Habit (4 page)

Twelve sharp knives and he could find no more. He found that several of them were similar in appearance. They had the insignia of Royal Norfolk Cutlery etched in their steel blades. A heraldic lion pawed the air next to the name. There were four of these. Four knives and four slots. He slipped the knives in the sheath and stepped back. He heard someone behind him.

It was Delaney.

“How’s it going?” The big man darkened the doorway to the kitchen.

“Good,” said Brendan. The excitement of the knife hunt was dissipating.

“You get to talk to the Heilshorn kid further?”

“A little, sir.”

“What are you doing?”

“Checking to see if the murder weapon could have come from this collection of knives,” said Brendan. It was hard not to mask some bit of disappointment he felt.

Delaney walked over at a leisurely pace. He stopped a foot away from Brendan, facing him. Brendan could smell the outside air on the man, and a trace of aftershave. Delaney reached past Brendan and pulled out one of the knives. He wasn’t wearing gloves. “They can clear my prints,” he said absently. He held the knife, resting the blade on one palm and pinching the handle between the thumb and forefinger of his other hand. He rolled it over. He grunted to himself.

“So you think a missing knife could be our murder weapon?”

Brendan nodded. “Maybe. But this one set is all accounted for.”

Delaney raised his considerable eyebrows and looked over the blade of the knife he held up to his face. “You think we’ll find a knife with a print on it. Run the print in the database, match it with a felon, and go pick him up.”

“Could be.”

Delaney nodded, slid the knife back into the sheath and stuck out his lower lip. Then he walked to the sink and turned on the water. He splashed some on his face. “Christ it’s hot out there,” he said.

He turned and started walking out of the kitchen. “Go finish with the motorcycle rider. I’ll have CSI come down and bag that whole assortment of knives. They’re moving into the rest of the house. A K9 unit is en route.”

Delaney walked out of the room.

Brendan paused, and then pressed his palms to the wooden butcher’s block, and leaned forward. He let his head hang. He took a breath.

Then he resumed walking around the kitchen. He stopped and looked at the refrigerator. It was an unusual red color, not quite matching the floor. It was an older model – the handles were chipped, the color dull in places on the face. There were a few magnets on the surface. One was a tiny lobster. One was the flat, thin kind, from a hardware store. There were no notes, no drawings or photos.

Brendan stood looking at the half dozen magnets. A thought occurred to him and he turned and walked away from the fridge. He passed the butcher’s block, glancing at the array of knives he’d unearthed. Then he walked into the shadowy dining room adjoining the kitchen.

CHAPTER FIVE / THURSDAY, 10:35 AM

Brendan wanted to keep close to the K9 unit, but first he wanted to examine the rest of the house himself. He smiled at the two women from the CSI unit, Alicia and Dominique, as he passed them on the stairs.

In the bathroom, he went through the medicine cabinet. He found prescription bottles for Xanax and Klonopin, and a generic menstrual cramp reliever. He left them on the small shelf.

The bathroom appeared undisturbed. The translucent plastic curtain was pushed back, from Rebecca Heilshorn’s last shower. The tub was the kind which sat up on feet – the curled paws of some animal, making Brendan think of the heraldic lion on the knife blades. The sink had a rust stain beneath the old fashioned faucet. The rubber drain plug was mildewed. A bar of hand soap sat in a dish. There was a toilet with a chain flush, and a small wicker laundry hamper. Brendan lifted the lid. There were only a few articles of
clothing – maybe what the victim had on before her shower. He reached in with his gloved hand and found a pair of yoga pants, a t-shirt which read “Born Lucky – Lucky Jeans,” some ankle socks, a pair of underwear, and what may have been the outfit from the day before – jeans, a white blouse with a frilly open collar, and another set of socks and underwear. Either Rebecca had been a very tidy housekeeper who did laundry daily, or she had just arrived at the house.

Brendan made a note in his pad to ask about a housekeeper or caretaker. The house certainly didn’t feel lived in. The bedroom and kitchen were the only places with signs of life. The bathroom was well-kempt. There were no stray hairs or soap scum. Nothing, in fact, anywhere in the house seemed to have much dust on it.

He left the bathroom. There was a linen closet on his right, the next door down. The careful arrangement of clean towels and bedding also suggested a very tidy person or help with the housekeeping.

The door at the end of the hallway led to another bedroom. It was nearly twice the size of the bedroom where the victim had been discovered. Bright light shone around the edges of the drawn blinds – fabric blinds that were of a dark, blood-red. The room was much darker than the victim’s bedroom. Those blinds, Brendan recalled, had all been up. The room had been bright. The windows, though, the way the sun had burned through them, they had been dirty.

