“Jumpy, probably in shock. Wanted to help, but I don’t think she knew much. I’m sure she’s seen a lot over there.”
“Agreed.” Petrosky unwrapped an antacid and popped it into his mouth. It coated his tongue with chalk.
“So you think there’s something fishy about LaPorte?” Morrison said.
LaPorte was fiercely protective of those girls—she hadn’t killed one. But to refuse to cooperate in a police investigation, knowing the victim had been there? Something was happening at that place, something everyone there was nervous about. Including Hannah.
Petrosky frowned and swallowed the mess on his tongue. “Let’s find out.”
Tuesday, October 13th
Noelle sipped her coffee, willing the caffeine to enter her bloodstream ASAP. The morning had been shitty enough already. The second she’d walked in the door, her manager had come over to interrogate her, giant teeth flapping in the breeze.
“I noticed you had a few files left the night before last.”
She’d sat straighter. “I thought I could finish them the following morning. I didn’t have too much lined up, and the work day was over.”
“The overseas offices are on a completely different time zone. Some needed those reports to begin the next day and you put them another day behind.” His beady eyes had radiated disapproval.
“I’m sorry, sir.” She’d hung her head.
“Don’t let it happen again. There are plenty of people who can do this job.” He had marched away, clenching his ass as if he were trying not to shit his pants.
Noelle’s cheeks were still burning from the episode. She took another sip of coffee.
Hannah poked her head over the cubicle wall. “Everything okay?”
No, I’m just blowing everything. As usual. She was ashamed to admit it, but Hannah’s willingness to pick up the slack was probably the only reason Noelle was still employed. And Hannah’s support in her personal life was probably the only reason she was still sort of normal. Sort of.
Noelle loved her. Maybe more than she should.
“Everything’s fine,” Noelle said, drawing her lips into her best smile to prove that it was true. She held the manufactured grin until Hannah nodded and went back to her desk.
But everything wasn’t fine. She didn’t want to lose this job. She couldn’t go home to a customer service job in a small town where nosiness was written into the charter. She could hear the meddlesome locals now: “I’m so sorry about your mother. How are you holding up?”
She would have to bite her tongue to keep from responding. Those assholes just wanted the story. Noelle’s father being unfaithful was juicy enough, but her mother swallowing a bottle of pills over it was delectable.
Here in Ash Park, no one knew, not even Hannah. Noelle’s life before Harwick Technical belonged to someone else, shoved into a closet in the corner of her brain. That was also where she hid Mr. Cantonelli, big shot attorney with sausage fingers and breath that reeked of sauerkraut and coffee. New York: where the buildings were as high as the crack addicts and stiff as the boss’s cock, especially if you were desperate enough to do anything not to have to return to your nosy hometown and your father’s disapproving stare.
Things had fallen apart as quickly as they had come together. She’d worked hard both on and off her feet, and Cantonelli had still given the promotion to some redheaded bitch.
He had paid for that one.
Noelle had brought him coffee that night for the last time. “Just so you know, Harry, I’m pregnant. I’m pretty sure there’s a case there for sexual harassment, right?”
His face had gone from disbelief to outright terror.
The next morning she had clicked on the television. “And in breaking news, a local attorney was found dead late last night in his office by the cleaning crew. Foul play is not suspected.”
She had faked a resume and gotten in at Harwick Technical before Mr. Cantonelli’s body was in the ground. Faker or no, there was no one to dispute her credentials.
Not anymore.
Noelle’s heel was doing a wild dance under the desk. She closed her eyes and saw Cantonelli behind her eyelids, his bulldog face contorting in ecstasy above her.
I’ll make sure you get that job, honey.
Then Harry’s face turned into her mother’s, eyes open and vacant, vomit on her pillow like the day Noelle had found her.
Fucking slut, her mother said.
You weren’t any better, Mom.
I got a house and a family out of it, her mother sneered. What the fuck do you have?
Noelle opened her eyes. Her boss walked by the glass doors.
She picked up her coffee cup and wondered if it would smash through the window and actually hit him if she threw it hard enough. Her fingers tightened on the mug, as if all her fury was pooling in her hands. She was going fucking insane. Noelle slammed her cup against the desk and coffee splashed over the brim.
“Noelle?” Ralph, her coworker across the way, was wringing his hands next to her cubicle.
“I was wondering if”—his eyes dropped to the floor—”if you might want to go out sometime? I mean, I know I’ve asked you to do stuff before, but I just keep … hoping?”
Noelle took in Ralph’s nerdy glasses and weak, vulnerable gopher face. Her first day there, he had watched her breasts as she panicked at the stack of paperwork. Her jaw clenched in anger.
“Sure,” she said, trying to look excited.
Ralph’s face lit up. “Really? I mean, great! Let me know where I can pick you up.” He almost skipped back to his cubicle.
Asshole.
The next night, they ate at a small Italian restaurant off Orchard Lake Road.
“So what do your parents do?” he asked.
“They’re in real estate.”
“Cool. It’s a good area for that. They live nearby?”
“No. They live in Texas,” she said, hoping she would remember the information later.
“Oh.”
