The Murder of Janessa Hennley

by Victor Methos

  When Mickey stepped off the plane, he walked into the terminal at Ted Stevens International Airport and had to sit down. He watched several planes land and take off before pulling out a Valium and breaking it in half. He washed down half the pill with water and counted to thirty in his head before checking on his bag. He had a connecting flight on a puddle-jumper scheduled to Fairbanks County Airport in two and a half hours.

  At a café near the gates, Mickey ate a salad with grilled steak and drank two cups of coffee. He waited until the effects of the Valium had dimmed somewhat, then he went to his gate and boarded the little private plane.

  The flight was short, less than fifteen minutes, and he stepped onto the tarmac of the airport at about eight p.m. He had wondered why the Bureau wasted money on a flight until the plane flew over several lakes and mountain ranges where the roads just disappeared. Driving there would have taken several hours, if it were possible at all.

  He stopped at the only car rental booth and rented a Ford truck, one of only nine vehicles in stock. The air was warm as he pulled out of airport parking and drove up the road onto the Interstate, heading east toward Kodiak Basin. He looped around and entered the freeway that led him to the city.

  The breezy, light smell up there was something between a park after a rain and a cave untouched by people. He rolled down both windows and let the air wash over him.

  The moon barely illuminated the mountains, giant, ominous shadows off in the distance. Plains stretched out for miles. They disappeared on hills with houses built over them like pebbles on a sand dune, their lights twinkling.

  He glanced at the exits as they passed by. After taking the exit he was looking for, the terrain turned to thick forest separated by lakes and reservoirs. The moon reflected in a dull glow that reminded him of a nightlight.

  He drove another half hour before dipping down past a mountain and coming up into a valley. The city was just beyond that.

  The lights clustered together like candles on a birthday cake, surrounded by a blackness that stretched to the horizon. Mountains and forests fenced the city. Whoever founded it, Mickey thought, must’ve really wanted somewhere they would be left alone.

  It was already ten p.m. by the time he arrived at the Sheriff’s station, so he decided to head to the motel instead. The Bureau had booked one for him that looked like a box of matches. He drove around a bit and found a bed and breakfast in what looked like an old Victorian home instead. He parked and walked to the front door. It was unlocked and he stepped inside.

  “Hello?”

  “Just a minute,” a female voice said. A few moments later an older woman in a robe came down the stairs.

  “Sorry, the door was unlocked.”

  “That’s all right. What can I do for you, sir?” She pulled her robe tight.

  “I was wondering if you had a room available for a few days?”

  She stared at him. “Haven’t seen you here before.”

  “No, ma’am. You haven’t.”

  “Just passing through?”

  “Something like that. I’m here to meet the sheriff. She requested my help with something.”

  “Oh, well, why didn’t you say so? Come in, we’ll find something for you.”

  Mickey shut the door behind him and followed the woman up the stairs. Several rooms with closed doors lined either side of the hall, and she used a key to unlock one. The room had one bed and a window that overlooked a garden in the backyard.

  “It’s fifty a night, and I take cash or credit card.”

  Mickey pulled out his wallet and gave her his credit card.

  “I’ll be right back with a receipt,” she said.

  He placed his bag down on the floor. The town and forest just beyond the window were quiet and empty. He opened the window as the woman came back and placed his card and a receipt on the nightstand.

  “Fresh towels and soap are in the bathroom. Breakfast is at seven a.m. sharp, so don’t be late.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So what’re you doing for the sheriff, exactly?”

  “There’s a case she wanted me to look at. I’m a federal agent.”

  “Oh. Is it the Hennleys?”

  “It is.”

  The woman shook her head. “Such a sweet family. Especially that girl of theirs, Janessa. Her mother and I volunteered with the PTA together some years ago. She was so warm. Just a sweet girl. I wish the sheriff would just hurry up and find whoever did that.”

  “Thanks for the room,” Mickey said.

  The woman stood still. Mickey held her gaze. Most people were unable to maintain silent eye contact for more than a few moments without growing uncomfortable. She fidgeted a little and then said, “Well, I should let you get some sleep.”

  “Thanks again,” Mickey said, and shut the door.

  He lay down on the bed. Though he wanted to take a shower, fatigue penetrated every muscle in his body. He was asleep before he could even kick off his shoes.

  11

  The bulb in the ceiling glared like an unwelcome guest in his room. The sun came through the windows, brightening the room further and reflecting off a mirror on the far wall. Mickey’s watch beeped. He clicked it off and retrieved the amber bottles from his bag. He ran the water in the bathroom sink until it was cold. Cupping his hand under the stream, he took each pill one at a time, then returned to the window.

  He dressed in the traditional clothing J. Edgar Hoover had forced down the throats of special agents in the Bureau for sixty years: black suit, white shirt, dark tie. The outfit police agencies expected. Whenever Mickey showed up in jeans, the officers were less likely to help or listen to him.

  He’d missed breakfast, so he went straight to his car and headed for the Sheriff’s Office. The streets were nearly empty, the roads lined with mom-and-pop stores and fast-food restaurants. Children played on a playground near the Sheriff’s Office.