So, a housekeeper then who “didn’t do windows.” It was laughably clichéd.

There were two dressers – one tall, one wide, like the bureau in the victim’s room with the opened drawers. The ones in here were oak, of a set, no doubt. They appeared new. In fact, the bed’s mattress was wrapped in plastic.

The ceiling was slanted on either side of the south-facing dormer window. To the right of the dormer, a door led to another bathroom. Brendan walked through the dim room across carpeting which was plush but faded. He clicked the light on in the dark bathroom.

Recently refurbished. A new Jacuzzi, replete with water jets. A new double sink, new cabinetry, light fixtures, the works. It was possible that Rebecca Heilshorn was using the bedroom down the hall while this one, the master bedroom, was being finished. The new mattress, matching bureau set, new bathroom appliances and fixtures – it was a room under construction. Even so, it didn’t tell him much. And Kevin was waiting, and the K9 unit would be here any moment.

* * *

He stepped outside into the bright sunlight. He fished his sunglasses out of his inside jacket pocket. Kevin Heilshorn was sitting near where Brendan had left him, picking at the grass between his legs, slumped forward. Deputy Bostrom was nowhere to be seen. Vehicles were everywhere. A dog started barking. The K9 unit had already arrived, and one of the German Shepherds was pulling a cop towards the shed.

Brendan instantly got going. He’d had a feeling about that shed since he’d first arrived. He jumped from the doorway and started trotting over to the K9 cop and the dog. The dog was really pulling on the leash, straining to get to that shed.

“Oh my God,” said Brendan. He didn’t know why he said it, it just slipped out.

In his peripheral vision he saw Kevin Heilshorn stand and dust off the back of his pants. The K9 unit reached the edge of the shed just as Brendan caught up to them. The two men and the dog went into the gloom, and Brendan removed his sunglasses.

The first thing Brendan noticed was the old John Deere tractor. Its hood was open, engine exposed, looking in surprisingly good shape after all. The bucket was still attached, resting on the dirt floor. On either side of the shed were stacked rows of what looked like cages. The smell of chicken shit was powerful. As his eyes adjusted, Brendan could see the dried white splatters of chicken poop dripping from the cages, and around on the floor. Chicken feed was turned to mush next to the cages. The dog pulled the K9 cop around to the back of the tractor. Its barks resounded in the dark. There was a sudden intensification of smell – the odor of decay, sour and acute. Brendan braced himself to find another body, perhaps of the killer, who’d come out and slit his own throat after perpetrating the heinous crime inside the house.

But it wasn’t a human body that the dog had found. It was a small animal. Maybe a hedgehog, or a woodchuck.

The farmer across the road had been after a woodchuck or some other creature, shooting through the desiccated rows of corn at it.

The stink was even worse back here: chicken excrement, the powerful odor of a rotted animal, and something more. Maggots crawled through the tufts of fur, and flies buzzed and alighted. It looked like a raccoon.

“Ugh.” Brendan put the ridge of his hand under his nose.

The K9 cop said nothing, working to restrain the dog from burying his snout in the mess. “What do you think did that?” asked Brendan.

“Have to order the autopsy,” said the K9 cop with dry humor. Then, “Dunno. Maybe a coyote. Maybe it just came in here to die.”

There appeared to be some blood, but it was hard to tell. Against the back wall of the shed were trash barrels. Two of these had been tipped over. On the ground were piles of what appeared to be household trash; Brendan thought he could see banana peels, plastic food packaging, an empty Cascade detergent box, some kind of noodles, and more. There were also substances which didn’t resemble food. Holding his nose, Brendan bent and squinted at what appeared to be a large lump of dark plastic. It looked melted, perhaps some appliance that had somehow been superheated until it severely deformed – there was little light in the back of the shed and so it was hard to tell. Around all of this the ground was littered with the mash of feed, and strands of hay, dirt, small rocks. The cop got his dog turned around, and headed back out into the bright square of sunlight.

Brendan stayed for a moment, looking at the lump of plastic.

* * *

“I need to get the young man a grief counselor,” said Brendan to Detective Delaney. “A psychologist. Someone like that. He’s having a real hard time. Who do you have around here?”

“Call, uhm, Olivia Jane,” said Delaney. He was popping bits of something into his mouth. Sunflower seeds. “She worked with DCH, now she’s on her own. She’s come down a few times to help with grief counseling, she can help set up temporary housing for victim families, that sort of thing. Works with battered wives a lot.”

