The Murder of Janessa Hennley

by Victor Methos

  Now, he just texted her all the time and told her not to worry about texting him back.

  Realizing he couldn’t waste more time lying in bed than he already had, he finally rolled out and sauntered into the bathroom. After handling his morning ritual of relieving himself, taking medication, and brushing his teeth, he stood in the shower for the better part of half an hour. The water was hot and steamed up the little bathroom like a sauna. For just a brief moment, the humidity and the water pounding on his skull took him back to Vietnam. But those moments came less and less frequently now. And when they did, they seemed so long ago they may as well have been someone else’s life.

  Mickey dressed in jeans and a blazer and headed out the door. His duties in screening were interspersed with the real reason he still worked at the Bureau: teaching. The new recruits had a different zeitgeist than when he had attended. They were much more sophisticated and focused on the international scene. Al Qaeda was unheard of when he was at the Academy. The most coveted positions then were in Behavioral Science as—a term no one knew or understood at the time—criminal profilers.

  The drive from DC to Quantico took roughly an hour, and he listened to an audiobook about the Mayans. The narrator described a particularly brutal practice in which human slaves were killed, cured, and used as drums. Their skin stretched and thumped, and the sounds exited from their mouths.

  He parked in back and walked the distance to the dark lecture hall. The cadets in their blue polos with the letters “FBI” over the heart and the insignias below them awaited him. Mickey walked to the front and cued up his Mac, connecting it to the projection screen, before clearing his throat.

  “Today we’re going to be discussing an extremely important book.” He reached into his leather satchel and pulled out a copy of a book first published in 1886. “This is the Psychopathia Sexualis. Who knows what this is? Kevin?”

  A young man taking notes with an iPad and keyboard said, “It’s by Krafft-Ebing, and it introduced sexually deviant case studies. Sex crimes and things.”

  “That’s right. It was the first to use sexual case histories to bolster Krafft-Ebing’s deviant sexuality theories, so in a way it is really the progenitor of modern psychosexual research. But it did something even more important than that. Anyone know what?” He paced around a few steps. “It introduced the terms ‘sadism’ and ‘masochism’.”

  Mickey went back to the lectern. He’d written the lecture notes for this lesson almost ten years ago and given it countless times. He taught from memory now.

  “Sadism and masochism describe a personality type that gains sexual pleasure from either the infliction or receiving of pain or humiliation. We say ‘sexual,’ but we don’t completely mean that. There are plenty of documented cases in the literature of those that find no sexual gratification from pain whatsoever. The reward for them is something else, though we’re not entirely certain what. Maybe just the pleasure they receive from watching someone else suffer.”

  Mickey opened a document on the Mac, and an old painting of a woman beating a man with a spiked belt appeared on the screen. The man was nude and lying on a bed, his wrists tied to the bedposts.

  “This is from the 15th century by a painter named Giovanni Donato, a Milanese artist. You can see that the male in this painting is not grimacing but smiling. He’s happy. The female, on the other hand, has a solemn expression and takes her role seriously. This is just one example from the Renaissance, but the earliest depiction of sadomasochistic behavior dates back even further, to ancient Greece.

  “But they are not really separate phenomena. The term ‘sadomasochism’ denotes the presence of both traits in a single individual, and commonly we see both of them together. Adolf Hitler is a good example. The reports from some of the women he had sexual relations with are that he was unable to reach sexual climax without the infliction of some sort of masochistic pain. Most notably, stepping on his genitals with high heels and urination on the face. But he clearly had sadistic tendencies as well, and he enjoyed few things more than the power over life and death. When he knew the war was lost—”

  A man stood at the back of the lecture hall. Mickey stopped and stared at him a moment. He wore a guest badge. What appeared to be an unlit cigarette dangled from his mouth.

  The man turned and walked out.

  The lecture lasted exactly fifty minutes, with a five-minute question and answer period afterward. The main idea Mickey wanted to get across was that sadomasochistic behavior was not necessarily correlated with violence.

  The people at the clubs dressed in leather whipping each other might seem like a good collar on a sex crime, but more often than not, they were docile. The ones you truly had to worry about were the predators who acted human, maybe even had a wife and kids, but on the inside had no identification with other people. One serial killer in custody had said that he saw other people as just long pigs and felt no more remorse at torturing them than he would a pig.

  Mickey gathered his leather satchel and left the lecture hall. A few students thanked him; he nodded and kept walking. He exited into the sunlight and looked for the man he had seen, but no one was around.

  A terrifying thought hit him just then: the man might have been in his head. Patients reported hallucinations on his HIV cocktail, some sort of interaction with the neurochemicals.

  He took a deep breath and headed home. He’d take an Ambien tonight and try for a good twelve hours of sleep.

  5

  Kodiak Basin was a small town by any measure. One of the benefits of that, at least Sheriff Clay thought, was that everyone knew everyone. And there wasn’t a single person she could think of who would be responsible for something like… this.