After dinner she let him walk her to the elevators in her building. “Good night, Ralph,” she said, pushing the button as she turned her back on him.
“Good night.”
The following week he took her to a Tigers baseball game. His excitement was palpable as she sat with him behind third base. She stifled a yawn.
“Do you like baseball?” he asked.
“Sure,” she said.
“My ex hated it. But then again, she hated me, too. Thought I was unstable, when really, she just couldn’t keep up with me.” He had a laugh like a donkey’s bray.
Couldn’t keep up? Right. Noelle kept her eyes on the first baseman as he reeled back to catch a ball and missed it.
Ralph cleared his throat. “My brother always liked to play baseball. Do you have any siblings?”
“No.” She wondered what her brother Steve was up to these days. She hadn’t spoken to his self-righteous ass since he’d called to tell her their father had died. She had hung up on him before he could tell her about the arrangements.
Ralph cocked his head. “You okay?”
Noelle plastered a smile on her face. “Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”
Ralph followed her to the lobby again that night. She let him kiss her softly on the cheek. “Good night, Ralph.”
“Good night.”
Later that week he took her out to dinner at an Indian restaurant downtown. The coconut curry was delicious.
“Where did your parents meet?” Ralph asked.
“A real estate conference.”
“Was it love at first sight?”
She tried not to look bored. “Yes,” she said.
When dinner was over, he took her back to her apartment and walked her through the lobby to the elevator again. She saw the affection in his eyes, the ache, the longing, the adoration. He was in deep enough to suffer.
“Well, I guess this is good ni—”
She put a finger on his lips. “Would you like to come up?”
>
Desire brightened his eyes. “Yes,” he said, breath already ragged with anticipation.
She awoke at three the next morning with the weight of his arm pinning her to the bed. Her skin crawled where his arm made contact with her flesh. She shimmied from underneath him, padded into the kitchen and sucked down a glass of water at the sink, considering whether she should wake him and throw him out, or just wait until morning when he would leave on his own.
Her mind wandered to the night before, and how he’d been so willing and eager to put his tongue between her legs. She smiled.
I’ll wait until morning.
Monday morning, Ralph approached her as she entered the office.
“Hey, Noelle!” He moved closer to put his arm around her.
“Hello.” She sidestepped his hand and walked past him to her desk. The blank computer screen reflected her perfectly curled hair and smooth features. Not a hint of exhaustion as in previous weeks.
He followed her. “Is everything okay?”
She turned on the computer. “Yep.” She watched her reflection morph into the Harwick Technical logo and stared at the sign-in window until Ralph finally walked away.
Hannah poked her head over the partition. “So … how’d it go this weekend?”
Noelle shrugged. “You know, same old same old.”
The next day, there were flowers on her desk when she arrived at the office. Ralph stood by the water cooler, waiting for her reaction. She dumped the flowers into the trash and watched his face fall.
Thursday morning, Ralph was waiting for her at her cubicle. His face was drawn and there were bags under his eyes, but his mouth was set in a furious line.
“Hey,” he spat.
“Hey.” She turned on the computer and stared at the screen as it booted up.
“Did I do something wrong?”
Two priors:She could see his fists in her peripheral vision, clenched at his sides near her desktop.
She shook her head. “Nope.”
His breath whistled through his nostrils on a long, deep inhale. He sighed it out. “I just … I really like you. I thought we had something good going. I mean, I know it was only a few dates, but—”
“Yeah, sometimes things just don’t work out.”
“This is tearing me the fuck up,” he said.
She shrugged, refusing to look at him.
“Can’t we just try again?” His voice rose. “Maybe dinner? A movie? I feel like I’m going insane. I can’t think about anything else. I’m on Xanax for Christ’s sake.” He was practically yelling, loud enough for everyone in the office to hear him. Not that Hannah would be all judge-y about it. And Toni never said shit.
“No thanks, Ralph. I don’t think you can make me happy.”
But as she heard him stomp away, she did feel a glimmer of satisfaction. Not happiness exactly, but close enough. Good old Ralph … that boring fucker.
Maybe the next one would be more interesting. Find the right guy and you could get him to do anything.
Anything at all.
Hannah peeked into her cubicle. “Xanax, huh? Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Sometimes, they just like you a little more than you like them, right? Maybe one of these days we can go out, take my mind off all this.”
Hannah nodded uncertainly and disappeared behind the partition.
Noelle turned back to her computer and tried to hide her smile.
Friday, October 30th
Petrosky stared across the cherry desk at Dr. Stephen McCallum. The department psychiatrist was Santa Claus in the off season, at least two-hundred-and-fifty pounds, with ruddy cheeks and a head full of curly white hair that matched his beard. No red coat, though; McCallum’s green button-down shirt and brown tweed jacket strained against his bulk.
“Do your victims have any common acquaintances?” McCallum asked.
“Nope.”
“Any promising physical evidence?”
Fuck no, there wasn’t. No fingerprints on any of the restraints, but tons of random prints all over the crime scenes, probably from kids smoking dope or squatters. “At the Trazowski scene, we found fingerprints all over that basement from some guy who had a previous arrest. Crack addict, says he slept in the basement once, shit in a corner. The restraints are expensive and the dissection meticulous enough that I don’t think corner-shitter is our guy.”
