Brendan tried to talk. His lips felt gummy and numb. The expression on Colinas’s face was not good. He said a doctor described one bullet wound as having severed the subclavian artery. Brendan needed a blood transfusion. Colinas was already removing his jacket and rolling up his sleeve.
* * *
The transfusion worked, but there were other complications. Brendan swam back into consciousness again. He had been with his wife and baby girl. It was hard to leave them behind. He wanted to go back.
A woman stood over him with AED paddles in her hand, having just shocked Brendan back to life.
He didn’t see himself, not like in those pulp stories and quasi-documentaries about out-of-body experiences in times of mortal trauma. He knew what the brain did in situations like this. He understood how the synapses were firing like a wild west shoot-out in his grey matter, and that random thoughts and memories were stimulated. Like things he’d seen over the past few days. A stretch of road. The woman at the vegetable stand. The glimpse of someone in the room on Forrester’s video – the one who then held the camera. The open dresser drawers at Rebecca Heilshorn’s murder scene. Olivia Jane’s locked office door.
For a brief moment, Brendan thought that Delaney was standing over him. The vision – if it was that – triggered another gush of recall. Brendan found himself remembering back as far as the first morning at the Bloomingdale house. He saw Kevin Heilshorn spilling his bike in the dirt driveway. He saw Kevin wrestling with the deputies, trying to get inside to see his dead sister.
And he saw Kevin lying in the garden behind Olivia Jane’s house. The blood spatter around his head; the crimson dapples on the summer squash.
Hadn’t it been Delaney who had suggested Olivia Jane as the grief counselor? Certainly it was Delaney who had been hot to pin Rebecca’s murder on her brother, Kevin. Delaney who assumed, as did much of the department, that Kevin had come after Brendan and Olivia because he was afraid the therapist would reveal his guilt.
Yet Olivia was so ethical. She wouldn’t speak about what had transpired between her and Kevin. She was a vault, locked up like her home office. She wouldn’t treat Brendan either, though she clearly wanted to know what he was thinking, what he was feeling. As a friend, she’d said. She was highly ethical.
Except, perhaps, for her duplicity regarding her treatment of Rebecca Heilshorn.
These things spun through the detective’s mind like celestial events, gliding in and out of his semi-conscious mind. Thoughts and faces.
Seeing light was common in such circumstances, too, some part of him reflected. The light at the end of the tunnel, a frequent trope about coming close to the afterlife. Even his wife and daughter were nothing more than snapshots of his past, animated by his addled, oxygen-deprived mind.
But they were convincing. They stood and beckoned to him, and they were oh so convincing.
It felt warm where they were.
He began making his way toward them, in a world that resembled their neighborhood in Hawthorne, only at night, only on a much larger scale, so that his wife and daughter were tiny. So small, and they kept shrinking. He chased them. His wife waved. It was now hard to know if it was a beckoning wave or a gesture of goodbye.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR / THURSDAY, 12:22 PM
Colinas went to the evidence locker for the Heilshorn case and stood looking at the crumpled lump of burnt laptop. He looked at it for a long time, wondering what secrets it held. Correspondence between Rebecca and her family was evident on the laptop which had not been destroyed, plus emails between her and Kettering, reinforcing his statements about her. This other computer could have contained much more. Maybe threats coming from Forrester, maybe threats from others.
Forrester had enough common sense to know that cops could seize any device like a laptop or a phone or iPad and lift all kinds of information from the drives, and so he’d completely destroyed it. That was one thought. But, Forrester had held onto another device – the camera. It contained incriminating evidence that he was intimately involved with the murder victim. And that was to put it mildly.
Colinas stood looking at the small camera, and tried to imagine Brendan Healy sitting in a room with this psychopath, forced to watch what was on it. Colinas himself didn’t have the clearance to access it. Taber was keeping things under tight wraps until he knew which way IA’s sword was going to fall. Someone was going to pay, and already it didn’t look good for the Department, who had been cooperating with a man who was also deeply involved in the sordid mess.
