The Murder of Janessa Hennley (18 page)

48

O
ne of the windows had been left open, cooling the room. Suzan screamed for nearly an hour until her voice went completely hoarse and it felt like someone had ripped her throat out. But no one came. She couldn’t even hear any cars.

She saw no tools lying around,
but one of the corners of a metal drawer had a sharp edge. If she could rub her wrists against it, it might be enough to cut through the plastic binds, depending on what type had been used.

She
sat up and was instantly dizzy. Based on the light through the windows and the intervening darkness, she guessed she’d spent over two days without food or water down here.

She pushed
with her feet and crawled slowly across the floor, making her way to the metal drawers. Sweat dripped down into her eyes, her remaining strength vanished. She took frequent rests to catch her breath, but she made it.

The hard part was figuring out a way to get her wrists flush against the
drawer. She pushed her back against it and then scooted up until the sharp edge pressed against her forearms. The binds tugged against her flesh as she thrust up a little more.

S
he scraped the plastic against the metal as fast and as hard as she could, until her arms burned and blood trickled down her wrists and into her hands. The binds didn’t even loosen.

And
a stench she couldn’t place, like skunk, overpowered her.

She struggled,
fought, and pulled on her binds so hard, she thought she would dislocate her shoulders. After a short time, complete exhaustion set in. She laid her head against the cool cement floor and cried.

49

Mickey tried Kodiak Basin Cemetery first
. Several cruisers, along with Deputy Woody, were there. The sky was a deep gray, and rain wasn’t too far away. Woody wore a plastic rain cover over his uniform that reminded Mickey of a condom.

“Agent Parsons. What’chyu doin’ here?”

“Looking for someone. What’s going on?”

“We got three dead over in the groundskeeper’s booth. Teenage couple and the groundskeeper. It’s bad. They all had their faces cut up real good.”

Mickey contemplated the small shack. “You see anybody here? Anybody walking around?”

“No
, and we combed this place good. The coroner thinks they been dead about two days.”

“Let me know if you see anybody, would you?”

“Sure thing, boss.”

Mickey pulled away and stopped at the cemetery gates.
He Googled Anchorage cemeteries and found five, then input all five into Maps and drove to the first one.

He traversed t
he first two, Suzan Nell and Jordan Crawford Memorial Park, quickly. Seeing no one there, he continued on to Alfred Hiller Memorial. He turned on the classical radio station for the drive and then turned it back off.

The
Hiller Park was empty except for a family holding services near the center of the green. The sky had opened up now and rain drizzled, but the family didn’t move. Only a few held umbrellas. Mickey drove by. He wished like hell there was anyone else that could do this.

Next, he
drove to Angelus Memorial Park. This was the closest cemetery to the Shyams’ home. Why didn’t he think to go here first?

The cemetery was pleasant enough, as cemeteries go
. He skimmed the tombs and graves. A figure stood at the far end, hidden partially by a tree. A man in a shirt and jeans.

The figure
stared at the headstone. Mickey approached him from behind and stood still.

The figure let the rain bounce off him without a single movement. If he had been on a pedestal, Mickey doubted anyone could tell him from a statue.
Mickey took out his cell phone and texted his location to Deputy Woody.

After putting the phone away,
Mickey didn’t speak. He reached for his sidearm, but then he moved his hand away.

“Can you see me?” the figure
finally said.

Mickey was silent a moment. “
I can see you, David. You’re not dead.”

David Shyam turned around
, and their eyes locked. He was tall and lean but hid a wiry strength in his frame.

Mickey thought
, initially, that a mask covered his face. He could see the cut, red edges and the looseness near the jaw.

He was wearing someone else’s face.

“David, listen to me. You’re not dead. Do you understand? You’re alive. You have a disorder. It’s a disease of the brain that makes you think you’re dead. But you’re not. You have a family that loves you very much, and they’re scared right now. You’re scaring them.”

He stepped close
. Mickey’s gut instinct was to move back and pull out his weapon. It took everything he had to hold his ground and show him he wasn’t a threat.

“I scare myself.”

“I spoke to your doctor, David. Dr. Boyack. He says that with medication, you can get better. It can fix the imbalance that you have right now. But to do that, you have to come with me. We have to get you help. You can’t get better on your own. Do you understand?”

He tilted his head to the side. “Can you really see me?” he whispered.

“Yes.”

“And I can see you.”

