The Murder of Janessa Hennley (24 page)
Read The Murder of Janessa Hennley Online
Authors: Victor Methos
Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Police Procedural
14
As Mickey drove down the Interstate back to Madison County, he took out his cell phone and flipped through the recent calls received. He found the number he was looking for and pressed it.
“This is Miller.”
“Toby, it’s Mickey Parsons.”
“What can I do for you, Agent Parsons? My men ain’t seen shit yet
, if that’s what you callin’ ’bout.”
“Actually, about that, I need you to pull your men out.”
“And why would I do that?”
“He’s not going to show,” Mickey said. “I’m going to do another walkthrough of the house
, and I think we should call it quits. But I might know where he is.”
“Where?”
“I’ll come by in the morning, and we’ll go over everything. But I would appreciate if you could pull your men out.”
A long silence.
“If you say so.”
“Thanks. I’ll, ah, swing by in the morning.”
“Sure. You do that.”
Mickey hung up. Miller was suspicious
, and it didn’t sound like he bought Mickey’s reasoning. But it didn’t matter. As long as the men were gone and Ricks showed up, Miller could hate him for lying later.
The nearer Mickey got to the house, the faster his heartbeat. By the time he pulled over in front of the home, his palms were sweating and he felt short of breath.
It wasn’t just the situation causing him stress. A disease was eating him from the inside out. He tried to open the door but couldn’t muster the strength to move. Instead, he sat quietly and stared at the house.
After a good half hour, the streetlights turned on. Mickey
staggered out of the car. He looked down both sides of the street but didn’t see anyone. His muscles felt weak and loose. The four beers he’d had before coming didn’t help, either.
H
e turned on his cell phone’s recorder and stuck it in his breast pocket. He sauntered to the door and tried the knob. The door clicked open.
T
he house was quiet and dark. Mickey flipped on the light in the living room. Nothing looked disturbed since the last time he’d been there. The kitchen was empty as well. He climbed the stairs to the second floor. At the top, he stood silent and listened.
B
reathing came from one of the bedrooms down the hallway. Mickey withdrew his sidearm and held it low. He walked down the hallway and checked one of the rooms. Empty. The second was empty as well.
He stood against the wall and opened the
last room’s door from the side. He poked his head in and saw Angela on her knees, her hands tied. Behind her on a nightstand was a blue birthday cake with a feeding tube on top of it.
Harold Ricks sat on the bed. He smiled as Mickey walked into the room.
“You actually came alone. I appreciate you taking me at my word. If I’d-a seen cops outside, I would have blown her head off.”
“I don’t doubt you would have.” Angela glanced up
at him but didn’t say anything. “I’m here, Harold. What do you want?”
“I told you what I want. I want you to blow my brains out. It has to be accurate. I don’t wanna live as some vegetable. I would do the back of the head. That’s the quickest way to kill somebody.”
“I don’t want to kill you, Harold. You don’t need to die.”
“Really? I kill innocent girls. You said so yourself. You don’t think I need to die?”
“No.”
“Why?”
Mickey stared at Angela. “Because all life is precious and worth fighting for.”
He laughed. “Where’d you hear that shit? I’d say the opposite is probably closer to the truth. Anyway, that’s the deal. You gotta do it.”
Mickey eyed the birthday cake.
“Something I could never figure out. Why the cake? It would have been easier to shoot them.”
Harold’s grin went away. “None’a your business, now is it? But since we doin’ favors for each other today, I’ll tell ya. When I was back in that fucking jungle, I spent some time with them slopes in one of their camps. I was captured at night along with a buddy a mine, Chuck. They used to… Anyway, I don’t need to tell you what they done to us. But the cake, that’s how they killed Chuck. I watched him die, man. Watched his guts explode. They thought it was the funniest thing in the world…” Harold drifted off, and then came back. “Now you gotta do it, man.”
“Or what?”
“Or that bomb I planted in the bedroom next door is gonna detonate when I press this button here.” He pulled out a device that looked like a remote control. “I die, or all three of us die. Up to you.”
“I thought you said you couldn’t kill yourself?”
“Do you wanna risk that? This is just pushing a button, it ain’t pulling a trigger. Never even thought of this ’til couple nights ago.”
Mickey cautiously walked over to him. “I died a little in Vietnam, too. It took me a long time to try to feel normal. With help, you can start feeling normal, too.”
