The Murder of Janessa Hennley (8 page)

19

Mickey placed an ice pack on his nose in the waiting room of the ER
. When he was finally taken back, he was given a painkiller as they reset his nose.

He didn’t remember much after that other than needles and shots
. He did recall a male with gray hair standing over him, and the loud crunch that sounded like it came from inside his skull.

The familiar tingling of
Demerol flooded his system. He drifted out of consciousness for a time and remembered his wife. A picnic somewhere with their daughter, still a toddler, running around them with a toy airplane. That memory came to him at least half a dozen times.

The cool air
from a fan above him hit his forehead. Sweat saturated him. His throat hurt, and he wanted water but wasn’t sure how to find somebody.

A nurse’s aide walked by the open door, glanced in, and
shouted, “Doctor Lloyd.”

A
man with gray hair came in. He was smiling with warmth that comforted Mickey almost immediately.

The doctor sat down
on the bed and lightly touched Mickey’s arm. “How you feeling, Mr. Parsons?”

“Like I fell off a building,” he rasped.

“You took a rather vicious blow to the face and suffered a concussion. You’ll experience some memory loss of the event. That’s perfectly all right. You also have a broken nose. What was more concerning is the ulcer that’s developed along the lining of your stomach. Were you aware of that?”

He shook his head
.

“It’s perforated the lining.
That’s why you vomited blood. Normally I would have just taken you in for surgery, but I wanted to speak to you first. We can repair it here. We simply cauterize it with a small scope we put down your throat. We don’t even have to put you out for it, if you don’t want.”

Mickey touched the bandage on his nose.
“Can I think about it?”

“Sure. But it’s bleeding right now. I wouldn’t wait longer th
an a couple of days to decide. And no more heavy exertion. That’s what aggravated it.”

“I
appreciate it. Thanks.”

After the doctor left, Mickey
took out his cell phone. He had two voicemail messages, the first one from Kyle.

“What the hell happened, Mickey? I got a report from that sheriff that you tried to apprehend someone at the funeral? Call me right now. I’m sending someone up from the
Anchorage office if I don’t hear from you.”

Another message
, from Suzan.

“Hey, just checking on you. Please give me a call at this number when you’re feeling up to it.”

He placed the phone on the side table and lay back. Soon, Kyle would find out everything that happened and pull him from the field. If he opted for the ulcer surgery, that would buy him some time, but not much. His days in Kodiak Basin were numbered, but the last thing he wanted to do was leave. That old familiar feeling was back. Akin to running a race.

The prey had revealed itself. It was a hunt
, and he was the hunter.

M
aybe one of the men he’d talked to today, Jason or Nathan, attacked him. It wouldn’t take long to find out which. But discovering enough evidence to make an arrest seemed remote at this point.

He’d been in this spot seve
ral times in the past, and it never bothered him. Some investigations panned out, while others led to dead ends. But that this man had been brazen enough to show up to the funeral, to attack him… Mickey didn’t think a man like that was afraid of getting caught.

In the past he’d had help.
The brilliant chief of Behavioral Science, Gillian Hanks, added much needed objectivity to investigations. He turned to her frequently, and her insights led to some breakthroughs in cases he thought were dead.

But there was someone else.

Jon Stanton, a former homicide detective with the San Diego Police Department, was similar to Gillian in that they both held PhD’s in psychology, though Stanton focused on personality theory and psychoanalysis, while Gillian had been a pure neuroscience researcher in graduate school.  But the similarities ended there.

Gillian
’s cold detachment led her to see cases as puzzles to be solved. The end game was the completion of the puzzle, not the impact on communities or families. This brought her a certain gravitas and laser-focus that enabled her to look at the most horrific actions of men and view them as pieces to put together.

Stanton, on the other hand, at least to Mickey, took every case personally. He tried not to. He tried desperately to detach himself, but he never could
pull himself out of the mire. No doubt, the dead haunted him in those lonely moments at night, when he woke up in an empty room. Mickey felt sorry for him in a lot of ways. Even some in the Behavioral Science Unit felt Stanton’s gift might have had supernatural, rather than analytic, origins. Several articles written about Stanton having extrasensory perception and remote viewing capabilities were quickly dismissed as eccentric media outlets began exploring connections to CIA experiments and the KGB.

