Chris & Nancy Read Online Free Page A

neighbor to the left of the Benoits’ house took care of the dogs whenever the family was away. This set of exchanges, including intervals between follow-up calls, lasted the better part of an hour.
    The officers found Holly Schrepfer at home. Before joining them on the return to the Benoits’ gate, Holly called Nancy. As had been the case for days, there was no answer.
    Shortly after 2 : 30 , Holly was climbing over the fence and calming the dogs. Their names were Carny and Highspot, inside jokes from Chris and Nancy’s careers in professional wrestling. A carny, or carnival figure, refers to the sport’s roots in the nineteenth-century big top, and its reliance ever since on a jargon (“mark” to signify a naive fan, “work” as a synonym for staging something fake, “kayfabe” for the overall con) comprehensible only to insiders. A “highspot” is an aerial maneuver in a wrestling match. During the two decades in which Chris Benoit rose to become one of wrestling’s biggest stars, his signature highspot was a spectacular diving head butt from the top rope, sometimes called the Swan Dive.
    Holly ushered the German shepherds through the unlocked door on the side of the garage leading into the house. The door led up a short flight of stairs to a mudroom where the dogs were kept in portable kennels. Holly locked up Carny and Highspot.
    It was a warm early-summer afternoon in North Georgia, temperature in the low 80 s Fahrenheit. The central air conditioning system in the Benoit house was off, which made the odor hanging in the air, powerful but indistinct, more stagnant and intense.
    With foreboding, Holly called out, “Nancy? Daniel?”
    Holly ascended two flights to the upper level to look in Daniel’s bedroom. The decor was dominated by posters and action figures of his wrestling father; on the dresser lay two toy replica championship belts. Holly found little Daniel, in a long-sleeve blue SpongeBob T-shirt, and pajama pants with a soccer-and-baseball design, lying in bed on his stomach, his left cheek on the pillow over turned-down covers. Next to him were two stuffed Winnie-the-Poohs and a book,
My First Bible
— a children’s edition of the New Testament — propped atop his extended right hand. His right leg was bent, with the foot touching the left knee. As Holly got closer, she could see that Daniel wasn’t just sleeping. His face was discolored. Dried-up foam was crusted around his mouth and nose.
    Holly gasped and scrambled down one flight of stairs. She knew that Nancy kept a home office and liked to watch television in a room above the garage. That room, too, was strewn with wrestling memorabilia: framed photos, plaques, baseball caps promoting
WrestleManias
past.
    There Holly found Nancy lying on her right side on the hardwood floor, a red fringed throw rug covering everything except her head and feet. She faced the wall between the sitting area and a wet bar. A pillow, askew, leaned against a messy head of brunette hair. Another Bible, a regular adult edition with a burgundy cover, lay alongside her. Nancy was in a white tank top and blue striped pajama bottoms. Her hands were tied together behind her back, at shoulder-blade level, with coaxial cable. A second cable, along with a small white rope, extended from there and wrapped around her neck. Her feet were bound with the cord from an electric charger, secured by black tape. Nancy’s face was blue and black, her stomach bloated; her arms were already in an advanced state of decomposition.
    Holly hurried down the steps, through the mudroom, and out the garage side door, yelling to Deputy Mundy and Lieutenant Alden that Daniel and Nancy had been murdered.
    The officers told Holly to stay put in the driveway while they went inside and followed her directions to the two bodies. After confirming her discoveries, they searched the entire house, eventually making their way to the