HABIT: a gripping detective thriller full of suspense

by T. J. Brearton

  Maybe Rebecca had relocated to the region because her former roommate was now a practicing psychotherapist. Maybe Olivia represented to Rebecca a time in her life before things had turned ugly. Or, maybe she had been drawn, like Brendan was, by the power which lurked beneath the crumbling façades, the kind of desperate strength of a place with cities named after kingdoms, villages which refused to be conquered and spawned tough cities.

  Yet, Nero fiddled while Rome burned.

  He suddenly turned around, leaving the city limits behind. He headed towards Eddie Stemp’s farm.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX / SUNDAY, 7:12 PM

  Brendan was greeted by a man with a rifle. Stemp was cold and unemotional at first, not the warm and caring Christian that Brendan had anticipated. He handled the weapon like a military man.

  After he defused the situation and got Stemp to put away the Winchester 30.30, the men got to talking. Stemp insisted they stay outside.

  The sun was setting, drawing a lavender twilight around them as it sank. With it, Brendan felt that time was running out. For him, for Rebecca, for catching her killer.

  Brendan was as forthcoming with Stemp as he could be. The man had intense eyes that exuded both intelligence and a strange, cultish edge. To put a finer point on it, he looked drugged, as though he’d drunk some of the Kool-Aid.

  “You’re dealing with the life of a very troubled woman,” said Stemp.

  The two men sat at a picnic table near the barn. There was a clothes line and a small flower garden. The farmhouse was warmly lit, in the near distance. The night was cool but not uncomfortably. The insects, however, were coming out. Mosquitos whined in Brendan’s ears, and he swatted at the air. Stemp didn’t seem to notice the bugs. He sat with his hands folded, the rifle on the bench beside him. He wore a flannel shirt and tan Carhartt overalls.

  “Tell me about her,” said Brendan.

  “Well, I’ll tell you what I told the other detective. Cortez, or what have you.”

  “Colinas.”

  “Colinas, right. I told him about the laptop, too, by the way. I bought that when Rebecca and I were together. I have no idea why she threw it out, or burned it, or whatever he said she did. But most likely it was where she had kept certain . . . information about her other life.”

  “Okay. Thank you.”

  “So, I pray for Rebecca every day. I pray for her soul. We said a special prayer for her in church this morning.”

  “I’m sure she . . . I’m sure that’s appreciated by her family.”

  Stemp nodded as if he heard this all the time.

  Brendan looked around, taking in the night. It was a nice spread and back from the main road. Things were quiet, with only the crickets singing and mosquitos whining.

  “Well, you know, like I said, troubled girl,” Stemp said.

  “Like what? What were her troubles?”

  “Well, it’s not for me to judge. That’s for the Lord. But I can recognize the symptoms of a sickened soul.”

  “Could you please share them with me? I’d be grateful to hear your thoughts.”

  “Like lewd and lascivious behavior, that’s what. Now, like I say, I’m not one who can talk. I had my share of a dark night.”

  “A dark night?”

  Stemp made eye contact. “A dark night of the soul. Everyone has them. Some are longer than others. Some dark nights . . . they get complicated. There are forces which can get in there and . . . just make things a whole heck of a lot worse.”

  “Forces?”

  “Demons.”

  “Ah.”

  “My mother would say that once visited by demons, and then purged of them, a person would have to replace the void with something else. Something holy. If not, the demons were invited to return, and they would return sevenfold.”

  For some reason, Brendan found himself thinking about Delaney, and his sunflower seed habit. He knew cross-addiction wasn’t entirely what Eddie Stemp was referring to, but maybe it was, just a little bit.

  Stemp looked at Brendan flatly. “Do you have access points?”

  “Sorry?”

  “Spiritual access points. Ways for unclean spirits to enter you. My guess is that you do.”

  Brendan rubbed at his jaw and looked away. He needed a moment; he didn’t want to offend Stemp. Demons, and demonology, as far as he was concerned, were nonsense. Life was conducted through chemicals, not angels and demons. When Brendan didn’t answer, Stemp moved on.

