I put my arm around him, and gently stroked the back of his neck while he cried. “Uncle Jack,” I said softly. “I got you out of jail. I convinced the judge to reduce your bond to a 10% bond, and mom and I got together and got the money for you to get out of jail. You have to stay here, Uncle Jack, while you await trial. Mom has custody over you. You also have an ankle monitor on.”

  Jack looked down at his ankle and saw the monitor, and then he looked up at me. “You got me out of jail. Thank you, June Bug. Thank you. I just wish that I could remember any of it. I mean, I was talking to you and then I’m here. Out of nowhere, I’m here.”

  I was disappointed that Jack was back. I knew that Jack was clueless about everything. He had no idea about Father Kennedy. I doubted that Jack even had a relationship with the Father at all. Mick knew the Father. Mick apparently was in love with the Father – at least, that was what he told me. I had a feeling that Eli was the one, however, who really knew what happened, and Mick was protecting Eli. Mick was making sure that Eli couldn’t come out. That Eli stayed hidden. I didn’t know what that game was, but I knew, I somehow knew, that Eli knew exactly what had happened in that rectory.

  But Jack? Jack didn’t know anything. He therefore wasn’t going to be much use to me. I didn’t think that he would be able to help me out, at all, in my pursuit of the truth of what had happened in this case.

  “Uncle Jack, I’m so sorry. I need to go. I need to figure a few things out.”

  “What do you need to figure out?”

  “I just need to do some thinking and some investigating. I love you, and I’ll be back to visit you soon. Probably tomorrow. But right now – I have to follow up on a few things.”

  Jack just nodded his head. He looked so sad…my heart just went out to him.

  I got up and went through the house. Mom and Albany were sitting in the living room, talking. “I have to go,” I told them both. “Albany, I’m sorry about earlier. Really. I need to find out more about what you were telling me. I’m not going to discount it. I promise you this.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “I hope that you don’t. As I said, I don’t know if it’s significant, but I hope that it is. I hope that it’s something that you can use. Something that will put you on the right track.” She nodded her head. “I think that it will. You just have to keep an open mind.”

  “I will.”

  As I left, I knew that Albany might be right. I had no idea how it could have happened, though.

  I had the feeling that Steven Heaney was really alive somewhere.

  I GOT TO MY OFFICE, and the first thing that I wanted to do was to find out all I could about Steven Heaney. To my surprise, this was a huge story back in the day. The early 1970s, which was when Jack was 11 year old, was a different time from today. This was the time before the huge case of Adam Walsh had blown up, which put the topic of child abductions on the front page and at the forefront of people’s consciousness. It was before Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer and all those other guys who made worldwide news and focused people on the fact that there were dangerous monsters wa
lking amongst us.

  So, when Jack escaped from Steven Heaney’s home, and the police went into that home and found the bones of missing children, that was a huge deal. I found that it was front-page news for months after the fact.

  I read through the news articles and I found that Albany was correct. Jack apparently killed Steven Heaney. He was never charged, however, both because of his youth and because the police apparently figured that he had suffered enough. Besides, the police no doubt felt that Jack, by killing a monster like Steven Heaney, was doing the world a tremendous favor.

  There also wasn’t a mention of Eli in any of these articles. I figured that was because Eli probably didn’t reveal himself. In other words, he probably “played along” and pretended that he was Jack, so that the police officers wouldn’t be suspicious. Also, the early 1970s was a time when DID wasn’t generally known. It was a rare disorder, anyhow, but it was really rare back then. Well, maybe it wasn’t more rare back then so much as it was just not as well-known to the 1970s public as it was now. After all, the story of Sybil entered the pop culture consciousness around the year 1976, when the television mini-series hit, starring a young Sally Field. Eli probably thought, rightly, that if he made himself known, the media attention would have been even more intense.

  I sighed. How did I not know about any of this? How could my family keep something like this under wraps? I knew that every family had some skeletons in their closets, but this one was a doozy. My Uncle Jack not only was kept by this monster, but he apparently killed him, or Eli killed him. I didn’t even know if Uncle Jack had any recollection of any of this. My mom seemed to indicate that he didn’t, but I couldn’t understand how that was even possible. The alters were there, they were out the entire time that Jack was in this house of horrors, but, nonetheless, I still figured that there would be some kind of memory somewhere in Jack’s consciousness.

  I wrote down on a piece of paper. Find out if Steven Heaney really was still alive. Speak with the other priests at the church. Do an independent DNA analysis on the knife found at the scene. Try to figure out if you could possibly talk to Eli. That last one was going to be difficult. I might have been able to speak with Eli if I could have convinced Mick to let him out. But Jack didn’t seem to have any control over any of them. Jack didn’t even really know that those other alters existed. I mean, he probably had some kind of knowledge that they were there, mainly because he was told that they were there, but, from the literature I had been reading on the DID disorder, the main person wasn’t always aware that the alters existed, but the alters usually knew about one another.