They stood in the blistering sun. Sweat patches were visible around the armpits of Delaney’s grey suit. Brendan glanced down at his own darker apparel, wondering if it too was stained with perspiration. His skin felt prickly, the pores popping open, the tendrils of sweat starting to run from his temples.

“Are we going to put surveillance on the house?”

“Absolutely. What did Clark say?”

Brendan thought back to the coroner. So much had happened in just the past hour. He thought to check his notes, but tried to remember instead. “Looks like one stab wound to the pulmonary artery was the non-survivable injury. The victim likely expired sometime between 8:20 and 8:40 this morning, but we figured that already.”

“Anything else?”

“He talked about petechiae.” Brendan pointed to his face. “The kinds of blotches that can come from a pinching off of the carotid artery. Typically from strangulation.”

“I know what it is.” Delaney nodded at Kevin. “Is he going to be alright?”

“He vomited in the grass not long ago. He could need some medical attention. Some mental attention, too. My plan is . . . well.”

“What?”

Brendan squinted in the sun at the senior investigator. Then he remembered his sunglasses and put them back on. “I was thinking I could get him out of here. Take him back to Remsen myself. To the motel, maybe to the hospital. Talk to him on the way. Get his statement.”

“That’s a good idea.”

Compliments were rare with Delaney. It took Brendan aback for a moment. Then he added, “I’ll have the . . . what was her name? Olivia Jane. She can meet us there.”

Delaney spat out a sunflower seed shell. They were at the outlet of the driveway, getting a word in private, away from the house. The whole scene was before them. The dogs were now out back, sniffing around the barn. CSI was working the entire house. The sun had climbed high into gauzy sky.

“I think we want to make sure CSI combs through the shed. There’s a dead animal back there, and some interesting refuse.”

Delaney raised his eyebrows. “Raccoon?”

“Don’t know.”

“That’s what Folwell was after. Some animal. Shooting at it with his Browning. I’ll make sure they go through the trash. Something caught your eye?”

“There’s a fireplace inside, yeah? Something may have been burned and then thrown out.”

“I want to meet back with you in one hour.”

“Okay,” said Brendan, and he started to dial Olivia Jane.

CHAPTER SIX / THURSDAY, 11:08 AM

He was able to convince Kevin Heilshorn to ride into Remsen with him and get a sandwich. In the car, he lit a cigarette. “Mind if I smoke?” Kevin shook his head. Brendan pressed the buttons to roll down both front windows, and then started turning around in the driveway.

“Can I get one?”

“Sure. Take as many as you want. I’m trying to quit.”

They turned onto Route 12, headed west. Brendan got the Camry up to speed, and the wind beat in through the opened windows, the antenna shivered on the hood. There was quicksilver baking on the road, and the Camry sluiced through it.

“Hot,” Brendan said. “You know, it’s late in the summer, too.”

“That doesn’t matter. It’s all getting hotter.”

Brendan glanced over. “Global Warming?”

Kevin shrugged. His eyes were ringed red from crying, glassy and small as if shrink-wrapped. He was a good-looking kid, with a strong jaw and straight nose. Brendan’s own nose was bent to one side, something he had always been a little bit self-conscious about. That and the smattering of Irish freckles he had around his cheeks and temples. He was grateful he wasn’t a redhead. With the rest of his complexion and red hair he would have been Howdy Doody. But Brendan had inherited some of the darker looks of his Italian mother, too. His hair was black. Along with his green eyes, hatchet nose and light complexion, he often thought of his appearance as uncomely, like a ghost’s.

Kevin cleared his throat. “I’m not a proponent of anything. It could be CO2 emissions; it could be the Chandler Wobble. Who knows.”

“The Chandler Wobble?”

“Haven’t you ever heard of the wobble of the earth?”

“I wasn’t a Geology major.”

“It’s like this. Let’s say you were to stick a pencil in an orange. Then you put the tip of that pencil on a piece of paper. You spin the orange. A perfect spin, and the pencil just makes a dot on the paper. Now imagine that the orange is
wobbling
, and . . .”

“It makes an ellipse on the paper. What causes the wobble?”

“That’s just it. Maybe global warming causes the wobble. Or maybe the wobble causes global warming. It’s the chicken or the egg.”

The comment made Brendan think of the shed. Particularly of the chicken coop made out of stacks of cages, banded together by some simple one-by-four lumber. “Did your sister keep chickens?”

At first he thought Kevin would answer, but then the young man put his forehead in his hand. His elbow was propped on the passenger door. The wind slamming by sucked at his hair and pulled it out the window. A moment later and he had both of his hands covering his face, leaning forward.

