The Murder of Janessa Hennley Page 16

  The man folded his arms. “I know. And I know that the sheriff was more than happy to give it to you, but the detectives don’t work like that. Just thought you should know you won’t be getting any help from them.”

  “I appreciate the warning. But that’s pretty much the reaction everywhere. Nothing new.”

  Mickey walked back to the body and put on latex gloves of his own. He signaled for the ME’s people to help him turn it over. The woman’s face was swollen to the size of a soccer ball, and one side was flat. Mickey ran his gaze down her body to her stomach.

  “Look at this,” he said to Angela.

  The stomach had split open, and the contents were pouring out. “He cut her open,” she said.

  “No. That’s not a cut. And that food’s undigested.” He stood up, his stare not leaving the stomach. “I think she burst.”

  2

  Mickey stood by their rental car as the ME’s team bagged the body and placed it in the Medical Examiner’s van. He nodded to the man he’d spoken to as he climbed into the van and pulled away.

  “Locals don’t seem too friendly,” Angela said, sipping her coffee.

  “Get used to it. There’s some real fragile egos in law enforcement. You’ll get that reaction a lot.”

  She sighed. “So, what now?”

  “Now you’re going to take everything we’ve gathered, and you’re going to make your first murder book. It has to have everything about the case. The reports you write have to be as detailed as possible. Nothing left out. Make sure you get all the tox and crime scene reports from the other agencies, too.”

  “You really think it’s the same guy? From Lincoln County?”

  “The killings are similar, but the Nebraska victim looked a lot different. Brunette instead of blonde, chubby instead of skinny. I don’t remember what the contents of her stomach were. Find out, would you?”

  “Sure.”

  Mickey checked his watch. “I have a call to make from the hotel. Let’s head back.”

  The air conditioner in the rental spewed out warm air. Mickey, steering with his knees, took off his jacket and loosened his tie. Angela looked over nervously but didn’t say anything.

  “Where you from originally?” Mickey asked.

  “Buffalo.”

  “Yeah? Did you go to UB?”

  “No, I went out of state. University of Michigan.”

  “What’d you study?”

  “Chemistry.”

  “What would possibly make you want to do this for a living over a scientist?”

  “You don’t believe in the nobility of the cause?”

  “Nobody would choose this career. It chooses you. The people that last a long time are the ones that are in this because they can’t do anything else.”

  “Well, maybe I’m one of those people?”

  “No, I don’t think you are. You chose the FBI and Behavioral Science in particular. Why?”

  “Let’s just say I wanted to make a difference.” She paused. “I think all life is worth fighting for, you know? The prostitute’s life is worth just as much as a billionaire. I see that here. We treat every homicide the same. I love that. We don’t fight for people, we fight for life.”

  She averted her eyes and watched the passing fields out the window. She played absently with her ID card tethered to a University of Michigan lanyard.

  He parked at the Marriot and dropped her off.

  “You coming in?” she asked.

  “No, I’m gonna grab something to eat after my phone call. You’re welcome to come.”

  “Don’t think so. I’ve got some autopsy reports to get through, it looks like.”

  “Stay on it. They’ll seem like Latin at first. But you’ll pick up the rhythm of the reports in no time.”

  “All right, see you in a bit.”

  Mickey waited until she was inside before pulling out and driving to the nearby diner. The place was one story, red, and appeared as if it had been built in the ’50s. But they had the best omelets Mickey ever had. He sat quietly a few moments before dialing a Virginia number on his cell. The bad hold music on repeat at hospitals and doctor’s offices occupied the line. He’d listened to hours of it when his wife was in the cancer unit back in Virginia.

  “Dry Creek Medical,” a receptionist answered.

  “Yes, I’m a patient of Dr. Glenn’s. I’m waiting for some test results. Mickey Parsons.”

  “One moment… Dr. Glenn isn’t in right now, but I’m sure he’ll call you as soon as he knows, Mr. Parsons.”

