[Ash Park 01.0] Famished

by Meghan O'Flynn

  Robert took a breath, trying to ignore the words and pretend, just for a moment, that he was a good person, a person worthy of compassion. Perhaps this new girl would find him worthy in a way others never had. He began a poem for her inside his head.

  My heart expands at your nearness,

  Like a balloon begging to be broken,

  Yearning to spill our love over the world in rivers of happiness.

  Hope lit in his chest, hope that this creature would forgive him, that she might be an angel who would help him purge his sins before they swallowed him forever. He thrust into her, deeply, slowly, savoring every inch of her.

  She moved against him. I forgive you. She didn’t say it, but Robert felt it, saw it in her glistening eyes. He caressed her face and rotated his hips, each thrust bringing him closer to salvation.

  I forgive you.

  He stroked her breast gently, thanking her for her mercy.

  She winced. Winced.

  She was one of them. She’d be pleased at the thought of sinners thrust down into the pits of Hell. Sinners like him.

  Rotten. Unlovable. Unforgivable. He might as well embrace his true nature, enjoy his lechery, for there would be no enjoyment in eternity.

  Not for one like him.

  Robert pulled himself from her depths and plastered his palm over her mouth before she could vocalize her judgment. Pimples ripe with pus reddened across the bridge of her nose.

  Fucking cunt. She will pay. And dammit, she will like it.

  Robert grabbed her hair and yanked her forward, off the bed. He kicked at her shins until she knelt before him, worshipping him in the way others worshipped their God, a God that would condemn him and torture him until he could take no more, an agony to be repeated for eternity.

  He forced that agony on her, slapping her, splitting her lip. Her sobs echoed through his brain like music, hypnotic and rich. As the blood ran into her mouth he shoved himself into the opening, moaning as she cried, accelerating his pace until he choked her with his seed.

  —and the righteous shall rise again, pious on the Earth until they are embraced into the kingdom of Heaven.

  He pulled the whore’s head back, and she stared up at him, lashes wet, freckled skin stippled with hatred, each pock mark like a mouth brimming with accusation. Her glassy eyes told him all he needed to know.

  He raised his hand. She would not forgive him. She would not absolve him. His fists clenched, his muscles aching for release of a different kind.

  She cringed and turned her head.

  No. Not now. Robert brought his fist down on the bed behind her and smiled when she yelped. Stupid fucking whore. This was all her fault. He tossed money at her and went to take a shower.

  She would not be there when he returned. They never were.

  Sunday, October 11th

  Rotting garbage and animal urine curdled the air. The silence resonated with the eerie heaviness of a ghost town, if you were prone to fanciful bullshit. Petrosky wasn’t. He squinted at the house.

  The building was beyond repair, part of a housing project long abandoned by any developer or landlord. Even panhandlers would not come out this far to squat for a night when they had to trek five miles back in the morning to beg for their breakfast.

  So why here?

  Behind him, rubber soles on gravel crunched closer.

  “Morning, Boss.”

  “California.”

  “I brought you some coffee and a protein bar. I’ll get them after we finish up here.”

  Petrosky grimaced.

  “Come on, Boss. You’ll like it.”

  “That’s what you said about tofu. I will take the coffee though. Later.” Petrosky walked up the front steps, Morrison at his heel.

  “He killed another one pretty fast, didn’t he?” Morrison said.

  “Too fast.” Only ten days between murders, highly unusual even for a serial killer. They ducked through the front door, kicking up dust and mold that sat, itchy, in Petrosky’s throat.

  “I don’t like this.”

  “I bet she liked it less.” Petrosky glanced around the living room where pieces of roofing tile had tumbled haphazardly to the splintered floor. He followed the low hum of voices and the phosphorescent ricochet of flood lights down the groaning basement stairs, and inhaled deeply when he reached the lower floor. The scent of mushrooms and dank earth clung to the back of his tongue. A dull sheen lit the basement windows from the outside, the sunlight struggling to illuminate through years of filth.

