Harper Ross Legal Thrillers vol. 1-3

by Rachel Sinclair

  “Of course not, lass,” he said. “Although I’m the detective. I can probably find little clues better than anybody here.”

  “I know that,” I said. “You can go up there and explore after I get back.”

  I carefully went up the stairs that led into the attic, while Axel stayed behind. Albany followed me, trailing behind me as closely as possible. “Don’t get out of my sight,” I said to her. “Seriously.”

  “I won’t, sis,” she said.

  My heart was pounding out of my chest as I crouched down and looked around this dusty attic with my flashlight. I started to cough from all the dust, and my flashlight landed on a little doll in the corner. The doll was one of those turn of the century dolls, with the porcelain face and pouty mouth. The hair was painted on, and she was dressed in a pink onesy looking number. Her tiny little feet had on a pair of black shoes.

  “Damn, that’s a creepy doll,” Albany said as she looked at the porcelain face that was eyeing both of us disinterestedly. “I wonder who it belonged to?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But I think that I need to snag it.” On the search warrant that Axel had obtained, we were given permission to take anything from this house that we could find that would possibly lead us to evidence that would be helpful in Jack’s case. This doll fit the bill, maybe. I had to admit, I thought about possibly showing Jack this doll and see how he reacted to it. I hated to say that maybe seeing the doll would trigger Mick to come back, or, even better, Eli.

  Why did I believe that? Maybe the doll belonged to Mary. I thought that Mary, and the death of Mary, was the weak spot in Jack’s psyche. There was a spot in his psyche that harbored the memories that I needed from him. The memory, specifically, on what happened when Jack entered that rectory. I was desperate to find that out. There was some part of Jack that knew. I was going to look for anything at all that might trip that memory out of him. And, if all else failed, I would have him undergo hypnosis. But I wanted this memory to come out of him spontaneously, because anything that he remembered under hypnosis would never be allowed in court. Any statement that he made while under hypnosis wasn’t going to be allowed.

  On the other hand, if I could possibly trip Jack’s memory without hypnosis, then he could possibly testify on his own behalf in court. That was very important to me – to have Jack testify to the jury and tell them what he saw.

  I walked further around the attic, and didn’t see much more in there. At least, I didn’t see anything that I thought might be significant. There were some old record albums in a box, and a record player that had about six inches of dust on it. There was more furniture up here – another couch and a bed that was fully intact.

  There was a chest of drawers in the corner, and, when I opened up the chest of drawers, I saw that it was filled with men’s clothing. There were blue jeans and work shirts and t-shirts in these drawers. There were also socks and underwear.

  Then there were also some female clothes that were hanging up on a makeshift rack, like the kind you find in a thrift store. Those were curious to me, so I went over to them and looked through them. There were dresses and women’s slacks and shirts. Most of them were floral in nature.

  I took them off the rack, wondering why it was that these would be significant, too. I knew that they would be, though – why would a man have these female clothes? They were small clothes, too, almost like the clothing that a child would wear, but just slightly larger than that. Whoever it was who wore these clothes was tiny – extremely short and extremely thin. Bony.

  “What are those, sis?” Albany said, looking at the clothes that were laying in my arms.

  “Clothes,” I said. “Here, take a heap. If the two of us work together, we can bring all these clothes downstairs.”

  “I know that these are clothes. I can see that. But I wonder who they belonged to?”

  “Who knows? Maybe Jack knows, though. I’m determined that he’s going to remember something about that murder of Father Kennedy. He is. I promise you that.”

  Then I went over the record albums, and I saw it. I saw the main reason why I went into this house.

  Written clearly, on every record album, on a piece of masking tape, were the words “Property of Jackson Heaney.”

  I got excited, as I went further into the attic and discovered that there was a bookcase filled with books on one wall. I opened up each book, and each book said the same thing. “Property of Jackson Heaney.” There was never a mention of Steven Heaney.

  “What does that mean?” Albany said as I handed her a load full of books, and I took some of these books myself. “What does it mean that these books and albums belonged to Jackson and not Steven?”

  “I’m thinking that this whole thing is door number 2. That Steven Heaney might have been an innocent party all along. That Jackson was the one who lived here, while taking Steven Heaney’s identification, and that Steven Heaney himself was somebody who was his identical twin but maybe never had a thing to do with any of these murders.” I shook my head. “I wonder why the cops never thought to look in this attic? If they did, they would have seen this evidence that Steven Heaney has nothing to do with these murders.”

  Albany was shaking her head. “No. You’re wrong about this.” She shivered. “You’re wrong, sis. You’re wrong. Steven Heaney isn’t an innocent. He lived here, too. He did.” She pointed at me. “Think about it, Harper. If Jackson was living here, taking Steven’s identity, then why would he label the record albums as his property? That makes zero sense. And…” She shook her head. “I can sense Steven’s presence in here. Like the furniture and the walls and everything are infected with his energy. And Jackson’s as well. No, Harper, I think that you’re wrong.”

  “I think that Steven and Jackson both were living here. One of them lived in the attic, and the other one lived downstairs.”

