Free The Murder of Janessa Hennley by Victor Methos

ack at the mechanic shop, Suzan waited for an old man named Dick with a handlebar mustache and a Dodgers baseball cap to come up front.
    “Dick, I need to talk to Jason again.”
    “Just missed him, Sheriff.”
    “Where’d he go?”
    “I don’t know. Just said he had to leave for the rest of the day and took off.”
    Suzan took out her cell phone and tried him. It went straight to voicemail. “Thanks, Dick. If he comes back, tell him to gimme a call, huh?”
    “No problem.”
    She walked out and sat in the Tahoe while Mickey popped his pills. “He took off.”
    “Where?”
    “They don’t know.”
    Mickey took the last pill and watched Dick working the stereo in the shop. “We’ll have to come back later. I want to get to that funeral.”

18
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Kodiak Basin City Cemetery lay at the foot of a small mountain. Nothing more than grass speckled with a few trees. It was the kind of small-town cemetery Mickey pictured in The Andy Griffith Show .
    The parking was limited to a few spaces, so he and the sheriff parked across the street and walked over. A gathering of people on the northeast end headed that way. Two people said “Hello” to Suzan. Most offered sidelong glances, and then turned back to the grave as a few people recited remembrance speeches.
    Mickey identified the grandparents almost immediately, even if they weren’t the ones closest to the grave. The grandmother wasn’t crying; that was in the movies. In real life, at the sudden death of a child, most parents were catatonic. They developed a stare that saw through things, and though they ate, breathed, showered, and worked, they didn’t exist. Sometimes they would come back and learn to cope, and other times they would be lost for the rest of their lives.
    The grandmother stared, unblinking, at the grave. The grandfather lowered his head and twirled between his fingers some grass he had ripped out of the lawn.
    A young woman reminisced about a time she had been on a bad date. She’d come home crying, so Candice had ditched the date she was about to go on and took her out for ice cream and to the mall instead.
    Few places in the world made Mickey more uncomfortable than cemeteries. His guts were in knots, his chest tight, and he wondered if he should go to an ER and get something to calm himself.
    In his yoga meditation class, they taught him breathing exercises. He did them now, taking in deep lungfuls of air through his nose, letting his belly rather than his chest rise, and then exhaling through the mouth.
    As he turn ed back to the grave, he saw something out of the corner of his eye. A slight discoloration on a tree, like blue and orange paint. Insecure about the signs of age, he looked around to make sure no one was watching, and then took out the prescription glasses he carried in his breast pocket. He put them on.
    He could see the outline of a baseball cap, then the jeans and white shirt with the red sleeves that went along with it. He couldn’t distinguish a face. Casually, he stepped away from the funeral. He planned to walk to the perimeter and come up behind the figure.
    He glanced over once . The figure started walking away.
    T oo late for subtlety.
    Mickey walked quickly to catch up with him. The figure looked back and took off running. One slip and he’d blow out his knee, so Mickey, running in dress shoes through grass, had to slow his pace. He made a beeline for the pavement and then burst into a full sprint.
    A t the edge of the cemetery, the man dashed into the road. Mickey was about twenty yards behind as the man headed for Main Street.
    Mickey had to wait for a car to zip by. Another blared its horn as he ran in front and held up his hand. The figure was almost thirty yards away now. He was losing him.
    A cid burned in his legs, and fatigue overcame his calves and thighs. They felt rock hard and his circulation was poor. But he didn’t slow down, not until the man tried to cross another street. A car