The Murder of Janessa Hennley Page 10

  The narrow stairs gave Mickey a claustrophobic tightness in his chest. Suzan didn’t seem to notice.

  The basement was unfinished, the floors bare cement and the walls wood and insulation. Behind a table in the corner was a large hole in the wall.

  “Found her right there. The hole had been patched over, and when we brought out a K-9 unit to have a sniff, he hit right in that spot.”

  A tag with the words JANE DOE written in marker was attached to a black bag that resembled a thick trash bag.

  “Bobby, you mind?” Torres said.

  One of the techs working on the hole unzipped the bag. Inside were the putrid remains of what was clearly a young teenager. She still wore shorts and a red tank top. Most of her flesh had rotted away, and the stench was overpowering. Dead human bodies had a unique smell that nothing in the animal kingdom resembled.

  “Found her encased in cement in the wall. The cement had cracked through and let in oxygen. It must’ve stunk up the whole house. I don’t know why he didn’t try to move it or something.”

  “Other victims?” Mickey asked.

  “Nope. But we’ve just started tearing the house up. Maybe we’ll find something, but the K-9 didn’t hit anywhere but here.”

  “Did you find anything else?”

  “Oh yeah. Come upstairs.”

  He followed him up the stairs and quickly glanced at Suzan. She said nothing as they ascended. Torres led them to the master bedroom. A tech was standing in front of the television, latex gloves on his hands as he flipped through some DVDs.

  “Turn it on,” Torres said. Mickey picked up an emotion in his voice that sounded almost like glee.

  The image came to life on the screen. A girl of perhaps fifteen or sixteen was nude and tied up in a bed. Mickey recognized the bed as the one he stood in front of right now. A man’s voice spoke over the video.

  “You’re gonna love this, you little bitch. I have a fun night planned. You like masks, huh? You like masks?”

  The man placed a mask over the camera, darkening it. Only a muffled groan escaped the girl’s gagged mouth. The image switched to a stationary one a few feet from the bed. The next shot showed his nude body and him raping the young girl.

  Mickey looked over to Suzan. Her eyes were glistening, and she wasn’t blinking.

  “Turn it off, please,” Mickey said.

  “Huh? Oh, sure.” Torres nodded, and the tech flipped it off. “There’s at least twenty of these videos. Some of them have more guys in them. As many as a few dozen in one we saw. We haven’t even gone through the entire collection yet.”

  “Where is he?” Suzan said through clenched teeth.

  “Mathias? He’s being driven down to the Bureau in Anchorage for interrogation.”

  Mickey waited a beat and said, “Come on, let’s get outta here.”

  As they descended the stairs back to the main floor, Suzan turned to him. “They better keep him the hell away from me. ’Cause if I see him, I’m putting a bullet in his head.”

  31

  The drive back to the Sheriff’s Office seemed to take longer than normal.

  “You okay?” Mickey asked as they left the car.

  “Fine.”

  Suzan gathered a few things inside her office. Mickey told her he would see her tonight. Afterward, he drove to the nearest grocery store.

  Mickey bought some tomatoes, onions, green peppers, ground beef, garlic, and basil. He also picked up some bread, pasta, and two bottles of wine. If ever there was a time Suzan Clay needed a home-cooked meal, he guessed it was now.

  As he drove back to Suzan’s house, he listened to a local classical station playing Bach. The reception wasn’t good and the signal kept cutting out, but he didn’t mind. The scenery here was something out of a postcard and made up for a lot.

  At her home, he put the groceries inside before changing into gym shorts, a Nike shirt, and sneakers. He drank down a full glass of water and went outside. The weather was still cool but mostly sunny, with sporadic clouds spread across the blue expanse. The air here was different, softer somehow. Not as difficult to process for the body, maybe.

  Mickey jogged along the road for only a few blocks before cutting into the forest and stumbling along a trail that headed into the surrounding mountains. Trees crowded the narrow trail, and pinecones crunched underneath his feet. Insects buzzed around him. The higher he rose, the louder they seemed to get.