David rushed him and closed the distance. He grabbed Mickey by the collar and flung him onto his back, then pulled out a knife tucked under his waistband.

He swung the knife
down. Mickey kicked at his knees, throwing him off balance. The knife blow went wide, and Mickey rolled to his feet.

David ran at him
. Mickey waited, his knees bent, and sprung to the side as the knife grazed his arm. Mickey pulled out his weapon, but David knocked the gun to the ground. The knife penetrated his side as if he were steak; blinding pain shot through him.

Mickey swung w
ith a right hook that connected to David’s jaw and then with a left, loosening his grip and knocking him back. He ripped the knife out of his side with a groan and threw it at David as he turned for the gun.

David tackled him from behind
, and they landed on the wet grass. Rain splashed in their eyes, and thunder roared above them. Fingers on Mickey’s throat cut off the air. He reached up and grabbed the face. It slid off David’s, revealing the slick, bloody mess underneath. Mickey stabbed his fingers into David’s eyes as far as they could go. David didn’t make a sound.

Mickey pulled his fingers out
. Darkness closed in on him. He grabbed David’s throat and wrapped his fingers around the windpipe, then squeezed as hard as he could. David gasped as his trachea crunched and the air stopped flowing.

Mickey
rolled away, gripping his throat and sucking in air. He grabbed the gun, his chest and side burning.

He lifted the weapon. If he shot him, he would never find her. Never know what happened. The not knowing would eat at him. Even if she was dead, he had to know.

“Where is she?” He was out of breath and could barely speak. “Where is she, David? Where is Suzan Clay?”

He lowered the gun
. He didn’t have the strength to lift anything right now. Mickey collapsed onto the grass and stared at the man in front of him. David’s mouth opened and closed like a fish dragged to shore.

“David, where is she?”

Mickey wanted to bash his face until he told him where she was, but he didn’t have anything left. Nothing but scorching pain. He lay on his back and waited. Either the police would get here in time, or they wouldn’t. And he wasn’t sure he cared either way.

50

Mickey lay on a headboard. EMTs took his blood pressure and
taped a temporary bandage over the wound in his side. They loaded David into another ambulance and treated him as well. With his last ounce of strength, Mickey yelled out, “Where is she, David? Tell me where she is!”

N
o response.

The ride to the hospital and the examination were a blur. A trauma surgeon told him that
the knife hadn’t punctured his lung as they initially thought, but they needed to perform emergency surgery on his right kidney.

“No, you have to find him. You have to get him to tell you where she is,” he said, delirious from the pain and the medications used to dull it.

“Who, Mr. Parsons?”

“David. You have to find out what happened to her.”

The doctor glanced around at his colleagues. Clearly, they had no idea what he was talking about. “We’ll ask. For now, just please lie back and try to relax.”

51

The recovery was much more difficult than the surgery, since even the slightest motion in his bed caused so much pain he would vomit. When he spoke, it was as if the nurses couldn’t hear his words. They had developed a type of patient deafness that Mickey had seen in big city hospitals. He saw it with his wife. She was in so much pain that they tuned her out. It was the only way for the staff to cope.

Some people from the Bureau came down to visit him
and told him he would be receiving a medal when he got back to Quantico. But the painkillers numbed everything, and he couldn’t respond articulately enough to tell them to shove their medal up their asses. Instead, Mickey just nodded and listened.

The days
melted into each other, but on the third day, the pain felt like it was subsiding. By the fourth day he was walking around and using the bathroom by himself. They asked that he stay another few days to ensure everything healed well, but he told them he would follow up with a surgeon in Washington.

By the time the hospital
released him, he had lost seven pounds and his hair appeared grayer. He had to prop himself on a cane, so he tried to choose one that appeared the most stylish. Black with a silver handle. He didn’t know why he cared about that sort of thing, but it was important to him somehow.

Kyle
Vidal and Jon Stanton had both left several voicemails, but he didn’t respond to any of them.

A
t the entrance, he rose from the wheelchair and thanked the CNA before walking back inside. He leaned heavily on his cane as though it were a crutch. On the fifth floor, he told the receptionist he needed to speak to the doctor treating David Shyam. An elderly psychiatrist met him at the front desk a few minutes later.

“Agent Parsons, it’s a pleasure to meet you. My name is Dr. Hopp. I’m David’s treating
physician.”

“I’d like to speak to him for a minute.”