  “My dark night and Rebecca’s dark night coincided. Sometimes that’s how it goes with people. You meet when you are in crisis, and you can’t do anything to help each other. You’re attracted to the darkness in each other. At the same time, maybe you want to believe that the other can heal you. There’s some people who think we’re just searching for our mothers and fathers in our chosen partners, and that we expect our partners to meet the need that our parents didn’t, or couldn’t.”

  “I’m familiar with the idea. Do you know Olivia Jane?”

  Stemp frowned. “No. Don’t think so.”

  “Was Rebecca seeing a therapist when you were together?”

  “I have no idea. It wouldn’t have done her any good anyway. Therapy and pills can’t treat the soul.”

  “Was she involved in pornography when you were together?”

  Stemp made eye contact again. His expression turned grave. “I’ve made my peace with that. I tried to get Rebecca to atone for her own sake.”

  An alarm flashed in the back of Brendan’s mind. Especially at the reference to atonement. And he realized that Stemp wouldn’t likely have said any of this to Colinas, because Colinas hadn’t known about the videos. Inadvertently, Brendan’s eyes dropped to the rifle sitting beside Stemp.

  “What else? Can you tell me more? How did you try to get her to atone?”

  “To pray. To join the church. Look, I was no good for her when we were together, I know that. So does the Lord, which is why it was pleasing to Him that I had the marriage properly annulled. But He made a deal with me.”

  “The Lord?”

  “Yes. He granted me my forgiveness and annulled the marriage, he gave me the wonderful gifts of my wife, Trudy, and our two children, and in return, he asked me a favor.”

  “To turn Rebecca towards the faith?”

  Stemp raised his eyebrows. “Yes. And to have her come to understand her dark night for what it was. To show her that the light existed, and she could find it, as I had.”

  “So you visited her frequently in the time before her death?”

  Now Eddie Stemp looked forlorn. “No. Things were complicated with our first birth, Trudy and me. The Lord gave us a child very quickly, but it came at a price. Our first baby has CF – that’s cystic fibrosis – and I wasn’t able to get away much. I was needed here. And by the time she was older and things were smoothing out, the farm here was in full swing, our second baby was arriving, and I was a leader in my church.”

  “Did the Lord let you out of the deal?”

  Stemp searched Brendan’s face, perhaps looking for guile. Brendan was only speaking to the man in his own language.

  “We amended the deal, you could say.”

  “How so?”

  Eddie shifted on the picnic table bench. It seemed to Brendan that they had reached a juncture. It was a place that almost every interview came to, where the person being questioned stepped out of their comfort zone. It was a critical moment. The dusk had fully enveloped them now. The evening sky had turned indigo, with a solid deck of low clouds and only an umber scattering of sunlight. Brendan urged Eddie forward. “Please, how did you amend it?”

  Possible answers to the question tumbled through Brendan’s own mind.

  The Lord told me to save her brother, Kevin, instead.

  The Lord told me to kill her.

  The Lord told me I was born under the black smoke of September.

  “First, you need to know something else. I’m not some man who is hopped up on his own self-importance. No
t because I found the Lord, or my church. I know you’re sitting there in judgment of me, and that’s okay. I would have been, too, years ago. I’m not some dumb country bumpkin. I lived a lot of life before I came into the fold. And I made some terrible decisions. One of those involved aborting my own child.”

  Brendan leaned back, absorbing this. He thought for a moment, and reached into his pocket and took out his cigarettes. Stemp watched as Brendan lit one. Brendan offered.

  “No, thank you. I quit those like I quit a lot of bad habits.”

  Brendan exhaled smoke. “Rebecca had an abortion?”

  “We had an abortion. I don’t care what they say; the father is just as complicit.”

  “Okay.”