Alexander Heilshorn was an enigma. He was currently being held in the County Jail on suspicion of kidnapping and obstruction of justice. Colinas believed that the victim’s father had had good intentions if it were true that he’d harbored prostitutes. But the State Detective also sensed a sinister undercurrent at work. The old man had withheld information to protect children, or so he claimed. It was hard to envision the charges sticking. But Heilshorn was afraid of something. With his daughter’s murderer captured, Heilshorn should have been enjoying some measure of relief. Only the wealthy doctor, robust and affable just five days ago, had seemed to wither and shrink.
Colinas felt a chill and left the evidence locker.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE / THURSDAY, 3:33 PM
Taber, Colinas, Senior Prosecutor Skene, and several consulting detectives stitched together the events they now believed had led up to the murder of the young Heilshorn woman.
The 911 transcript clearly indicated that the killer was male. The victim had referred to the killer as “he” several times. Plus, there were the boot prints in the dooryard and the mark found on the door to the victim’s bedroom – size eleven work boots, the kind a man wore on a construction site, typically. Hai Takai, the footprint analyst, matched the prints to the footwear of a recent arrestee.
They were Forrester’s.
Reginald Forrester had tried to set up an alibi for himself that he was at work when Rebecca Heilshorn was killed. But the contract to build the new Business School building had been stalled the day before her death. His alibi was not corroborated. It was so transparent that it felt to many of the men that it wasn’t even a serious attempt at a lie. It was as if Forrester didn’t care, or was toying with them.
He had been in the Oneida County Jail that morning, awaiting arraignment when he was found dead in his cell. The men’s pod at the jail had one isolation area, with suicide-watch and round the clock guards, and Forrester had been in it. A full blown investigation had been launched immediately.
Forrester was dead. An autopsy was scheduled for the afternoon, Stanley Clark to perform. The Deputy Corrections Officers on duty were being questioned.
“How did Healy get onto this Forrester guy?” Skene folded his arms and looked at Taber and the rest. “Because that’s going to come up, and you know it.”
Rudy Colinas stood in front of Prosecutor Skene and Sheriff Taber. “Because Healy is smart.”
Skene shot Colinas a look, and Rudy lowered his eyes in a humble gesture. Best not to get Skene all agitated. Their whole Sheriff’s Department was looking bad right now. Chaos was descending. Best to play the dutiful servant, just the messenger. The Sheriff listened silently, his arms folded.
“Healy met with Heilshorn, as you and Sheriff Taber know. Heilshorn is the one who told Healy about Forrester’s whereabouts. He actually warned him to stay away. Healy went anyway, as we all know. It looks like Forrester was luring Brendan into a trap.”
“Let me see if this holds up,” Skene said. “After disappearing for a while into her stint with the escort service, erotic entertainment, if that in fact happened, Rebecca Heilshorn gets pregnant. It’s her second time. She’s scared; she’s too afraid to get another abortion, too afraid that having the child will ruin her so-called career? Or what? We need testing on that girl – Leah, right away. The other one, too. What’s the other one’s name?”
“Aldona,” said Colinas.
“And she’s with social services now. Ok
ay, so Rebecca Heilshorn goes home to her parents. After she has her child delivered by her father, she tells him everything. There are other women, too, who have gone to term with babies born of escort relationships with politicos – women unwilling to abort, who want to use the pregnancy as a way out. So Heilshorn starts delivering them in secret, using his money and influence to then shepherd them to good homes.”
Skene leveled them all with a look that could kill.
“If any of this is true, you realize we’re into the very deep end of the pool, here. Where this goes could be unbelievably huge.
“But back to the case at hand. Our prime suspect is dead. We can still prosecute, but it’s going to be a clusterfuck, I can tell you that right now. We need simplification. Juries don’t like complex denouements, if you catch my drift. This thing with the escort service, I think we’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg here. Whether or not Heilshorn was lying about this thing with the kids . . . being held as leverage or not, we’ve got some serious implications floating around here.”