  “Thanks. Tell him any time is fine, day or night.”

  “Of course. We’ll let you know.”

  Mickey hung up and placed the phone into his breast pocket. Inside the diner, he sat at a booth in the corner facing the parking lot. The waitress, a girl by the name of Debbie, poured him a cup of coffee.

  “Two days in a row. People are gonna start talkin’ about us.”

  “I can’t help it. I think you put drugs in your omelets.”

  She grinned. “Just love. So, same?”

  “Yes. And a side of fruit today, please. How’d your boy’s soccer game go yesterday?”

  “Oh, you know, with five-year-olds it’s not really a game. Just kids running from one end of the field to the other. But it was a lot of fun. They won, and he said he wants to be a professional soccer player.”

  “Well, don’t ever talk him out of it. Kids need to know they can be whatever they want to be.”

  She shrugged. “Unless what they want to be is bad, I guess. Your food’ll be right out.”

  Mickey sipped his coffee and opened the file on the body he’d observed all morning. Carrie Ann Belnap.

  Twenty-one and a full time student at the University of Iowa. Next of kin was an aunt notified of her death yesterday. The aunt had called in a missing persons report a week ago. Carrie Ann was last seen alive at a local bar near the school, drinking with friends and having pizza.

  One of the friends, a boy named Seth Morgan, reported that he saw her speaking to a man in the parking lot after she had left, but he couldn’t identify the man or give a decent description of him. He couldn’t remember the make or model of the vehicle either, other than it was a van.

  Mickey flipped through photos of the scene. There wasn’t much blood, a sign the perpetrator moved her from another location. Ligature marks on her wrists and ankles indicated duct tape or rope. Not a hard plastic bind.

  The most unusual aspect was the stomach contents. The photos showed nothing but a lumpy slosh, but an enormous amount of food had to be eaten to produce that amount. Much more than could comfortably be ingested.

  He would have to wait for the autopsy results to find out exactly what was consumed and in what quantity. But an unpleasant thought kept creeping into his mind. His best guess about the cause of death was that someone bound her and fed her until her stomach burst open. From there, she either bled to death or died of sepsis.

  He closed the file as the omelet arrived. Mushroom, bacon, and sausage with extra cheese.

  “You’re nothing but skin and bones,” Debbie said. “I threw in a chocolate chip muffin for you.”

  “Thanks, Debbie.”

  “Lemme know if you need anything.”

  The omelet melted with each bite, and he couldn’t gobble it fast enough. He managed to eat half the muffin and drank two cups of coffee before the bill came. The tally was less than nine dollars. Mickey left a twenty-dollar tip.

  Debbie sat on the curb sipping a Red Bull. He took out a package of gum and placed a piece in his mouth before offering one to her.

  “You’re here on that girl, ain’t ya?” she said.

  “How could you tell?”

  “I saw your FBI badge.” She swallowed the rest of her drink. “How long you here for?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  She looked out to the road as a car drove by. “I didn’t know her, but I know girls like her. She was just a child.”

  “Twenty
-one.”

  “Who would do something like that?”

  “Anyone. Don’t ever let anyone surprise you, Debbie. Everyone’s capable of evil when they think no one’s watching.”

  “Are you?”

  Before he could answer, his cell phone rang. It was Angela. “Hey,” Mickey said.

  “Hey, reread through the autopsy reports on the vic in Lincoln County.”

  “And?”

  “You’re not gonna believe it. A massive amount of food was found in the belly. We kinda skimmed over it because it wasn’t that unusual at the time. Guess what kind of food it was?”

  “What?”

  “Cake. Fucking cake, Mickey. How much you wanna bet cake is what’s in this vic’s stomach?”

  He waved to Debbie as he walked away, and she waved back. He waited a beat to make sure she was out of earshot. “We need the autopsy done ASAP.”

  “I don’t think they like us much out here. I doubt we’re a high priority.”

  “Maybe not us, but I bet I know someone that can exert a little pressure.”