  “ ‘We had an abortion.’ That’s a euphemism. Meant to sound like something procedural, almost cosmetic. ‘We killed our child.’ That’s the correct phrasing. I don’t care what you believe, what faith you have or don’t have, the minute that cell divides in the womb, that is a human being. Left uninterrupted, unmolested, it will become a one year-old baby, a twelve year-old girl, a seventy-year-old grandmother.”

  Brendan nodded. In no way was he going to engage this man in a debate on abortion, which was the biggest quagmire of all topics, in his experience.

  “But she got pregnant again very quickly, didn’t she? Or . . .?”

  Stemp seemed to search Brendan deeply, as if evaluating whether or not the man could be trusted. He then made a decision.

  “Leah is not my child.”

  Brendan swallowed and found his throat was dry. “So you and Rebecca didn’t get pregnant again.”

  “No. We had the abortion, but then we tried to marry – but the death of our child haunted us, and it did what it tends to do – it pulled us apart. And, rightfully so. It was the Lord. The Lord pulled us apart in His wisdom.”

  “Do you know who the father is?”

  “No.”

  “You mentioned that the symptoms of Rebecca’s spiritual distress were her lewd and lascivious behavior. I take this to mean you knew about Rebecca’s involvement in making erotic videos.”

  “That wasn’t all of it.”

  “No?”

  Stemp shook his head, somberly.

  “Can you tell me what else?”

  “It all goes together. Not for everyone, I’m sure; it’s not all the same for everyone. But Rebecca started out seeking something . . . I don’t know. She was in Albany for a while. She was someone . . . one of those girls who escorted the rich businessmen, the government officials, in secret. The Elliot Spitzers.”

  This was a vital piece of the chain. Rebecca had started not in videos, but in a higher-end escort service, if he was to believe Stemp.

  “How do you know this?”

  “I wasn’t always a farmer. You’re not the only man around here whose past is very different from his present. Look around you. Why else would we be tucked away up here? I wasn’t born here.”

  “What do you think you know about me?”

  Stemp shook his head, dismissively. “Now, don’t get all detective, Detective. It’s just a call. You have an accent, like Putnam, Rockland, maybe Westchester County. The way you dress. Walk. I don’t know.”

  Brendan decided to let it go. “What did you do? In your previous life?”

  “I served in Desert Storm. Later I worked as a bodyguard. That’s as far as I’ll care to go along that line. My personal history is immaterial.”

  “Can I ask you one thing?”

  “Maybe.” Stemp glanced at the house, as if growing impatient.

  “You said that your deal with the Lord was amended. You were no longer meant to cure her of her ways, because you just didn’t have the time. You had your own family to deal with.”

  “I wouldn’t say ‘cure her of her ways,’ but . . .”

  “Sorry, best choice of words I could come up with.” Brendan stubbed the cigarette out on the table without thinking about it. Stemp looked at the burn mark and frowned. “So if you didn’t have the time for that,” Brendan continued, “What did you have the time for?”

  Stemp sighed. “I put in some calls. I used some of the information I had gotten from Rebecca, some names, and I decided that the best thing I could do was help to try and prevent something like this from happening to anyone else. But I was out of my league.”

  “You mean you called . . . who? Officials? Police? People you used to work with? Did you call her father?”

  Stemp stood. He picked up his rifle. “I’m sorry, Detective, this really is where I have to get off. My family is waiting for me to come to supper, and I have nothing more I can add. None of what I did made any difference. That’s something I have to live with. Like a lot of things.”

  “Please, I need to know. Her killer is still out there, and you still have a chance to help Rebecca. If you could just give me something. Anything. Anyone. Just a name. Who did you call?”

  Stemp sighed again. “Maybe I made a call to her father. And maybe he made an anonymous phone call to the State Attorney’s Office. It was all I was able to do in that regard. In the end, that wasn’t the real amendment, anyway.”

  “What was?”

  “To pray. Now, thank you, and have a good night.”

  Brendan stood, too. He called to Stemp as the man turned away.

  “Eddie.”