  I SHUDDERED as I thought about this house. What if Albany was right? She was sensitive to spirits. I really wasn’t. She might have sensed the presence of the energy that both Steven and Jackson had left behind. I couldn’t feel any kind of leftover energy. She also had the sense that there were spirits around.

  “So, what you’re saying is, your theory is, that Steven and Jackson both lived here and both killed these kids? Yet Steven got out.”

  “I don’t know. It’s just a theory. I don’t know how Steven got out, and I don’t know if the people who lived here with the two twins – Uncle Jack and Mary – knew what the game was, but my theory is that both twins were equally guilty of the heinous crimes. I wish that I could talk to Jack about this.”

  “You can talk to Jack, but he doesn’t remember this house. And you can’t talk to Eli, who knows the most about what happened in this house,” I said. “Eli is being protected by Mick. Dammit.” I shook my head. “There has to be a way to reach Eli.”

  I thought about the scenario in that house. Eli killed Jackson, and, perhaps, people in general had no idea that there were identical twins even living in this house. Maybe society didn’t know about the twins. That would certainly be possible – Jackson and Steven could have easily lived in this house together, and, as long as only one of them was seen around the neighborhood at a time, nobody would ever know that there were two of them living here in this house.

  That was even assuming that one of them left the house on a regular basis. But surely one of them did. After all, they had to have food in the house. Either Jackson or Steven, maybe both, alternating, had to leave the house to get groceries. As far as I knew, Eli didn’t help bring groceries home.

  But would the people in this house realize that there were two men living here? Assuming that one of the men actually lived in this attic. One of the men at a time living there in the attic.

  I could only assume that Jack and Mary, who were the only survivors of this house of horrors, probably didn’t know that there were two different men living here. If so, Eli, the alter who killed Steven, or Jackson, as it were, would have known that he
had to kill a second man. But, then again, he was only 13 years old at the time. And he might really have killed Jackson in defense of Mary. He probably didn’t even mean to kill him. If that was the case, then he might not have bothered the second twin, and he might not have told the cops about him.

  This was all confusing for me. What was even more confusing was how any of this fit into the overall scheme of things with Jack and the priest. Was it even significant, or was I completely being flummoxed? What did any of this mean?

  I gathered all the evidence that I found in this house and put it into an empty box that I found in the corner. Then I opened up the attic door and climbed down. Albany followed shortly after me.

  “Okay, Axel,” I said to Axel, who was standing right at the base of the attic steps. “Your turn. Go on up there and see if you can find anything else that would maybe help us out in this case.”

  “I will, mate,” he said, and he climbed into the attic.

  “So,” Albany said. “What do you think all this means for Jack? How do you think you might be able to help him with the things that we found in this attic?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “Maybe I can show this stuff to Jack and maybe it will trip his memory. I’m nervous about doing that, though, because I don’t want to spin him out. He might have a mental breakdown if he’s faced with these things. His psyche is so fragile, anyhow.” I sighed. “But I might have no choice, though. I need to speak with Eli, and showing Jack these things might bring Eli out. That’s so dangerous, though. What if Eli comes out and stays out? What if Jack is faced with the reality of what happened to him, and he just disappears forever? He told me the other day that he has a feeling that something terrible happened to him, and he was trying to access those memories. He said that every time he got closer to the memory of what happened, he would black out. That tells me that another alter took over whenever Jack himself started to access these memories.”

  I was definitely going to have to go easy with this evidence that I found. It might be something that would bring out Eli, who could tell me what happened to Father Kennedy, but it might be something that would completely destroy Jack in the process. In that case, I wouldn’t be able to win, period. Eli would be out and Jack would be gone. That would be the devastating result of this kind of strategy.

  The other thing that I was going to possibly do would be to use this information to go and see Steven in Oregon. He was living there, according to Anna, in a secluded house that was far away from civilization. Anna said that he was pretty much living off the land - he raised his own vegetables and hunted rabbits and squirrels and deer. He didn’t have running water or electricity – he had gas lamps for his lights and he had a fireplace that heated his home. Everything in that home, according to Anna, looked like he had hand made it. All the furniture was crafted by an individual, and the house itself was a log cabin that looked like it was made by somebody. She said that Steven was living like a pioneer would.

  She also told me that Steven was very welcoming to her. He treated her like an old friend. She got the sense that Steven was lonely living out there in the woods by himself. I think that I knew why he was there, too, living by himself. It was obvious to me, really – he couldn’t make himself known to society. Steven Heaney’s face was a face that was known to many people. The people like Anna who were obsessed with serial killers would recognize him. Granted, he wasn’t as famous as Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer or even John Wayne Gacy. Those were the faces that people really knew, because these were the most famous serial killers of them all. But Steven Heaney’s face wasn’t widely known like these other killers were. He was, however, known by the really dedicated serial killer buffs, and he probably knew this. He couldn’t live in society. He would never be able to.

  Axel came down. “I didn’t find anything else,” he said,“that would be significant. I assume that you and Albany found the record albums, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, here are some,” he said. “I just took a few.”

  Gordon Lightfoot, The Beatles, and Carole King were the albums that he had in his hands.