  The woman lay prone on an old dining table, wrists and ankles each bound to a different table leg with leather restraints. Blond hair fanned around her head, mussed as if she were merely asleep, but there was no mistaking the vacant death stare in her hazel eyes.

  A few techs bustled around the dim space, tweezing and bagging and scraping. Petrosky ignored them and scanned the victim’s extremities. Graying skin covered her arms, and the fingers of her left hand were contorted like a claw on the table. Stiff. No maggots yet. She hadn’t been dead for long. “Do you have a positive ID?” Petrosky asked no one in particular.

  “Jane Trazowski,” someone behind him said. “She’s in the system, got a couple charges for solicitation of prostitution. We need the family for a positive ID but Connors here recognized her from a domestic violence arrest where her kids were—”

  “Fine.” Petrosky said. He cleared his throat and dragged his eyes over her belly. Her abdomen had been hacked apart revealing gelatinous blobs of organs and the slick sheen of intestine. Like the first body, the long whitish tube was splayed open, a sheet of bloodied tissue, more torn and gnarled in some areas than others. Either their guy had been pissed, or the rats had gotten to her already. Petrosky squinted at the ruin. Probably both.

  “Damn. I feel bad for them.” Morrison’s voice was irritatingly nasal.

  Fucking surfers. They always sounded high. Though maybe he was just trying not to breathe through his nose.

  “You feel bad for who? The woman or her kids?”

  Morrison’s face went red. “Both.”

  Morrison would have to cut out that blushing shit before he was allowed to handle any perps. Too much visible emotion and suspects would eat him alive.

  The stairs wept behind them with a shuddery scree, and Petrosky and Morrison turned to see Brian Thompson, the medical examiner, coming down the last few steps. He was tall and lanky with perpetual five o’clock shadow and teeth like a mule. He nodded at Petrosky and approached the table reeking of cigarette smoke—good tobacco, none of that pepperminty menthol bullshit. Petrosky’s mouth watered.

  “Suspect used standard metal clasps to keep the skin peeled back while he worked.” Thompson circled the table, gray eyes wandering like he was bored as fuck to be there. “You can get them from any hardware store. Usually these guys are perfectionists. While the dissection is pretty meticulous, there is a brutality to it that goes beyond the simple cuts themselves. See this here?” Thompson gestured to a series of scrapes visible along the underside of the body. “Splinters in the skin. Looks like she was rubbing against the table, trying to escape.”

  Petrosky peered at the cuts. “You think she was captive for a while before—”

  “Yeah, like the first. He didn’t just murder her and then play around with her insides. She was probably alive when he removed her organs, though I will need to complete the autopsy to confirm abdominal surgery as the cause of death.”

  Upstairs, the telltale clank and rattle of a wheeled gurney approached the basement steps. Can’t put it off any longer. Petrosky swallowed over the knot in his throat, bent and craned his neck to see the underside of the table. Copper stung his nose as he read the poem, each line written on a different board in block script. Here and there, the splitting lumber had skewered a chunk of something dark and gory and almost alive. Rotten wood. Perhaps a piece of paintbrush. Maybe skin.

  Children three that nestle near,

  Eager eye and willing ear

>   Pleased a simple tale to hear-

  Petrosky straightened. Evisceration, shock, death. This fucker had tortured her. She’d been in agony. She had begged for her life. Julie probably had, too. An invisible rope tightened around his throat.

  Children three that nestle near …

  “How many kids did she have?” Petrosky asked.

  “Three,” said the tech from the floor.

  “He knew this one,” Morrison said.

  “Or of her. Maybe Lawrence too.” Petrosky let that sink in. “Let’s find out where these ladies spent their time.”

  The shelter was in a shitty part of downtown, but it looked surprisingly well-kept if you ignored the spray paint. In the back parking lot, a spry sixty-ish woman broomed debris from the walkway. She looked up as Petrosky and Morrison approached.

  Petrosky flashed his badge. “Ms. LaPorte? We have a few questions—”

  “Our girls lives belong to them alone, sir.” Her lips were a thin line.

  Petrosky stiffened.

  “Ma’am, we’re following up on the murder of a woman who spent some time here. We were hoping you could help us,” Morrison said.

