Habit (19 page)

He supposed he would have some luck with that last question by talking to the deputy coroner. He called and found out that Heilshorn didn’t have any ostensible health conditions or sexually transmitted diseases. There were signs of a possible abortion, a birth, and certainly many sexual partners. The girl was being prepared for the arrival of her parents, and her subsequent identification by them. They would no doubt be pressing for arrangements for her funeral, and Clark, the coroner, was reluctant to give her up. With the investigation ongoing, she needed to stay in the morgue.

Brendan wondered about Rebecca’s phone call to the kid, Pert. If the teenager was to be believed, Rebecca had asked about a diaper sprayer. There was no biological indication that she was pregnant again, and three was a bit old for a child to still be in diapers, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t possible. Maybe little Leah was a late-bloomer.

Colinas knocked on the door, which was open.

“Come in.”

The State Detective, with the light brown skin, took a seat across from Brendan, where he had first sat two days before when he’d been inducted into the case.

“That was interesting,” said Colinas.

“It was.”

“Too bad we didn’t get anywhere.”

“We didn’t? There’s still all of the forensic data. Something may pop up.”

“You think that nineteen year-old kid did her in? Working for Kettering? He was desperate, jealous, and he has her taken care of? ‘If I can’t have her, nobody can have her?’ ”

Brendan leaned back in his chair. He had a pen in his hand and tapped it against his lip. Then he stuck it in his mouth. Maybe he could fool himself into believing it was a cigarette. “I don’t know.”

“I’ve got a theory,” said Colinas, sitting up straighter.

“Let’s hear it.”

“Kettering sees the girl in the porn video. He does his thing, you know, rubs one out, and then a few months later, holy shit, she’s standing there in his store.”

“That’s Skene’s inclination, too. But there’s a caveat; she doesn’t have the house yet.”

“Hmm. There is that.” Colinas furrowed his brow. “So Kettering’s description of how they met is bullshit?”

“I think so. I bet he saw her on the street. From afar. Something. And he worked his way into her life. Eventually he convinced her to have him help her make improvements on the house, and all of that.”

“But that still doesn’t make him our killer.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Brendan agreed, and sighed. “Just a guy caught in a very embarrassing situation.”

“Well, bear with me. She’s preggo at first, so she’s sort of out of the game. But, then, a couple months go by, the kid is born, and maybe she gets back into it. Kettering doesn’t like it now. Or, maybe he does. Maybe he wants to make his own videos . . .” Colinas trailed off. His inspiration faded. “Fuck. I don’t know. It feels like a dead end.”

Brendan smiled. “That’s your theory?”

Colinas looked wounded.

“Here’s something interesting. You remember what Kettering said about the church he goes to? Resurrection Life Church. Same as the one Eddie Stemp goes to.”

Colinas was nodding. “That’s right. That’s right.”

“How many of these churches are there in the area?”

“I’ll find out. Probably not many. May even only be the one.”

“Well, if it’s only the one, then we ought to have that second look at Stemp sooner than later.”

Colinas shot Brendan a look. Brendan amended, “Maybe
you
should have that look at Stemp again.”

Colinas started to get up. “What are you gonna do? What else is there with the porn thing?”

“Where did you get to with Rebecca’s Cornell records? Her roommates?”

“Uhm, we tracked down one, thanks to the Sheriff’s connection through Mark Overton.”

“Did you talk to her?”

Colinas turned to face Brendan directly, but he seemed to evade direct eye contact. Brendan frowned. “What is it?”

“Look, this whole thing, you know? Normally the State Police would take Rebecca’s homicide, but your Sheriff’s Department was first on scene, and I guess Delaney really made some noise to get it.”

“Colinas, what are you talking about?”

“I mean, so, we’re here to help, you know? But the thing with Kevin, that’s separate.”

“I know that. I don’t understand what …”

“I talked to my Detective Sergeant. This stuff, one case spills into the other. We’ve got to be careful. I knew this would come up when I found out about the roommate, so I asked. I can tell you – I’m compelled to tell you – but you’re not going to like it.”

“Spit it out, Rudy, Jesus. What did the roommate say?”

“I asked her the usual stuff. How Rebecca was as a student, a roommate, if she was heavy into partying, that sort of thing. It was pretty brief.”

“What did you get?”

