Habit (3 page)

Those same eyes of the kid now welled with tears. “She’s my sister,” he said. “She’s my older sister.” The tears spilled, cleaving fresh, clean tracks down his dirty face. His lower lip trembled.

They were sitting back in the grass, halfway between the house and the road. Kevin Heilshorn was on his rear end, facing the house. Brendan had arranged them this way.

Brendan crouched in front of him, but not blocking that view. He observed the kid carefully. He noted where the kid looked: mostly at the house, and occasionally over to the shed.

“So,” Brendan proceeded cautiously, “If you didn’t get a call from anyone . . .”

“I was on my way here to see Rebecca,” Kevin said abruptly. “No. Nobody called me. We had a ten o’clock meeting.”

A meeting
, thought Brendan. It was an interesting way of describing a visit to a family member living out in a country farmhouse.

Brendan glanced around. Delaney had gone back inside. Brendan had assured the senior investigator that he would be able to take care of this newcomer on the scene. It was, he reminded Delaney, what he was here to do. Delaney didn’t like talking to people, and never questioned the witnesses. Delaney supposedly was a good cop and excellent investigator, but he was a little bit prima donna, Brendan thought, and seemed to think he was above talking to witnesses or bystanders.

Brendan thought that the unspoken truth was that Delaney had never had any training in proper interview techniques. He was old school, from the era when detectives mostly used intimidation to get information out of people.

“Okay,” said Brendan. He decided it was time to get out his notebook. Usually he tried to keep the notebook out of any sort of questioning or interview, because it put a distance between him and the person he was talking to. They might feel reduced to a series of quotes, or he might miss something their body language told him. He didn’t need to jot down the word “meeting,” but he made a note to check the shed.

He proceeded with a few standard questions. The kid was twenty-five, and the motorcycle was registered in his name. He was close in age to the victim – only two and a half years separating them. His address was Scarsdale, New York.

“Did you drive the bike all the way up? That’s a long haul. You couldn’t have; not this morning.”

“No, not this morning. I stayed in a hotel last night.”

“You stayed in a hotel? Where?”

“In Remsen.”

Brendan looked off down the road, Route 12. Remsen was five miles south. He looked back at Kevin, whose eyes remained fixed on the house. “You didn’t just come straight here? Why stay in a motel?”

Kevin shrugged. Brendan thought he wasn’t going to say anymore, when the kid added, “Our meeting wasn’t until nine.”

“What was your meeting about?”

Kevin closed his eyes. He reached up, and wiped his dirty leather sleeve across his face, smearing tears and dirt. Then he took his fingers and pressed them to the closed lids of his eyes. He sniffled. “It was just a meeting,” he said. “We had some stuff to go over.”

“Like what?”

He pulled his hands away and his eyes popped open. He gave Brendan a hard look. “Like personal stuff, okay? Private stuff.”

“Okay,” said Brendan softly. “But when you say ‘meeting,’ it makes me think business.”

“Well, that’s how it is. You wouldn’t understand, man. I can’t . . . fuck.” He closed his eyes tight and started to cry.

“I want to understand. Can you help me understand?”

Kevin covered his face in his arms and shook his head.

Brendan was considering whether to let the point go or give it a second and keep pressing, when a vehicle on Route 12 slowed and turned down the driveway, crunching the dirt and small stones. It was a black SUV. The on-call mortuary service.

Kevin lifted his head and opened his eyes. “Is that them?” he said standing up.

Brendan stood up too. They watched as the vehicle parked and a man and woman got out. They opened the back doors and unloaded a stretcher.

Kevin abruptly started walking towards the house. “I’m going to see her now. I’m going to see my sister.”

CHAPTER FOUR / THURSDAY, 10:13 AM

State Troopers had arrived, along with more deputies from the next county, St. Lawrence. They had briefly organized and then spread out, heading off in all directions. Healy saw two troopers cutting a path through the corn, across the road where the farmer had been shooting an interloping rodent. It was almost ten o’clock. Healy doubted they would find anything, but it couldn’t be known whether the killer was hiding in the fields, or even on the premises. He could be in that big barn out back, or in that shed with the wide door, tucked away in the dark, waiting them out.

The body of the young woman was brought out the front door. She had been zipped in a black bag. Healy stood next to the young man in the motorcycle jacket, Kevin. The man and woman from the mortuary service gently lifted the stretcher over the threshold and the step, into the dooryard. The black-bagged body wobbled a little.

Kevin Heilshorn reached out, perhaps to touch the body, or to unzip it, and Brendan took hold of his arm gingerly, but firmly. Kevin relented. They walked alongside the gurney as it was trucked over to the SUV hearse.

“Where does she go now?” The young man’s voice sounded choked.

“She’ll go to the morgue,” said Brendan. “She’ll be looked after; she’ll be fine.”

“Are they going to . . . cut her open? Do all that stuff?” His voice broke on the last word, and he sobbed as he walked, swaying a little.

“No. There’s no reason for that. She’ll be examined. They’ll want to take a close look at her wounds. See if she has any . . . other signs that can help us.”
A serology check
.
Blood from her killer. Semen.
Detective Healy didn’t say these things.

