by Blake Pierce
They sat there silently for a while. Eventually Hannah readjusted her legs and Jessie thought she was going to get up. Instead the girl leaned back on the couch and looked up at the ceiling.
“I was thinking about something after you left,” she said with less certitude than Jessie was used to.
“What was that?”
“You said Mick came from an abusive background, right?”
“Yeah,” Jessie confirmed, noting silently that Hannah had adopted use of the girl’s nickname when discussing her. “Her dad was a drinker. It was so bad that she got emancipated at sixteen.”
“Okay,” Hannah said. “In one of my first sessions with Dr. Lemmon, she suggested I start writing in a journal, so I could get my thoughts down—the ones I wasn’t comfortable sharing out loud. But the truth is I was already doing that. I started a few days after our father killed my adoptive parents. I wrote furiously just to get the thoughts out of my head. I probably went through five or six journals before she ever brought it up.”
“Uh-huh,” Jessie said, nodding. She wasn’t certain where Hannah was going with this but didn’t want to interrupt.
“I was wondering…what if Mick did the same thing?”
“Kept a journal?” Jessie asked.
“Yeah. Think about it. Her mom dies. Her dad is a nightmare. She’s living at a Catholic school with nuns watching her every second. Then she leaves and starts doing porn. She seems like the kind of girl who might have some stuff she wanted to get off her chest.”
“That makes sense,” Jessie said noncommittally.
“I thought so,” Hannah said, now leaning in. “If she did keep a journal, I’d be willing to bet there’s a lot of material in there that might be useful to someone investigating her death. Assuming you knew where to find it.”
Jessie sat with the idea for a moment, letting it sink in. After several seconds, a possibility formed in her head. She turned to Hannah.
“You’re a genius,” she said.
“What?” Hannah said, blushing.
“I think I know where to go and it can’t wait until tomorrow. So for the second time this evening, I’m going to say goodnight and suggest you get some sleep.”
She got up and headed over to the counter to collect the things she’d placed there only minutes earlier.
“Where are you going?” Hannah asked.
“I’d tell you,” Jessie said. “But then I’d have to kill you.”
Hannah frowned but said nothing. Jessie was impressed with her restraint so she threw her a bone.
“But, little sister, if this pans out. I promise I will tell you.”
She caught a quick hint of a smile on Hannah’s face just as she shut the door.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The girl waited until she was sure the coast was clear.
Only then did she carefully walk into the room where the laptop rested, its silver branded emblem glinting in the dull overnight moonlight. She made her way over to the dresser and stood there silently for several more seconds. When she was sure the thumping she heard was coming from her own heartbeat, she lifted the screen and turned the laptop on.
The glow from the screen illuminated the entire room and she felt like she had been trapped in a prison yard spotlight. But no one appeared or said a word so she punched in the password that she’d secretly learned and waited for the screen to fill up. It didn’t take long.
Her finger hovered over the touchpad for a second longer to make absolutely sure she wouldn’t be interrupted. Then she clicked the play button.
After a second of buffering, the movie kicked in. Michaela Penn, aka Melissa Mackenzie, aka Missy Mack, wore a Catholic schoolgirl uniform with an unusually short skirt and had her hair in pigtails. She was skipping down a hallway when she was chastised by a man in what was clearly supposed to be priest attire but looked more like a black turtleneck with a piece of white tape on the collar.
“Young lady, I’ve warned you about skipping in the halls for the last time,” he scolded. “Now get in this room and accept your punishment!”
As Missy shuffled into the room and the “priest” closed the door behind her, Hannah Dorsey switched windows and pulled up Mick’s Instagram page. She’d been looking at the girl’s social media ever since Jessie left the first time that evening and had only just hopped back into bed before her half-sister unlocked the apartment’s front door.
Now she was back at it. As the porn played in the background, she toggled among all of Mick’s various feeds, trying to soak up as much as she could about the girl. She somehow felt a deep connection to her.
Hannah had gone through Jessie’s file on the girl and learned that she was exactly forty-nine days younger than Mick. Their schools were 6.4 miles apart. Mick’s GPA was 3.8 when she graduated. Hannah’s was 3.9 when she had to leave school because of her parents’ murder. Mick’s apartment was 4.7 miles from Hannah’s old house.
By checking some of Michaela’s photos, she learned that they actually knew at least three of the same people. One of the girls from Hannah’s school who had graduated last year had even been in a movie with Mick called Valley Gals Shall. It wasn’t great.
Of course, those surface connections weren’t the true reason Hannah had developed what she would acknowledge was an obsession with the other girl. It ran much deeper than that.
Both of them had been forced to grow up fast. Hannah was painfully aware that most girls she’d gone to school with were fixated on their favorite YouTube influencers and where they could find the best juice bar. She and Mick didn’t have that luxury.
Their lives were defined by dead caregivers, abusive or psychotic fathers, and the crushing sense that there wasn’t a single person in their lives that they could truly trust. That’s the world she and Mick lived in. Or in Mick’s case, died in.