“You don’t feel normal. None of us do. The shit we did, the shit we saw. There’s no help for that, Mickey.” He stood up. “Shoot me.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Ain’t got nothing to do with want.” He lifted the device in his hand. “I’m gonna count to three, and then I’m pushing this button and blowing us all to hell.”
“Don’t do it, Harold.”
“One.”
Mickey lifted his
sidearm, the muzzle pointed at Ricks’ face. “Don’t, Harold. You can live and help other people. You don’t need to die.”
“Pass. Two…”
“Don’t, I will kill you.”
“I’m counting on it…
Three.”
Mickey fired.
15
Mickey stood outside the home, his arm around Angela as the sheriff’s deputies stormed inside. An ambulance screeched to a stop in front of the house, but the paramedics had to wait for a clearance from the detective on scene.
Toby Miller strutted out of the house and over to Mickey. “He’s dead,” Miller said.
“I know.”
“Blew his damn brains out over the wall. Didn’t expect to see that right now.” He spit on the pavement. “You shoulda told me.”
“He would have killed her.”
“Don’t know that yet for sure. We’re having the bomb
squad from Polk County come down to scan the house, but we didn’t see nothin’. I think he was bullshittin’ you. Which means you shot an unarmed man. I hope the Bureau’s cool with shit like that.”
“They’ll do what they have to do.”
“You take care of yourself, Special Agent Parsons.”
Angela
looked queasy. “I think I’m gonna be sick.”
Mickey
looked up to the house one more time and then turned away. “Let’s go home.”
16
Mickey Parsons sat on the hood of his car in the parking lot of Quantico
, surrounded by lush, green trees. He held a chicken parm sandwich, and the grease dripped down onto the car. He wiped it with a napkin before taking a sip of his soda.
Angela
Listz walked by. She was in a group of other special agents taking one of his seminars on the latest developments on Fourth Amendment law. She smiled to him, and he smiled back. She said something to her friends and then separated from them.
“I like your class,” she said.
“Pay special attention to the section on no-knock warrants and exigent circumstances for entering a home.”
“Yeah, well, we’ll see.”
“I heard you’re being transferred to the Seattle office. That’s a great place. The SAC is an old academy buddy of mine. I think you’ll really like him.”
“I never said thank you, Mickey.”
“You don’t have to.”
She glanced back
at the building. “So, what for you now? More running around the country?”
“Actually, they’re taking me out of the field. I’m going to be placed in screening.”
“What? They can’t do that. That was a justified shoot.”
“Doesn’t matter. Justified, unjustified, they’re just words. Ricks’ mother filed a complaint against me
, and there’s supposedly a lawsuit pending. The Bureau is just covering themselves. I don’t hold it against them. Besides, I could use the slower pace of screening. I’m not far from retirement.”
After a moment, she leaned in and kissed his cheek. “I’ll see ya around.”
Mickey watched her walk away and grinned. She would be all right. Probably have a great career, as long as she kept her emotions in check.
He put the sandwich down and hopped off the car. He retrieved three amber bottles from the glovebox.
He took out one pill from each bottle then swallowed them with his soda. He hadn’t lied to Angela; he was looking forward to the calm pace of screening. He’d been in the field so long that he hadn’t had any time to build a life. Once his wife passed, he spent his days and nights either working the job or thinking about it. It had burned him out.
Ricks
was the first person he had ever killed in the line of duty with the Bureau. He’d shot people before, but never killed. Not since the war. And it left a bad taste in his mouth.
Hopefully, he
would never have to go out into the field again.
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BY VICTOR METHOS
Jon Stanton Thrillers
Science
Fiction & Fantasy
Empire of War
: An Epic Fantasy
Star Dreamer: The Early Science Fiction of Victor Methos
Superhero Thrillers
Superhero (An Action Thriller)
Plague Trilogy
Scourge (Coming February 2014)
Thrillers
Black Sky (A Mystery-Thriller)
Murder Corporation (A Crime Thriller)
Creature-Feature Novels
Paranormal Thrillers
Humo
r
Earl Lindquist: Accountant and Zombie Killer
Philosophical Fiction
Existentialism and Death on a Paris Afternoon
To contact the author, learn about his latest adventures, get tips on starting your own adventures, or learn about upcoming releases, please visit the author’s blog at
http://methosreview.blogspot.com/
Copyright 2013
Victor Methos
Kindle Edition
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