  He wrapped around the mountain. He had run for thirty minutes. The summit was still a good half hour away, and instead of heading there, he turned around. His knees and ankles ached from the rougher terrain—he was used to running on asphalt—but he felt better than he had in a long time. Even the itch in his throat was gone.

  By the time he arrived back at Suzan’s home, he was out of breath, his legs were sore, and sweat poured out of him. He held his hands behind his head and walked up the block, then back, to cool down. As he sat on the porch, some of her neighbors waved, and he waved back. People here seemed genuinely friendly, and he guessed if the neighbors weren’t wrangling kids, they probably would have come over to say hello.

  After a shower, he limped out to the patio. He lay down on a couch and listened to the hum of the engines on the road. He tried to sleep, but his heart was racing from the jog, and sweat still rolled out. He settled for deep breathing and emptied his mind.

  He felt an entire day’s fatigue, but it was only eleven in the morning.

  After grabbing his jacket, he drove to the location the sheriff had taken him near the Hennleys’ home. He parked in front of the house. Police tape still barricaded the door, and the house looked undisturbed. He sat in the truck a while and listened to the classical station before getting out.

  The lawn was freshly cut. No one had informed the landscapers, or the Hennleys had already paid for the rest of the month and they felt obligated to finish.

  Mickey tried the front door. It was open. He ducked under the police tape and shut the door behind him.

  The house was still. Dust particles didn’t even twirl in the beams of light coming through the windows. He wondered how long it took them to settle without anyone living here.

  He looked inside the first room, an office. It contained Ben Hennley’s computer, a few chairs, a desk, and photos of the family. A sign over the computer said “Bless This Mess.”

  Mickey unhurriedly walked into the living room. He sat on the couch and noticed the television hanging on the wall. How many hours had the family spent here, laughing, arguing, and crying? He picked up the remote on the table and flicked on the television but received only black and white static on every station. The cable company apparently didn’t feel as obligated as the landscapers.

  He gradually made his way into the kitchen. No dishes were in the sink, and the drawers were bare. He opened the fridge. The grandparents had emptied it, leaving a box of Arm & Hammer on the top shelf. Only ice filled the freezer. He opened the wooden door next to the fridge. Stairs descended into the basement. His stomach dropped as he took the first step down.

  The basement wasn’t as dark as he thought it would be. Next to a washer and dryer tucked away in the corner, piles of laundry sat on a counter. He approached a workbench against the wall. He pulled down the hammer from the tools hanging on a board and felt the weight of it before picking up a screwdriver. The one that killed Ben Hennley was locked away in an evidence locker, but with this one in his palm, he imagined what it would be like to kill a man with it. Sloppy and painful. He hung it back on the board.

  The dark stains by his feet were all that remained of Ben in this house. The cleaning crew failed to get it out of the cement, though they replaced the carpets upstairs. The grandparents would put the home on the market immediately at a severely discounted rate. Who bought a home where a family was murdered? He pictured a shady realtor keeping that bit of information to himself and misleading a poor family into believing they were getting a steal.

  Mickey walked to the windows. H
e recalled from the police reports that the far window in the corner had been the point of entry. The person that entered this house didn’t even have to break the glass. The window was open. Mickey wondered if no one in this town was frightened of crime, since it was so rare. Now, he had no doubt people would lock their doors and windows.

  The window wasn’t large, maybe four feet by two feet. They would have had to sneak through and then balance themselves on a steel cabinet before hopping to the ground. Mickey imagined that the darkness completely hid this section of the basement away.

  He left the basement and headed upstairs, stopping in the kitchen. Why had he come here at all, and why had he waited so long to do it? The scene of the crime was usually the first stop.

  He went up to the children’s room next.

  He looked at the bed and stood there a long time before returning to the hall. He slowly stepped into the master bedroom and stared at the bed in which Candice Hennley was murdered.

