[Ash Park 01.0] Famished

by Meghan O'Flynn

  So their killer was likely a younger male, not a physician, who possibly, but not certainly, suffered childhood abuse or neglect. The abused became the abusers, if they lived long enough. Everyone had a motivation. Not that this excused leaving a murdered child to be torn apart in a field. Petrosky’s chest tightened and he settled into the anger, letting it focus him. He needed a lead. He needed to think.

  How did the killer choose his victims? Both women had a history of arrests for prostitution as well as drug charges. They were similar physically, with thin bodies and blond hair, though that wasn’t hard to find.

  Petrosky cracked his knuckles and the noise startled McCallum’s hands off the desk. Jumpy motherfucker. Petrosky eyed him, be he recovered quickly, leaning back and steepling his fingers beneath his chin in official shrink style.

  “You know, this guy is a goddamn stereotype. Kill the hookers. Like that hasn’t been done.”

  “Whether it’s the prostitution thing or not, there’s something about these women,” McCallum said. “They remind him of someone. And whoever it is, he’s killing her over and over again.”

  “You think he killed the original?”

  “Perhaps. But maybe he couldn’t. She could have died of some other cause. Or maybe she got away and he doesn’t know where she is.”

  “Let’s hope someone got away.” Petrosky stood. “The next one won’t unless we find him.”

  McCallum shrugged his fleshy shoulders. “That’s your department, Ed. Not mine.”

  McCallum walked him out, huffing as he tried to keep up.

  Petrosky kept his eyes on the hallway in front of him. He needed to find a more solid link between the victims, or at least someone else who knew something. It was either that, or wait until the guy chopped up someone else and left a clue. If he left a clue. Hannah Montgomery, the young woman who had been a spitting image of Julie, flashed through Petrosky’s mind. He pushed the image away and opened the door.

  Icy air brushed his face, but the wind was laced with the smell of grass and earth, a stubborn summer still rasping its final breaths.

  “Later, Ed. And I’m here to help you work things through, on this, or—”

  “I know, Steve. I know.”

  Petrosky flipped his collar against the breeze and headed for the precinct.

  “Petrosky!” Shannon Taylor’s long jacket flew behind her like a cape as she hurried toward him across the lot.

  “You looking for my rookie again, Taylor?”

  She stepped onto the curb. “Yeah. Where is he?”

  “Out. Tracking our vics.”

  “He’s good, Petrosky. Got an eye for details.”

  “I know. But he’ll be better.”

  “You’re taking a lot of time with him. You feel bad because his dad died, or—”

  “Did you need something, Shannon?”

  “No ‘Taylor’ anymore, huh?” She smiled. He didn’t.

  “All right, so I have a defendant in holding across the street. Former or current prostitute, arrested on domestic violence, claiming self-defense.”

  “And? She need someone to bail her out and you thought you’d ask me?”

  “She says she’s been over to the shelter. Knew one of your victims—Trazowski. Kinda shaken up about it.”

  Petrosky squinted toward the street. The detention center hulked in the background. “You been pulling information from my rookie?”

  “Just talking.”

  “How long’s she got?”

  “Transfer later today to the William Dickerson facility. I told her we’d probably cut her some slack if she cooperated with your homicide case.”

  “I’ll check it out.”

  Taylor started toward the precinct.

  “And, Taylor?”

  She turned.

  “Don’t mess with Morrison.”

  “I’m not messing with him. He’s nice. And unlike you, he doesn’t try to hide it from everyone.”

  “Thanks for the helpful tip, Taylor. I’ll let Baker know you said she needs to plead the fifth and focus on changing her name before you lock her ass up.”

  “You’re such an asshole.” She turned on her heel and walked away, cape-coat flapping behind her.

  It was the same goodbye every time. He smiled at her back and crossed the street toward the Ash Park Detention Center. Halfway across the road, an oncoming Chevy honked at him. Petrosky stopped in the street, forcing the driver to halt with a squeal of brakes. He flipped open his badge. Deciding that asshole looked appropriately chagrined, Petrosky left the street for the detention center where a lady cop with a bored expression checked him through the metal detector inside the front door.

  Inside, the waiting room looked like the DMV but felt more miserable, if such a thing were possible. Behind a counter surrounded by Plexiglas, a man with ghost-white skin and a face flat enough to have been run over with a steam roller raised caterpillar eyebrows, too indifferent to bother asking what Petrosky wanted. A. Cook glinted off the badge on his chest.

  “Cook.”

  “Petrosky.”

  “Need a form. Got a few questions for one of your detainees.”

  Cook pulled a yellow carbon sheet from a drawer and slid it through the Plexiglas slot. “You make them sound like they’re on their way to Guantanamo.”

  “Some of them might as well be for all the good this place’ll do them.” He scrawled on the form and Cook pulled it back through the slot, a yellow tongue retracting into a Plexiglass lizard.

  “Give me ten.”

