The Murder of Janessa Hennley (15 page)

39

Suzan reached over and felt nothing but a cool pillow. She opened her eyes and stared at the empty place next to her. Her brain told her to get up and search the house, that there was a possibility he was just out on the patio or in the bathroom, or having a snack in the kitchen.

But she knew that wasn’t true.

She even knew why. He thought he was sparing her a lifetime of slowly watching him die. Typical male reaction. He didn’t give her the credit to understand that she was an adult and could decide for herself what she could and couldn’t handle. She checked the clock on the stand. It was past midnight. She exhaled loudly and rose to have a hot bath.

Suzan sat on the corner of the tub as
it filled with hot water. She sprinkled in some bath salts and then stripped nude. As she leaned back in the tub, the water washing over her body, all the tension tied up in her muscles slowly began to give way. She dipped a cloth in the hot water and placed it over her eyes.

A thought crossed her mind to call Mickey and yell at him. How dare he presume to know what was best for her? But another thought came
, that maybe she should let him go. An intense desire had developed within her the past couple of years to have a child. That would be impossible with Mickey.

Something
crashed to the floor, startling her.

She removed the cloth and looked out the door, as if she could hear with her eyes. Maybe he was still here after all.

“Mickey, is that you?”

Silence,
but she’d heard something. Feet on her hardwood floors or something dropping. The hairs on the back of her neck stirred. She got out of the tub, wrapped a robe around herself, and walked into the hall.

“Mickey?”

She suddenly felt anxious without her sidearm. She contemplated grabbing it from the bedroom, but the kitchen was just a few paces ahead of her. She flipped on the light and saw nothing but a chair that wasn’t tucked underneath the table.

T
he man put his hand over her mouth.

Suzan screamed and swung with her fists as fast as she could, connecting twice with his face.
When she hit him in the eye, he let go and stumbled back as she turned and sprinted for the backdoor. An arm slammed across her throat, choking her, pressing the life out of her. It lifted her up off the ground, and she couldn’t draw in breath.

She thrust her head back into his face
. The blow must’ve caught his nose, because he dropped her. She darted for the basement stairs and took them so fast she almost fell. Suzan ran across the cellar and jumped into the laundry room, then climbed into the cupboards underneath the counter.

Inside the large cabinet,
she didn’t feel too uncomfortable except for the bottles of detergent poking into her back. Breathing hard, she tried to calm herself and listen. Footsteps crept down the stairs.

This was a mistake. She
had panicked. She should have gone for her gun.

Opening the cupboard a little,
she could see out into the main area of the basement. A figure lingered there, scanning the room. She bit her lip and softly closed the cupboard. An annoying bottle behind her tipped toward her, jabbing into her kidneys. She closed her eyes and said a prayer, and then slowly reached behind her.

S
he could tell from its shape that the bottle was bleach. She gently pulled it away from her, straightening it out. It leaned against the back of the cupboard.

Relief washed over her
, and she opened the cupboard again. No one stood in the basement any longer. He was probably searching the house. She would crawl out and get to a phone in the morning.

As she close
d the cupboard, a pair of yellow eyes stared down at her. She shrieked as hands closed around her body and dragged her out screaming.

40

Mickey had slept almost twelve hours, and he still felt exhausted. He took his medication with warm water out of the tap and then lay back down in bed. His muscles felt like he’d just raced the Tour de France, though he’d done nothing more than drive and walk short distances.

Before he knew it, sunlight coming through the windows
woke him again. He’d slept another two and a half hours. Nearly the entire day had been spent in bed.

He stretched and then
brushed his teeth. He’d catch the next flight out, maybe stop in L.A. for some time on the beach before heading back to Washington and Virginia. After examining the room for anything he might have left behind, he went to the front desk to check out. As he was leaving, a woman was walking in with her two kids. She wasn’t looking where she was going and bumped into him.

“Excuse me,” he said.

“Asshole,” she muttered under her breath.

He got into his rented truck and headed to the airport. Only five minutes into the drive, he
received a call from a number he didn’t recognize.

“This is Parsons.”

“Yeah, Agent Parsons? This is Deputy Andrew Woody from the Sheriff’s Office. Um, up here in Kodiak Basin.”

“Yeah, Andrew, what can I do for you?”

“Well, I was just wondering if you’d seen the sheriff?”

“Seen her when?”

“Today. She wasn’t answerin’ any of her calls, so I went over to her house. The door was open, but no one was there.”

“Was her car in the driveway?”

“Sure was.”

He was silent a moment. “I’m gonna head over there now. I’m sure she just went out to the store or something.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right. Only she always answers her phone.”

“I’ll let you know if she’s over there now.”

“Thanks. You got my number?”

“Yeah, it’s on the ID here.”

“Okay, thanks.”

Mickey hung up and placed the phone on the passenger seat. He
flipped the truck around and sped back toward Kodiak Basin.

The Tahoe
remained in the driveway where it had been yesterday when Mickey left. The driver and passenger doors were locked. He walked up the porch steps and looked through the living room windows before trying the door. It was locked. But the patio door was open and he went in.

The house didn’t look messy in any way. No dirty shoeprints on the floors, no blood, no torn up curtains or clothing. All things
he pictured he would see as he drove over. Mickey always considered the worst possibilities first.

As he was about to head to the bedroom, he noticed the bathtub was full. He stuck his hand in. The water was cold.