Hannah looked at these photos of the dead girl and knew that they were part of an act, an image she projected to the world to protect herself from the damage it wanted to inflict on her. She could see it in the vacant, dead-eyed stare Mick offered the camera in her sex scenes. She saw it in the plastic, forced smile on her face in her social media posts. She saw it in the way Mick’s hands always seemed to be curled into tight fists, as if she might have to strike out at a threat at any moment. Hannah recognized all of it. It was like she was looking in a mirror.
*
By the time Jessie got to Michaela’s apartment, it was well past 2 a.m.
She’d considered stopping at Van Nuys Station to get the key but decided the request would draw unwanted attention. Instead, she put on a pair of latex gloves and used a technique she’d learned at the FBI Academy to jimmy the lock. Then she ducked under the police tape and stepped inside.
The apartment was dark and had a faint, rusty smell, which she recognized all too well as the scent remnant of blood. Jessie stood in the hall and took the place in. She tried to imagine Michaela standing beside her, deciding the best place to hide a journal that held her deepest, darkest secrets.
The obvious place to start was her bedroom. She walked to the end of the hall and used her foot to push open the door, which was only slightly ajar. Stepping in, she looked around, trying to think where a seventeen-year-old girl might hide something so precious.
She worked her way around the room, opening dresser drawers, crawling under the bed, and carefully sifting through the contents of the closet. She couldn’t explain why, but she had the distinct sense that she wasn’t the first person to do this in the last twenty-four hours. Something about the way items rested on counters, desks, and the closet floor suggested that they had been reviewed and replaced, not always in their original location.
After twenty minutes, it became clear that the bedroom was a dead end. She returned to the living room and slowly spun in a small circle, hoping she might notice something she’d missed before. Nothing leapt out at her.
Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that Hannah had been on to something. It just made
emotional sense that Michaela would need some sort of safe outlet for her thoughts.
It has to be here somewhere.
She sat down in the middle of the floor and tried to picture Michaela doing the same thing. She pictured the girl here alone in the days before Lizzie moved in. This was her place. She had the run of it before she’d decided to have a roommate. She knew all the secret hiding spots. She knew the places Lizzie wasn’t allowed to go.
And that’s when an idea occurred to her. Lizzie had said the rent was cheap because she really only used the one bedroom. But the reality was that she generally had free rein. Knowing human nature, if there was some spot that Michaela had told her not to go, that very request would have made such a place tempting.
But there was one part of the apartment Lizzie was unlikely to snoop because there was simply no reason to: her own room.
Jessie got up and went to the bedroom. The door was open. The room was fairly spartan, which reflected both Lizzie’s finances and the transient lifestyle of a college student.
She hadn’t done much to personalize it, though she did have that cross over her bed, reflecting her acknowledged religiosity. There were two framed watercolors on the wall. In the far corner between the window and the closet was a framed Gustav Klimt print of the iconic The Kiss.
Compared to some of the other Klimt works in the rest of the apartment, this one was fairly tame. In the painting, a couple embraced chastely. Still, Jessie found it odd that it was in Lizzie’s room. The piece was clearly more Mick’s style.
Why would she put it in the other bedroom?
Jessie walked over and looked at the print more closely, her brain tingling slightly. The painting was in this room because that’s where Michaela wanted it. She would have hung it before Lizzie moved in. And because Lizzie didn’t want to alienate her generous friend, she wouldn’t have protested, especially since the image was so unobjectionable. It was actually more romantic than erotic.
Nestled in the corner of the room that didn’t belong to Mick and innocuous enough to be overlooked entirely, it was the perfect spot to hide something important. Jessie lifted the frame off the wall, excited to see what was behind it. But there was nothing there besides two nails and painted drywall.
Frustrated, she tried to re-hang the print. But it was heavy and she almost dropped the thing. She put it down and allowed herself a second to regroup before trying again. She lifted it a second time, stunned at how unwieldy it was.
Why is it so heavy?
The tingling in her brain had extended to her extremities. She put the frame down again and stared at it. Then she laid it face down on the ground. Kneeling down, she unfastened the backing and lifted it off.
There, tucked in behind the back of the print, was a large manila envelope, packed full to bursting. Jessie removed and opened it. Inside was cash—more money than Jessie had ever seen in her life. She couldn’t begin to guess at the total. There were easily a dozen bundles of bills, all at least an inch thick. She was tempted to try to count them but knew she was already pressing her luck by being here at all. Lingering to rifle through the envelope was one risk too many.
So she tucked it into the back of her slacks, reassembled the frame, and with much effort, managed to hang it back on the wall. She was just heading for the bedroom door when she heard the sound of the unlocked front door creak open.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Jessie pulled out her gun.
As the sound of footsteps got closer, she stood next to the door of Lizzie’s room with her back pressed against the wall. Anyone who stepped in would be in point-blank range of her weapon.
She exhaled slowly and as quietly as she could. The footsteps, heavy and clunky, were now right outside the bedroom. They stopped briefly, then continued down the hall. Jessie waited until they had gone several steps past her before poking her head out.