  Petrosky moved to the blue-upholstered chairs, set in rows across the middle of the room. Three seats away, a mother with stringy orange hair fed gummy bears to an overwrought toddler, probably waiting for daddy to be brought to the visiting area so they could pretend they were a family for thirty minutes. Behind her, a woman in a business suit picked at a hangnail with a faraway look on her face. Waiting on a brother or a father, Petrosky thought—someone far removed from her own station in life, but whom she just couldn’t let go.

  The door next to the Plexiglass-enclosed counter clacked open and the previous round of visitors emerged, all from different walks of life, but all wearing the same expression: forlorn, defeated, depressed. Behind Petrosky, the exit whooshed open and closed, open and closed, bringing with it fresh bursts of misty winter that he could barely smell over the stench of hand sanitizer, dry toast and cheap perfume.

  He took his place in line with the others, behind the woman in the business suit. She’d abandoned her hangnail and was now twirling her short, dark curls with such ferocity that Petrosky expected one to snap off in her hand. The toddler was wailing somewhere in the back, a warning siren for his mother to run for the exit before whomever they were seeing sucked her down too. She hushed the child as they walked single file through another metal detector and into a holding pen between two bulletproof doors, then into the sterile-looking interior hallway that led to the visitor stalls.

  A young black officer with a drawn face and a full beard stood in the aisle holding a list. “Chapman, second stall,” he said, gesturing with the paper toward the first hallway. The woman in the business suit raised a hand, stumbled forward and disappeared down the aisle.

  “Baker, end of the line.”

  Petrosky followed the officer’s finger to the last stall, where Sarah Baker stood waiting for him on the other side of a chest-high cinderblock wall. He peered at her through the thick black mesh that ran from the top of the wall to the ceiling. She was thick and stocky, the kind of girl you’d want on your side in a street brawl.

  She edged her face forward and squinted, as if trying to get a better look at him through the mesh screen. “Who are you?” Her voice had the low husky quality of a lounge singer.

  “Detective Petrosky. I heard you might have some information on Jane Trazowski.”

  “Oh, that.” A wet slap, the pop of bubble gum. “I met her at the shelter over there on Hamerstein.”

  “LaPorte’s plac
e.”

  “Yeah, her and me were talking at dinner one night. She was real beat up. Bruises everywhere. Couldn’t hardly eat on account of her lip, all busted up. Even had those marks on her wrists, the kind from rope or whatever.”

  “She’d been tied up?”

  “Yep. Said the guy paid for the night but he was into some kinky stuff. Gave her twice her normal.”

  “Did she describe him?”

  Pop. “She said tall, I think. Not muscle-y like, but tall.”

  “Hair?”

  “I don’t remember. I don’t think she said.”

  “Eyes?”

  Pop. “She just said tall and that he was an asshole. Told him to stop and he said he already paid her so she couldn’t say no.”

  Entitled fuck. “Sounds like an asshole, all right.”

  “So was it him? The one that killed her?”

  “We don’t know. Where’d he pick her up?”

  She shrugged. “Didn’t say.”

  “Tattoos? Anything?”

  “Nuh uh. Nothing like that. Just that he was mean and she was afraid to go home because he might know where she lived.”

  “So he picked her up close to her house, then.”

  Pause. “Well … I dunno. Maybe. Or maybe he dropped her off. I’m not sure.”

  “How long were you there with her?”

  “She left the day after I got there. You can only stay ten days at a time, but I think she was only there one or two.”

  “Where were her kids?”

  “I dunno.”

  “Why didn’t she bring them with her?”

  Pop. Pop. Pop. Petrosky waited.

  “I only really talked to her that once at dinner. Didn’t even know she had kids.”

  “What’d you have?”

  “What?”

  “For dinner.”

  “Burgers.” Pop. “They were good. The assistant toasted the buns and stuff.”

  “Assistant?” LaPorte had called her “Hannah” at the shelter. Now his file referred to her by her last name. “Ms. Montgomery?”

  “Uh … yeah, whatever. She was real nice.”

  Ms. Montgomery, the assistant, not Julie, his daughter. His stomach tightened anyway as he remembered the shock of the resemblance. “I’m sure she was nice. I’m sure they all are.”

  “Sometimes they aren’t on account of them being hurt. It makes people mean. Some of us anyway.”

  “Hurt?” Heat flared in his chest. He clenched his fist against his thigh.

  “Yeah, that girl—”

  “Ms. Montgomery.” Not Julie.

  “Yeah. She had a few bruises on her wrist. She covered them up real good, but I know what it means when you have concealer rubbing off on your shirt sleeves.”

  “She ever mention who hurt her?” Petrosky asked.

  Baker squinted at him though the screen. “Why? Is she dead too?”

  Friday, October 30th

  I chewed my cheek and typed in another batch of dismissals. Engineer Ernie Smack was not nearly as intimidating on paper as his name suggested he’d be if I tried to fire him in person. Luckily, Noelle had let him go this morning and I was just helping her play catch up on her files. Not that I minded; I needed something to keep my brain busy so as not to end up in a padded room.