  Mickey sat on the steps of the home, feeling embarrassed for the Hennleys that a stranger was here going through their private life.

  He drove back to Suzan’s to begin cooking dinner. Mickey arrived much faster than he expected.

  32

  Dr. Martin Boyack sat alone in his office, a grandfather clock ticking against the far wall. Elegantly decorated, the office was a safe haven in Anchorage. Somewhere for his patients to get away from the troubles of the world. He had designed it to be soundproof and rented the office next door to ensure that no noises would disturb him or his patients.

  The rugs were imported, and the desk the finest oak he could find. A woodworker, an old man with generations of woodworkers behind him in Switzerland, had actually made it.

  Dr. Boyack sat at the desk and finished some notes regarding a twenty-six-year-old young woman he was treating. Apparently she had become promiscuous for no reason at all. She had been in a stable relationship with a man she loved dearly, and then one day just began cheating on him and now couldn’t stop. She admitted to having sex with ten to fifteen men a month.

  As occasionally happened in the treatment of hypersexuality, she had attempted a seduction of Dr. Boyack as well. When he rebuffed her and told her that they would not be sleeping together, she broke down and wept. It was the breakthrough Dr. Boyack had been waiting for.

  The office door buzzed, and he saw from the clock on the wall that it was nearly seven in the evening.

  His office typically closed at five, but this was a special situation. He opened the door to find three people standing there.

  “Please,” he said, “come in.”

  Two of them sat in chairs in front of his desk. A middle-aged couple, perhaps in their late fifties. The male appeared distant, and as soon as they sat down, he began fidgeting and staring off into space.

  The female was worse. She rocked slowly, and her hands trembled. She couldn’t look him in the eyes.

  And behind them sat their son, David Shyam. The reason they were here. He wore a gray hoodie, a scarf, and large, dark, Jim Jones-style sunglasses. The only visible part of his face was his forehead.

  “Thank you for seeing us, Doctor,” Rebecca Shyam said. “We both work until six and couldn’t make it sooner.”

  “That’s all right. I was catching up on some paperwork anyway. So, we didn’t get a chance to really discuss things in detail on the phone. Why don’t you tell me what it is I can do for you?”

  “It’s… David. He’s having some serious issues. Well, he’s always had issues. But not like this.”

  “Perhaps we should speak in private, Mrs. Shyam?”

  “Oh, you’re worried about him listening. No, he doesn’t listen to anything. In fact, he hasn’t spoken in three years. Not a single word.”

  David Shyam’s face was turned toward the carpet, and he sat still as a statue.

  Mrs. Shyam mumbled something under her breath and then cleared her throat. “The doctors didn’t know what was wrong with him for a long time. Chronic depression and then anxiety… One doctor said he might be schizophrenic, but the tests were inconclusive. He just kept getting worse and worse until about three years ago, when he completely withdrew into himself.”

  Dr. Boyack leaned back in his seat and put a pen lightly to his lips, a gesture a professor of his used to have. He immediately felt foolish and placed the pen down on the desk. “Withdrew how?”

  “Well, like I said, he stopped talking. I mean completely.” She glanced at her husband, who wasn’t looking up. “And a few months after that, he stopped eating and drinking. He stopped going to the bathroom, too, and we’d find him covered in”—she whispered the next word—“poop.”

  “Does he eat now?”

  “No. He has to be force-fed through a tube. But he doesn’t fight us. He just lies back while we insert the tube. But if we didn’t do it, he would starve to death. The neurologist can’t find anything physically wrong. He referred us to you.”

  The husband cleared his throat and said, “We were told you specialize in rare disorders. That you might be able to help our boy.”

  “I’ll need to spend some time with him first. I received his medical records this morning from Dr. Williams, and we’re in agreement that it’s nothing physiological. That means it’s likely psychological. And if it’s psychological, it’s going to take some time to figure out.”

  Mrs. Shyam furtively glanced at her husband and then back to Dr. Boyack. “There’s something else, too.” She pushed back her son’s hoodie, took off his glasses and scarf, and pulled up his sleeves.