But Mickey had seen him work, seen the leaps he
took when no one else saw anything. He could fit into the minds of the most disturbed individuals and find his way back out again like a maze. Mickey’s fear was that Stanton would get lost in there one day. As far as the supernatural stuff, it was unverifiable and therefore not worthy of consideration.

Mickey dialed Stanton’s cell phone and got voicemail.

“Jon, this is Mickey Parsons. I have a case I’m stuck on and could really use your help. I heard you retired, and I’m sorry to bother you with this. Please call me back.”

Mickey hung up and placed the phone back on the table. Though his nose was throbbing, he didn’t want to ask for any more meds. He closed his eyes. Focusing on his place of serenity, a trick taught in the
Yoga for Healing classes he attended, he emptied his mind and concentrated on the one place in the world where he felt most safe, most at ease. For him, it was his home of twenty years in Arizona, sold after his wife passed away. He could still hear his daughter’s footsteps on the hardwood floors as she crossed on Christmas morning to try sneaking open some of her presents.

As he drifted off to sleep, he
smiled.

20

Mickey opened his eyes slowly, listening to ensure he’d actually heard
noise and that it wasn’t just a dream. Moonlight reached through the only window in the room, and a breeze blew the curtains open. Though cold, it felt good on his skin, which burned with fever.

The doctors and nurses had apparently let him sleep.
He had no experience in small town courtesies. Back in DC, they would have kicked him out the second they reset his nose.

He heard the sound again. Almost like a voice but not quite. Taking a deep brea
th, he swung his legs around on the bed. He put his bare feet on the cold linoleum and pushed his feet into slippers one at a time. He walked to the window and looked outside at the hospital parking lot. The nearest hospital to his home back in DC was crowded every time he’d been there, with a minimum two and a half-hour wait in the emergency room. Viewing the empty lot, he wondered why he hadn’t chosen to live in a small town sooner in his career. Why did he always choose crowded places? Perhaps he knew the reason: he was lonely. And in the midst of strangers that loneliness was alleviated, at least a little.

The noise again
, from out in the hall. He walked to the door. The hospital was quiet; he didn’t even hear any of the staff. He looked down both directions of the brightly lit corridor before seeing the sign for the bathroom at the west end.

Another noise
. Coming from behind the desk. It sounded almost like paper hitting a fan, or something sliding around on the floor.

Mickey glanced around one more time
. How many people were actually needed to staff an emergency room? No one was here, and it didn’t seem to be a big deal. Then he heard a familiar sound, though distant and barely audible: laughter. The staff in another room at the far end of the floor.

The noise again. He made his way around the desk and looked down.

An orderly lay on the ground. Blood pooled around him and soaked his scrubs a dark black. His throat had been slit, and he was trying to inhale, the incision in his neck making a wet sucking sound.

Mickey instinctively reached for the sidearm he always
kept with him but grabbed nothing but cloth.

As he turned to get help
, hot breath burned on the back of his neck.

The man
wore a mask. Mickey tried to go for his eyes, but he was quicker. The man ducked and pulled out a blade. He rose again just as Mickey jumped back, avoiding the blade by inches.

Mickey
kicked him in the groin, and then connected with a left to the jaw. Mickey ran toward the laughter down the hall. As he ran, a slash seared across his back, but he didn’t turn around.

He
pushed through the double doors and fell onto the linoleum in front of several people. Unsure exactly what they were seeing, they didn’t move at first, until one of the nurses ran to him.

21

T
he sheriff shut the door behind her. She sat down on a stool next to the hospital bed and waited a beat before speaking.

“I’m having one of my officers posted outside this room at all time
s.”

“I’d feel better if they hadn’t taken my sidearm.”

“A man on painkillers with a gun probably isn’t a good combination.”

“Did the
orderly survive?”

She played with a ring on one of her fingers.
“He’s in critical condition. He lost a lot of blood.”

“Tell me they have cameras here.”

“No cameras except at the front entrance. I looked ’em over. We caught a man in a mask and hoodie walking into the hospital and then walking out about twenty minutes later. Did you see his face?”

“No, he kept the mask on the entire time.”

“Well, he’s clearly targeted you for some reason.”