Colinas regarded Skene. Despite the prosecutor’s efforts to steer things back on course, he seemed hot to get those hands on a government conspiracy. Elections were closer than ever, Colinas figured. Now only a month away.
“But anyway, for Forrester, we have motive, we have opportunity,” Skene said, sounding pleased. “And we have that video.”
“We have motive?” This was the first thing Sheriff Taber had said for a few minutes. Skene looked surprised. “I don’t think we’ve established that. Forrester makes this video, for what?”
“He’s a sicko,” said the prosecutor. “Who cares why?”
“The defense might.”
Now Skene truly did look wounded. He clearly wanted this wrapped up neat with a bow, and it wasn’t quite going down that way. “You’re not trying to do my job, are you, Sheriff?”
“He’s in the video, clearly. But why kill her? Forrester has Heilshorn in his pocket already – this well-to-do doctor has a prostitute daughter. But Heilshorn has Forrester pinned, too – he can blow the whistle any time. But he doesn’t because of these other children. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship in a sad, twisted way. Everything is working. Why kill the girl?”
Skene had no response. Taber walked around his desk and sat down, immediately picking up the phone. Colinas had to stifle a smile.
“Get me Robertson,” Taber said into the phone. Robertson was Taber’s head of the C.O.s at the County Jail. Robertson was probably a nervous wreck, Colinas figured, given what had just happened on his watch.
Sheriff Taber then looked up at Skene and Colinas.
“Maybe it wasn’t Forrester who committed the actual murder. We could have a Charles Manson-type here. Forrester may not have acted alone.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX / FRIDAY, 8:18 AM
The clouds had gathered but the birds were still chirping in the tamarack trees as a nurse wheeled Brendan out of the hospital.
Once clear of the entrance, Brendan took his legs out of the stirrups and stood up. The nurse folded up the chair and wished him well. Colinas pulled up in Brendan’s Camry a moment later. He insisted that he drive, and Brendan acquiesced.
They cruised along for a while in silence. Colinas kept stealing looks at Brendan.
“It’s worse than it looks,” Brendan said.
He was covered in bruises, one in particular around his neck – thumb and finger marks were visible as yellow-purple hematomas. There was a gash along one side of his head. His hand was in a bandage and his arm rested on a support. This was both to elevate the hand, but also to reduce pressure on his ribs and clavicle, which were bruised from the bullet wounds. These wounds were on the opposite side from his damaged hip which he favored while he sat, leaning a little to the right.
“You’re a fucking train wreck,” Colinas said.
The men laughed. It was short lived – the rapid breathing was painful. Brendan took a shallow breath, held it, and looked out the window.
“I had a lot of time to think in there.”
“I bet. Nice little paid vacation. What were you thinking about?”
“I was thinking that you gave me your blood.”
“Think nothing of it.”
“Thank you.”
Colinas smiled and looked embarrassed.
Brendan shifted, wincing, and then continued. “We still don’t know why Rebecca was murdered. Not exactly. So, I was also thinking about Kevin Heilshorn.”
“Let me hear it.”
“If Alexander Heilshorn was truly running this sort of underground railroad for these illegitimate children, that’s a little bit different than the idea that the Company – Titan – was holding the children and using them to leverage the women into continued work, a kind of indentured servitude.”
“Maybe it’s both.”
“Maybe. Probably. The depravity here knows no bounds, I’ll give you that. But either way, the idea that Kevin Heilshorn came after me to stop the investigation from potentially putting these children in harm’s way – I just can’t swallow that. Not any more than I thought he was afraid of having his own guilt revealed.”
“With your extensive injuries, you shouldn’t be swallowing anything that big.” Colinas winked.
Brendan gave a wan smile. He really liked Colinas.
The State Detective continued by asking, “So what do you think motivated him?”
“Not what, but who. I think he was after Olivia Jane.”
“Interesting.”
“Here’s what we know. Olivia Jane meets Rebecca at Cornell when she answers an ad to be her roommate. They have several classes together. Olivia Jane is two years her senior. She graduates, and she doesn’t go far. She settles here, and sets up practice. Rebecca’s senior capstone project is under the guidance of our late psychotic professor Reggie Forrester. But – she doesn’t finish.”