It was too dark to identify the intruder but it was definitely a male. He was trudging loudly toward the back room. Jessie briefly considered sneaking out the front door, confident she wouldn’t be noticed.
But what if this was the killer, returning to clean up some evidence that might implicate him or merely to bask in his crime? She couldn’t turn her back on that. Before she could stop herself she was moving toward the man with her gun raised. When she was only three feet away, she finally spoke.
“Hey!” she shouted.
The man spun around right into the butt of her gun, which she slammed hard against his forehead. As he fell backward, Jessie flicked on the hall light with one hand while pointing her weapon at him. He hit the ground with a thud, let out a loud moan, and looked up. It was Keith Penn, Michaela’s father.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she demanded.
“Owwww,” he whimpered.
“What are you doing here, Mr. Penn?” she demanded again. “I better get a good answer in the next five seconds.”
He looked up, squinting into the light to see her. After a second, he seemed to recognize who was standing over him.
“I’m Michaela’s dad,” he said weakly.
“I know who you are. We spoke earlier today in jail. Why aren’t you still there?”
He reached up and rubbed his head, as if that would somehow dull the ache.
“They released me when I posted bail,” he said. “I’m just here to find something…anything to remember her by. I don’t even have a picture.”
Jessie lowered her weapon slightly. Penn at least seemed to have sobered up. He wasn’t slurring like earlier that day and his eyes were clear.
“Why didn’t you ask an officer to bring you by?” she asked with less intensity than before.
“Are you kidding? I just wanted to get out of there. Besides, I didn’t think they’d let me enter a crime scene, even if I am her father, at least in name.”
“What does that mean?” she asked.
He looked down at the carpet and sighed heavily before answering her.
“It’s pretty clear I wasn’t much of a dad. Ever since Michaela’s mom died, I’ve been in a downward spiral. That was ten years ago and I just never pulled myself out, even for her.”
Jessie could feel her animosity ebbing as her curiosity grew.
“Why not?” she asked.
He looked at her closely, debating whether it was worth trying to explain. He seemed oblivious to the trickle of blood running down his forehead.
“I was always a pretty big drinker,” he said quietly. “But once Marnie died, it got out of control. Lots of nights I passed out and Michaela had to put herself to bed. Sometimes she had to make her own dinner, usually dry cereal. I don’t even know how she managed to get to school, much less get good enough grades to get into that Catholic school.”
“It sounds like she was tough cookie,” Jessie offered.
“Yeah. Maybe too tough. After a while, on days when I was half-sober, I noticed that she had become…what’s the word, distant?”
“That surprised you?” Jessie asked, stunned that he’d expect anything else.
“No, that’s not the right word; more like detached, as if she wouldn’t allow herself to have any emotions. She never cried, even if I yelled at her or did worse, which sometimes happened. She seemed to shut off, not just with me, but with everyone. To this day, I still remember a comment from one of her teachers on her report card. She got straight A’s but the teacher said she was ‘disconnected from the school community and seemed unable to form meaningful bonds.’ They sent her to the school counselor but it didn’t seem to do much good. I can’t help but think I did that to her.”
He looked up at Jessie as if seeking absolution. But she had none to offer. He was almost certainly right. It was quite likely that he had done this to her. Maybe Michaela had anti-social tendencies already, but having an abusive, alcoholic, absentee father would have greatly exacerbated it.
She got the sense that he didn’t know just how far his daughter had gone to achieve any semblance of feeling i
n her life. He seemed not to know that his dead daughter was a porn actress. And though he probably didn’t deserve to be protected from knowing the full extent of the harm he’d caused, Jessie decided not to tell. He was pathetic enough as it was, lying limp and forlorn on the apartment carpet. She didn’t need to kick him while he was down.
“You should go, Mr. Penn,” she finally said. “You could get in trouble for being here and you don’t need any more trouble.”
“Okay,” he said, getting slowly to his feet. “Why are you here?”
Jessie felt a brief moment of anxiety as she realized it wouldn’t do for him to go around talking about her presence here. But it faded quickly.
“I’m investigating Michaela’s murder,” she said, not mentioning that she was ignoring the niceties of proper police procedure. “I’m looking for evidence to catch her killer.”
Penn seemed satisfied with that answer and trudged out toward the front door without further prodding. Jessie followed him, not holstering her weapon but now keeping it at her side. She locked the door from the inside and they stepped outside.
“How did you get here?” she asked.
“My truck is impounded so I took a cab from the motel.”
Jessie looked at the time. It was 2:24 a.m. She sighed heavily.
“Tell me where it is and I’ll give you a ride,” she said.
“You’d do that?” he asked, taken aback.
“I just want to go home and get some sleep,” she told him. “That’s what I recommend you do too.”
He nodded and they made their way to her car. Both were weighed down, he by guilt and grief and she by unresolved questions. Neither spoke again, even when they parted ways.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
Hannah had to wake her up.
Through a mix of physical and mental exhaustion, Jessie had slept through both her main and backup alarms. When Hannah shook her gently and noted that it was almost 8 a.m., the time Jessie usually got to work, she nearly pulled a muscle bounding out of bed.