“At the funeral, after he’d hit me, h
e said he can see me.”

She paused. “It’s him. It’s freaking him.” She took the ring off and rubbed it a few times before putting it back on.
“What do you think that means?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it mean
s we’re his targets. Or maybe it’s nonsense. Someone this reckless has to be suffering from mental illness.”

“Oh my gosh, don’t tell me you
buy into all this garbage about people being what they are because of how they were raised? We have responsibility for our own lives. He knows what he’s doing.”

“The brain is a machine. Like any machine
, it can malfunction. If your car malfunctions and you crash, we don’t blame you. It was inevitable.”

“Don’t buy it. Sorry. Some people are good and some people are evil
, and that’s all there is to it.” She hesitated a moment. “I got a mountain of paperwork. I better run. The deputy is outside your door. I’ll get your sidearm back to you. Do you need anything?”

“I’m good. Thanks.”

After she left, the doctor came back in.

“Sheriff’s cute, isn’t she?” he said.

Despite his age, Mickey felt himself blush. “Yeah, she’s a good woman.”

“So, we have a decision yet on the surgery?”

Mickey nodded. “I want to do it. As soon as we can.”

The doctor jingled something in the pocket of his white
coat. “I think it’s for the best. Just lay back and relax a bit; we’ll get everything set up.”

That moment of consciousness just after surge
ry was the worst. The second he awoke, he braced himself for pain, because the anesthesiologists could never get the pain medication just quite right. Mickey felt burning down his throat all the way to his stomach and then a powerful churning in his gut, as though it were in a blender.

“You’re up,” the nurse said from across the room.

“It hurts.”

She adjusted some knobs on a machine and increased the drip from an IV bag. “That should help.”

“He didn’t make it seem like it would hurt this bad.”

She grinned. “He does that. Says the anticipation of the pain is worse than the pain.” Adjusting his pillow, she said, “Get some sleep. You’ll only be here a day or so.”

The day Mickey spent in the recovery unit was one of the longest in his life. He wasn’t allowed to eat and could only suck on ice chips. Tomorrow, they assured him, he could have some Gatorade, but today his stomach had to be empty while it healed.

He tried to take his mind off the pain by watching television
, but he could fit only so many hours of it into a day. Standing and sitting were extraordinarily painful, but he performed them dutifully and took short walks around the floor. A woman two rooms down said hello as he walked by, pulling his IV along.

“You look as bad as I feel,” she said from her bed.

“That sounds about right.”

“What they got you in for?”

He walked nearer to her door. “Stomach surgery. You?”

“Cancer. Lung cancer. Twenty-two years of smoking. I’ve had three surgeries
, and it keeps coming back. Damn thing just won’t leave me alone. You ever know anyone that had cancer?”

He lea
ned against the frame of the door. “My wife passed from cancer.”

“I’m sorry.”

He shook his head. “It was a long time ago. You look like you’re holding strong.”

“I am. Gotta keep positive and all that bullshit. I’m Kelly
, by the way.”

“Mickey.”

“Mickey? Now there’s a name you don’t hear anymore.”

“My father was a big fan of Mickey Pitts, a boxer from the fifties.”

“Well Mickey, if you ever get bored you come on over, and we can watch some shows together.”

“Thanks.”

Mickey made a whole lap before going back to his room. A uniformed officer sat in a chair outside the room sipping an orange soda. He nodded to him as he entered.

Mickey grabbed his phone and lay back on the bed. He had a missed call from Jon Stanton. He dialed his number
, and Stanton answered on the third ring. The ocean roared behind him.

“How’s it going, Mickey?”

“Good. You at the beach?”

“Yeah, just laying around with my boys. I got them both for a while.”

“Really? What happened to the lone wolf?”

“He got old and lonely.”

“I can relate.” He hesitated. “Did you get my message earlier?”

“I did. Sorry for not calling back.”

“It’s okay. I was just hoping you might be able to help me out.”

“
With what?”

“I don’t want you thinking about this stuff when y
ou’re with your kids. Call me later when you get a second alone.”

“Sure.”

“Thanks, Jon. Talk to you soon.”

Mickey hung up and groaned. The pain in his belly burned
as if he’d swallowed hot stones. He pressed the button on the bed to call the nurse and closed his eyes.