  Stemp stopped and slowly turned back. Both men were in the dark now. Standing a few yards away, Stemp was just a sketch, his rifle hanging at his side.

  “Is the child in danger? Is Leah in danger?”

  “We’re all in danger, Detective. Not from one another, but from God’s righteousness. What we do to one another is ineffectual. The Lord works in mysterious ways, but the sinners are punished. Always.”

  “Did you give The Screwtape Letters to Rebecca? With a highlighted passage? Addressed to the name she used in pornography?”

  Stemp was motionless. His voice carried over. “Yes.”

  “Why did you sign the note, ‘K’?”

  Stemp sighed. “My first name is Kim. I am Kim Edward Stemp. We used to joke about it. Only she ever called me Kim. We had some good times, Detective. But she was always looking for something else. Always had one foot out the door.”

  It sounded like something Donald Kettering would say.

  “Do you know Donald Kettering?”

  In the gloaming, it was hard to make out Stemp’s features, but Brendan thought the man’s brow lifted. “Of course. He’s a member of our congregation.”

  “Did Rebecca ever go with you to church?”

  “Only once or twice. Now please, Detective . . .”

  “Did you write a phrase on the back of a picture in her house, I was born under the black smoke of September?”

  “No. I did no such thing. But whoever wrote that . . . well . . .”

  “Do you know what it means?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Not exactly?”

  “It makes me think of something. I’m not sure what. Maybe September is, you know, 9/11. Detective, I have to go. Please, I’ve been very patient. Good night.”

  Stemp turned away again. His outline shrank as he moved through the night towards his country home. Brendan could see a figure in the window and assumed it was Stemp’s wife, awaiting his return.

  He left the picnic table and slid into the Camry and switched on the engine. After a moment, he realized the bell for his seatbelt was chiming. He had just been sitting there, his head buzzing with all of this new information. For one thing, he needed to get the photograph with the sentence on it to a handwriting expert. But tomorrow, Heilshorn was arriving and Brendan would have to deal with the investigation around the shooting. All of this going on, and he was going to have to fade even further into the background.

  He drove away from the Stemp farm into the darkness, unsure of where to turn.

  * * *

  Back on the road, Brendan’s thoughts churned.

  Who wrote the phrase on the back of th
e photograph? He leaned heavily toward the idea that the author and killer were one and the same.

  On the other hand, it always could have been Rebecca herself.

  He realized how little he still knew about her, the woman central to this entire investigation. He had learned some information, but felt like her personality was a mystery. For all he knew, she had untreated mental health issues such as bipolar disorder or schizophrenia.

  He wondered about Stemp’s interpretation, that it had something to do with 9/11. That felt like an entirely new can of worms, though. A thought occurred to him: he needed to go back to the house, yet again, and examine the rest of the photographs. To see if there was writing on any others.

  He pulled over and did a hasty three-point-turn. A vehicle blared its horn at him and drove past. He ignored it and headed to the Bloomingdale farm.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN / SUNDAY, 10:23 PM

  He pulled in to the quiet farm. The big house lurked in the dark. He stepped out of the Camry. Overhead, the moon was just a sliver, occasionally disappearing completely behind the clouds.

  The clouds looked like smoke.

  He slipped into the house and went to the dining room, off the back of the kitchen. He used a flashlight instead of turning on the lights, and he put on his gloves.

  He went through the framed pictures one at a time. His heartbeat accelerated as he did. His breathing quickened.

  He found four photos with cryptic phrases written on the back.

  He didn’t need a handwriting expert to confirm that they were written by the same person. He could see that with his own eyes. In fact, he wondered if he even needed an expert to compare the phrases to the victim’s own penmanship.

  His blood chilled by what he was reading, he set the photographs down momentarily and darted into the unlit kitchen.

  Everyone had a “junk drawer.” A catch-all drawer with old birthday candles and forgotten candy, wine openers and little notes with phone numbers. The drawer had already been gone through by CSI, and most of it had been bagged, but Brendan figured they were likely to have left something behind.