HABIT: a gripping detective thriller full of suspense

by T. J. Brearton

  Danice’s other videos took place in a totally different context, the first of which was dated two years later. Brendan wondered if the first video actually served an ulterior purpose. If he was to believe Eddie Stemp and the story of the high-end escort service, then the “interview,” as playful as it was objectifying and demeaning, could have been part of an online catalog. But Brendan thought any “casting” video was more likely a sick ruse used to get young women to perform sex acts on the spot. Finally, Brendan wanted to learn more about how the videos were distributed, but there were nothing but dead ends.

  Two videos had tags down below, advertising the websites which offered them. One was tagged “Adult Royale dot com;” a video in which Danice strutted around a fancy home wearing high heels before she was approached by a muscular young man. The other was the mock interview video, and the tag read “XList,” with a heraldic lion unfurling a long tongue as its emblem. Brendan had decided to visit that website first, and had scoured it for contact information. There wasn’t much more than a hard copy order form. He hadn’t looked it over thoroughly enough, however, and now at home, perpetually on the couch, he had more time to do so.

  He found that there was an email address for problems with orders or shipment. He took a long pull of the Stoli vodka, emptying the glass. He then spent the next ten minutes concocting a fake email account. He named himself John Porter and set up a Gmail address in which his username was johnporter645.

  He decided to just act as though he wasn’t aware of how to select and order a video, though the site certainly made it easy enough for any moron.

  Dear XList,

  I am trying to find a video featuring Danice. I can’t seem to locate one. Sorry, but I am not great with computers. Could you please help me?

  Thanks, John Porter

  He hit send and then flopped back on the couch. He realized that he needed to keep looking for these types of sites which sold any of the other videos, either in DVD shipment or as downloads, but for the moment, he couldn’t stomach it. All of the sites featured ads in the margins with looped graphics of people engaged in various acts. They covered the gamut of human perversion, but tended towards the absurd, the grotesque. There was animated porn, he had discovered, and every kind of fetish, known to him and not. He was tired of looking at it.

  He exited out of the sites and poured himself another glass of vodka.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE / TUESDAY, 9:44 PM

  “Nothing,” said Delaney.

  “Nothing? And Heilshorn has his own private investigators?”

  “Just like he said. You doing alright? You don’t sound too good.”

  “I don’t know why. I slept most of yesterday.”

  Brendan looked outside. It was indeed dark again. There was a light rain falling.

  “I can’t believe we’re gonna lose this,” said Brendan.

  “Lose it? We’re not going to lose anything. It hasn’t even been a week. These things can take time. They can take years.”

  Brendan grunted. He was on his fourth vodka of the evening. He had eaten a peanut butter and jelly sandwich earlier that day. He couldn’t remember if he’d eaten anything else.

  “Did you know Olivia Jane was Rebecca Heilshorn’s therapist?”

  He heard Delaney breathing for a second. “You know, I really don’t appreciate you asking the Sheriff that. Those relationships are kept strictly confidential.”

  “So I’ve been told. Have you been able to obtain her session notes?”

  “Jesus, Healy. No. Don’t you understand? Time. These things take time.”

  “Rebecca doesn’t have time.”

  “Rebecca’s dead.”

  “Exactly,” said Brendan. “Exactly. Time means nothing to her now.”

  “Are you . . . Healy, are you drunk?”

  “Far from it, my friend. You know, you can be a real hardcase, Delaney. A real asshole. But I like you. I don’t think you did anything wrong.”

  “Fuck you, Healy.”

  Brendan started to laugh.

  “I’m doing you a favor even talking to you,” Delaney said gruffly. “Next time you want to know anything, you call the Sheriff. But remember, this is no longer your case. Not the house, not the people, not the porn. Out of your territory now.”

  Brendan lolled on the couch. “Did you, ah, oil your broomstick with Olivia Jane?” He closed his eyes.

  Delaney responded, sounding farther away, “Hey, Healy. Do me a favor. Look around. See anything?”

  “No.”

  “Exactly. That’s your territory right now.”

  Delaney hung up.

  Brendan looked at his phone and frowned when he saw the “Call Ended 6:03 mins” flashing. He threw the phone across the room where it knocked hard against the wall. He propped himself up and reached for the milk jug next to the couch. The wheelchair was so tough to get in and out of, and using the crutches made it impossible to piss standing up. Sitting was too painful, even with the meds. And the vodka made him have to whiz frequently. He just peed next to the couch.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO / THURSDAY, 10:14 AM

  He realized the pee jugs were full. He also realized his house was disgusting.

  Brendan’s head pounded. Lawless had brought him five bottles of vodka and a case of Miller High Life. He was halfway through the fourth bottle of vodka and so decided to switch to beer. He would need to come down a little in order to be able to go out and get more vodka. This time he would get a case of it.

  He needed to stay drunk enough that the depression didn’t crush him, but sober enough to be able to drive. Plus, he had returned to the videos. For the three that showed the male involved clearly, he had written out a physical description of each. His handwriting was messy chicken-scratch. He needed to transcribe it into a proper document. He figured a little housework would help put him in the mood.