  3

  The donut shop smelled like warm dough and sugar. Mickey picked out the twelve most fattening donuts he could, along with two Sprites. The clerk boxed them, and then Mickey drove to the Madison County Sheriff’s Office.

  The flat, brown building lacked an ounce of decoration. The windows were clean and the trees well trimmed. No garbage littered the parking lot, but the building was ugly enough that cleanliness couldn’t make up for it.

  Mickey approached the front desk. An officer, an older woman with thinning hair, was eating Top Ramen. She sighed when she saw him and put the cup down.

  “What do you want, Agent Parsons?”

  “I’d like to speak to Detective Miller again, please.”

  “Hold on.”

  She buzzed him and spoke softly on the phone a moment. “Go on back. Third door on the right.”

  “Thanks.”

  He walked to Detective Toby Miller’s office and knocked on the open door. Miller finished whatever he was writing before leaning back and catching his gaze. His thick, bushy mustache drooped over his top lip. One of his buttons was open; he wasn’t wearing a shirt underneath. The pit stains under his arms expanded to his chest.

  “Agent Parsons. Still in town and no collar yet, huh?”

  “Working on it,” Mickey said, sitting down across from him. “Here.” He placed the donuts and drinks on the desk.

  “Banbury Cross, I’m impressed. But nothin’ is free in the world. What do you want, Agent Parsons, in exchange for the ten dollars in donuts you brought me?”

  “I want what you want. To catch this son of a bitch. I don’t care about headlines, Toby. I don’t care about interviews. You can have all of it. I just want to make sure this doesn’t happen to another girl.”

  “That’s what y’all say,” he scoffed, “and then the cameras come ’round and the local police seem to get forgotten in your ‘thank you’ speeches. Makes us look bad, and the sheriff is an elected position. He can’t look bad.”

  “Anything I find, I give to you directly. You don’t have to mention me anywhere.”

  “Except in the police reports and in court when they ask me where I got the evidence. Sorry, Paco, I don’t think I’m gonna be playin’ your game.”

  He nodded. “Then it looks like I’ll be hanging on to any evidence I find. And when I do have enough to make a collar, maybe the local TV station will be my first call instead of the good people of the Madison County Sheriff’s Office. And when they ask me what your involvement was, I’ll have to truthfully tell them that you refused to cooperate and the FBI apprehended the suspect on our own. Now, how do you think the sheriff would react to that? Considering it’s an elected position and all.”

  Miller ran his finger across the desk and made a sucking noise as if a piece of meat was stuck between his teeth. His gaze was fixated on the desk a long time, and he kept wrinkling his forehead. The frequency of it implied he didn’t know he was doing it.

  “Fine. What do you wanna know?” Miller said.

  “I want all the forensic reports. The ones made by the team that was out before we got there.”

  “Who said a team was up there?”

  Mickey took out his phone and opened a photograph. A trail of boot prints led around the body. “Next time you bring out a forensics team to work a scene, you may want to tell them to wear booties over their boots. Unless, of course, these are the killer’s prints, in which case we should have them analyzed right away.”

  Miller’s cheeks flushed red. “You know damn well they ain’t.”

  “Contaminating a scene isn’t going to play well. Especially since you did it just so you’d have first crack at the evidence.” Mickey bit into one of the donuts. “Your sheriff asked us to come out, Toby. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t want it. I was perfectly happy at my desk, writing reports from nine to five. And the only way I’m getting back to my desk is if we catch him. So please, help me out here. Give me the initial forensic reports.”

  He exhaled and reached into his desk, producing a thick stack of reports. He tossed them across the desk. Mickey placed them in his lap.

  “Thank you, Toby. I knew we’d hit it off eventually.”

  “Tell my secretary to make you copies. I want the originals.”

  As Mickey walked out of the office, Toby mumbled, “Cocksucker,” behind him.

  4

  Harold Ricks stood on the roof of an apartment building and looked down at the sidewalk twelve stories below. His gray beard moved in time with the wind. He lifted one leg and then the other and did a little twirl, spitting in the face of death. He laughed with surprise at his lack of fear.