“You know, not much. Rebecca was quiet, kept to herself, studious. No reason or explanation for dropping out so close to the end.”

“Did they stay in touch?”

“Uhm, the roommate was sort of vague. Said they bonded a little over some shopping and shared classes, but that was about it.”

“Well,” said Brendan, “I’ll have a few more questions for her, given what we’ve found since then.”

“Totally,” said Colinas.

“Can you give me her name, number, address?”

“This is the part you’re not going to like. Gimme a minute.”

Brendan felt the hairs rising along the nape of his neck. He watched Colinas leave and waited until he came back a minute later with a file. He dropped it on Brendan’s desk.

“There you go.”

Brendan opened it up and read the information on the first page.

It read: Olivia Jane, 6223 Route 365, Barneveld, NY.

“What the hell is this?”

Brendan stood looking at the file. His lips suddenly felt numb.

Colinas sighed. “That’s her roommate, sophomore year. Roommate was a senior. They shared a little house together.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before? Why did she say anything? My God.” Brendan rubbed his jaw. His whole body felt raw, scrubbed with gooseflesh.

“Like I said, it’s two separate cases cross-pollinating. I don’t know why she didn’t offer this earlier. We asked, of course, but she had a lawyer there, and the lawyer was worm-tonguing in her ear the whole time. So, you know, like I said, we asked her the standard questions. She said it was a long time ago. Rebecca was quiet, pretty normal, decent grades…” Colinas shrugged. At last he met Brendan’s gaze. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, right”

“What do you mean by that?”

Brendan jabbed the file with a finger. He felt betrayed, livid. “Colinas, this is the woman who served as our grief counselor for Kevin Heilshorn. She went to school with his sister, Rebecca? For chrissakes, Delaney was the one who referred her. This is a mess.”

Colinas looked hurt. “I’m trying to help you out, buddy, best as I can. Yeah, it’s a jurisdictional clusterfuck, and this shit with the family, roommates, it gets messy. And when I met with Olivia Jane and her lawyer, another State Detective was with me. We couldn’t push her on the issue about not coming forward sooner, because that’s your case. The case we were working with Olivia Jane? The shooting of Kevin Heilshorn. And you’re the shooter in that case. So you can see the position I’m in.”

Brendan quickly grabbed up his stuff and left the office.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE / SUNDAY, 5:48 PM

He tried to drive at a reasonable speed, but couldn’t. He flew along the highway. He blew through traffic lights. Within minutes he was at Olivia Jane’s house. Her car was not in the driveway. He parked and went to the porch. The front door was locked. He walked around to the back of the house, trying to get his nerves under control. He didn’t let himself look at the garden, to where Kevin Heilshorn had fallen, gunned down by Brendan’s own hand.

Kevin knew her, after all
, he thought.

Olivia would be in a lot of trouble. She had withheld vital information. If she had been roommates with the victim, Rebecca, she would very likely have known about Rebecca’s brother. It wasn’t clear why she wouldn’t have disclosed that information, but Brendan felt sure it had been a conscious act, nothing she had simply “failed to mention.”

It seemed like a virus. First Kettering and now Olivia who weren’t showing all of their cards. He wondered if it was something Investigators encountered a lot. He felt a twinge of embarrassment, but he couldn’t say why. Had he missed something due to his inexperience? Had he screwed up the very thing he was hired to do – to use his “good instincts” questioning persons of interest, getting information from them?

He found the back door unlocked and let himself into the house. It was quiet and cool inside and smelled of cleaning products.

He did a cursory check of the main part of the house, going through the kitchen, dining room and living room, not quite sure what he was looking for, just trying to calm down. He found some framed pictures on a bookcase. She liked to travel. Here was a picture of a younger Olivia standing alone on the Brooklyn Bridge with the World Trade Center in the background. Here was Olivia in an athletic outfit on top of some mountain or other, her arm around a woman who looked a bit like her. Her sister maybe. Brendan recalled some of their dinner conversation, but despite some basics, he realized he still didn’t know much about Olivia’s background.

He supposed she didn’t know much about his, either.

In another picture, she was dressed up, sitting at a table at some function or banquet, smiling along with four other people also dressed handsomely. There was one smaller frame, only three-by-five, showing Olivia holding a small baby in her arms, possibly a niece or a nephew. Then there were several photos elsewhere in the living room with pictures of people he didn’t recognize.