  He started to get off the couch and realized things were worse than he’d first feared. The pain in his groin had been muted by the painkillers, but so, it seemed had a certain amount of feeling in his legs. It took him ten minutes just to get to the wheelchair. Then another ten to fumble around with the crutches and get his useless legs underneath his body. During the process, he felt a tickle in his throat and coughed into his fist. The blood that splattered on his hand was bright and terrifying.

  It took a half an hour to get the pee jugs into the bathroom and flush them down the toilet.

  He took a break and went to the fridge for the beer. Half of the case of Miller High Life was gone, and he didn’t remember drinking it. There were cans in the sink and on the kitchen counter. He had left food out, and the kitchen was rank.

  He kept seeing flashes of the porn videos. It was as if they had hijacked his cerebral cortex. He thought about habits. He wondered if doing porn was a habit, like anything else. Cue, routine, reward. He wondered what Rebecca’s first cue had been. He wanted so badly to talk to her father, Alexander Heilshorn, Mr. Big Deal New York City Doctor.

  An idea flickered in the back of his mind. A connection. But it was tough to bring to the surface. The meds and the booze and the lack of nutrition were conspiring to cloud his brain. Blood from his mouth was drying on his hand. He cracked a beer and guzzled it down. Nothing had ever tasted better. Not even ice chips.

  * * *

  He forgot, temporarily, about going out for the vodka and went to check his email. He saw he had finally gotten a response from XList, which turned out to be the only porn site which offered an email address. All the rest had been download-only, and no customer service.

  He drank from his second can of beer and eagerly clicked to open the reply.

  Dear Valued Customer,

  Thank you for your interest in The XList Company! We’re proud to offer the highest quality in erotic entertainment. Our “Danice” excerpt can be found at the following link:

  A complicated URL was provided.

  For the full feature DVD to be shipped to your door for only 19.95, click
here:

  And a credit card button had been embedded in the email.

  Thank you and happy viewing.

  The XList Company

  Brendan shuddered when he thought of the XList “Company.” He also thought of the people who genuinely considered erotic entertainment to be a service. Some would say it helped married couples keep their sex lives spicy. Others would point to the lonely men who needed release – they might even go so far as to say it helped to prevent sex crimes. Brendan had heard it all.

  He considered the videos featuring Rebecca, aka Danice. They were all professionally done. She was not in the “amateur” section of Red Light. If she had started out doing tricks for senators and congressmen in Albany, someone in the escort service had introduced her to pornographers. She had then done the “casting interview,” and went on to perform in a handful of videos, but only a couple of years later. Had it taken that long for her to break into the business? Or had she hesitated, after doing the “interview,” and had second thoughts? Was there some motive, other than a zeal for exhibitionism, or a need for money, that had made her return to the trade after a hiatus?

  In a flash of clarity, Brendan realized there was no need to transcribe his descriptions of the three men in the videos. He wasn’t a computer-whiz by any means, but he knew how to take a screen shot. He cued up each video to the best image of the man involved, paused it, and instructed his computer to take a “snapshot” of the entire screen. He cropped the images to get a headshot of each man, even the interview video where the man’s head was mostly blotted out. Then he got back to looking into the names of the websites who proffered the videos to Red Light. There was only the one other which declared itself: Adult Royale dot com. He visited the site.

  Again he looked for the Danice video by using the in-site search tool. He found the video and used the buttons to act as if he were ordering it. They were download only – no shipping. There was no address for Adult Royale productions listed anywhere on the site. No customer service.

  He did a separate Google search for Adult Royale. There were a number of hits, including one for the Adult Video Awards, or “AVAs.” At last he found a home page different from the one which offered the downloads. This listed an address in Culver City, California, but no phone number or email.

  Brendan sat back from the laptop and rubbed his eyes. Was he barking up the wrong tree? What if the videos had nothing to do with Rebecca’s death? They could just be a part of her life that she had tried to leave behind, by moving to the country and starting again. She had full custody of her daughter, but her parents had kept the girl most of the time, at least while she was setting up house.

  He imagined her: She has shunned the life of the erotic entertainer, a road she embarked on due to some as yet unknown catalyst while she was in college. Perhaps this was to spite her parents, but maybe for some other reason. She turns away from the industry and gets married to Eddie Stemp. They attempt to carve out a life together.

  Did she meet Stemp after she’d already left the business?

  Brendan’s eyes widened and he sat up on the couch.

  Or did she meet Stemp while she was in the business?

  Maybe Stemp and Rebecca got out together; he from politics, she from escorting. But he found God and she didn’t. And the daughter was not his blood. Was she the illegitimate child of someone she’d had relations with in the videos?

  Or one of the men she’d slept with during her time as a high-end call girl?

  He’d said he was a bodyguard after the military. A bodyguard for whom? Who had bodyguards? Rock stars and politicians.

  There were no rock stars in Albany.

  Brendan started to get himself off of the couch. He wrenched his body towards the crutches, ignoring the various alarms of pain going off in his hip, groin, and chest. He fumbled around until he got a crutch beneath himself.

