HABIT: a gripping detective thriller full of suspense

by T. J. Brearton

  “He’s grief-stricken. In shock,” Brendan interjected. “He laid down the bike because he hit the soft dirt of the driveway. That could suggest that he’s never been here before, except he told me the name of the neighbor, Folwell. He knew who he was.”

  Skene’s head swiveled slowly back to look at Brendan.

  Brendan continued, “As he approached, police were on either side of the road. The Folwell farmer had been shooting at a pest in the corn. There were people everywhere. The brother was distracted and confused. In any case, it would be outlandish to return to the scene of a crime less than an hour after perpetrating it.”

  “Unless that’s his defense,” said the prosecutor flatly.

  Brendan skipped past it. “We have her cell phone and a laptop found in the bedroom. We’re going to go through that. I’ll contact the parents next. My hope is that I can get them to come and ID the body. If they are unreachable, we can have the brother Kevin do it, to keep things moving. The coroner determined the victim expired due to an injury to her pulmonary artery – a stab wound, one of several. She was naked in the bed.”

  “So I heard. Raped?”

  “We’ll know more when we get the results of the PERK,” Brendan said.

  “Which will be when?”

  Brendan glanced at Delaney, who seemed to be enjoying himself. His face was hidden in part by his own sunglasses and his mustache, but Brendan got a sense the senior investigator was taking pleasure in the interaction between Brendan and Skene.

  “As soon as Clark’s investigators and his forensic staff perform the autopsy. The forensic pathologist will verify Clark’s original cause of death, perhaps elaborate upon it or invalidate it. But if there was rape, it will show up in the PERK.”

  “Again, how long?”

  Brendan was taken aback. Skene had been with the prosecutor’s office for a decade or more. He knew the routine. He knew that with a homicide autopsy, there was limited access, the surgeries performed in a special room, everything photographed and documented down to the last detail. “It could take all the rest of today, maybe until tomorrow,” said Brendan. He realized as soon as he answered the prosecutor why the man had asked a question about something he more than likely knew the answer to.

  “That’s not good enough,” Skene said.

  The prosecutor didn’t want to be the one breathing down the Deputy Coroner’s neck. He wanted Brendan to be the one to keep the pressure on.

  “I understand,” Brendan said quietly.

  “I hope you do. Look, I’m not trying to be an asshole here. I know you’re new to Oneida. But this is the first homicide we’ve had in two years. People are going to be terrified. If there is a killer on the loose – I don’t have to tell you we need to act quickly. And here you are already defending the kid who shows up, wrecks his bike, and gets in a fight with our deputies at the scene of the crime. That’s fine. But if there’s a rape, let’s get the serology report sooner rather than later. Let’s get prints from the house, more serology from the sheets, and let’s get the bastard responsible for this. Do you even know if he’s the victim’s kin? Did you check his ID? Did anyone?”

  Skene looked from Brendan to Delaney. Delaney nodded towards the road. “I was dealing with Elmer Fudd over there,” he said.

  “Jesus Christ,” said Skene. He reached down and adjusted the waist of his pants. Then he looked back at Brendan.

  “I checked his ID. Kevin Heilshorn, from Scarsdale.”

  “Okay. Tell me what else you have.”

  “In the shed,” said Brendan. “There appeared to be a burnt device in the trash.”

  “A ‘burnt device’? What does that mean?”

  “Burned. Cooked. Incinerated. A computer, maybe. Someone torched their laptop. The one upstairs could be a dummy.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “A hunch. I also . . .”

  “A hunch. Who are you, Kojak? Check it anyway.”

  “Jesus Christ,” said Brendan. He turned and started walking away. His head was blazing hot from the sun beating down on his dark hair. His suit was itchy. The breakfast he’d horked down at the diner wasn’t sitting right in his stomach. Suddenly, he stopped, and bent forward, putting his hands on his knees. There he swayed. He thought he was going to vomit, just like Kevin Heilshorn had.

  He closed his eyes. He could hear Delaney and Skene mumbling behind him. Skene sounded agitated, incredulous. Delaney was placating. A moment later, Delaney walked over and put a hand on Brendan’s shoulder.

