Regression: The Sharon Hayes Detective Series, #2

By Jude LaHaye

Homicide Detective Sharon Hayes is back, but she has quit the NYPD and has hung out her own shingle. Her first case: her own. She has questions, lots of questions about what happened to her, her parents, her boss (and godfather), and her now dead relationship with Jimmy James, the forensics wunderkind. She decides to seek professional help and finds a psychiatrist who specializes in regression, using hypnotherapy. Sharon is convinced the answers she seeks are buried deep within her own brain...along with a thirty-something British woman who has been with her for as long as she can remember. The woman in her head used to be quiet, but since Sharon launched a career in crime-solving, she has become pushy and even verbally abusive. Sharon does not want Dr. Ronald Black to find her secret companion. She doesn't know that he found her in their first session and is grooming her to partner with him in publishing a major study that will catapult him into fame...and fortune. Sharon has to find her own cases at this point: she doesn't have much of a budget for advertising at this point in her solo career. She finds a trend she feels merits investigating: the murders, seeming unrelated, of several young women in the suburban area north of the Bronx, her stomping grounds. As she develops her case and is closing in on a suspect, she becomes entangled with dangerously sick and depraved criminals who wouldn't think twice about eliminating her...and she walks perilously close to their traps, unaware that her introduction to Dr. Black is a move which pulls her further into danger. She gets tough advice from the voice in her head. Will she take it and save both of them?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jude LaHaye
• Release date: Dec 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223229605

Jude LaHaye

Jude LaHaye is a Buddhist. Buddhists believe that the highest form of sentience is the human being. They also believe that the meaning of life is...Life. LaHaye struggles with his belief system and the evidence of his own human interactions and observations. His books are born of this struggle.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1. A Client

Even though I’ve already died twice, I failed to stay dead long enough to collect any life insurance. So, I really need to work. I need the money.

With this ridiculous thought, I am smiling as I step out of the public Port-All onto the busy South Bronx sidewalk which will take me, eventually, to the building that houses my new office.

I wish I could have said stately building, but that would be untrue: this building is old without boasting a single redeeming historically significant feature. Even as I wonder why the city hasn’t knocked it down in preference to modern, faceless efficiency, or more parking, I reach the front entrance and key-code my way into the drab vestibule.

At least the elevator works, I’m saying as I turn the corner to confront the sign that announces that, once again, I am wrong. I make the climb to the fourth floor. I claim it as exercise and mentally deduct the effort from my daily work-out goal.

"I said ‘goal’, I silently respond to the Ha!" I hear resounding in my head. This one-syllable symbol of mean-spirited amusement is an internal comment on just how much effort actually goes into any of my work-out goals, daily or not.

Sharon Hayes, Private Detective, reads the gold laminate letters on my very retro wooden office door. I special-ordered the simulated glass pane that the letters are floating on. They are not big, those letters. Not garish, not modern, not cool.

Just like me.

I make my way past the still-sealed boxes that are all over the floor. I have managed to make a pathway to my desk by pushing some of these against the walls. Hey, it’s only Day #2 in the new place, I am telling myself by way of explanation, or let’s face it, excuse. I am aware of a hope that my preemptive explanation will forestall any judgmental comment from the voice in my head.

"Who do you think you are kidding? Even you aren’t buying your own drivel, the voice says. Yeah, and ‘good morning’ to you, too," I reply, not out loud, of course. That would be crazy.

I am reasonably sure that I am not crazy. I have gotten accustomed to carrying this other immaterial person around with me. By ‘immaterial I don’t mean unimportant. I mean she doesn’t exist. Maybe incorporeal is a better word. She has a British accent. She is sarcastic. Sardonic. Critical. I am pretty sure she doesn’t like me, which makes her useful in keeping me in line. If I can carry off a conversation with another real person without getting some kind of comment from her, I consider the conversation a raging success.

This rarely happens.

I call out for my computer to go to active mode. I hear the aural cue that my command has been executed while I’m still making my way through the labyrinth between the door and the desk. Queue news, I command as I round the desk and plop into the ergonomic vertical hammock that is the preferred seating device nowadays in business and industry. These hammocks are ugly, and therefore haven’t taken over the domestic furniture market yet.