Mickey pulled out his sidearm and began searching the rest of the house. He started in the bedroom and checked underneath the bed and in the closet. Next, he cautiously stepped across the living room. A plant he had enjoyed when he sat there had died. It looked like it could crumble to dust any second. Maybe Suzan was just too busy to tend to it properly.

He stared at the dead
plant longer than he should have, then continued through the house. The attic was little more than an empty space the size of a large closet, but he checked it anyway. Then he slowly walked to the door leading to the basement.

H
e reached the bottom with his heart thumping loudly in his ears. Two windows adorned the walls and allowed in enough sunlight that he could see. Dust particles swirled furiously in the sunbeams. He thought of the Hennleys’ house and the lack of dust particles there.

Mickey searched the entire basement before realizing he hadn’t called it in. He hit redial on his phone and told
Deputy Wood to send a forensics team to the sheriff’s house right away.

“What for? You think something’s wrong?”

“Yeah,” Mickey said, “something’s wrong. Just get ’em down here.”

“Ten
-four.”

Mickey replaced his weapon and
the phone and flipped on the light in the laundry room. The cupboards underneath a granite counter were open, and several bottles lay on the linoleum. He bent down to study the bottles and then the cupboard. The space was big, easily large enough to fit a person. And on the outside of the cupboard was a slimy, green-yellow film smeared like a handprint. The same substance caked on the Hennleys’ basement window.

41

Suzan Clay felt
burning pain.

Her head pounded
, and she was coughing. In the dark, she couldn’t tell if she was lying down, sitting, or standing. Once she fully awoke, however, she knew she was lying on her side. Her legs were scrunched up with her knees touching her belly. And she felt a rocking sensation, then a bump and movement the other way. She was in a car.

She tried
to reach her hands up, but they were tied behind her back. A sack or bag over her head blocked out all the light and made it difficult to breathe. An overwhelming, obtuse panic spread through her body as she thought she might suffocate. She closed her eyes and imagined herself lying in her own bed in the dark, the patio doors open and letting in a cool spring breeze.

It calmed her enough that she
moved her head down in the sack. Pressing her face to the seat, she slowly slid her head out of the sack’s opening. She couldn’t see much, just a couple of inches with her left eye, but it was enough to confirm she was in a car. The passenger seat was empty, and she saw the arm of whoever was driving, though she couldn’t see high enough to capture a face.

The landscape
passed by too quickly to tell where she was, but there were many trees and a sunny sky beyond. Their speed and the lack of traffic lights meant they were on the freeway. She squirmed out of the sack some more. She lay in the backseat of a sedan. The car was clean and empty but had a sour smell to it, like a wet dog.

S
he guessed the binds on her wrists were some sort of plastic. Tightly bound, they were cutting off circulation to her hands. She tried to loosen them but couldn’t. Her feet were unbound. If she could sit up and reach the door handle, if the doors were unlocked, she could tumble out. But they were going so fast that she might just crack her head open, especially with her hands behind her.

As she tried to
pull the sack further off, the seat underneath rubbed against her hands. The driver looked back, and she could see his neck but not his face.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

The driver picked up a hammer from the passenger seat, and she screamed as he bashed her head with it.

The pain didn’t fade. She felt her lungs bursting
, and through the stars and blackness, she thought she was dying. She’d seen what a blow to the head could do to people. She could have internal bleeding in the brain that she wouldn’t even notice for a few days. But that would suddenly, and painfully, kill her. She needed to get to a hospital.

T
he sack wasn’t on her head anymore. She opened her eyes, scanning her surroundings. She was strapped to a mattress, her legs and hands bound. She was in a basement with multiple windows. It was airy and sunny, and she’d seen it before somewhere, but in her hazy state couldn’t guess where.

“I see you,” a voice hissed.

She gasped. The man stood five feet away from her, staring at her face unblinkingly. He looked like a nightmare. Sores that exposed the tissue beneath polluted parts of his skin. The skin itself was sagging and yellow, matching his eyes. Some of his thick, greasy hair had fallen out in clumps. The skin on his neck was bright red and flaking, as though it were about to peel off.

“I see you,” he said again
, his voice metallic and grainy. A voice that, she thought, wasn’t used to speaking. He lurched toward her, and she startled again, trying to get away. He pulled up a plastic chair and sat down in front of her. “You can see me?”

She nodded as tears
rolled down her cheeks.

“Yes, I see you,
” she said quietly.

He seem
ed almost happy by that and leaned back, grinning. Typically a grin gave others a pleasant response, but in him it only revealed rotting black and yellow teeth. Jagged, like a carnivorous animal’s, his gums black and bleeding.

“You can see me,
” he rasped.

“Yes, yes
, I can see you.”

He
slapped his hands down on his thighs. “I can see you. You can see me.”

“Yes, I can see you
, and you can see me.” She swallowed. “My name is Suzan. What’s yours?”

The man pulled out a knife and slit her face
from her eye down to her chin. It bled so profusely she felt the droplets against her neck. She howled in pain, which seemed to excite the man more. He placed his tongue on the wound and licked from her chin to her eye. His breath was like rotting meat, the spit sticky and rank.

He tucked the knife
away and sat down, locking eyes with her, the horrible grin still twisting his lips as a dribble of blood leaked down his tongue and over his teeth.