“I’m very sorry for your loss,” Brendan said. He realized that while he’d always winced at such generic phrases, there was nothing else to say in moments like this.

“She never should have come up here,” said Kevin through his hands. He snuffled back some tears and wiped a hasty hand across his face. He looked out at the scenery rushing by; corn, barns, silos, gnarled oak trees, a long swath of pines in the distance.

“Where did she come up from?” Brendan asked, emphasizing the last word. “On your driver’s license, it says you’re from Scarsdale. That where she’s from, too?”

Kevin cut his eyes over to look at the detective, then turned to look back out the blustery open window. He didn’t seem to want to answer the question.

“I’m from Westchester County, too,” Brendan offered.

Another sideways glance from the young man. “Oh yeah? Where?”

“Hawthorne.”

Brendan had tried not to leap to an instant assumption about where Kevin was from, but Scarsdale meant money. It was the richest city in one of the richest counties in the country. The last he’d checked the statistics, Westchester was second only to Fairfax County for per capita wealth. It was hard not to connect the young woman, who had an entire farm to herself with an Audi parked in the driveway, to a wealthy family supporting her. He tried to proceed tactfully.

“Scarsdale is nice,” he said.

“I went to school in White Plains.”

“College?”

“High school. We were right along the edge of that district.” He paused and added a little defensively, “I didn’t go to college.”

They were just a couple miles from Remsen. Brendan let off the gas just a little. “No, huh? You seem educated.”

“I educated myself.”

Brendan could tell this was sensitive territory, and imagined heated conversations Kevin might have had with his parents.

“Are your parents together?”

“That’s hard to say.”

“But they’re not divorced.”

“No.” Kevin finished his cigarette and pitched the butt out the window.

Brendan took a breath. “Do they own the house where your sister was found today?”

He nodded.

“Well, we need to talk to them right away. The coroner is obligated to call them, and he will, within the next few minutes, I’m sure. Maybe you’d like to call them. Maybe it would be better if they heard it from you.”

“No,” said Kevin with little hesitation. “It wouldn’t.”

Brendan considered this. Maybe the kid wasn’t prepared to go through it. Family brought out the strongest emotions. Or maybe it would be tough in another way – maybe they would blame him, maybe he was the family whipping boy, who knew?

Or maybe he had something to hide from them.

Brendan, changed tack. “How long has your family owned the place?”

“Uhm, I don’t know. Three years? More? I’m sure Bops bought it because he was trying to hide money. Avoid capital gains tax.”

“Bops?”

“My father. We call him Bops because . . . Well. Let’s just say my parents got into the family game late in life. Both Bops and Ma’am are career-driven people. Bops was in his mid-forties when Rebecca came. He’s seventy-one now. Maybe seventy-two; I don’t know.” Kevin surprised Brendan by cracking a smile. “Man, she was a fucking surprise. Maybe Ma’am’s body had rejected the pill by then – she was thirty-five or thirty-eight or something. Ma’am is in publishing. For whatever reason, they started having kids. I’m the last in a line of fucking token children.”

Brendan absorbed all of this. The kid clearly expressed bitterness and resentment. It was to be expected, Brendan supposed.

“And how close were you and Rebecca?”

“How do you mean?”

“You talk regularly and stuff? I don’t know how it works. I’m an only.”

Kevin sighed. He ran a hand across his face again. Brendan glanced and saw the shine of tears. “We were close, I guess, yeah. Not always, but more since . . . we got older. Look, man, I can’t, I can’t go into this right now.” Suddenly he sat up straighter, and his voice grew louder. “Did you get her phone?”

“The CSI unit – that’s the Crime Scene Investigation team – they bagged her phone. They’d take any of her personals, like cell phone, computer, wallet, down to the lab. What about the phone?”

Kevin’s body seemed to slump again. He returned to looking out the window. There were small, modular homes alongside the road now. They were coming into Remsen. “Nothing,” he said.

“Can I ask you something?”

Kevin was quiet.

“Did your sister have any children?”

Kevin abruptly turned his head to the side to cut a look over at Brendan. His jaw was set, his lips pursed. “No,” he said.

Brendan felt like the kid was lying.

After that, they lapsed into silence.

* * *

At the diner, Brendan ordered a BLT and a coffee. Kevin said he wasn’t hungry.

“I know it’s probably not appealing,” Brendan said. “But you should eat something.”             

Kevin conceded to an order of eggs and toast. He had an orange juice brought over with Brendan’s coffee. He sipped the juice, and grimaced. “Bitter,” he said. He pushed it away.