  She sat at her desk with her feet up, staring out the window. The temperature was in the high seventies today, and kids played outside. Remembering her own summers, the fresh smell of dandelions and grass, and cold lemonade with real sugar, made her miss childhood. Sometimes she daydreamed about being a kid again. No responsibilities, and the point of life was clear: having fun. She wondered at what exact point she had lost that. Was there a single day where a child becomes an adult, or was it gradual?

  A knock sounded at her door, and she yelled, “Come in.”

  Nolan, looking awkward, sat down across from her and took off his hat. He placed it on her desk then changed his mind and put it in his lap.

  “What can I do for you, Nolan?”

  “I was thinkin’ about this whole thing.”

  “Me too. Haven’t thought about anything else for four days.”

  He ran his fingers along the brim of the hat. “Me neither. Oh, ah, I talked to Tom.”

  “I’m sorry you had to be the one to do that.”

  “It’s better he hear it from a friend. Though truth be told, Sheriff, he ain’t never gonna be the same.”

  “I bet.”

  “Yeah. Well, I was thinkin’ about this whole thing, and I remembered Casper Reynolds. You remember him?”

  “Yeah,” she said, excitement rousing her, “yeah, I remember.”

  She was angry that Casper had slipped her mind. She hadn’t made the connection. Sex offenders were so rare in Kodiak Basin that she’d completely forgotten she had one. Casper had raped a high school student, done his time, and was living in a trailer within city limits. Not entirely far from where the Hennleys lived.

  She got her jacket before Nolan even finished his thought. As she walked out of the station, she yelled to her secretary, “I’m out for the afternoon.”

  The drive wasn’t long, and her window was down. Forest surrounded Kodiak Basin. It really was a little gem carved out of nature. Behind the town were mountains, and in front the Gulf of Alaska with forests on either side. If someone wanted to get lost from civilization but still wanted enough people around that they wouldn’t go crazy, this was the place.

  Young kids ran around the trailer park. Casper’s trailer was a thousand feet from any others, the requirement establ
ished by the judge and his parole officer. But the fact that he had access to children, even if required to stay a thousand feet away at all times, made her uneasy.

  Sheriff Clay knocked on his door. Rust coated the bottom of the dusty trailer, and the windows were blacked out from the inside. She knocked again, harder this time, and said, “Sheriff’s Office, open up.”

  The trailer jostled a little, and then the door opened. Casper stood in his tighty-whities and no shirt. His greasy hair hung past his shoulders, and sunburn reddened his neck and forearms.

  “What can I do you for, Sheriff?”

  “I need to speak to you. You wanna do it here or at the station?”

  “I’d rather do it here, if it’s all right with you.”

  “Well, I’m not goin’ in there, so come out here.”

  “Lemme get my pants.”

  She sat in one of two lawn chairs in front of the trailer and waited for Casper. She remembered him from long before he was the town’s only registered sex offender. Casper had been a diesel mechanic, earning nearly $90,000 a year. He had a home, a wife that couldn’t have been any sweeter or prettier, and a baby on the way.

  Then one night, drunk and horny, he walked right in to his neighbor’s house, knowing they were gone on a trip up north. A fifteen-year-old babysitter watched their two children. Casper locked the kids in the bathroom so they couldn’t see it, he later told police, and then raped the babysitter on the couch. The damned fool was so drunk he passed out right there, and the police found him asleep on the couch.

  He came out, sat down, and lit a cigarette. Then he popped open a can of beer and took a chug.

  “I thought part of parole was no alcohol?”

  “My PO don’t care. I only got two months left, and he’s just gonna clear my papers.”

  “How long you on the registry for?”

  “Lifetime. This is it, Sheriff. This is my life now. Livin’ a thousand feet away from any other livin’ soul. I can’t even say hello to them kids.”

  “You did a really bad thing, Casper.”

  He kicked his feet out and blew a puff of smoke. “I know, I know. Tears me up inside. Don’t even know why I did it. Just saw her and thought it a good idea at the time.”

  “Do you know the Hennleys, Casper? Ben Hennley and his family?”

  He shook his head.

  “They were killed. Their oldest daughter, Janessa, got the worst of it.”

  He took a drink. “I had nothin’ to do with that, Sheriff.”

  “Where were you?”

  “Right here.” He lifted his pant leg, revealing a blinking monitor. “Ankle monitor. My movement is tracked. You can check with my PO for whatever night you askin’.”

  She shook her head. “That won’t be necessary. I forgot about that.” She rose. “Thanks for talkin’ to me, Casper.”

  “Sheriff, can I ask you somethin’?”

  “Sure.”

  “You talk to anyone else yet about them murders?”

  She paused. “No. Why?”

  “They just always gonna judge me for this, ain’t they? No matter what else I do in my life, this is gonna be what I’m known for.”

  She kicked at a pebble by her boot. “You take care of yourself, Casper.”

  As she walked away, she looked back and saw him glaring at her. Draining the can of beer before going inside.

  6

  Mickey sat on his porch and enjoyed the warm air. At ten in the morning, his thinking was foggy and slow. Ten was at least two hours after he was supposed to be at the office, but no one ever said anything.

  He grabbed a ham and egg sandwich with an apple juice on the way in to work and could only find parking in the back of the lot again. As he walked inside, the wind whipped his tie over his shoulder. It amused him for some reason.