  LaPorte’s free hand clamped over her mouth.

  Way to go, Surfer Boy.

  Morrison shrank under Petrosky’s glare.

  “Who? When was she here?”

  “Jane Trazowski.” Petrosky tried to keep his voice non-threatening. “She was here last week, Thursday. We think she may have left Friday morning.”

  LaPorte shook her head. “I wasn’t here, had a touch of the flu. You’ll have to ask Hannah or Brandy. Brandy’s out at an appointment but she’ll be back later.”

  They followed LaPorte down a back hallway to a small kitchen. A thin woman stood at the counter, shoulder blades visible through her shirt on either side of a long dark ponytail as she scooped macaroni and cheese from a metal dish. She turned toward them.

  Cotton plugged his throat. Julie. Jesus fucking Christ. No, not her, but—

  Everyone was looking at him. He nodded at Morrison. Take it, California. There was no point trying to speak; his tongue had become a useless dehydrated mass on the floor of his mouth.

  “Good evening, ma’am. I’m Detective Morrison and this is Detective Petrosky. We’re trying to get information on a Jane Trazowski who may have been here a few weeks back.”

  She’s not Julie.

  The girl, not Julie, the girl, bit her lip. “I’m not sure. I don’t always get names.”

  Petrosky pulled a picture from his folder and showed her. Her mouth fell open. “Yeah, I … what happened?”

  “She was killed.”

  Petrosky winced at Morrison’s bluntness.

  Hannah froze. It was the type of shock Petrosky often saw when he told someone their loved one had died, but it seemed an overreaction in this circumstance. Unless this girl was closer to Trazowski than she was letting on. Interesting. Petrosky tried to wet his lips with his tongue but his mouth was dry.

  LaPorte put an arm around Hannah, who seemed to be having trouble taking in air.

  “I … she had some really nasty marks on her. Bruises and … stuff. She said it was from a bad—” Hannah’s eyes flicked to the officers.

  It was a guilty look. Very interesting. “She’s beyond trouble at this point,” Petrosky said, low but even. “Help us catch the person who hurt her.”

  Hannah took another breath and blew it out. “She said it was from a guy she slept with. He paid her enough for her rent, but she was afraid to go home because he knew where she lived.”

  “Do you remember anything else about him? A name?”

  She looked at the ceiling, the way lying perps sometimes did. It was how they accessed the creative center of the brain. But what would this girl have to hide?

  You’re just fucked up and imagining shit, Petrosky. This girl wasn’t a suspect. Whatever she was hiding had nothing to do with this case.

  She met his eyes. His stomach jerked against something sharp, like he had ingested barbed wire. Those eyes. She’s not Julie. Julie’s dead.

  She shook her head. “No, no names. It never got that deep. Sometimes they don’t … want to talk.”

  “Do you remember exactly what she said?”

  “Um … some rent-check mother … um … got caught up in something. I’m not sure. It wasn’t that, but something like that. I can’t really remember.” Beneath her nose, her lips quivered and stilled.

  His arms ached to hug her and tell her it would all be okay. Petrosky ground his teeth, returned the photo to his folder and pulled out another. “How about her?”

  LaPorte and Hannah stared at the image, frozen.

  “Ladies?”

  “Is this another one? Another … victim?” LaPorte asked.

  Questions, no answers. That didn’t sit well with him. “It is, ma’am. Do you know her?”

  LaPorte shook her head.

  Petrosky turned to Hannah.

  Hannah bit her lip, eyes radiating uncertainty as she glanced at LaPorte. “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I … think so. I mean, we see so many and we don’t always get IDs or whatever. Some of them are really scared.”

  But were they afraid of their exes or of someone else stalking them, hunting them down? “Scared?” Petrosky asked. Clean and non-specific. Sometimes it was what you didn’t say that tripped people up.

  “You’d be frightened too if someone you loved was beating on you.” LaPorte stepped in front of Hannah, her finger jabbing at the air between them. “You’d be afraid if the police didn’t help you when you called them. These ladies are allowed to be afraid.”