  He pulled into the Kodiak Basin Justice Complex. A few uniformed officers were relaxing near their cars, smoking. They glared at him as he retrieved his iPad and went inside. Only two people were there, a secretary and a man replacing a water cooler.

  “Can I help you?” the secretary said, putting her glasses on.

  “I’m looking for Sheriff Clay.”

  She adjusted her glasses as though she couldn’t see him. “And who may I say is here?”

  “Mickey Parsons with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

  “Oh. One moment.” She picked up her phone and whispered, “The FBI is here to see you,” before hanging up. “She’ll be out in a jiff.”

  “Thanks.”

  Mickey studied the walls. A poster displayed a glass of beer and a prescription medicine bottle with the title “HONEY, WE JUST AIN’T MEANT TO BE TOGETHER.”

  “Special Agent Parsons?”

  Mickey turned around. The sheriff wore jeans and a blouse, her hair pulled back with a clip. She appeared too young for the position she held, but her face disclosed confidence, whether real or faked, that she deserved it.

  “Just Mickey,” he said, shaking her hand.

  “I’m so glad you came. I was expecting someone else.”

  “Wanted to get out of the office for a bit.”

  “Well, welcome to Kodiak Basin. Um, do you want anything to eat or drink?”

  “Coffee would be great.”

  “Oh, ah, well, we don’t have a coffee maker here, but let’s go over to Nick’s and grab a cup.”

  Mickey climbed into the passenger seat of Suzan’s black Chevy Tahoe. She pulled out of the lot and headed down the road.

  “You ever been to Alaska before?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “There are a few things you should see if you got the time. The oil fields outside of town are kinda interesting. Some of the biggest in the state. And any of the canyons or lakes are just a sight.”

  “I don’t think I’ll be staying that long.”

  They parked on the street and entered a café with
booths lining either side. Suzan said hello to the cashier and one of the waitresses and sat down. Mickey sat across from her, facing the windows. They ordered one coffee and one hot water with lemon.

  “So the FBI, huh? That must be really interesting. Flying all over the place.”

  “I’m sure it’s no different than what you do.”

  “I doubt that. Ninety percent of my job is busting pot smokers and drunk drivers. You wanna know something weird? I’ve never left Alaska. Not once. Never been to California or anything like that.” She smirked. “How pathetic is that?”

  “There’s nothing pathetic to sticking with what you know. My mother lived in the same house for fifty-seven years and never left town. A small place in Jackson, Mississippi. She was born in that town and died there without having known the outside world, but she was the happiest person I knew.”

  “I don’t know. I feel like an ant,” she said. “See, an ant can live its whole life on a lawn. It thinks the entire universe is nothing but grass, and it dies thinking it’s seen everything.”

  The coffee came. Mickey put some cream in it and sipped it. He lifted his eyebrows. “That’s damn good coffee.”

  “Everything’s good here. You sure you’re not hungry?”

  “I’m fine. But thanks. I’d actually like to see the body, if it’s still available.”

  “It is. The family wants to bury it as quickly as possible, but I kept telling them to hold off. I wanted you guys to look at it first. It’s at the morgue down in Anchorage. We don’t have one here.”

  “Do you have any idea who could have done this?” Mickey asked.

  “There is one guy. He’s a registered sex offender, the only one we have in town. He raped a fifteen-year-old some six years ago. He’s the only one I can think of.”

  “Did you speak to him?”

  She squeezed the lemon into her water. “Yeah, but he’s no help. He’s drunk and high so much, he doesn’t really talk. The night of the murders he was on ankle monitor and wasn’t anywhere near the Hennleys’. I sent a deputy to search his trailer just in case, but there wasn’t anything.”

  “Tell me about Janessa.”

  “She’s a nice girl, never had trouble with her. One ticket for public intoxication at a party where she was drunk. Comes from good parents. Her dad’s the pharmacist—was the pharmacist, down at Wal-Mart, and her mom was one of the managers. She was dating a kid named George for about six months. But he moved to California for a job almost a month ago. We checked him out first. He was in Los Angeles at the time these murders happened.”

  “Was she promiscuous?”

  Suzan pursed her lips. “No, she wasn’t.”

  “Was she a junkie?”

  “No, she wasn’t a junkie. I told you she was a nice girl.”

  Mickey took a sip of coffee, letting a few moments pass before speaking again. “She’s an object to the man that did this. We have to view her as an object if we want to catch him. See her how he saw her. This wasn’t random, though it might appear that way. He saw something in her that piqued his interest, and we need to know what that was. That’s how we’ll find him. You can’t get offended in us doing that.”

  “I wasn’t offended. And how do you know he wasn’t after someone else in the family?”

  “He spent the most time with her. Everyone else was killed as quickly as possible. Her death must’ve taken some time.”

  “What about Ben? He could’ve been after him. If Ben screwed up someone’s medications or something…”

  “No, she was the target.”

  She leaned forward. “But how do you know?”

  “The reports said the male subject—”

  “Ben.”

  “Right, Ben. The reports said Ben was stabbed in the eye, throat and body cavity about ten times and then left to bleed out. His wife was even quicker, with one slash across the throat. Same with the two boys. Which means whoever did this spent about half a minute worrying about Ben, his wife and the boys, and the rest of his night focusing on Janessa. He wouldn’t accidently spend the entire night with her if he was there initially for someone else. He was there for her.”

