The Murder of Janessa Hennley (3 page)

6

Mickey sat on his porch and enjoyed the warm air. At ten in the morning, his thinking was foggy and slow. Ten was at least two hours after he was supposed to be at the office, but no one ever said anything.

He grab
bed a ham and egg sandwich with an apple juice on the way in to work and could only find parking in the back of the lot again. As he walked inside, the wind whipped his tie over his shoulder. It amused him for some reason.

Once inside, he cleared security and signed in before heading down the elevators to the basement. It was the one level of this building—world-famous after dozens of movies and television shows had either referenced it or been filmed here—that no one really knew about.

He unlocked his office and hesitated at the door a moment before sitting down and running through his email. The hesitations at the door were getting longer every day.

Most
of the emails were just interoffice chatter, and he deleted them without reading. He also deleted the memos, office updates, notifications of policy changes, and messages of calls he received from marketers.

That left only personal emails and requests from law enforcement agencies.

As the Behavioral Science Unit’s screener, his job was to check requests for help from local law enforcement agencies around the world and see if the Bureau had the time or the resources to help them.

One email was from the activities director of his
mother’s nursing home, informing him that a local elementary school performance was being put on that Friday morning. The director asked if he could volunteer to help. He replied that he’d be happy to, but he had medical issues that might make the parents of the children uncomfortable and would have to decline for their sake.

Then he went to the requests for help.

There were four today, two from overseas. Scammers tried to enlist the FBI’s help in various murder cases, hoping to glean personal information about the special agents and use their identities to open new credit accounts. They knew, somehow, that special agents were required to maintain good credit ratings as part of their employment with the Bureau.

One of the other emails was a request for analysis on a fiber found at a crime scene in Kansas City. The fiber was believed to have come from the jeans of a burglar as he attempted to flee a business he’d just ransacked
, shooting the cashier on the way out. Mickey checked the detective’s name that had forwarded it and ran a criminal history. He checked the police reports online, something most agencies wouldn’t have approved of if they’d known the FBI could do it, and then forwarded the email to an assistant at the lab with a note that he had verified it as an actual case.

The final email came with the subject heading NEED HELP PLEASE.

He opened it and began reading:

Dear FBI Behavioral Science Unit,

My name is Sheriff Suzan Clay, and I’m the sheriff in Kodiak Basin, Alaska. A week ago I dealt with the most horrific murders I’ve ever seen, and I have no suspects and no leads. No witnesses, nothing. I could use your help and resources on this. We asked the Sheriff’s Office in Anchorage for help, but they said they were busy enough and turned us down. Budgets are getting cut everywhere. The detective I spoke with there said it was probably a drug killing, revenge or something, and we do have a lot of drugs up here. But I know that’s not it.

I would appreciate if you could call me.

Thanks.

P.S. The victims
are forty-one, thirty-two, sixteen, ten and nine.

Mickey read the email twice before leaning back. The last line stuck out to him like a thorn:
The victims are forty-one, thirty-two, sixteen, ten and nine.
Despite the email’s informal tone, the sheriff pulled an interesting trick to tug at the heartstrings of whoever read the email. But he also noticed that the ages meant Mrs. Hennley was pregnant at sixteen with their first child, and Mr. Hennley would have been twenty-five. She was under the age of consent. Their relationship had begun with a sex crime.

He picked up the phone and dialed.

“This is Suzan.”

Mickey noted that she didn’t answer with
Sheriff
. “Sheriff Clay?”

“Yeah, you got her
.”

“This is Mickey Parsons. I’m a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

“Oh! Oh, hey. How are you?”

“I’m fine, thank you for asking.”

“Is this about the email? ’Cause I sent that a few days ago, and I didn’t hear back so I didn’t think you were interested.”

“It takes a while for things to run through the Bureau. So who are the victims
, exactly?”

“
The Hennley family. Ben and his wife Candice, and their children Janessa, Timothy and Ezra. They were stabbed, all of them except Janessa. She was… well, you’d have to see it, I guess.”

Mickey recognized the hesitation in her voice, the reluctance to discuss the details openly. “You knew
them personally?”

“I did. We’re a
city of five thousand. Everyone knows everyone here.”

“Why don’t you send the murder book up
, and I’ll take a look at it.”

“The what?”

“The murder book. All the evidence and reports you have.”

“Oh. Okay, well, I can send you the police reports we have and the autopsy and toxicology report
s they did down in Anchorage.”

“Yeah, just PDF it and email it to me.”

“Okay, and to that same email?”

“Yeah.”

“Thanks a lot for this. I really do appreciate it.”

“You’re welcome.”

Mickey closed his browser and stretched his arms and neck. He was about to get a cup of coffee when his desktop dinged with a new email. It was from the sheriff.

7

The police reports on the Hennleys consisted of four pages of narrative with an autopsy report and a toxicology analysis. Nothing more. The entire murder book was less than a dozen pages, but Mickey was used to over thirty. On a family, it should have been near seventy.

He skimmed it quickly.
Ben had been found in the basement, dead from blood loss and severe organ trauma. The murder weapon, a long Philips-head screwdriver, lay next to the body. His wife’s throat was slit with a kitchen knife while she was still in bed. The two boys, nine and ten, had been found upstairs. One was stabbed through the heart while still under his covers. The other in the hallway with a knife wound to the back of his neck. He had tried to run.

But they weren’t the ones
he
had come for. He—and everything here told Mickey it was a “he”—had come for Janessa.