Except at my home, where ugly is King.

The news is up and humming, waiting for me, and I only take time to put my ‘Koin of coffee down before skimming the first screen’s worth of nightly doings and discoveries.

Check deaths, women, tri-county area, I command next.

I get a hit! Julia Anderssen, 40, dead from an unfortunate tumble down a rocky siding. The apparently steep siding runs along a remote county road Ms. Anderssen was running down. Map, Rock Tree Creek Park; out five miles all directions, I command. Yes, within a mile or so from the scene of death I find the rectangle that represents Ms. Anderssen’s listed home address.

Out for a jog. Probably something she did every morning. Same time, same route.

It has been raining hard for days. So ostensibly the pavement was slippery on Anderssen’s death-day.

Julia Norma Anderssen, nee Hill, I communicate next. Her public information comes up almost immediately. She has my coloration: freckled, strawberry blonde hair, blue eyes. She looks as athletic as I think I am. So she bears almost no resemblance to any of the other recently-dead women I have identified. One of them was very fit. All of them were darker, and one of them was black. She wasn’t fit. I am sure we could have been fast friends. "Fast or fat?" my voice crows victoriously.

It is pretty funny, actually. And I am not fat. I am curvy.

I’m going to take a drive out to Rock Tree Creek Park and check it out. This is the fifth accidental death in as many months of a woman under fifty in any one of the three counties that surround my office. My hunch-o-meter is pinging. That’s too many accidents. The victims are all in the 35-to-48-year-old range. They lived in nice areas. They were married. Three of them had school-aged children. There the pattern falls apart. I can find nothing that links these women together from information I can glean from newspapers and public records available on line.

OK, OK, you’re right. I just opened my own detective agency and I don’t have any clients yet. How can I be blamed for becoming my own client? "You think curiosity is a virtue, right?" asks the smart-ass in my head.

Yeah, I do. A virtue and a curse. And I’ve got them both.

Before I can pick up my coffee and my backpack, I call up the ‘Fone Function on the system and ask to be connected with Jimmy. I hear a couple of regular bleeps before I hear Jimmy’s voice. Forensics, he answers.

That’s my buddy Jimmy James. He still works for the NYPD, Central Bronx Precinct. I don’t. I resigned after my first - - and last - - homicide case. It’s complicated.

Hey, Jimmy, I blurt. I am a blurter. I got another one. Rock Tree Creek Park, up in Westchester. I’m going to take a ride up there and check out the scene.

No clients yet, Hayes? he asks, without a trace of sarcasm or meanness. Jimmy and I are friends. I am thinking hard about changing that status now that we don’t work together. Jimmy is just my type: tall, thin, alabaster skin, almost black hair. Blue eyes. Yummy. "Thinking ‘hard’, Hayes?" my Brit asks with all the sarcasm and meanness missing from Jimmy’s conversation. She is always attributing motives to me that are insulting. And usually right. I ignore her.

"Not yet, Jimmy, but if I can make this a case and then, you know, solve it, what better advertising?" is my light reply. I say it like I’m kidding, but I’m not.

I have to get my name out there if I am going to attract paying customers. For now, finances aren’t an issue. I got some money when my parents were murdered, and I have my own savings. My husband Jim left me enough insurance to have him cremated and interred. I saved the interment fee by dumping him in the East River. If all else fails, I have an NYPD pension fund sitting idle for the next twenty-four years when I can start drawing a monthly stipend from it. And if that fails, I’ll sell my brownstone in the Bronx. It has appreciated significantly since I bought it five years ago. I am thinking of selling it anyway. Too many foul memories of my ex. I am still having flashbacks of his abuse. I wake up sweating in the middle of the night, imagining a Kevlar river of my SWAT brothers snaking through it, silently, deadly, and ultimately, empty handed.

There is another reason I hang on to that brownstone. My husband was brutally butchered in it, and that incident plastered over many television and internet channels. For many, many days. I imagine the realtor’s sign advertising: As Seen On TV.

Another reason to create a case to work on. I think I will make a great client.

Hey, Jimmy, if I go missing, you’re my last contact, I say. Make sure our brethren know where I was heading.