“Kevin, I’m having someone meet us here.”

The young man raised his eyebrows. He made solid eye contact most of the time, Brendan thought, but always looked away first, as he did now, scanning the other patrons in the diner. It was fairly busy for a Thursday morning. A group of four older men sat at a nearby table. One was wearing a trucker’s cap which read “American Legion” on it. They wore flannel and suspenders and their shirt pockets bulged.

Brendan and Kevin sat in one of the booths by the window. There were five booths in a row. In the next booth over, behind Kevin, Brendan observed a young woman with a baby. The child was crying as it was fed mashed potatoes.

“Who’s meeting us?”

“She’s a grief counselor,” said Brendan.

Kevin didn’t look pleased. He pushed the silverware around on his paper placemat. He glanced up at the far door as if he were considering leaving.

“You’ve been through an incredible shock,” said Brendan. “I can’t begin to imagine the loss. But, Kevin, these first 48 hours are crucial. If we’re going to find your sister’s killer, I’m going to need your help. But I don’t want to neglect your own personal needs; what you’re going through. It’s a tough situation.”

Kevin looked back at Brendan. His blue eyes seemed to darken. “Tough? Sorry, but you don’t know anything about tough right now.” He gripped the table in front of him. “I don’t like this. I don’t like counselors, all that.” Indeed, the young man seemed to be getting agitated. His eyes, glassy and red, darted around the room.

“Why is that?”

Those eyes pinned Brendan, even darker now, as if drawn into harder material, like pits. “You like to be under the microscope?”

Brendan sipped his coffee. He thought of the nervousness he’d felt this morning, coming upon his first official crime scene up here in God’s country. It still came around, sometimes, his doubt in himself. But for some reason his gut told him that this wasn’t the reason why Kevin was apprehensive. Again, it felt more like the young man had something to hide. “Nobody really likes being . . . looked into. But I think what you learn is how to be gracious.”

“Gracious,” Kevin scoffed, spitting the word.

“Are you a user?”

“Excuse me?”

Brendan kept his voice low. “I mean do you use drugs. Did Rebecca use drugs? Illegal or prescription?”

“See? This is what I’m talking about. Do
you
use drugs, detective?”

Brendan had expected the young man to be combative. It was better that he got riled than panicky, and ran out.

“I used to,” said Brendan.

“So? What about you? Let’s talk about you. See how you like people prying into your life.”

“It’s not fun; you’re right.”

“What is a guy from Westchester doing up here in Podunk central working as a detective?”

Brendan took a deep breath, and exhaled. He moved his cup of coffee in front of him and took it with both hands. He spoke in a clear voice, not too soft, not too loud.

“I was born and raised in Hawthorne to a middle class family. I got a scholarship to a school where I studied the biology of the brain. Particularly, I studied how we formed habits, did things routinely. Everything from muscle memory, to the basal ganglia. I didn’t graduate top of my class, or anywhere near it. I barely made it through. Then I came close to receiving my PhD in neurobiology when I was your age, but fell short.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know how I made it through, even that far, because I was drinking the whole time. I had met a girl at school, and we were married in two years. We had a child the year I was finishing. Then, I lost it all.”

He paused there, and gauged Kevin’s reaction. The young man seemed incredulous. “You almost got a PhD in neurobiology? What the fuck are you doing as a cop? That can’t pay much.”

“Neither does neurobiology. It’s a myth that a doctorate automatically translates into a high income. I wasn’t going to be a brain surgeon. I did research. It all depends on who you go to work for as a researcher, or if you stay in academia and go after grants. At the time, with the economy, let’s say the prospects were grim. But that’s not why I became a cop.”

“Then why?” Kevin seemed genuinely more relaxed with the focus off him for now. And some of the combative energy seemed to have temporarily subsided. You could often reveal more about a person of interest by talking about things other than themselves. Sometimes the indirect approach worked best. Back in Westchester, a policeman named Argon had taught Brendan that.

“I became a cop because of everything I lost. My wife, my child, my life. I sobered up, thanks to the help of someone who came into my life just when I needed it most. That man was a cop. It took me time to get myself together, but during part of my recovery, I went to the police academy. I figured lots of push-ups and sit-ups would be a good thing.”

Brendan shrugged, and sat back, letting go of the coffee cup.

Kevin’s face was open now. He regarded Brendan plainly from across the table. His fight or flight impulse seemed to have subsided. A moment later, a woman appeared. Both men glanced up, thinking their food had arrived.