“I’m afraid that’s impossible. David’s been through a severe trauma, and he’s just barely able to keep it together. I think seeing you would bring up some memories that are best left forgotten.”

Mickey
, inches away from the man’s face, stared down at him unblinkingly. “I know all about severe trauma. Let me see him now. Or I’ll come back with a court order and a search warrant and turn this place upside down.”

Hopp swallowed. “No need for hostility. If you insist, I can set up a supervised visit.”

“No, right now. I’m not some deputy, doc. I’ll bring the entire weight of the FBI down on you and this hospital. You don’t want that.”

He was silent a moment
. “You have five minutes.”

Mickey foll
owed him down the corridor. At a white door with a glass viewing window, Hopp slid his ID badge over a scanner. The door clicked open, and they walked a long hallway with rooms on either side. Hopp waited for Mickey to catch up to him. He motioned with his head to an orderly at a desk up the hall. The orderly opened the door.

Sitting on a bed
, dressed in white clothing, was David Shyam.

“Five minutes, Agent Parsons. Not a second longer.”

Mickey stepped inside. The orderly stood by the door, eyeing David.

S
trands of drool leaked from his mouth into a puddle on the floor. David stared at the wall. Already, within a week, he appeared better. Someone on the hospital staff had told Mickey that they were treating his jaundice, and with the powerful medications he was on, he was able to eat real food for the first time in three years. And he’d been showered and shaved.

“Do you remember me, David?”

David jerked. His stare turned toward Mickey.

“I can see now,
Agent Parsons,” he said, his voice metallic.

“I know you can.
There was a woman. Sheriff Suzan Clay. You took her out of her house. She was hiding in some cupboards in the basement. Do you remember that?” Mickey took out his cell phone and showed him Suzan’s official photo on the Sheriff’s website. “Do you remember her, David?”

His
gaze moved again, down to the photo. “I could see her, too.”

“I know you could. You saw Janessa
, too, didn’t you?”

“Yes. Janessa. I saw her.
I knew her from group therapy.”

“Did you eat her, David? Did you want to make Janessa a part of you?”

A twitch in his upper lip. He closed his eyes as though something painful were happening to him. “Yes… I ate her. I wanted her to be with me.”

“Do
you know why you killed people, David? The syndrome you have, they told me it doesn’t always lead to violence.”

“If I could see them… I don’t know. I wanted the ones I could see to be a part of me. Janessa wouldn’t talk to me. She was the first person I could see in three years.
I thought I couldn’t see people anymore. That I was completely alone, and then she showed me that I wasn’t. And she wouldn’t talk to me. I thought if I could make her a part of me… I don’t know. The way I thought then… I can’t think that way now.”

He appeared confused
, and his voice was giving out from even those few words. Mickey knew he didn’t have much time. 

“What about Suzan?”
His chest felt tight. He wasn’t certain he really wanted to know the answer to his next question. “Did you do the same thing to her?”

He was quiet a long while. “No. No
, I left her.”

“Where did you leave her?” Mickey leaned in close. “David, it’s very important you
tell me where you left her.”

“W
here I killed Janessa.”

Mickey watched him a moment longer. David held his gaze for maybe t
en seconds before he turned back to the wall.

Mickey walked out to the
hallway. Hopp stood there with his arms folded as the orderly locked David’s door.

“Agent Parsons?” David said.

“Yeah?”

“If you find her…
if she’s still alive… please tell her that I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Mickey stared at him
a moment without saying anything.

“Did you get what you came for?” Hopp asked.

“Is this going to come back?”

“Well
, there’s some brain damage from general lack of care. We discovered scars upon scars on his head. Places he’d sustained injuries. There’s a particularly bad one over his frontal cortex that appears like blunt force trauma. Maybe a fall, or he might have been beaten somewhere. I’m not certain, exactly. So there’s some brain damage that might affect the syndrome, one way or the other. It’s hard to say, though. Cotard’s is a mystery. As you heard, he’s not even certain why he started killing.”

Mickey glanced back through the window on David’s door. He was still staring at the wall. “Thanks for letting me see him
.” Mickey turned away and began hobbling down the corridor.

“Agent Parsons?”

“Yeah.”

“This is something I’ve already reported to the police
, and they’re looking into it. But in case you’re curious, he admitted to several more victims. He said the same thing I just heard him say to you. That they’re with Janessa.”

Mickey nodded. “Thanks.”