Stanley Clark, the coroner, came out of the house. As the man and woman loaded the body into the vehicle, Clark approached. Brendan kept an eye on Kevin, but stepped away to have a private word with Clark. Delaney had left the scene a few minutes before, coordinating the area search with the state police and two groups of deputies.

Brendan raised his eyebrows, and Clark gave a brief report. “She has thirteen stab wounds. She has some petechial papules around her mouth and eyes. This could mean she was held down by her throat, and there was some strangulation. Or, it could be some type of pre-existing vasculitis. I won’t know until I can perform the autopsy.”

Brendan made a clucking sound with his tongue. In a low voice head said, “I just told her brother that wouldn’t be necessary.”

Clark looked at Brendan impassively. He seemed to regard the detective like some other life-form, one unfamiliar with indigenous customs. “Why would you do that?”

“I was trying to comfort him.”

The body was loaded into the hearse and the doors were closed. The man paused to offer condolences to Kevin, who himself looked like someone adrift in a foreign land. Brendan and Clark both looked at the young man, who was out of earshot. Still, they kept their voices low.

Clark asked Healy: “Is he going to call the rest of the family?”

“I’ll help him do it.” Brendan cut his eyes back to Clark. “What do you think happened in there?”

Clark looked grim. “I think she was forced into the bed. There are also signs of blunt trauma to the head and left shoulder. She was stabbed repeatedly and succumbed. She’s dead.”

“Thank you.”

Clark offered a bird-like nod and swiftly moved away.

Brendan stood for a moment. He had called the District Attorney’s office back. He had delegated two deputies to locate the next door neighbors and ferret out any witnesses, a car coming or going, strange noises, screams, anything. It was quiet out here in the country, Brendan thought, you could hear someone crack an egg a mile away when there was no traffic on the road. Route 12 was not a major artery, but nor was it a back road. A fair amount of vehicles had passed since he’d arrived on the scene, many of them slowing to get a look at the activity.

Much of his to-do list would need to be delegated or accomplished back at the station. Finding out who owned the house, if not the victim, establishing a timeline, collating all the information he now had, and consulting with Clark once he had done his examination. He needed to check the victim’s phone, and look into all calls from within the past 24 hours, starting this morning and working his way back. Maybe even further back, if need be.

First, though, there were things left to do on the scene. Brendan decided that Kevin Heilshorn shouldn’t be left alone for the time being. Kevin could also furnish Brendan with more information – whether his sister had a boyfriend, who her friends were, and above all, who else may have been invited to this “meeting,” that Kevin spoke of.

However, one thing immediately didn’t wash about the meeting. The victim herself had called 911 and reported an intruder. If she had been expecting her brother, it would stand to reason that hearing a noise downstairs wouldn’t have caused her emergency call. She must’ve seen who’d entered the house, and either didn’t recognize him, or didn’t want him there.

Brendan’s hunch suggested the latter. He couldn’t swallow the idea of a robbery, right off the bat. For one thing, the way those drawers were arranged. Still, he needed to ascertain what, if anything, had been stolen.

And there was Bostrom to talk to. Delaney had been brusque with Bostrom, but Brendan wanted to know every detail about the deputy’s arrival on scene and his actions step-by-step.

And finally, Brendan needed to venture back upstairs to the core scene, and see where the CSI unit was at, and what else they may have turned up.

Delaney, it seemed, had cut him loose. Brendan felt that sense of unease returning. Not because the senior investigator had basically left him on his own, but for reasons he wasn’t quite sure of yet.

He watched the mortuary service do a three-point turn in the driveway, and then head off down the driveway. Clark followed them in his sedan. The two vehicles turned on to Route 12 and headed south, towards Remsen.

Kevin Heilshorn stood in the settling dust. Deputy Bostrom had remained at the house, as per Brendan’s instructions. He was off in the sprawling front yard, talking on his cell phone and pacing. Brendan felt that the scuffle with Kevin had unnerved the deputy. That or the fact Brendan had asked him to stay behind and not join the area search.

At last, Brendan looked up at the sky. He didn’t think the area search would yield anything significant. The killer, he now felt certain, was long gone.

Brendan twisted his neck and his eyes fell on the bedroom windows where the victim had been found. The killer had made quick work of her. He’d entered the house, which was either open, or maybe he had a key. Rebecca Heilshorn had been getting out of the shower. He imagined her toweling her hair, another towel wrapped around her torso. She’d started down the hallway back to the bedroom where she’d get dressed and ready for this meeting with her brother. Along the way, she hears someone downstairs. The railing along the hallway overlooked the front door. Anyone standing there would be in plain view. So she gets an eyeful, and then runs to the bedroom where she dials 911.

Brendan glanced at Kevin, and then at Bostrom. Bostrom was preoccupied. Kevin was looking around, apparently in a bit of a fugue. Brendan hurried over to the young man.

“I need you to stay here, okay? Can you do that? I need to talk to you some more.”

“Okay,” said the young man in a dolorous tone.

