Harper Ross Legal Thrillers vol. 1-3

by Rachel Sinclair

  “And,” she whispered. “Rina hasn’t gotten her period yet. I don’t want her to feel bad.”

  “Buttercup,” I said. “Why would she feel bad?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe she would. Maybe she wouldn’t. But I just don’t want her to feel like I’m passing her up or something. I don’t know.” She looked down at the beans, which were boiling on the stove. “I don’t know, mom. But I’m feeling better. Last week, I was crying every day. I thought it was because of James, but I went to my counselor at school, and told her that I had my period, and she said that I can expect to get emotional a lot. I felt better after speaking with her.”

  “Good,” I said. “I’m so happy to hear it.” I tousled her hair. “And how are things with James? You’re not still thinking of quitting band, are you?”

  She shook her head. “No, mom. I challenged the first chair today and I won.” She beamed. “I won, mom. I’m first chair. I know, it’s not that big of a deal to be first chair in the seventh grade, because this is just seventh grade band, but…”

  I hugged her. “Stop trying to minimize this, Buttercup. That’s huge. First chair is amazing. I mean, you started later than all those other flute players, and you’re already better than all of them. You should be proud of yourself. All your hard work has paid off. And you’ll get into the regular band next year, and I know that when you do, you’re going to work your way up there, too. This calls for a celebration.”

  Rina came into the kitchen. “Okay, is your mother-daughter talk over? I’m hungry.”

  “Yes, it is. Abby made first chair.”

  “Yay. That’s great.” Rina’s voice as bored and she rolled her eyes. “Now, let’s eat.”

  We sat down to eat, with Rina chatting the entire way about all the latest gossip happening at her school. “James and his new girl are already broken up,” Rina announced. “And James is trying for Abby again. But Abby has told him no way, Jose.” She and Abby high-fived and Abby giggled.

  “Oh, so that’s the reason why you’re feeling better, huh Abs?” I asked her with a smile. “Good girl. You just keep telling him that you’re not interested. Show him that he can’t come crawling back when he gets dumped by his new girl.”

  “Yeah, that’s right, Abby,” Rina said. “You just stand strong. James is such a douche.”

  “He is,” Abby said, giggling. “He is.”

  The girls and I ate the rest of our meal while laughing and giggling about James being such a douche and we joked around about a lot of other things, as well. It occurred to me that these girls were literally the things in my life that kept me sane. They were the ones who kept me out of the psychiatric facility. I knew that, if something ever happened to either one of them, I would be beyond devastated.

  I suddenly had a great deal of sympathy for my mother. I couldn’t imagine what it was like for her, not knowing if she would ever see her brother again. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to live under that roof, with everyone devastated and depressed. I couldn’t even imagine what it would be like to have Jack back, only to find that he wasn’t even Jack anymore. How it would be to go through the roller-coaster of trying to get used to a drug dealer and drug user who insists on being called Eli, when he was clearly Jack. I didn’t even want to think about all of that.

  No doubt about it, if any monster came and tried to hurt Abby and Rina, they would have to deal with an angry Mama Grizzly coming after him. I would literally kill anybody who even thought about hurting either of my girls.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The next day, I summoned Axel. “I need to do something,” I said. “And I think that I might need some kind of protection. I definitely need a search warrant. I hope that you can arrange that for me.”

  “What do you need a search warrant for, lass?” he asked on the phone. “And what kind of protection do you need?”

  “There’s a house that I need to go to. It’s abandoned. I need to go in there and see if I can find anything out. It’s the house that Steven Heaney used to live in. I don’t even know what I’m looking for. I only know that I need to turn over every stone to try to figure out what is going on with Jack’s case.”

  “Sure, mate,” he said. “Give me the address, and I’ll get a search warrant for you. I’ll come with you, too.”

  “It’s on the East Side,” I said. “On Agnes.” I gave him the address. “I’ll meet you there in an hour. Okay?”

  “Okay. I’ll see you then.”

  I didn’t really know what I was going to find in this house. Maybe nothing. It was abandoned, and it had been for years. Nobody had lived in that house ever since Steven Heaney was found dead in there, and they had found the bones of all those children. That made me feel sick to my stomach. How could a monster like that walk among us?

  And was he still walking among us? I didn’t know. There were two theories that I was working on. The first theory was that Steven Heaney was never Steven Heaney at all. Rather, the killer was Jackson Heaney the entire time, taking the identity of Steven Heaney. Jackson Heaney was the one who was killed in that house, and he was the one who was doing the killing. In this scenario, Steven Heaney was the innocent and wronged party.

  The other scenario was that Steven Heaney was the one who was doing the killing the entire time. And he lured his identical twin brother into the house and had Eli kill him while he slipped out the back door. Under this theory, he would do that because the authorities were closing in, or maybe Eli himself was threatening to kill him. He put his brother into his place, and his brother was the one who was killed and Eli had no idea that he wasn’t killing Steven.

  The third scenario was that maybe the two brothers were interchangeable. They both were crazy killers and they both took turns doing the horrible things in that house. I remembered reading a book about this one time, where there were two killers, but everybody assumed that there was only one. The other one was the twin, and he got away.