Hayes, you know damned well that every Starbucks between your office and that park are going to be contacts after you’ve hung up with me. Just make sure you do something memorable for them. He is laughing when he hangs up.

So am I. He is so right.

And so I get into my Squirt-E, something I treated myself to when I resigned, and off I go to Westchester County, where I intend to walk where the dear departed Ms. Anderssen ran. I don’t really run for recreation. I find that there’s a lot of running in crime fighting, oh sorry, detection, and I remain very fit. My idea of recreation involves beer and an occasional shot of Irish Whiskey.

I get to pick the occasions.

The Squirt-E slips right into a slot on the parkway and I sit back and let the satellite traffic system do its thing. I have keyed in my final destination and will let the system select the best route at a legal speed. I have found out the hard way that I can’t be trusted with that speed restriction.

Forty minutes later I am spit out onto the parkway’s access road and it’s a short drive to the county road that leads to the park. Destination, my Squirt-E informs me as we reach the park entrance. I take over the navigation at this point, driving slowly, looking for signs of police and emergency vehicle presence.

It’s not hard to find. The side of the road where Ms. Anderssen departed safety and arrived at tragedy is a mess. This only happens when foul play is not suspected, as it obviously was not here. The asphalt is littered with unevenly mounded gravel. Tire and people tracks are evident for a full fifty yards of the road’s shoulder.

I pull over, park, and peer over the side of the road. It cannot be a coincidence that this very spot is the only one as far as the eye can see where the siding is dangerously steep. I imagine that I can see blood spatter that marks Ms. Anderssen’s descent, and it’s clear from the trail of disturbed gravel that the emergency trauma team had to make the same, albeit bloodless, descent all the way to bottom of the sheer drop.

I realize that I am leaning over a low guard rail of some indeterminate make. It might even be metal, although that would date it some years back. It hits me about mid-kneecap. On a normal sized person, that might just be shin-high. From Ms. Anderssen’s personal stats I can see that she was 5’8", over a half a foot taller than I.

Call it shin high.

Could she have slipped over this railing without leaving a mark of any kind? I am going to have to pull strings to get her forensic records. Even though the railing doesn’t show any signs of violent contact, her legs would have to, I’m thinking.

You should be thinking about a completely different part of your own anatomy, not some random victim’s shins, my voice says.

Just. Shut. Up, is all I can manage to reply. I cannot understand for the life of me how this voice of mine can be cleverer than I am. If she’s a product of my own mind, I should be the champion of the one-liners, right?

But she’s right again. I should be watching my own ass more carefully.

There’s someone watching me from the dense woods about 100 yards to my left. Silent and still. Almost cloaked from visibility by flora. But I see him. I see him seeing me.

CHAPTER 2. Home Invasion

Julia Anderssen’s house is a beehive of activity. There are station wagons and SUV’s in the driveway and on the street. Women of all ages carry casseroles and other covered dishes from the vehicles into the house.

I take my cue and drive to a nearby market and purchase a cake. I hasten back to the Anderssen house with my bakery item.

I can’t say that I am completely comfortable with what I am doing. It’s something else that drives me to intrude on these people in their grief. Stupidity? ventures my voice.

No, not stupidity. It’s somehow worse. It is a pathological curiosity.

I want to see where she lived. I want to see her husband. I need to unleash my hunch-o-meter, to use my instincts to see if I can smell a rat. Touch her things; hear the voices of those she has left behind. See. Smell. Hear. Touch.

Have some cake. That takes care of taste.

That covers all the senses, right?

Pathological. I told you.

So in I go, drafting in behind a largish woman in a polyester dress and bright red flats. I follow her into the home’s dining room and put my cake on an edge of the crowded table.

I spend a few sweaty seconds peeling the market’s label from the cake container. Damn, I should have bought a real plate and a cake cutter. Too late now.

I think this will be alright. It looks like a lot of these women are introducing themselves to each other. A complete stranger won’t stick out too much.

Excuse me, a man’s voice interrupts my self-congratulatory inner dialog.

I look up.

It’s the obviously aggrieved husband, Jeffrey. I say this because of his haunted look, red-rimmed eyes, his apron, and oven mitts.