  “You alright?”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “Don’t let him get to you,” Delaney whispered. “He’s a fucking prick. It’s an election year. Now come on. Stand up. It’s almost over.”

  Brendan slowly got to his feet. He felt lightheaded, but the sensation was starting to subside. He looked at the house. With sweat in his eyes, it took on the look of a looming funhouse, pitching and yawing. He wiped the moisture away with the back of his suit sleeve. A second later, he took off the jacket and tossed it in the grass.

  When he looked back at Skene and Delaney, Delaney’s mouth was open, his hands out in front of him, ready to minister the make-up between the prosecutor and rookie detective. Brendan said, “I have something else to show you.”

  Skene’s flat face showed a tremor of response to this. He came over, with his weird, shit-pants walk. Delaney, a little dumbfounded, followed. As they approached, Delaney’s expression tried to convey, What aren’t you telling me?

  Brendan unsnapped the sleeves of his shirt. He rolled up the cuffs to his elbows. He looked at both men, their eyes concealed behind their sunglasses. Then he turned and started towards the house.

  * * *

  Inside, the kitchen was gloomy and refreshingly cool.

  Skene goggled at everything, his eyes darting around like a kid looking for Christmas presents. Delaney wore a mildly puzzled, mildly amused expression. Both men had removed their sunglasses and perched them atop their heads – Delaney with a few wispy hairs left, Skene with thick salt-and-pepper curls.

  “What are we looking at?”

  For a moment, Brendan saw Delaney’s eyes drop to the pile of knives on the butcher’s block. Brendan shot Delaney a look that conveyed: It’s not the knives. They walked further into the room, passing the appliances, including the new dishwasher, the sink, the counter space, the spice rack and two hanging bunches of dried herbs, and through into another room.

  Brendan flipped the light switch.

  The large oval, antique dining table had a leaf added to its center. Eight chairs were around it. As Brendan had told Skene outside, the furniture was thick with dust. Silken cobwebs were festooned around the corners of the room. There were no placemats or adornments to the table except for two cast iron candelabras, giving the whole set-up a rather macabre feel. Flanking the table were two banks of cabinetry, all white, with small wood knobs on the drawers. Fine dinnerware was stored in the top glass cabinets.

  In between the rows of drawers and upper glass-front cabinets, was an open shelf. Other candles and candle holders sat there, as well as a basket of faded cloth napkins. Everything was covered in dust. Including the dozen or more framed photographs.

  “This is how I’ve come to suspect that Rebecca and Kevin are, in fact, brother and sister,” said Brendan. He pointed to a photo, a studio portrait of the victim, perhaps only eighteen, and a fifteen or sixteen-year-old Kevin. The young Rebecca was posed behind the young Kevin. Her smile looked genuine, his perhaps a little manufactured. Skene began to drift through the room, lit by the overhead chandelier. While the faces in the frames, too, were covered with a film of dust, there was no mistaking them. Here was Kevin and Rebecca again, even younger, with two older people.

  “Bops and Ma’am,” said Brendan.

  Delaney glanced across the table at him. The senior investigator was on the other side, where more photos decorated the other shelf. “The parents,” he inferred.

  Brendan
nodded. He returned his attention to the last photo in the display on his side of the room. There were others – Bops standing next to a guide boat; a mountain vista with the four of them posing in tourist’s garb; a prom picture (Rebecca was a beautiful girl); and a young man in a black and white photo – likely Bops in his prime – standing shirtless next to the open hood of a cherry muscle car. But the last one had been what Brendan had been unable to get out of his mind all day. “This one here is of particular interest,” he said. “And one over where Detective Delaney is standing that would seem to correspond to it.”

  He pointed to the picture, in an ornate gold frame, of Rebecca Heilshorn. Here she looked almost the same age as the girl who had stared at Brendan in the reflection of the mirror this morning, her eyes haunted, her mouth open. Here, she was the portrait of happiness, and why not? She held a beautiful bouncing baby girl on her lap. The child, only a few months old, had a bow on her nearly bald head.