  She sipped her hot water and stared out the windows a while before speaking. “Well, you wanna see the body now?”

  12

  The drive to the Alaska State Office of the Medical Examiner in Anchorage took less than two hours. Sheriff Clay knew a pass around a mountain that Mickey would never have found in a million years. She told him that without it, the drive was nearly impossible, as the Interstate didn’t cross the mountain range behind which Kodiak Basin was tucked.

  The brown brick building with white trim sat on the side of a mountain near a community college. Suzan led him to the entrance of the building and held the door open for him.

  “Thanks.”

  The interior was cool and smelled like recently mopped floors. Suzan did a quick check-in at reception and chatted with the receptionist about the last murder case they had in Kodiak Basin almost eight years ago.

  A door opened, and a man with puffy white hair and eyeglasses pushed up onto his forehead stepped out. His eyes were red-rimmed with lack of sleep. He curtly said, “You the sheriff?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Come on back. I got her out already.”

  A rush of excitement tightened Mickey’s guts as he followed the deputy medical examiner—at least that was Mickey’s guess who this man was—down the corridor. Familiar excitement, like waiting in line for a roller coaster he’d already been on. Every walk at an ME’s office to see a body for the first time felt this way.

  They walked through a set of double-doors, past the elevators, and down a flight of stairs into a vast room. Metal cabinets covered the walls. The pale corpse of Janessa Hennley lay on a slick, steel table.

  The young woman’s eyes were closed, the surrounding tissues black from blood pooling around them, a phenomenon known as lividity. She had to lie face down long after death for gravity to force blood to drain into the face.

  The most prominent wounds were the bite indentations. They covered the entire length of her body. Some were nothing but marks that broke the skin, some so deep they had taken chunks of muscle and fat with them.

  “Looks like a knife,” the deputy ME said. “Used the knife to eviscerate her, and used his teeth for everything else. You’ll notice here that her genitals have been excised.”

  “Cut off?” the sheriff said.

  “Bitten off, actually. As was her cheek, one of her breasts, and several fingers.”

  “Were any knives found?” Mickey asked, his gaze not leaving the corpse.

  “Not that I know of,” the sheriff replied.

  Mickey examined the stumps where the intruder bit off her fingers at the knuckles. Her ring and index fingers were missing, her thumb cut about halfway down.

  “He couldn’t get through the thumb,” the deputy ME said. “The bone is pretty thick there. His teeth just wouldn’t get through. Did you find any of the flesh that was bitten off in the house?”

  “No,” the sheriff said. “You think he spit them out somewhere?”

  “He ate them.” Mickey’s gaze moved over the wound where her genitals had been, down her legs to her feet before refocusing on her face. “The autopsy was only a few pages. Is that standard length?” Mickey asked as diplomatically as possible.

  “Few pages? What’re you talking about?”

  “I only received eight or so pages of the report.”

  “There was an anatomical diagnosis, the clinical summary, the gross findings, the microscopic findings, and the clinicopathologic correlations. It was at least thirty pages, not including the other family members.”

  Mickey looked to the sheriff, who glanced at him and then away.

  “How bad is the trauma to the vaginal area?” Mickey said.

  “The uterus was torn away. Never found it. Whatever he did with the rest of her, he probably did with that. He tore her up internally prett
y good.”

  “Did you find any semen or saliva?”

  “No semen in the vagina, mouth, or anus.”

  “None?” Mickey said, astounded.

  He shook his head.

  Mickey turned to the sheriff. “Did you find any in the kitchen or the house?”

  “No. We didn’t see anything. We had a forensics guy come up, and he used the black light on the whole house.”

  Mickey stared at the body another moment before nodding to the deputy ME, who pulled a sheet over the corpse. Part of the face was still revealed and Mickey drew the sheet up the rest of the way. He thanked the ME and left without looking back.

  Mickey waited until they were on the Interstate before speaking.

  “Is there a particular reason you kept the autopsy reports from me?”

  She didn’t respond right away. “Look, it’s not you. It’s this family I’m worried about. They’ve got uncles and aunts, cousins that are still in high school…. If it got out… If anyone found out everything… Kids can be really cruel.”

  “I’d like to see them.”

  “They’re back at the office. I just have the one copy.”

  A deer on the side the road darted away into the forest. “What’s in them that’s more damaging than what we just heard?”

  She was quiet a moment. “She was found nude and had a tattoo no one knew about. It said… it said ‘slut’ across her lower back. She also had words written on her forehead. We took pictures and then washed it off before the medical examiner got there.”

  He glared at her. “You washed evidence off a murder victim?”

  “I didn’t do it. One of my deputies did. He’s friends with her uncle. This is a tiny town, Agent Parsons. I couldn’t hang on to those official crime scene photos the forensic guys took for even a day before they leaked. The deputy just wanted to protect the family as much as possible. He took photos and then cleaned her up and laid a blanket on her.”

  “What were the words written on her?”

  She hesitated. “‘I see you.’”