You wouldn’t go to someone else’s house and put on an apron and oven mitts, would you?

I am so sorry for your loss, I manage to stutter, ignoring the Smoooooooth I get from my voice. I offer my hand and he takes it. In his oven mitts.

Thank you for coming, he says, oblivious to the mitts. I am sorry, but I don’t think I know who you are.

Here is a moment. Do I dissemble? Do I know how?

My name is Sharon Hayes, Mr. Anderssen, I begin. I pull in a deep breath in order to continue.

You don’t know me, and I actually never met your wife, I hear coming from my mouth. I decide to let it just continue coming out, hoping for the best. I just lost my best friend last month to an accidental death, and could not help myself. I brought a cake, and here I gesture to the obviously store-bought bundt just about sliding off the end of the busy table, and my sincere condolences.

He drops my hands. That is odd, he says.

I am sorry if this is too much of an intrusion, I respond, putting my hands into their opposite arm pits to remove them from the field of play.

No, you don’t understand, Jeff Anderssen responds. I mean, Julia just lost a friend to an accident last month. He looks confused, and frankly, sedated. His eyes are dull and glassy at the same time.

It wasn’t Sonja Halvorsen... I gasp, wracking my brain for the accident victim’s name from previous month.

"Oh my god, it was Sonja," a fractured Jeff Anderssen says, weaving a bit and looking around desperately.

As always quick with wits and feet, I understand his situation and propel him to the nearest chair. He falls into it, backwards.

I let him sit without interruption. This is very difficult for me. I mean, my instincts are pinging, screaming, jumping for crying out loud.

How did Julia know Sonja? I ask him quietly without a hint of pressure.

They were in group therapy together. In Yonkers, he says, peering around the room like he’s searching for someone.

He looks up at me suddenly, and captures my eyes with his, his lashes wet, his face creased with pain.

They were learning to be more assertive, he whispers. Sonja lived down there. Julia heard about it from the bulletin board at church.

I am so sorry, I say, as I make a move to pat his shoulders. I stop myself short.

He has forgotten I am even there. His head is in his hands and several other, more matronly women than I are pushing me away with their elbows and hips as they move in to comfort him. To soothe. To hug and feed.

To me, it appears that he doesn’t know that they are there, either, and I find that strangely vindicating.

I leave quietly and quickly. I am on my ‘Fone as soon as I get into my Squirt-E, looking for the nearest Lutheran church. Anderssen. Halvorsen. I am thinking Lutheran.

Scandinavian profiling? my voice challenges.

Maybe.

There it is. Saint Ansgar’s Lutheran Church, not four blocks from the Anderssen home.

CHAPTER 3. Hold the Lightning Bolts

Ihaven’t been in a church since my Aunt Constanza’s very Catholic funeral. I remember feeling like the church was huddled over me, trying to figure out how to smite me with lightning without frying my mother and father.

I stuck close to them. Very. I practically ran from the place after the ceremony, pushing them in front of me, my head down, eyes averted, shoulders rounded, almost praying. Definitely sweating.

I felt completely ridiculous once we were out in the bright sunshine, but there it is. My parents were both looking at me as if I’d lost my mind, which, in retrospect, I guess I had.

But no lightning bolts that day. Am I pushing my luck by entering this church merely hoping that the Lutheran God doesn’t fry the stray agnostic?

The church is nearly empty, no service underway. I look around for someone who might appear like they work there and happen across the community bulletin board, instead. It is simply plastered with announcements and informational brochures.

It takes a few minutes, but I find something.

"Women’s Assertiveness – It’s Personal!" shouts the bright red brochure cover. I take one, making sure the others are replaced on the bulletin board with the large push pin I have pulled out. It pushes back in with an almost pneumatic feeling.

Good, thick bulletin board, I am thinking, patting it ever so slightly in appreciation.

Can I help you? a sharp voice interrupts. I am startled and I know I look it.

I take a moment to turn and surveil the small woman behind the shattering voice.

She does not look dangerous, and I hope I don’t either. That thought makes me smile.

I think I’ve found what I was looking for, I say, brandishing the brochure.

That isn’t one of ours, the small