“Okay,” echoed Brendan. “Where will you be?”

“Right here,” said Kevin.

Brendan lingered a moment. He needed to run inside. So he left Kevin there. He jogged towards the house again. On his way, he whistled. Bostrom looked over. Brendan pointed two fingers at his eyes and then pointed them back at Kevin Heilshorn.
Watch him.
Bostrom nodded, and lifted a hand in the air. Brendan sprang in through the front door of the house.

* * *

Upstairs, he found the CSI unit still working the room. He nodded at them and then took a look at what he’d come back up to see.

The doors in the house were old farmhouse doors, the kinds that didn’t have locks. Brendan examined the door. He put on a pair of latex gloves and then ran his hands up and down the side of the door, and then the face of it. He could feel impressions towards the base. Brendan looked closely and saw what appeared to be a little black smudge. Where it had been kicked.

He then leaned around the door and looked behind it. There was an end table there which looked like it belonged next to the bed, instead of where it had ended up, sitting at an angle. The floors were hard wood. This would make it challenging for the forensics team to lift any hairs or fabric, but they provided clarity for something else. There were whitish scrape marks under the end table.

This was because the end table had been used by the victim to try to block the door, Brendan thought.

He looked up at the man named Patnode, who had been taking pictures of the room earlier. He was now dusting for latent fingerprints.

“Did you get the door?”

Patnode looked around and saw Brendan, who was down on his knees at the entrance to the bedroom. Brendan pointed around to the outside of the door.

“It’s been kicked in. Get pictures, and let’s see if we can lift this shoe scuff, an imprint in the paint, something.”

* * *

The killer had come up the stairs. He had gotten to the top and then strode down the hallway towards the bedroom. He found the door blockaded, and he’d pushed and he’d kicked. It wouldn’t have taken much – the end table likely only weighed thirty or forty pounds. After the initial kick, the killer had probably seen that the door gave easily enough. So he’d pushed it the rest of the way.

“And fingerprints.”

“Yes,” said Patnode. “I was getting to the doorknob next.”

“The door was open when you arrived,” said Brendan, “but it wasn’t when the killer did.” All three of the CSI looked at the young detective, and understood.

When the killer reached the girl wrapped in her towels, she was still damp from the shower. Rebecca Heilshorn likely struggled with him at the foot of the bed, and then he pushed her onto it. She scrambled back, trying to get away from him. She had been partially under the covers when they’d found her, and so she’d flailed, she’d probably kicked; she’d worked her way under the duvet.

Then the killer had pounced. He’d climbed on top of her with the murder weapon and pinned her with one hand. What did he want? Just to destroy her? Did he try to get her to do something – agree to something? Many cases like this involved a disgruntled boyfriend, or ex-husband, a rejected lover. When they couldn’t get what they wanted, they eradicated the source of their anger or pain. When this woman didn’t satisfy what was asked of her, she paid for it with multiple stab wounds, and perhaps strangulation.

Brendan’s unease continued to grow. It wasn’t the same apprehension of coming across his first murder crime scene as it had been an hour ago – it was shaping up to be this different thing, this different sort of feeling. Like he was missing something vital, standing right next to it, and not seeing it.

He turned and walked out of the room as the CSI began to work the door in earnest.

Brendan ran down the stairs.

He walked briskly into the kitchen, his eyes roving, his head turning back and forth. Within seconds, he found the sheath of knives.

There were ten slots in the sheath. Six slots were filled with a knife. Four others were not.

Still with his gloves on, he started going through drawers. He went through the dishwasher, too (a Maytag, he saw, recently installed) and finally through the dirty dishes in the sink. Each knife he found, he set down on a butcher’s block in the center of the room.

The kitchen was old-fashioned and farmhouse-traditional, save for the new dishwasher. The floor was red tile. There was a window over the sink that looked out to the shed with the big dark entrance. To his right was a rudimentary wooden booth built into the wall, bench seats on either side. Then there was a doorway, with no door, to a pantry. This was a small room that took up part of the floor plan of the kitchen, as if added in at some point. Behind him on the other side of the room, more cabinets and a long counter. To his left, an antique hutch with glass doors on top, housing what may have been hand-me-down china. A doorway beside the hutch led to the next room. It was dark, the light not penetrating this far back in a house with southern exposure to its front. Still, the dining room table and chairs were visible. More cabinetry with glass fronts containing dishware, candelabras, and other knickknacks.

He found knife after knife and set them all out, some splattered with food, some still wet from the dishwasher, some dry and dull from a lack of polish, sitting dusty in the drawers. He found mouse turds in one of the drawers.

As he laid the knives out – twelve now – he found himself marveling at how Delaney had left him to this. Finding a murder weapon was priority one. Though since it wasn’t a gun, had Delaney deprioritized it? Had he expected – despite the fact that his list of instructions hadn’t included searching for a weapon – that Brendan would get to it quickly anyway? Some things about the older detective just didn’t make a lot of sense, but Brendan chalked most of it to the quirkiness/arrogance that came with seniority. Still, senior investigators were rarely sloppy. That’s why they were still around.