Habit (31 page)

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE / MONDAY, 9:02 PM

There was a knock on the door.

It was so surprising that a breath escaped Brendan in a rush. He reacted instinctively by stepping away and doing a half-turn. He wanted to keep Forrester in his sights but be clear of the door. Who the hell was knocking?

“Come in,” said Forrester.

The door opened. Brendan took another step back and renewed his grip on his gun. He swung the barrel towards the door.

A man Brendan had never seen before stepped through. Brendan instantly associated the man with law enforcement, but not quite a cop. The man was older, about Forrester’s age, with trim gray hair, buzzed around the neck. There were pouches of skin beneath his rheumy eyes. He wore a zip-up jacket that looked like a
Member’s Only.
Jeans and plain black shoes beneath. He was carrying a small gym bag.

He turned his head and looked at Brendan.

“Relax,” said the new guy. His eyes fell on the gun Brendan wielded. “Put that thing down before you get somebody hurt.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m a private investigator. Let’s all settle down here, there’s a baby in the room, for chrissakes.”

Brendan kept his weapon up. A private investigator? He’d seen someone entering the parking lot in a vehicle some forty minutes ago. They had shut off their headlights, and then Brendan had waited by the front doors for a little while. Was he one of Heilshorn’s guys? That was the only reasonable explanation. Who else would know that Brendan was here?

“Come on,” said the P.I. “Lower that weapon before this gets any worse. Take a pill, kid. Relax.”

His eyes were dark brown and he stared at Brendan. He seemed unwilling to do anything besides stand in the doorway and glare until Brendan complied.

Brendan cut his eyes over to Forrester. The man was expressionless, watching the P.I. In his arms, the baby had fallen asleep at last.

“I asked you who you were,” said Brendan, keeping his voice low. “I’m Investigator Healy, with the Oneida County Sheriff’s Department. I’ll put down my weapon when I’m ready. Tell me who you are.”

“My name is Brown. That’s all you need to know, detective.”

“Do you work for Alexander Heilshorn?”

He seemed to consider this. His mouth curled down at the corners, and he shrugged.

Brendan looked at Forrester. The killer widened his eyes slightly. “These private eyes are a biddable bunch. Sorry, Brown, but it’s true.”

“You pay, I play.”

Brendan blinked. “You’re telling me that you were one of Heilshorn’s P.I.s, and you changed clients to this man because he pays better?”

“I was born rich to a poor family,” Brown said. “Ya know?”

A second later, Forrester made a move towards the other side of the room where the bassinet was. Brendan stiffened and brought the gun back around to aim at the killer. His neck and ears felt like they were filling with blood.

He heard a click, and saw that Brown had his own gun out, a Colt .45. He leveled it at Brendan’s head.

“I said to relax.”

Brendan swallowed. The situation was becoming unmanageable. He had no idea what to do.

Forrester placed the baby in the bassinet with a kind of practiced ease. He stood up and looked down, as if admiring his handiwork. Then he turned to the other two men in the room. “Let’s have that piece,” he said to Brendan. His own gun was still stuck into the backside of his pants.

Brendan felt a stitch of pain in his stomach as Brown took his .45 and aimed it at the infant in the bassinet.

Brendan cycled through the options. He could wage a shootout with two armed men here in the confined quarters of the lecture hall office, or he could play along. There was always hope that Colinas and other reinforcements would arrive in time. That was, of course, if Colinas ignored Brendan’s warnings to stay away.

That’s what I did
, thought Brendan. He had pressed on despite Heilshorn’s ardent entreaties to the contrary.

He had no choice. Brendan flipped his gun around and handed it to Brown, handle first.

As Brown took it, Brendan said, “That was you on the phone before. Not him. Your first name is Jerry.” Brendan had full recall now – Taber had talked about Heilshorn’s P.I. at the diner, the morning Brendan had first been asked to walk off the case. The P.I. described by Taber had been named Jerry Brown.

“Good for you,” the P.I. said.

“Why would you quit working for Doctor Heilshorn to work for this murderer?”

“Who says I quit working for Heilshorn?”

“You work for both of them?”

“Bingo. Did you graduate top of your academy, or what?”

“Healy here, is a scientist,” Forrester said.

“That’s right, that’s right. A brain doctor. Awfully slow for a brain doctor, wouldn’t you say?”

Brown set the bag on the oak desk. He unzipped it and then shoved Brendan’s firearm inside.

Simultaneously, Brendan slipped a hand into his pocket and felt around for his phone. Once he had it in his grasp, he thumbed on the power button. Then he eased his hand back out.

After Brown had secured the detective’s piece inside the bag, he pulled out a small shiny object. It was a small, compact camera. Brown handed it over to Forrester.

Forrester took the camera and looked down at it, turning it over in his hands as if it were some extraterrestrial object. Then he lifted it up and held it out towards Brendan. “From Rebecca’s dresser drawers,” he said.

Brendan instantly remembered. The drawers which had been pulled out haphazardly. The killer had grabbed this camera before he left.

Brendan swallowed.

He watched Forrester reach into the bag and take out a small cable. Then the large, mostly silver-haired man walked to the corner of the room where the flat screen TV was.

He fumbled for a few moments, muttering and cursing under his breath, and then stuck the USB end into the TV. He stepped back then, and glanced at Brendan. He pressed a button on the remote control and selected the input. A moment later, a large icon appeared on screen. The icon was titled “116.mov.”

“Technology just amazes me,” Forrester said. Then he cut a look over to Brown. “Move him closer.”

Brown shoved Brendan forward, forcing him to take steps towards the screen. After a few paces, Brown rammed a chair against the back of Brendan’s legs, making him sit down, hard. He was now only a few feet from the TV. Brown clamped his hand down on Brendan’s shoulder. He pressed the barrel of the .45 against Brendan’s right temple. At least it was no longer pointed at the baby.