When the police arrived, she was
on the kitchen floor, eviscerated, with severe trauma to the mouth, vaginal cavity, and anus. Several of her teeth and fingers were missing, as was much of her face. A photo of the scene showed a young girl with parts taken out of her, like a butchered cow with the prime pieces of meat cut off. But the edges of the wounds appeared ragged, not smooth as they would have been with a sharp instrument. They were more akin to teeth having torn the flesh away. It almost looked like someone had tried to eat her.

T
he detective’s exposition revealed that he thought Janessa had run through the house for some time as the intruder cut up her back. Her ankle was broken, and a blood trail in the backyard told them she had made it out but was dragged back inside.

There was nothing else of note. No wonder they didn’t have any suspects, Mickey thought.

The toxicology came back negative for the entire family except for Janessa. She tested positive for Viibryd. Mickey knew about Viibryd from an article in the
Journal of Forensic Psychiatry
he’d read some months ago. It was the most powerful anti-depressant available with minimal side effects.

A wave of pity
surged through him.

He closed the PDF,
sat back in his chair a while, then walked down the hall for a cup of coffee. The break room was empty. He made a fresh pot and sat at the lunch table, staring out the windows at the lawn outside. Workers were tearing it up to insert artificial grass, and nothing but dirt surrounded the building.

A janitor came in and nodded to him as he emptied the trash bins and wiped down the counters. Mickey finished his coffee and went back to his office
, then pulled up his email and wrote to the ASAC in charge of the Violent Criminal Apprehension Unit. His office phone rang.

“This is Parsons,” he said.

“Hi, Agent Parsons. This is Sheriff Clay, how are ya?”

He paused. “I’m good. What can I do for you, Sheriff?”

“I just wanted to make sure you got that email I sent.”

“Yeah, I’ve got it right here.”

“Good. So?”

“So, what?”

“So, what do you think? Can you help us?”

“I think we will be able to.”

She yelped with excitement. “I can’t tell you how happy that makes me. The Hennleys, the grandparents, have been on me nonstop since this happened, and I promised them I would get the FBI involved. How long until you get here?”

“Well, not every case requires us to be there. We can work in conjunction with your detectives and just make our labs available. But they’ll probably send someone out on this case. There isn’t much to work with.”

“You’re tellin’ me. I swear I interviewed every one of the family’s friends. They all said they had no idea who would want to hurt them. That they were the nicest folks you’d ever meet.”

“Whoever did this spent the most time with Janessa. She’s likely the reason he was there.”

“She was a sweetheart. Kinda threw our little town for a loop.”

“I’m sure. But I’ll send out the email
, and someone will get back to you.”

“Great. Thanks, Mickey.”

“You’re welcome.”

Mickey hung up and
then checked out the sheriff and the town online. He read a few news articles about the killing, then finished the email he was drafting, letting the ViCAP Unit know that it was a verified case.

He sent the email and rubbed the bridge of his nose with his fingers. His head
throbbed, and he felt short of breath from just the brief walk to and from the break room. The day had just started, and he was already spent. He emailed his secretary on the floor above and asked that she forward any calls to his cell phone. Then he left for the day.

The
morning coolness had faded, replaced by the afternoon heat when Mickey woke up. His mouth felt like he had been chewing cotton, another side effect of the medication. He rolled to the side and took a sip out of an old bottle of water on the nightstand.

H
e stared at the ceiling a while before going to the bathroom. Then he dressed in workout shorts and a tank top. The gym wasn’t far from his condo, and he decided to walk, since the weather was pleasant.

As he was stepping out the door, his cell phone rang. It was his daughter.

“It’s noon there,” he said. “What’re you doing out of class?”

“Just felt like calling you, Daddy. I wanted to catch you before you went to bed.”

“How’s Jim?”

“He’s good. He’s calling in sick today. Got some sort of throat thing.”

Mickey walked to his Jeep and put the key in the ignition but didn’t turn it. “I got your birthday card. I liked it.”

“Sorry I couldn’t afford a present. Being in college is more expensive than I realized.”

“I told you to call me if you needed money.”

“I know, but I want to save that for when I really need it. And you’re already paying tuition. We’re okay. Just some nights eating T
op Ramen is all. How are you feeling?”

“Not bad. I was just about to go to the gym and lift. How are your classes?”

“Good. I have one on the history of the Byzantine Empire that you would love. The professor’s a total libertarian who critiques their social policies. Everyone in the class is arguing all the time. It’s really fun. How ’bout work? Any interesting cases?”

“Nothing much. Just a case in
Alaska that sounded curious.”

“Are you going out there?”

“I don’t go out anymore, sweetheart.”

“Why not?”

He paused. “I’m not entirely sure. Just thought the exposure for the Bureau might be too much.”

“That’s ridiculous. You should get out, Daddy. I can’t stand the thought of you locked up in
that dark basement.”

“I retire in two years. I can take just about anything for two years
, I think.”

“Well, I think you should go. Life’s so short. You gotta do what makes you happy
, and I doubt that’s following procedure.”

He
grinned. “I’ll think about it.”

“It would make me happy if you did it.”

“I said I’ll think about it.”

“Okay. Jim’s getting up,
better run. I love you, Daddy.”

“Love you too.”

He hung up and turned the key then pulled out of the driveway and headed to the gym. He thought of a young girl on a linoleum floor, screaming for help that never came.