  “Thanks, Axel,” I said. “Well, I think that it’s time to get out of here.”

  The three of us left the house, and I was struck by how much warmer it was outside than it was in the house. I was starting to get used to the chill that was in that house, but it was contrasted with the 80 degree weather outside, and it was striking.

  I gave Albany a quick hug. “I love you girl,”I said to her.

  “Right back atcha,” she said and then she air-kissed me. “I’m going to be heading over to mom’s tonight,” she said. “I can see if Jack is back to Mick. I’ll call you if he is. I’ve been over there three times this week, though, and he’s been Jack every time.”

  “It’s just as well,” I said. “That he’s Jack. Mick isn’t much help in this case, either. He does keep saying, though, that he was in love with Father Kennedy. I don’t even know what that is supposed to mean. I talked to Father Mathews and he seemed to indicate that Jack was stalking Father Kennedy.” None of that added up to me, either – if Jack wasn’t religious, and Mick certainly didn’t seem religious, how did they end up going to that church and meeting Father Kennedy anyhow? I was going to have to look into the outreach activities that Father Kennedy made to the community. Perhaps that would lead me to the place where Mick and Father Kennedy would have met. And maybe that would also lead me to more evidence.

  I got in the car with Axel, and he reached for my hand and kissed it. “Lass,” he said, “what did you think about that house?”

  “Creepy. It did feel like a haunted house, and not one of those manufactured haunted houses that they have in the West Bottoms.” As a kid, I used to go to those haunted houses – they were enormous buildings that were in the bottoms area of Kansas City, transformed into houses where people would come after you with chain saws and mannequins played eerie music on organs. They even had rooms that made you feel that you were in heaven and hell. They had names like “Main Street Morgue,” “Edge of Hell,” “Catacombs” and “The Beast,” and they involved slides from the top of the building to the bottom. They were always a lot of fun to go to when I was a kid, because I knew that they weren’t real. They were manufactured and they were constructed for one reason – to make money. To make lots of money.

  These haunted houses were much different than houses like this one. This house, where the Heaneys lived, was a real haunted house. I knew it. I could feel it. I could feel it in the chill of the house. I could feel it in the oppressive air. The entire house seemed like it was depressed and anxious, if that made any sense at all. The entire house felt foreboding. I was glad to be getting out of there.

  “So, what’s next?” Axel asked me. “What are you going to do next?”

  “I’m going to look and see what kind of activities that Father Kennedy engaged in,” I said. “Father Mathews indicated that he does community outreach. He plays basketball with troubled youth and he goes to community events to meet people out in the world. I think that Father Kennedy probably did the same thing.” I nodded my head. “I just wonder….”

  “What do you wonder?”

  “I just wonder if Father Kennedy ever came in contact with one of the Heaneys.” I cocked my head. It certainly could have been possible. Father Kennedy was 66 when he was murdered, which meant that, in the early 1970s, when the Heaneys were killing children, he would have been in his early 20s. I needed to find out much more about him, to find out if he ever came in contact with the Heaneys.

  From there, I was going to have to work out a motive.

  Steven Heaney was connected to this murder. I just knew it. I had a feeling. My hunches were rarely wrong.

  I was just going to have to figure exactly how.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  When I got to my office, the first thing that I was going to do was to track down Steven Heaney in Oregon and try to pick his brain. No way I was going
to tell Axel what was I was planning to do, though. He probably would have killed me if he knew. It wasn’t the safest thing that I was planning on doing, after all – I was going to visit a possible serial killer at his home in the woods, and I was going to do it alone. I had the feeling that this was the only way that I was going to get the answers that I needed to help my Uncle.

  But I was stopped in my tracks when I got to my office suite.

  There was Heather, sitting on my couch, waiting for me. She was flipping through a magazine, looking bored and restless. Her nails were back to black, her hair was growing out and she was in full makeup again. She was also back to wearing her high-heeled shit-kicking boots.

  I had to smile. To tell the truth, I was actually missing that girl. I hadn’t had the chance to really talk with her these past few months, because I was so occupied with everything going on in my life.

  She stood up as I walked through the door. “Hey, Harper,” she said, her eyes fluttering just a bit. “How’s tricks?”

  I grinned. “Same old, same old. I-“

  I then looked over at Pearl, who was giving me a strange look. I had no idea what that look was about. I tried to read her look, but I couldn’t. I had no idea if her look had to do with Heather or something else.

  She then handed me a huge document. I groaned as I saw what that document was. It was an appeal filed by Michael Reynolds for ineffective assistance of counsel. I sighed. I was expecting that. I was hoping that, somehow, someway, it wouldn’t happen, but it did.

  I was faced with the reality that Michael Reynolds might be getting out of prison and getting a new trial soon. I prayed that his appellate attorney was just as incompetent as I was on that case. I also knew that a Bar Complaint was bound to be next.

  My “victory” with Michael Reynolds was probably going to be short-lived. I hoped that it wouldn’t be, but I had the feeling that it was going to be.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said to Heather, as I read the document. “Why don’t you come in my office? We can catch up a bit.” I read some more of the appeal while I walked slowly into my office.