  Skene looked at the image for a moment. Something may have struck him, but he dismissed it, Brendan thought.

  “So she has a child,” said Skene. “Or it’s her niece. Or a friend’s kid. What does it mean? How does it help us?”

  Brendan turned to Delaney. He nodded at a frame propped on the shelf on the senior investigator’s side of the table. Delaney got the message. Typically cavalier, Delaney picked up the frame with his bare hands, studied it for a second, then faced it forward and held it out over the table for Skene, who leaned in to see.

  This picture showed Rebecca and the child again. The child appeared to be about the same age.

  “As you can see, the victim has company in this photograph,” said Brendan.

  A man was standing next to Rebecca, just behind her. He was in his late thirties, dark-haired, dark-eyed, handsome, smiling. It appeared, in all ways, to be a quaint family photo.

  “With any luck,” said Brendan, “we have his size-eleven boot print from where he kicked in the door upstairs. As soon as the pathologist finishes the investigation of the body, we could have his blood and semen, too.”

  Skene remained fixed on the picture. He only glanced at Brendan briefly.

  “I don’t believe in luck,” he said.

  CHAPTER EIGHT / THURSDAY, 3:12 PM

  Donald Kettering was cordial and cooperative on the telephone. He invited Brendan to come and see him at his hardware store in Boonville, a village ten miles north of Remsen. He left the offices of the Sheriff’s Department in Oriskany, got in the Camry and drove with the AC on. Oriskany was south of Rome, and the drive up to Boonville took an hour. Brendan took a route that went up 26 and entered Boonville from the west. Along the way he found himself thinking of the past.

  Kettering looked the same as he did in the photo. Clean-cut, with a kempt appearance. He wore a fresh pair of Carhartt work pants and a button down white chambray work-shirt with an incongruous geometrically-patterned tie. His smile revealed Chiclet white teeth, and his grip was firm and dry as he shook Brendan’s hands on the steps outside of “Kettering's,” his eponymous hardware and appliance store on Erwin Street. There was no wedding ring on his finger.

  Boonville was bigger than Remsen, with a population of almost five thousand. Erwin Street was busy with traffic and people out running errands. The sun was just past its zenith overhead, and the pavement and sidewalk radiated heat. Kettering invited Brendan into the store, where it was cooler and darker.

  “We’re actually not so much a summer town, really,” Kettering said as he led Brendan further into the store. There was white tile underfoot, scuffed but squeaky clean. Brendan noticed that the front door was left open, even though the air conditioning inside was blasting. Kettering either had money to burn or wasn’t thrifty. “But we’re more of a winter place,” he said. “‘The Snow Capital of the East.’” He turned as he walked, slowing his pace, and frowned. “But you probably know all that, I’m sorry. This is your county. You probably know every nook and cranny. I just start rattling on when a new face shows up. It’s the salesman in me.” He smiled, showing his white teeth again.

  He was in considerably good spirits for a man who’d been told, thirty minutes ago, that someone he was close to was dead. Then again, he had a business to run, and keeping up appearances was probably second nature to him. Brendan wondered if he would take a day, shut down. Then again, the detective didn’t know the extent of the man’s relationship with the deceased woman. He had decided to save his questions until they were in person.

  “I don’t mind,” Brendan said about Kettering’s exposition. Brendan had a chance to glance down one or two aisles – racks of nuts, bolts, and washers, cans of house paint stacked ceiling-high, a wall of uncut keys, and a duplication machine – before Kettering said, “My office is right back here.”

  He led Brendan around a long white counter where a young male employee with a rash of acne looked back at Brendan with a mixture of awe and fear. The youth’s eyes seemed to probe Brendan’s person for where his firearm might be tucked away. Brendan offered a reassuring smile.

  They went through an open door and into a decent-sized space. It was at the back of the building, and two windows overlooked a parking area outside.

  “Please take a seat.”