  Dr. Boyack’s mouth nearly dropped open. He caught himself and tried not to show any emotion.

  The boy’s skin was jaundiced and pasty, as if he’d been locked in a cellar for years; his eyes were the same urine color but rimmed a bright red. Bandages covered most of his skin, but the portions that weren’t protected appeared to be slipping off his bones. His nails were long and black. His mother lifted his lips, revealing jagged, broken teeth. But sinewy muscle covered the skeleton. He guessed the Shyam’s were probably overfeeding him and maintaining his weight.

  “He stopped taking care of himself,” Mrs. Shyam said. “He just sits wherever we put him, and he’ll stay there and not move for days. I think he would die if we didn’t move him around.”

  “I noticed he walked in here. You didn’t have to carry him.”

  “No, if he’s walking in one direction he’ll keep walking, but he won’t really turn. He fell off a balcony like that, actually. Broke his arm and didn’t make a sound. The expression on his face didn’t even change.”

  “Can you help him, doc?” Mr. Shyam said it with such desperation that Dr. Boyack couldn’t help but feel for the family.

  “Yes, I might be able to. But it’ll take a tremendous amount of work on your part as well.”

  “We understand. Anything we can do.”

  He took them in quietly a moment before speaking again. They were desperate and frightened. Facing a force of nature, a disordered psyche, that human beings couldn’t fully comprehend or control. “It seems like he has some muscle on him.”

  “We give him steroid injections. His doctor said we had to keep up his muscles. Otherwise, he’d wither away. He’s actually pretty strong.”

  Dr. Boyack nodded. That’s what he would prescribe for a languid patient in David’s state as well. “I’d like to start seeing him a few times per week.”

  “He won’t talk to you.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I just want him here, spending time with me.”

  The husband nodded. “We appreciate you taking him on.”

  “Don’t appreciate me yet. I may not be able to do anything for him. The first step is to diagnose him. I have seen a similar condition in some paranoid schizophrenic patients, but not this extreme. And never to the degree that they can’t speak for three years.”

  “I don’t think he can’t, I think he won’t.”

  “Well, we’ll have to see.” Dr. Boyack took out
his phone and snapped a photo of David. He wondered if he should have asked permission first, but the Shyams didn’t even seem to notice. “Please bring him by in the afternoon tomorrow. I don’t usually schedule any sessions after 3:30, but I’ll make an exception for David.”

  “We really appreciate this,” Mrs. Shyam said. “Come on, David, let’s go.”

  The two of them lifted him out of his chair and sent him on a path down the hallway. Dr. Boyack shut the door behind them.

  An odd excitement and curiosity tingled his belly. This seemed a severe case, and severe cases were always interesting to publish in the psychiatric journals. He did have an odd assortment of clients, but never one with a condition like David’s. His brain, according to every MRI, PET, CAT and MEG scan available in modern medicine, was perfectly healthy. And yet, everything that made David human seemed lacking. Even the ability to choose not to speak for three years was extraordinary. Everything about the case was extraordinary.

  But his appearance was why Dr. Boyack made an exception for later in the afternoon, because David would frighten his other patients. The closest thing he resembled, Dr. Boyack thought, was a corpse.

  33

  Mickey waited until the last minute before cooking the meal. He wanted it nice and hot for Suzan when she got home. He was still cooking the sauce when she came in.

  “Hey,” she said, a hint of surprise in her voice. “You didn’t have to cook.”

  “It was nothing.”

  “Smells good.”

  “Thanks. Old recipe. Have a seat. It should be done soon.”

  Suzan took out two wine glasses, poured them nearly to the brim, and handed one to Mickey. She clinked his glass.

  “To catching the bastard,” she said.

  Mickey took a sip before placing the glass down.

  “So, I thought tomorrow we could go down to the station and go through videos together,” she said. “I bet some of my deputies would recognize a lot of the girls.”