  What are you hoping to find, Harper? What was I going to find in that house that would clue me into what actually happened? I really needed to speak with Steven Heaney. Anna had his address. I was going to do that, too, but only after I got my ducks in a row. I didn’t even know how I was going to approach him. What was I going to do, just go in there and say “I’m Harper Ross, and you’re Steven Heaney, and I need to ask you some questions.” I simply had to find out some answers before I approached him. He might be a totally innocent victim.

  Then again, he might be a psychotic killer.

  I obviously had to know which he was before I approached him.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  We got to that house on Agnes, which was a neighborhood East of Troost, which was commonly known as the dividing line in Kansas City between poor and middle-class neighborhoods. I didn’t think that this was necessarily true, as there were some nice neighborhoods East of Troost, too. Unfortunately, this particular street probably wasn’t in the middle of these nicer east-side neighborhoods.

  My heart was pounding as I approached this house. Axel was with me, holding my hand, but I really was freaking out. I had also called Albany, and she was supposed to meet us here, as well.

  Why did I call Albany? I didn’t really know. I didn’t want to admit that maybe, maybe, Albany would be able to get some kind of a vibe out of this house. That she might be able to sense a presence. I didn’t believe any of that hokum. But, in the back of my mind, I really kinda did. The whole thing about Steven Heaney being alive kinda made me a believer. As much as I hated to admit to that fact.

  “Your sister’s going to be here, right?” Axel asked me.

  “Right.” I swallowed hard. The house looked just like any other house on this block. It was a three story house, with a tiny window at the top of the house. The porch in front was old and badly in need of a paint job. The house was white with green trim, and the windows were boarded up. The door was a solid wood door, with a screen door that apparently wasn’t locked, because it was banging in
the wind. The weeds were a good four feet tall, but I was surprised that they weren’t even taller than that. After all, this house had been abandoned since Steven, or Jackson, Heaney was found dead in there. Jack was only 13 years old at that time. The State of Missouri currently owned the house, as it took possession when the property taxes went unpaid.

  In other words, nobody had presumably been in this house since 1972. The last time anybody had been in this house, the Vietnam War was still raging and Nixon was still in office. Nobody even knew the term “serial killer.” That term was coined by an FBI agent and profiler by the name of Robert Ressler in 1974. So, really, the last time anybody had been in this house, the term “serial killer” had not yet been coined.

  I wondered if there was going to be restless spirits in that house. Maybe it was haunted. Lots of children died there. My Uncle Jack probably would have died in there if he didn’t have that badass Eli protecting him. Probably Mary would have died there as well. I shuddered as I thought about all those innocent children, playing on the streets, like kids did back in the early 1970s. They were abducted as they played stickball, rode their bikes, walked home from school. Then they suffered unspeakable horror at the hands of this sick, sick man.

  Or men? I still didn’t know if perhaps Jackson and Steven both were sickos who killed kids. Perhaps it was one or the other. They might have alternated. I didn’t really know.

  What I did know was that Anna had tracked down Steven Heaney in Oregon. My new assignment for her was to find out if there were missing kids in Eugene, which was where Steven was currently living. That would tell me if Steven was one of the active serial killers, because that would mean that he was still doing it. He was still evil.

  But if there weren’t missing kids, a spate of them, in Eugene, then what did that mean? That probably meant that Steven Heaney wasn’t ever the serial killer. It was Jackson Heaney all along, taking Steven’s identification and posing as him. And if that was the case, then was Steven Heaney even relevant to Jack’s case? Was he even relevant to Jack’s case even if he was one of the serial killers who lived in this house? If so, what was his relevance?

  I heard a car pull up, and Albany got out of it. Even though it was May, and the weather was already 80 degrees, she had sweaters in her arms – three of them, one for each of us.

  “Here,” she said, giving a sweater to Axel and me. “Trust me, you two are going to need these sweaters. You probably don’t believe me when I say that, but, once you get into that house, you’re going to know why.”

  I furrowed my brow. “Albany, it’s like a million degrees out here.”

  “Why do you question me?” She shook her head. “Seriously, sis, wasn’t it enough that I told you that Steven Heaney was alive, and then you found out from Anna that this was true? You have to come to terms with the fact that there is another dimension in this world. It co-exists with this one. It’s a dimension that people like you don’t know about, or don’t want to know about, but sensitive people like myself are very in touch with this other world. And when I tell you that you’re going to be freezing your ass off in that house, then you can take that to the bank.”

  I reluctantly took the sweater that she gave to me. I saw that Axel already had his sweater on. “This fits well, Albany,” Axel said with a smile.

  “I thought it might. That sweater belongs to our father. He's about the same size as you.”

  “Thanks.” Axel grinned, his dimples showing, and, as usual, I melted just a little. I wondered when I was stop feeling like I was melting whenever I was around him. I hoped that I never would.

  I took Axel’s hand and gripped it tight. I was feeling a keen sense of anxiety, and I didn’t really know why. This was a house. That was all it was. A house just like any other. There wasn’t going to be any lingering spirits in this house. There was no such thing.