  Brendan sat in one of two chairs across from what looked like a school-teacher’s desk, a double pedestal model. Kettering sat down and his chair squeaked. Behind him was a peg board filled with bulletins, flyers, newspaper clippings, and pictures. There were filing cabinets, a small couch beneath one of the windows, and an exercise bike.

  “Thank you,” said Brendan as he got comfortable. He added, “I really don’t mind hearing about the town. I try not to hide the fact that I’m new here. A big snowmobile destination?”

  Kettering lit up even brighter. “Oh, absolutely. That’s when things get really booming in Boonville. The Oneida County Fair, the Woodsman Field Days, really great events, without a doubt, but the Snow Festivals are one of a kind. We’re the only village in Upstate New York to really do winter right, if you ask me. Up Saranac Lake they have a nice Winter Carnival, too, historic and all that. These Snow Festivals we got though . . . boy.”

  Brendan watched Kettering’s enthusiasm dwindle as he settled into the business at hand. “So, how can I help you? I mean, this is . . . a terrible tragedy. Terrible.” His facial features rearranged into a properly downcast expression.

  Brendan put a small tape recorder on the desk. “Is this okay with you? Otherwise you can go and give your official statement at the office. But then you have to take a trip and repeat yourself.”

  Kettering only glanced at the recorder. “That’s fine.”

  “How long have you known Rebecca Heilshorn?”

  He leaned back and his chair squawked again. His eyes rolled up to the ceiling, and he rubbed at his closely-shaven chin. “Oh jeeze, now. Let me think. We met in . . . oh I think it was three years ago?”

  “How did you meet?”

  “Right here,” he said with notable pride. “Right in my store. She was getting some hardware for the house. She came back two more times, and I asked her out for a cup of coffee.”

  “And then you were together? I’m sorry to ask such a personal question.”

  “No, no, I understand.”

  Kettering leaned forward now, resting his elbows on the desk, his eyes still darting around. “I understand. We, uh, well, we dated a little while, if you could call it that. We’d go for walks, I’d meet her at the house – the whole thing was kind of under the pretense that I could help her fix it up. But it never came to that, really. She was always coming and going from the area. Hard girl to pin down.” He offered a laugh and a wink. “So, I don’t know, for about two years we saw each other on and off.”

  “What was she doing up here?”

  “Well, first she was meeting with the realtors, and those types. Then, you know, closing. All of that stuff takes so much time. She was coming back and forth, back and forth.”

  “To bu
y the house?”

  Kettering raised his eyebrows. “Oh, right. Sorry, yes, I wasn’t sure what, you know, what of the particulars you already had.”

  “Assume I know nothing.”

  A look from Kettering. “They bought the old Bloomingdale farm.”

  “The place south of here, about eight miles.”

  “That’s right. Everyone calls it the Bloomingdale farm. There’s been a lot of development in this area over recent years, but that farm, that’s been there . . . jeeze, since the area was settled. Early 1800s, maybe. It’s been redone, you know, this patched up, that. I think the original barn caved in and a new one was erected in the 70s. But it was originally built by Arnold Bloomingdale.”

  “Why was Rebecca interested in it, do you think?”

  Again, Kettering seemed to pause for some silent evaluation. It was only a second or two, but Brendan couldn’t help but record it in his mind. “I couldn’t honestly tell you. I’ve met them, you know. Alex and Greta. I think the kids call them Bops and Ma’am. Very nice people.” His eyes seemed to narrow a bit. “Very wealthy. Different sort of people than everyday folks like you and me. Know what I mean?”

  “Money can change you, sure. Or, you’re born with it. So she was brokering a deal for her parents? Not buying the house herself?”

  “It was their money, if that’s what you mean, yes.”

  “But she came here for hardware, you said. Before she bought the place she was making repairs?”

  Kettering blinked, seeming momentarily derailed. “No, ah, she was staying in a little rental right here in Boonville. Sometimes she stayed at motels, she told me, but then she rented this little place. If I recall, there was a leak, and she wanted to fix it herself. She was very self-reliant.”

  Brendan made a mental note to look into this rental situation later. “Does she have any siblings?”

  Another pause. “Her brother, Kevin.”

  “No others?”