At the back of the living room was the door to her office. He went to it and found it locked. He left it for now. He backtracked to the rear entrance where the stairs led up. He ascended to a short hallway which fed into a bathroom and two bedrooms. One of the bedrooms was a den, with a small settee by a window which overlooked the garden and the roof of her office below. The office was maybe an add-on to the original house, he thought, given this view of the design. There were more books here and some pictures on the wall. Most were scenic views. There was only one with people, and again he didn’t recognize the faces.

He left the den and walked back down the hallway, and turned into the bathroom. One thing he remembered from Argon was that you found out the most about people from their bathrooms and their bedrooms. The living rooms were where people kept up appearances. The kitchens were usually just functional, the dining areas formal. In bathrooms you had the medicine cabinet, the products and appliances. Were they terribly vain and high maintenance, or was there just a toothbrush in a cup? Were they home a lot, or very little? Were the towels clean and packed away in a closet, or damp and on the floor? Olivia was somewhere in between. The bathroom was used regularly and she had a hair-straightening iron and the requisite conditioners and lotions. He felt a little bit guilty going through her stuff, but reminded himself that she had withheld critical information. Still, the right thing to do would have been to go into the Sheriff’s office and meet with Taber and Delaney about it, and go from there. Maybe get a warrant.

But on what grounds? Because she had told one investigator, but not another, that she had once been a roommate of the deceased? No judge would go for that. No, it was better this way. Maybe emotionally-driven – he had to concede that to his own analysis of the situation – but better.

There was nothing overtly incriminating in the medicine cabinet. Just Aspirin, vitamins, and plenty of lotion.

He found one bottle which seemed out of place. It was children’s Tylenol. For infants.

He considered it, turning it around in his hands. Maybe she was averse to strong medicine. Many people took baby aspirin, for instance. Or, maybe she had another reason.

He put everything back the way it was and left the bathroom and was heading to the bedroom, when he heard a car pull up in the driveway.

* * *

He expected her to be irate. To be indignant about his presence in her home. Even to threaten to call his superiors. It seemed like something she would do, from what he’d come to know of her.

Instead, however, she met him in the living room as she came in the front door, and her eyes only widened for a second. She took off her shoulder bag and set it down on the dining room table. Her gaze fell away from him, and she started towards the kitchen.

He watched as she got down a drinking glass, poured in some ice cubes from the ice machine in the fridge, and then filled the glass with water from the tap. She took a long drink, and then looked at him again.

“Hello, Detective Healy.”

He said nothing. She left the kitchen and returned to the dining room table where she set down her water and removed the light jacket she was wearing. Then she bent and took her shoes off and stuck them by the front door, only a few feet from the window which Kevin Heilshorn’s bullets had smashed through, nearly killing them both.

Brendan could feel his anger rising again.

He stood there in the space between the kitchen, dining area, and living room and watched as she crossed in front of him, sipping her water, and sat on the couch.

“Come on and sit down. I’m guessing this isn’t a social call.”

He strode over towards her but didn’t sit. He could feel himself fuming.

“What the fuck is the matter with you?”

She blinked at him. She didn’t affect surprise or offense at his language. Her expression only conveyed curiosity, perhaps even concern. It infuriated him.

“I guess you’re here because you found out I knew Rebecca Heilshorn.”

“Yes,” he said. He clenched his teeth. “That’s why I’m here.”

“You seem very angry.”

He cocked his head. “Oh yeah?”

“Yes.”

“And why do you think I would be very angry? Huh? Would it have something to do with the fact that you have kept this information from me?”

“Detective . . . Brendan, please sit.”

“I don’t want to sit.”

“I think it would help you be . . . less angry.”

“I don’t want to be less angry.”

“Ah,” she said. She took another sip of her water and then set the glass on the coffee table. She folded her hands on her lap and crossed her legs. She was wearing jeans and a hooded sweatshirt. She hadn’t come inside with any shopping bags.

“Where have you been?”

“That’s really none of your business.”

That was it. He couldn’t take it any longer. He thought of Donald Kettering’s bright red face. He supposed his face was as red now, but he couldn’t help it. He yelled at her. “Yes it
is
my fucking business, Olivia. Yes it is. So is knowing that you were roommates at Cornell with the victim in a major homicide case. That you knew the man who tried to shoot and kill me. The man who I had to fucking shoot
dead
.”