  Once inside, he cleared security and signed in before heading down the elevators to the basement. It was the one level of this building—world-famous after dozens of movies and television shows had either referenced it or been filmed here—that no one really knew about.

  He unlocked his office and hesitated at the door a moment before sitting down and running through his email. The hesitations at the door were getting longer every day.

  Most of the emails were just interoffice chatter, and he deleted them without reading. He also deleted the memos, office updates, notifications of policy changes, and messages of calls he received from marketers.

  That left only personal emails and requests from law enforcement agencies.

  As the Behavioral Science Unit’s screener, his job was to check requests for help from local law enforcement agencies around the world and see if the Bureau had the time or the resources to help them.

  One email was from the activities director of his mother’s nursing home, informing him that a local elementary school performance was being put on that Friday morning. The director asked if he could volunteer to help. He replied that he’d be happy to, but he had medical issues that might make the parents of the children uncomfortable and would have to decline for their sake.

  Then he went to the requests for help.

  There were four today, two from overseas. Scammers tried to enlist the FBI’s help in various murder cases, hoping to glean personal information about the special agents and use their identities to open new credit accounts. They knew, somehow, that special agents were required to maintain good credit ratings as part of their employment with the Bureau.

  One of the other emails was a request for analysis on a fiber found at a crime scene in Kansas City. The fiber was believed to have come from the jeans of a burglar as he attempted to flee a business he’d just ransacked, shooting the cashier on the way out. Mickey checked the detective’s name that had forwarded it and ran a criminal history. He checked the police reports online, something most agencies wouldn’t have approved of if they’d known the FBI could do it, and then forwarded the email to an assistant at the lab with a note that he had verified it as an actual case.

  The final email came with the subject heading NEED HELP PLEASE.

  He opened it and began reading:

  Dear FBI Behavioral Science Unit,

  My name is Sheriff Suzan Clay, and I’m the sheriff in Kodiak Basin, Alaska. A week ago I dealt with the most horrific murders I’ve ever seen, and I have no suspects and no leads. No witnesses, nothing. I could use your help and resources on this. We asked the Sheriff’s Office in Anchorage for help, but they said they were busy enough and turned us down. Budgets are getting cut everywhere. The detective I spoke with there said it was probably a drug killing, revenge or something, and we do have a lot of drugs up here. But I know that’s not it.

  I would appreciate if you could call me.

  Thanks.

  P.S. The victims are forty-one, thirty-two, sixteen, ten and nine.

  Mickey read the email twice before leaning back. The last line stuck out to him like a thorn: The victims are forty-one, thirty-two, sixteen, ten and nine. Despite the email’s informal tone, the sheriff pulled an interesting trick to tug at the heartstrings of whoever read the email. But he also noticed that the ages meant Mrs. Hennley was pregnant at sixteen with their first child, and Mr. Hennley would have been twenty-five. She was under the age of consent. Their relationship had begun with a sex crime.

  He picked up the phone and dialed.

  “This is Suzan.”

  Mickey noted that she didn’t answer with Sheriff. “Sheriff Clay?”

  “Yeah, you got her.”

  “This is Mickey Parsons. I’m a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

  “Oh! Oh, hey. How are you?”

  “I’m fine, thank you for asking.”

  “Is this about the email? ’Cause I sent that a few days ago, and I didn’t hear back so I didn’t think you were interested.”

  “It takes a while for things to run through the Bureau. So who are the victims, exactly?”

  “The Hennley family. Ben and his w
ife Candice, and their children Janessa, Timothy and Ezra. They were stabbed, all of them except Janessa. She was… well, you’d have to see it, I guess.”

  Mickey recognized the hesitation in her voice, the reluctance to discuss the details openly. “You knew them personally?”

  “I did. We’re a city of five thousand. Everyone knows everyone here.”

  “Why don’t you send the murder book up, and I’ll take a look at it.”

  “The what?”

  “The murder book. All the evidence and reports you have.”

  “Oh. Okay, well, I can send you the police reports we have and the autopsy and toxicology reports they did down in Anchorage.”

  “Yeah, just PDF it and email it to me.”

  “Okay, and to that same email?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Thanks a lot for this. I really do appreciate it.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Mickey closed his browser and stretched his arms and neck. He was about to get a cup of coffee when his desktop dinged with a new email. It was from the sheriff.

  7

  The police reports on the Hennleys consisted of four pages of narrative with an autopsy report and a toxicology analysis. Nothing more. The entire murder book was less than a dozen pages, but Mickey was used to over thirty. On a family, it should have been near seventy.

  He skimmed it quickly. Ben had been found in the basement, dead from blood loss and severe organ trauma. The murder weapon, a long Philips-head screwdriver, lay next to the body. His wife’s throat was slit with a kitchen knife while she was still in bed. The two boys, nine and ten, had been found upstairs. One was stabbed through the heart while still under his covers. The other in the hallway with a knife wound to the back of his neck. He had tried to run.

  But they weren’t the ones he had come for. He—and everything here told Mickey it was a “he”—had come for Janessa.