  So why did I feel so apprehensive?

  We walked up to the door, and unlocked it. Axel had arranged for a locksmith to come in and change the door lock, so that we could get in.

  I stood there on the porch, my feet rooted to the ground. I didn’t want to take another step. “Axel,” I whispered. “I’m kinda freaking out here.”

  “It’s okay, lass,” he said. “I am, too.”

  For her part, Albany had a big smile on her face as she opened up the door and walked on in. Axel and I stood on the porch while Albany walked into the living room and beckoned us with her hand. “Come on in,” she said. “This is kinda amazing in here. I guess they didn’t do the usual thing when a killer is found in a house, which is hold a massive estate sale and then raze the damned place. It looks like they pretty much came in, did their thing, found those bones, arrested that man, and got the hell out. They’ve left everything in here, completely intact.”

  I tentatively took a step into the house, and Albany was right. I was glad that I had my sweater on, because it was cold inside that house. Really cold. She was also right about something else – the house was left intact inside.

  “Albany,” I said. “Why is it so cold in here?”

  “Because there are restless spirits in this house. Can’t you feel them? That sense of foreboding that you feel - that’s them. That’s why you feel like that. That’s why you’re freezing. Their spirits are a part of the energy in this house, and they have so much energy that they’re literally taking all the heat out. They have to draw on the energy in this house, and the heat is the energy that they are drawing on.”

  Albany was all smiles, just like Anna was when I asked her to do some research on Steven Heaney. I couldn’t understand either of them. I didn’t like the idea that there were possibly other-worldly spirits that were trapped in this house. That these spirits were somehow doomed to stay here. I didn’t really believe in them to begin with, although this case was somewhat changing my mind about the matter.

  “This is so cool,” she said, as she sat down on the dusty couch that was right in front of an old-school fireplace. She banged her feet on the equally dusty throw rug that was underneath the coffee table. “I just can’t believe that nobody has been in this house for, what, 45 years?”

  There was so much dust in the air that I started to feel as if I couldn’t breathe. Cobwebs were everywhere – in every corner, underneath the formal dining room table and the chairs, all over every piece of furniture. I half expected to see a horde of bugs, but, thankfully, I didn’t. If I did, I probably would have run screaming from that house.

  I hate bugs.

  I took one of the flashlights that Axel had in his hand and clicked it on. Even though it was broad daylight outside, it was really quite dark in this house. “I don’t know what I’m looking for,” I said. “I guess I’m trying to find any piece of evidence that will tell me for sure that Steven Heaney is the guy who is alive in Oregon and Jackson Heaney was the guy who died in this home.”

  What evidence would that be, though? Seriously? The cops had been here in 1972, and they had taken every piece of evidence that they could possibly find. Or had they? I didn’t know. It seemed that the cops, back in the day, didn’t do as thorough of a job on crime scenes as did the cops of today. Maybe they missed something? Perhaps they went through the house and found the bones of the missing children, and they didn’t do a good search of the entire house?

  “Let’s start in the attic,” I said to Axel. “I think that the attic would be the place where we would most likely find something that will be helpful to us. Don’t you think?”

  “I do, lass,” he said. “If there’s going to be any piece of evidence that is going to be helpful to you, it’s going to be in the attic.”

  Axel and I creaked up the three flights of stairs, which were narrow, winding, and bounded by walls. The steps were wooden and, with every step we took, we heard a creaking noise. Creak, creak, creak, went our feet as we made our way to the top floor of the house. In this house, the attic was not a liveable part of the house, even though, in many of these houses, it was. The gate
way to the attic was a small trap door that had a handle. Axel was tall enough that he could just reach that handle, and he gripped it and brought it down.

  An attic ladder that was attached to the trap door came down with the door. I took a deep breath, not wanting to go up there. This house, in general, was creeping me out. This attic probably was going to really creep me out.

  “Albany,” I said. “You come up here with me.”

  “I will,” she said. “Oh, my God, I really should have a séance here. That would be amazing. Then again, I probably don’t want to hear all those horror stories that those poor children will say to me. You just don’t know, Harper. You probably can’t feel the spirits, but I can. They’re restless, they’re angry and they’re hurt. Very hurt. They can’t move on, because of the violence that was done to them.” She nodded her head. “I think that we need a proper medium in this house. Only then can the spirits be released to where they’re supposed to go. They need to move on to the next world, and, right now, they can’t.”

  “Okay,” I said, not wanting to pay attention to Albany’s rambling. “I know what you’re saying, Albany, but we have to focus on this world. Only in this world can we find evidence that will hopefully clear our Uncle Jack.”

  Axel was looking at the stairs, and I knew that he wanted to go up them and into the attic. I was going to have to ask him not to do that, though. “Axel,” I said. “I hate to do this to you, but can I ask you to stay down here and wait for me to come out? I’m terrified that something might happen if we all three go up there – like this attic door shutting on its own and maybe locking us in or something like that. I need somebody to stay down here just in case something weird happens and the police need to be called. You don’t mind, do you?”