He was taking huge breaths now. He clenched his fist. He wanted to smash something. A preposterous thought occurred to him, a memory of childhood, of watching an old TV show.
Hulk smash
. It almost made him start laughing. But if he started laughing, he might not stop.

“Brendan, please. Slow your breathing. In five minutes you won’t be so distressed.”

“I won’t?”

He remained standing. His muscles were tensed. His stomach throbbed. He felt ready to kill. Not Olivia, but something, someone.

He saw the victim’s eyes looking back at him in the bedroom mirror.

“No, I promise you. But, fine, stay standing. Whatever makes you . . . Whatever you want.”

She uncrossed her legs and leaned forward, elbows on knees. She seemed to be waiting for him to get himself under control.

It took a moment, but he could feel his pulse rate slowing, and he breathed more shallowly and gradually.

“I want you to consider the following with a clear head. Can you do that? I’m not going to try to convince you of anything. I am just going to give you the facts. Okay?”

He waited.

“Okay. I have known Investigator Delaney for several years. I told you I know more people around here than you. I met him when I began offering services in grief counseling. Frankly, he used to hit on me. But, we’re past all that. So, he called on me when this all happened. You then brought Kevin to me. I attempted to do my job, which was to help him with the extremely fresh, extremely recent tragedy.”

“Did you know him?”

“I’d never met Kevin before Thursday.”

He opened his mouth to ask her another question, but she cut him off.

“Please just hear me out. I’ll answer your questions as best as I can as soon as I’m finished. And yes, I can see by your face that you’re irritated with the fact that I’m not able to tell you everything you want to hear, as soon as you want to hear it, but that is the nature of things. You’ll see why.”

She took a breath. “Rebecca and I were roommates for one year. That you now know. Let’s just stay with that fact for a moment. You’re upset because I didn’t tell you. After you and I met, when you dropped off Kevin with me, we arranged to discuss that meeting. You wanted to know whether or not I thought he was guilty. But that’s not my field. I could only tell you about his state of mind, and he was indeed grief-stricken and addled. When we met here, that afternoon, I planned to share with you that I had known the victim, that I went to school with Rebecca. But we were interrupted.”

“That’s one way to put it.”

“Yes, that is one way to put it. As you know, that interruption led to a whole new chain of events. You and I were separated at the Department. I gave my statement, and then I left.”

“You got in your car and drove away from me.”

“I was instructed not to discuss anything with you, since you had done the shooting. I was told that if I did, I could be interfering with the internal investigation which necessarily follows an incident like the one with you and Kevin. The next day I was approached by the State Detectives. Colinas sought to question me about my relationship with Rebecca, which he had learned about from college records. At the same time, Detective Ritnowar was working the case on you and the shooting. Naturally, I called my lawyer before speaking with them. Not that I have anything to hide. But the matter seemed to grow quickly complicated, and I needed to be careful about anything I said. And then I was informed that you had been removed from the case. At that point, I mean, there was nothing I could say to you.”

“Why? Why all of this . . . slinking around? I don’t understand.”

“For one, Brendan, it’s because confidentiality extends beyond death.”

She fell silent, allowing this to sink in. It took him only a moment.

“Rebecca was your
patient
?”

“My client. Yes.”

He felt the anger returning. “And you didn’t feel compelled to share that
either?”

“Emotionally, yes, I did. But professionally, in fact, I am not compelled. My patients are confidential, and their sessions with me confidential, and remain so, even after death.”

“Jesus Christ,” said Brendan. He at last broke out of his vigilant stance and started pacing back and forth. He ran a hand over his face. “And have you been served a warrant?”

“Right now the State Detectives are seeking a warrant to review records of any medical history involving Rebecca, as she was under my care. But Rebecca was never institutionalized, never sent to any hospital. So, they won’t find much. My personal session notes are another story.”

“This just makes no sense to me. This is a
murder investigation
, Olivia. What if your notes are able to reveal the identity of the killer? What if one look at them cracks this whole thing wide open?”

She said nothing. She watched him pace.

“It makes no sense,” he repeated. “I can understand that while a person is living they want things to be kept confidential. But she’s dead. She would want to have her killer found, don’t you think?”

Again, Olivia said nothing, and Brendan found himself remembering something he had told Colinas.

She protected her killer to protect her child.

A second later he thought:
I was born under the black smoke of September.