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!”
No 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.
At 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 followed 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.
Strands 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.”
“Where I killed Janessa.”
Mickey watched him a moment longer. David held his gaze for maybe ten 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?” Ho
pp 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.”
52
Mickey stood in front of the home. The place it had all started. Behind it arose the mountain where Suzan had taken him and they’d found one of David’s knives. His gaze circled around and came back to rest on the roof with the white trim. No “For Sale” sign hung in the yard, which meant the relatives hadn’t come to pick through the belongings.
Mickey, still trying to get used to his cane, hobbled to the front door. He stood in front of it, gazing down at the doorknob before he tried it. It was open.
The Hennleys’ home remained mostly untouched. He didn’t check any of the closets or bedrooms. Instead, he went straight for the door leading to the basement. He took the stairs carefully, using his cane to push on each new step.
Before he even reached the middle of the stairs, the distinct smell, something between rotting meat and wet, moldy carpet, alerted him to the presence of dead bodies. He didn’t smell them when he was here before. David must have moved them in after Mickey was there.
He glanced into the laundry room. A man with severe stab wounds all over his torso lay there. Mickey bent down and checked his pulse, but the gray face and the blue lividity in his arms where the blood had pooled told Mickey he was long gone.
Movement. A scratching sound. Mickey switched hands with his cane and pulled out his weapon. His heart thumped in his ears, but he didn’t have the strength to fight. Not again, not this soon.
He looked around the corner and saw Suzan Clay.
She was emaciated and gray, her lips cracked and bleeding. Plastic ties bound her wrists, and she lay limply on her side. Mickey hobbled over to her, and she groaned.
“I’m here,” he said. “I’m here.”
He opened a tool kit with several hacksaws inside on a workbench. He sawed as carefully as he could through the ties. He caught her skin once, and she groaned again before the ties slipped off.
“I’m here, Suzan. I’m here.” He called 911 and told them where he was. Someone would be there in less than five minutes.
“Mickey,” she rasped.
“Don’t move. An ambulance is on its way.” Lack of circulation had turned her hands completely black.
He’d seen hands like that before. They had to be removed.
“I’m here, Suzan… I’m here.”
53
Mickey sat in the waiting room of Alaska Regional. The hospital allowed him to see Suzan only during visiting hours since he was neither family nor spouse. She drifted in and out of consciousness. The ER doctor informed him that she was nearly dead from dehydration when he’d brought her in. It’d been twenty hours now. The doctor felt he could predict that she would survive, though with rather extensive kidney damage from a lack of fluids. He didn’t know if they would be able to do anything about her hands but assured Mickey that the best orthopedic surgeon in Alaska practiced in their hospital, and he would do everything to save them.
Visiting hours started in five minutes. Mickey didn’t see anyone, so he sneaked into the room.
She was hooked up to IVs and a heart monitor. The doctors said the only thing that saved her life was that it had been cool and damp in the basement. If she had been on the upper floor, she likely would’ve died from the seizures caustic dehydration produced.
He pulled up a chair and sat next to her, then placed his hand over hers. Clouds floated by the single window in the room. Snow-capped mountains, jagged and blue, dominated the horizon.
His phone buzzed. “What can I do for you, Kyle?”
“Mickey. I just got the info. How’s the sheriff holding up?”
“She’s stable. She’s going to survive.”
“That’s great news. Maybe we can fly her out here for her own medal when you come out. Some sort of honorary something or other.”
“You can fly her out if you like, but I won’t be there.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I’m not coming back, Kyle. I’m going to have a moving company pack everything up and bring it here.”
“Where? Alaska? You gotta be shitting me.”
“I wasn’t going to last much longer there, anyway. And you can always find someone to sit in the basement.”
A shuffling sound as Mickey heard him whisper something to someone in the room with him. “I understand. Good luck.”
“Thanks.”
“Mickey, one thing.”
“Yeah?”
“The Ricks shooting. Between me and you, was that a good shoot?”
Suzan’s head had tilted slightly to the side, revealing a perfect profile, though her skin lacked elasticity from the dehydration. Her lips were peeling. He took some water out of a cup and lightly dabbed them with his finger. “He was dying of cancer and in pain every day. He told me he wanted to die but didn’t have the strength to kill himself. He hoped I would kill him.”
“And you did.”
“Yeah, I did. I can relate to that feeling. Not having any way out, with darkness closing in around you. I can relate to that in a way he knew I could. But I don’t know if I killed him because I actually thought he would kill me, or because I knew he wanted it. I can’t answer that question honestly, Kyle.”
“I see. Well, if this is what you want, I’m not going to stop you.”
“I appreciate that. Thanks for everything.”
“You’re welcome. Take care of yourself, Mickey.”
“You too.”
He hung up the phone and turned back to the window. As he gazed at the clouds, a small, hoarse voice said, “I’m glad you stayed.”
He bent down and kissed her forehead. “I’m glad, too.”
Bonus Material (As a Thank You from the Author)
CAKE BOX
A Mickey Parsons Short Story
1
The wheat field in Iowa, rather than absorb the day’s unbearable heat, bounced it back to cook anyone unlucky enough to be outside. Only one road wound through the desolate field. The nearest town was fifteen miles away, the nearest gas station eight.
The body had decomposed beyond recognition, mostly because the isolated dumping site precluded anyone from finding it right away. The body had that smell already, the smell of death, to which Mickey Parsons had grown accustomed. But his partner, an agent only three months out of the academy named Angela Listz, wasn’t used to it yet. She tried to pretend as if it didn’t bother her, but when she thought Mickey wasn’t watching, she took out some chapstick and rubbed it underneath her nostrils.
“What do you think, Angela?” Mickey said as the Medical Examiner’s people waited to cart off the body as soon as they were done.
Angela slipped on latex gloves and knelt over the body. Nude and rotting, portions of the bloated back had split open, and a thin, black fluid seeped out.
“Female,” she said. “Probably early twenties. She’s got upper ear piercings and tattoos. That doesn’t seem like the small towns around here. Tattoo on the upper right shoulder
… Looks like a name. Can’t really make it out. The first name might be Tim or Tom.”
“I can see that from a photo. Tell me about him.”
She stared at the body a long time. She walked around it, bent over it, stared at it like a painting. But after a good ten minutes she finally said, “Caucasian, loner with a house or shed somewhere.”
“Why?”
“Serial killers tend to kill their own race. He would need a house or a shed to torture someone like this. No neighbors nearby.”
“That’s a pretty big assumption, that he’s a serial killer. This could be just a random body.”
“I don’t think so. There’s some real damage to the musculature and dermis. That means torture. A sexual sadist.”
“There’s no evidence of anything sexual yet.”
She smirked. “With men, everything is sexual.”
Someone from the ME’s Office walked over and asked if he could have a word with Mickey. “Log the time,” he said to Angela.
Angela pulled out a digital recorder from her pocket and flicked it on. “Fourteen hundred hours, May sixteen, two thousand eight. We’ve retrieved…”
Mickey followed the man away from the body to a spot near the ME’s van. “Are you the one in charge?” the man asked.
“If anyone were in charge, I guess it would be me.”
“Well, I just wanted to let you know that the sheriff’s office doesn’t like people swooping in and taking their cases.”
“We only took this because it had similarities to another homicide in Nebraska. We think he’s crossing state lines.”
The Murder of Janessa Hennley Page 15