  The police had been called, but they weren’t shouting anything through a megaphone like he saw in the movies. They hid their cars around the block and rushed into the building to get up onto the roof. Luckily, he just happened to have a key he stole from the maintenance crew years ago.

  A woman walked by below him.

  “Hey!” he shouted. “Hey! You think you’d go flat if I landed on you?” The woman couldn’t hear him and kept walking. Shuffling along, he followed her to the edge of the building and then exposed himself to her.

  A key clicked in the lock behind him. Two police officers rushed him as if he was a quarterback with the ball. He held out his arms and looked up to the sky. Two sets of hands grabbed him and threw him down. A knee slammed into his back. The knee pressed so hard he couldn’t suck in breath.

  “Bastards,” he hissed quietly. “You saved my life to kill me?”

  They lifted him, and he took in a breath as they dragged him off the roof and down to their cruisers. Once he was in the back, one of the officers turned to him.

  “What the hell you doin’ up there?”

  “Just havin’ fun. That’s what this is all ’bout, ain’t it? Havin’ fun.”

  “I shoulda just let you splat on the ground.”

  “I shoulda taken you with me.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “To take you off the roof with me? How can I threaten that in handcuffs in the back of your car? They give out stupid pills this mornin’ or somethin’?”

  The other officer said, “Ignore it. Let’s take him down to get booked and finish this fucking day.”

  As the cruiser pulled away, Harold peered at an old house next to the building. Through the bedroom window, on the bed, he could just see the mop of blonde hair, messy and crusted red. He smiled to himself. He’d take her down to his special room after he got out of this.

  “You ain’t gonna search me or my house, huh?”

  “Why? You got somethin’ in there we should see?”

  “Got me a girl. She just dyin’ for me to get back.”

  “You ain’t got no girl, old man. Now shut up before I put a sack over your head.”

  He smiled and shrugged. “Don’t say I didn’t warn ya.”

  5

 
Around nine p.m. Mickey got the call that the autopsy had been completed. He knocked on Angela’s door. She answered in pajamas as an episode of Breaking Bad played on the television.

  “Autopsy’s done. Let’s go.”

  “That fast?”

  “I called in a favor.”

  She gathered her clothes before entering the bathroom to change. “With who?” she yelled out.

  “Former instructor at the academy who’s on the medical licensing board here. Doctors don’t turn down requests from them.”

  Angela emerged in her suit and grabbed her earrings before heading out. As Mickey drove, he glanced over at her. She was playing some game with cannons and a wall on her phone.

  “Can I ask you something personal?” he said.

  “Sure.”

  “How old are you, Angela?”

  “Twenty-four. Why?” she said without looking up.

  “Just curious.”

  She put her phone down on her lap. “How old are you?”

  “How old do I look?”

  She considered him. “Forty?”

  “Fifty-four.”

  “No way.” She turned back to her phone. “Hope I look that good at fifty-four.”

  He grinned. “I feel seventy though, so it’s a trade-off.”

  The Madison County Government Complex held the county jail, the district court, and the Medical Examiner’s offices. A rusted metal placard that said “Medical Examiner” perched near a walkway.

  It was cool inside, with a paint-thinner type scent. The receptionist said that the autopsy reports would be ready in a minute. As they sat in the waiting area, Mickey checked his cell phone for messages, but there weren’t any.

  “You were a lawyer before the Bureau, right?” Angela asked.

  “Yeah. Prosecutor and then defense attorney.”

  “Did you like it?”

  “It had its moments. But this does, too. This is your first case, so you haven’t experienced the good parts yet. The moment your suspect confesses, the jury coming back with a guilty verdict, the family crying and thanking you. You’ll get all of that. But you’ll also see the worst humanity has to offer. And you’ll have to decide whether it’s worth it. Most agents transfer out of Behavioral Science because the bad is too much for them.”