  Dear God – was Leah the daughter of some government official?

  Well, that wouldn’t make sense if certain assumptions were correct, and that the timeline reflected her history accurately. If she had left the escort service and then joined up with the video-production, Leah would have to be almost ten years old. The child was too young to fit that scenario.

  Unless Brendan was thinking too rigidly, too linearly. Life didn’t always happen that way, did it? People thought they quit something, but then they were back at it. Look at him, eight years of sobriety, and he was right back where he’d left off. Life moved in cycles, not timelines.

  As if to echo this thinking, he bent at a painful angle and picked up the Miller can and drained its contents. He leaned on his crutch until he nearly toppled over. He dropped the empty can on the carpet. So much for cleaning up.

  Rebecca might have never completely left the escort life. She could have kept up with it all along. Maybe she had moved to the west coast for a while – they had found no residences listed for her there, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t just stayed with someone for a while – but maybe she had never quit the escort game. Then again, maybe she had never gone to the West Coast. So what if one of the video “production companies” had a Culver City address. People could make the videos and send them in from all over. It was the age of outsourcing.

  The “Company,” so to speak, out there making movies worldwide and sending them back to California where, for all Brendan knew, one guy sat with a credit card machine and the servers running. Brendan didn’t know much about filmmaking, but he knew that the technology had evolved dramatically over the past decade. A person could make a high-definition video with a Canon camera and a microphone.

  Halfway to the kitchen for another beer, Brendan had a sobering thought: all of this stuff running through his head was built on unsubstantiated material. What were the facts? That a woman who looked just like the deceased Rebecca Heilshorn was in half a dozen porn videos under the name Danice. And that an ex-husband-turned-religious-zealot had hinted that she had been involved in some sort of organized prostitution in Albany, or thereabouts. These connections were pure conjecture.

  But the little girl, Leah, she wasn’t conjecture. Neither was the lack of evidence for her biological father. For all intents and purposes, he was just a ghost.

  And the man who had nearly run him over with a truck wasn’t a fantasy, either.

  Who was he? That was, of course, what the whole thing boiled down to. Whatever Rebecca had gotten herself caught up in was incidental. Important, but incidental. The killer was the objective.

  Brendan found himself putting on his coat. He had no idea how he was going to drive with his leg and hip in so much discomfort, but if he was going to make it through this, there was no stopping the drinking now.

  He did one last thing first. He went back and opened up his fake John Porter email. He bent and gritted his teeth against the pain and typed on the laptop.

  Five minutes later, and he had sent two emails. One was to Colinas, with attachments of the head shots he had created for each of the men in the videos.

  The second was to XList. He didn’t expect a response, but he’d sent it anyway. It read:

  Dear XList,

  What happens if one of your actresses gets pregnant?

  * * *

  Somehow, Brendan survived the trip to the liquor store, and then one to a Walgreens where he bought another case of beer, some milk and some bread. He drew a few looks, and was not surprised. Dressed in sweat pants, unlaced sneakers, and a beige trench-coat, his hair unkempt and undoubtedly reeking of booze, he was the picture of a man off the rails. He didn’t care, though. He smiled at the checkout boy, who reminded him of the kid with the acne who’d worked for Kettering and who’d been in Rebecca’s house not long before she was killed, picking up Kettering’s tools and supplies. Jason Pert.

  And she had called him to ask about hooking up a diaper sprayer.

  The checkout kid was giving Brendan a wary eye, and Brendan realized the transaction was complete. He hobbled out of the store hangi
ng on to the case of beer, bag of milk, and bread, with one arm. His grunting struggle elicited more looks, a mix of concern and thinly veiled disapproval.

  Back at his Camry in the parking lot, he loaded the groceries next to the case of vodka. He looked glibly at the case of grain alcohol for a moment, blinking. He wondered if it would kill him. Then he shut the trunk on it.

  He tried not to think of his wife and daughter as he drove back home. He needed to just focus on the road. Still, their memories seemed to come over him at the worst times. Their faces had faded some, too, and this made him angry.

  Before he got home he pulled off the road, limped to the trunk of the car and removed a beer from the case. He returned to the driver’s seat and then drank as he drove.

  His jaw was clenched so hard it was starting to hurt. Blood sat beneath his tongue.

  * * *

  Colinas had responded to Brendan’s email with the headshots.

  “Thanks for these. I will run them. I will say they were an anonymous tip. You know I can’t share the results with you. Sorry. – R.C.”

  Brendan was smiling when he started to read the email, and frowning by the end. He responded to Colinas. As he typed, a runnel of beer trickled down his stubbled jaw.

  “Hey Colinas, how does it feel to have my job?”

  He hit send before he had a chance to re-think. Brendan wanted to hurt him, this guy that had come in and taken over his role in the investigation. It wasn’t Brendan’s fault that Kevin Heilshorn had gone on a shooting spree which cost him his life. And the man in the truck had tried to run him over because Brendan was close. And everyone knew it. Colinas knew it. The Sheriff knew it. Delaney did. Even Olivia, she knew it. But they were all holding out on him. They had turned their backs.