Brendan thought about how near he’d come to completing his PhD himself. It was a lot to walk away that close to the end. But it was also easy, like sabotage.
“Rebecca spirals down from there. She gets mixed up in the wrong crowd – I just don’t think it’s by accident. We know Forrester was involved with XList. I bet he recruited her. She tries to scramble away several times. She marries a driver she meets while working. He tries to turn her to the Lord, and it’s her way out. She even starts seeing a therapist. Her old college roommate.”
Colinas glanced over. He didn’t question it. He turned in the direction of the Sheriff’s Department.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN / FRIDAY, 4:12 PM
It took most of the day to convince the judge and obtain the warrant.
In the late afternoon light, Colinas and two deputies from Oneida County entered the home of Olivia Jane. She was nowhere to be found. Deputies were dispatched to find her and bring her in for questioning.
Delaney followed the State Detective and attending deputies into her house, and observed.
The men went through the therapist’s kitchen drawers with rubber gloves on. They found, in all, fourteen different kitchen knives. Of these, Colinas selected four to be checked first, for the DNA of the victim, Rebecca Heilshorn. The full work-up of the victim’s DNA had been prepared by Clark and his team and they were ready to compare anything with it.
Delaney stood with his arms folded, watching the search. He felt a distant, uninvited tug of fear. He had known Olivia for many years. He knew that she’d had trouble with the Heilshorn girl. He speculated that the Heilshorn girl had made some vague threats toward Olivia. He’d sensed that there was some rivalry over a boyfriend the therapist kept in secret. Delaney had never pried into the matter, and Jane was totally tight-lipped as it was. She’d done a little pillow talking, that was all. She’d asked that Delaney look into the Heilshorn girl, said that Olivia thought she could be a danger to herself or others. But it needed to be kept off the record.
The Heilshorn girl was hardly ever home, and after Delaney had dispatched deputies for a
week to drive by and check on things, nothing had come of it. Still, if Olivia was involved in the murder of Rebecca Heilshorn, he would be in deep shit. And it would even mean more trouble for the department.
This one was a mess. The whole thing could come down.
He had liked Colinas at first, but the young State Detective had shown a foolish loyalty to the rookie CI, Healy. Healy was OK in Delaney’s book at first, too, and had asserted himself, which Delaney generally approved of. But when his cocky downstate attitude had rubbed the senior investigator the wrong way, Delaney had revised his tacit endorsement of Healy. If Colinas was right, that Healy had at last found Rebecca’s killer, then that too would reflect poorly on Delaney.
Very poorly.
“I’ve got to find one other thing,” said Colinas, and disappeared into Olivia’s office in the back. Colinas spent some time looking through a file cabinet. Then he started fumbling around with a rolltop desk. He broke it open.
Delaney sighed. He chewed on his sunflower seeds and watched Colinas bag the evidentiary properties from the therapist’s office and kitchen. Delaney looked down at the seed casings stuck to his fingertips. They were messy, and not a good thing to bring along to a crime scene. He cut a glance at Colinas and considered if it would be worth just taking the guy out back and shooting him. Then he wiped the seed casings into the bag and wondered if it was time to retire instead.
* * *
Clark performed the DNA tests on the knives. Inanimate objects were easier to work with than tissues, which were a hodgepodge of other oils and chemicals. The results came back rather quickly. Rebecca Heilshorn’s DNA was on one of the knives in Olivia Jane’s kitchen.
Clark had heard about the video which showed Reginald Forrester having nonconsensual sex with the murder victim, and he felt, for a moment, professionally inadequate. There had been no physical evidence of rape, or serology to confirm a suspect. And a person with numerous sexual partners had traces of many of them, so DNA profiling was almost always a wash. Still, he felt like he had let the department down when he had examined Rebecca Heilshorn.
HABIT: a gripping detective thriller full of suspense Page 33