  Faces appeared at the hole in the wall behind Hannah—some clean, some battered, all inquisitive.

  “We’d like to ask around here, if you don’t mind.”

  LaPorte bristled. “As a matter of fact, I do mind. You have no right to go poking around into these women’s lives, and I’ll be damned if—”

  “Let me rephrase: This is a police matter. We will be interviewing everyone here in an attempt to trace our victim’s movements.”

  LaPorte’s spindly fists formed balls. Beside Petrosky, Morrison stopped writing.

  “Do you have a room we can use?” Petrosky asked.

  LaPorte walked to the door. “Do your dirty work out back.”

  If a voice could cut flesh, Petrosky would have been on the floor with a severed jugular.

  They drove to the precinct in silence. Eight women in the shelter. Three identified Trazowski from her visit earlier that week. One recognized Lawrence, but wasn’t able to identify where she’d seen her.

  And then there was Hannah. He could still almost see her face—strained and pale. Shocked, but more than shock. She was afraid. Someone had died, yet he hadn’t given her a reason to think she’d be in danger any more than losing a loved one signals that you might be next. So what was she so afraid of? He yearned to know, to fix it, to take away the fear.

  Cement barriers whizzed by the window. She looked so much like Julie—how Julie would have looked if she had been allowed to grow up.

  Too bad you couldn’t save her.

  Get it together, asshole. Bury that shit.

  He could almost taste the whiskey, feel the fiery comfort of it in the back of his throat. But a drink was the last thing he needed. He had a job to do.

  Morrison swung into the lot and tossed Petrosky the keys, heading through the glass door to the precinct. Petrosky huffed up the interior flight of stairs after him, vowing to smack the shit out of anyone who dared suggest he go to the gym.

  On the top floor, a hallway to the left led to the chief’s office and a series of conference rooms. The rest of the place crackled with the controlled chaos of too many crimes and not enough cops. Detectives and plain-clothed officers sat at the dozens of desks in the bullpen, filling out paper reports and typing frantically on old PCs, trying to get the fuck out of there because they’d promised their wives they’d
be home in time to see the kids off to bed. Petrosky had done that too, before Julie was taken from him. He’d give anything to do it again.

  “What’s up, Morrison?” A short, stocky man in police blues smiled and clapped Morrison on the back before shooting a nervous glance at Petrosky. His teeth were too small, like someone had buzzed them off halfway down.

  Morrison shook the guy’s hand. “What’s up, Pete? See Annie this morning? I think she was looking for you on the Jackson case.”

  “Oh, really? I’m on it.” A final goofy grin lit his mahogany face, and Pete something-or-other was gone.

  Petrosky started for the center of the room, for his desk. “How do you know all these people?”

  “I meet them in the gym.”

  “That where you get your girl talk in, California?”

  “Pretty much.”

  The chair squealed under Petrosky’s ass as he sat. Morrison grabbed a chair from his desk across the aisle and plopped into it looking like a lap dog: eager, inquisitive, expectant. Might as well throw him a bone. “Morrison?”

  “What’s up, Boss?”

  “LaPorte come off confrontational to you?”

  “Sure did. I think maybe she’s had some bad experiences with cops. Type of place, maybe. Protecting the girls.”

  “Maybe.” Petrosky’s fingernails beat a rhythm on the desk. “Maybe something else is going on.”

  “Boss?”

  “Two girls, similar backgrounds. One definitely stayed there, one possibly around before her death, and you don’t cooperate?”

  Morrison cleared his throat.

  “What is it, California?”

  “I thought it was weird that LaPorte didn’t ask about safety. If I found out that someone who stayed at my place had been murdered, let alone two people, I’d worry about the guy showing up again. Even store owners sometimes ask about extra police protection after a robbery, or at least request a few drive-bys. Why wouldn’t she?”

  Petrosky stopped tapping. “Nicely done.”

  “Thanks, Boss.”

  “What’s your take on the girl?” Petrosky’s stomach twisted. He needed a bottle of Jack Daniels. He jerked open a drawer and pulled out a roll of antacids instead.