Brendan’s stomach was on fire now, with lightning pains tearing through his guts.
Ulcer
, he thought. Of all things.

“This is for you, Detective,” Forrester said. His voice had taken on a dead quality, like someone speaking from beyond the grave, if such a thing were possible.

A moment later, Forrester was at Brendan’s side. He leaned down and whispered in the detective’s ear. The killer’s breath was hot, and smelled sour.

“I know how you love these videos.”

Brendan felt cold chills – his skin was crawling. The icon on the screen disappeared, and an image flashed on in its place.

* * *

Brendan was instantly familiar with what he was looking at. It was the Bloomingdale farm, and the sun was just coming up. Whoever was holding the camera was facing the front door, standing in the dirt patch where Kevin Heilshorn had fallen to his knees, weeping for his sister.

Brendan had looked at that door many times. Now he was looking at it through the eyes of a killer. Of that he was instantly sure.

Forrester stood behind him, watching along. Forrester had replaced Brown and was now holding onto both of Brendan’s shoulders, crouched close. On screen, the camera turned to look into the tractor shed for a moment. As it did, with the image darker, Brendan could see the reflection of the people in the room behind him. Forrester was a pale moon face looming over his shoulder. Brown stood just beyond, near the baby.

Then the image changed to the brighter colored house and the reflections disappeared. Brendan watched as the killer advanced towards the door. With a gloved hand, the killer reached out and opened it. He entered the house.

Brendan was now inside the Bloomingdale farmhouse, standing in the killer’s shoes. The camera turned to the right, looking into the kitchen, and then to the left, looking into the dark living room there. Finally, the camera faced straight ahead, and then tilted to look up the stairs at the walkway crossing the open story room.

Brendan knew the layout well. That was where Rebecca Heilshorn would walk from the shower to her bedroom, spotting the killer down below as she made the short trip.

But as the camera lingered on the upstairs hallway for a moment, Brendan did not see Rebecca Heilshorn yet.

By the timeline of the 911 distress call, it should be any moment. Brendan braced himself, his stomach in rolling painful knots as he prepared to see the murder victim alive and in her house moments before her death.

There was no date and time in the lower corner of the screen to indicate when the video had been taken, like there had been in the old camcorder days. Brendan realized that this didn’t have to be the morning of the murder. And a split second after he had this thought, Rebecca appeared in the hallway after all.

She took a few steps, coming from the direction of the bathroom and the unfinished master bedroom.

Brendan’s stomach clenched, exciting fresh bolts of pain. He held his breath as his eyes appraised her.

She was not in a bath towel. She was in a casual outfit – a pair of body-fitting pants, like yoga pants, and a loose hoodie.

She looked down the stairs, at the person holding the camera, right through the television screen and into Brendan’s eyes.

“Jesus, you scared me. What are you doing?”

Her voice was loud. The TV volume must have been cranked up. It was like she was in the room with them. Brendan began to squirm. Forrester’s grip tightened. His lips were close to Brendan’s ear. “Shh. Watch.”

“Did you find my poem?” This was the cameraman’s voice. It was unmistakably the voice of Reginald Forrester. He pinched Brendan’s shoulders as the TV version of him began to climb the stairs.

“No,” said Rebecca.

“You always liked it when I wrote to you.”

The young woman on the landing offered a grim smile, which faded quickly. The camera work was a little shaky as TV-Forrester ascended, but the image stayed mostly centered on Rebecca. Brendan could see that she looked wary, and tired. He’d always thought she was a pretty girl. Here she appeared older than she actually was, fatigued and worn. Brendan thought the killer was talking about the words he’d written across the back of the framed photos in the dining room. In particular, one photograph that showed Rebecca and Leah and Donald Kettering posing as a happy family. Probably Forrester hadn’t liked Kettering very much.

From Rebecca’s right came a baby’s cry. For a split second, Brendan thought it was the baby girl in the room with them. He started to look around, to see if she was alright, but Forrester gripped his shoulders. Between his injured leg, the churning rat teeth in his stomach and a blistering headache forming, Brendan was not in good shape. But that baby’s cries – on the video, yes, as he listened he was sure now – somehow made everything else muffled in comparison. He felt far away from himself, in limbo between the video playing in front of him and the room he was actually in.

Rebecca turned as the killer neared the top of the stairs. She looked behind her, and then wordlessly disappeared that way.

The cameraman-killer, Forrester, finished the climb and then turned after her. Brendan watched the image float down the hallway and into the master bedroom.

The baby girl was on the bed. He was sure that it was the same infant who was in the room with them now, maybe about a month younger. This put the time of the video at about two weeks before the murder, maybe less.

The child was too young to be able to move much on her own, even more helpless than now. Her legs kicked frantically and uselessly in the air. Rebecca was at her side an instant later, leaning down and scooping her up. She held the child close to her breast and shushed her. Then her eyes lifted to the cameraman and Brendan saw fear in them, and pain, and resignation.

Behind the camera, Forrester was cooing at the baby, too, as he neared. “Little piggy,” he called softly.

“Don’t call her that.”

“Oh, she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know.” His voice was sing-song, lilting, like a cartoon character. “Does she? Does she know anything about anything? Nooo.”

The unseen Forrester neared Rebecca and the child.

Seeing them together for the first time, Brendan was struck by the resemblance. The baby had Rebecca’s large, dark eyes. Her nose and lips reminded Brendan of someone else – Kevin Heilshorn. Her uncle. And there was another familiar quality about her, too, one which escaped him for the moment.

“Put her back down,” said Forrester. His voice had lost the playful quality and was firm and commanding.