McCallum nodded. “Agreed. What else?”
“No sexual assault, no murder weapons found, and no witnesses. Trazowski and her kids were pretty much ghosts; I’ve got nothing on her movements until she arrived at the shelter, and less than a day after she left, she was filleted in the basement of a house she has no connection to. The father of Trazowski’s kids is currently doing four years in New York on a series of B and Es and he didn’t know Lawrence.” So not a pissed-off father situation. That would have made his life too fucking easy. “As for Lawrence, she had an abusive boyfriend with eight previous arrests for domestic violence, but he’s got an alibi the night of the murder. She had two priors: one for domestic violence and another for prostitution. Then there’s her abandoned kid.”
Petrosky blinked hard against the headache that was taking root in his temples. “The kid died of hypothermia, no signs of violence, but I turned it over to the prosecutor’s office in case they feel like going after Keil. I don’t think much will come of it.”
McCallum leaned forward in his chair and folded his hands on the desktop. “That bothers you.”
“Of course it fucking bothers me.”
“Because you’d give anything to have your kid back, and here people are throwing them away?”
“Because it’s fucked up, that’s why.” Petrosky had seen McCallum himself after Julie died. Mandatory leave, they’d said. Fucking bureaucratic bullshit.
“Has the anger abated any?”
“Goddammit, McCa—”
“I’ll take that as a no. Remember, anger can be a symptom of both depression and complicated grief, but it’s not something to ignore. Drinking still under control?”
“Everything’s under control,” Petrosky said tightly. He rubbed a hand over the stubble on his cheek. “Let’s get back on track here.”
“Fine, have it your way. Lawrence, then.”
“Lawrence. No family and no friends that the boyfriend mentioned.” A lack of acquaintances wasn’t uncommon in these situations, but it made Petrosky’s job far more difficult. Fewer friends around, fewer ways to trace a person’s movements. Fewer leads. He sighed.
“Okay, so not much to go on there. Anyone else who might provide you with some leads?”
“Maybe,” Petrosky said. “What’s your take on LaPorte?”
“Her file is very interesting. The early arrests for protesting and civil disobedience aren’t especially concerning given the time period. However, when paired with other symptoms, trouble with the law can be a sign of antisocial personality disorder, the clinical diagnosis related to psychopathic tendencies. The later arrest for the murder of her husband certainly fits that bill.”
“It was dismissed as self-defense. When a man stabs you with a kitchen knife, you’re allowed to bludgeon him to death with a tire iron.”
“I happen to agree,” McCallum said wryly. “And running a non-profit shelter for abuse victims speaks to empathy and a history of victimhood as opposed to someone with antisocial personality disorder. Whatever attitude made you suspicious of her is more likely related to her protecting those under her care than an admission of guilt.”
That much was true. LaPorte wasn’t a suspect. But between LaPorte’s defiance and Hannah’s anxiety something still felt wrong.
“What about the poems left at the crime scenes?” McCallum asked. “From what I understand, that poem is open to interpretation, and hotly debated. The whole book is a psychedelic Freudian’s dream.”
Petrosky had gleaned as much from Morrison’s assessment last week: “The poem he’s using is from the end of the book. T
he whole thing’s pretty weird, so it’s hard to tell what he’s saying. If I were him, I would have used the Walrus and the Carpenter. All those poor oysters.”
“So you’re saying you’re the Walrus?” Petrosky had asked.
“Koo koo ka choo, Boss.”
So much for a fancy-ass English degree.
McCallum laced his fingers on the desk. “The poetry is a conundrum, but the typical profile for this type of crime still fits. White male between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five. A planner, intelligent, probably well educated in this case. Someone shrewd, calculating.”
Petrosky nodded. “Could the dissection be related to the fact that both were mothers?”
“If he were dissecting only the uterus, the reproductive organs, I’d say yes. But according to the medical examiner’s reports, he dissected the stomach, the intestines, and in one case, part of the esophagus. Almost as if he’s looking for something there.”
Petrosky pictured the gaping hole in Trazowski’s abdomen, envisioned someone rummaging around, hands submerged to the wrists, forearms coated in gore. His gut clenched. “What would you look for inside someone’s stomach?”
“Something he fed them, perhaps, or maybe he wondered what their last meal had been. Or maybe he’s just interested in the mechanics. While the dissections were deliberate and rather precise, there were some small tears around the incisions, so I’d guess that he simply lacked the medical knowledge to complete the job perfectly. And the fact that they were alive when he cut into them speaks to an underlying rage or past slight. You might be looking for someone who was hurt by a maternal figure. Lack of attachment in these cases is prominent.”
“So our guy had a shitty upbringing?”
“Possibly. But some psychopaths are born without the ability to emote, while others only show sociopathic behaviors after severe abuse or neglect. Either type can end up killing people in fairly horrific ways. It’s hard to tell which category this individual would fall into since the presentation is generally the same.”
[Ash Park 01.0] Famished Page 8