  So far, my efforts were working. Over the last week, things had been so quiet at the shelter that my panic had finally subsided. And it was looking like the first victim was completely unrelated to the shelter or to me. When I saw her unfamiliar face on the news—bleached blond hair and polar bear white skin—I was so relieved that I didn’t even mind when Jake snapped the channel back to his lame car race.

  This ride on the paranoia train happened all the time, and I wished I could stop buying tickets. I once freaked out for three weeks after the news reported a tall man with dark hair had strangled a female store owner whose face kinda looked like mine. Which obviously meant that he was trying to find me and got confused. I tend to be a paranoid jerk and not the cute kind that can feign innocence about it. At least I’m aware of it, I guess.

  The horned owl on my desk glared at me. I should break his other ear off. Or get a plant for him to hide under.

  I looked up at the sound of heels clacking on the floor. Noelle stood at the entrance to my cubicle, smiling, her lips shiny from a fresh coat of gloss. “What’s up?” she said.

  Just contemplating torturing an inanimate ceramic figurine. Also, someone might be after me and killing girls I work with at a place you don’t even know I go to.

  “Not much. Crushing people’s dreams and occupational aspirations with the touch of a few buttons.”

  “Eh, I’m sure Dominic has a reason.”

  I stared at her, trying not to think about lying beneath Jake’s naked body the other night, eyes squeezed shut, swallowing Mr. Harwick’s name while Jake moaned in my ear. “You’re on a first name basis?”

  “Well, no. But hopefully I will be soon.” Noelle winked.

  My face grew warm. Subject change time. I nodded at the other side of the room and lowered my voice. “How are things with Ralph? He seems bummed, and he’s been watching you all day.”

  Noelle shrugged. “He wasn’t what I was after, I guess. Boring, you know?”

  There was something else in Noelle’s eyes, but it passed before I could get a handle on it.

  “Anyway,” Noelle said, “how about we let off some steam after work? There’s a club downtown that I’ve been dying to check out. They keep sending me ads. Maybe it will give me a little practice for the boss, or at least help me find someone more interesting than Mister Excitement over there.” Noelle jerked her head in Ralph’s direction.

  I needed to stop chewing on my lip before I ate it clean off my face. One day, Noelle was going to get tired of asking me to go out with her. Maybe she’d even go find another friend altogether. Shit.

  “I’m not sure … I mean, I don’t know if Jake—” My wrist throbbed. I cleared my throat. “I can’t.”

  “Girl, it’s fine. Next time, okay?” She waved her hand in that universal shooing-a-fruit-fly gesture.

  Ouch. I hoped I had better than fruit fly status—buzzing, fruit-stealing, poop-eating, assholes. Did fruit flies even eat poop? A biologist I was not.

  “Yeah, next time,” I said to the owls since Noelle was already gone.

  My cell phone rang. I grabbed it out of the bottom drawer.

  “Hey, baby. What’s up?”

  Jake was chewing on something, and the wet crunch of chips or pretzels made me want to gag. In the background, the television chattered about leasing a car.

  “Just working,” I said. Like you should be doing.

  “My mom wants us to come over for dinner tonight,” Jake said.

  “By ‘we’ do you mean ‘you?’”

  “Why do you always do that?” he demanded.

  I took a deep breath. He was right. I was in a horrible mood and in no shape to be around his mother. Not that my heart ever swelled at the prospect of sitting in her living room, choking on cigarette smoke, watching her glower at me. I should run off with Mario, my silent but poisonous plant—or Horny the rage-faced owl.

  “Sorry, I just … don’t think she likes me very much.”

  “She likes you fine. I just think … I dunno, I think maybe she wishes we’d gotten married before we moved in together.”

  I’m pretty sure she just thinks you can do better. I rose and peeked at Noelle, on the phone in her cubicle. Maybe making plans with someone less fruit-fly-like. My heart squeezed. “Actually, I’m going to work late tonight. I’ll get dinner before I come home. You go ahead.”

  “Fine,” he spat.

  Don’t be mad, don’t be mad. “There’s some extra money in the drawer in the kitchen. Why don’t you grab some drinks and dessert for you and your mom? I won’t be too late.”

  The channel changed in the background. Game show. Judge show. News show.

  How do you get your boyfriend
to do sit ups?

  Put the remote between his toes!

  There was a pause, then a sound like Jake was rummaging in a drawer. The shuffling stopped. He must have found the money.

  “Well, okay.” His voice was softer. “Don’t spend too much on dinner.”

  “Okay.” Like you should have any say where I put my money. “See you when I get home. Tell your mom I said hello.”

  “I will. Love you.”

  Not mad. Thank goodness. “Love you too.”

  The line clicked, taking the chatter of the television with it. I tossed my cell back in the drawer and headed to Noelle’s cubicle. “Change of plans,” I said, my heart twitching with nerves or maybe … excitement.

  Her hand pressed against her chest in mock surprise. “You mean Little Miss Goodie Two Shoes is actually going to go out and absorb some nightlife?”

  “I guess so. I just need to make sure I get back early. Like, maybe dinner, and then we can stop in at the club but head out after an hour or so.”

  “Aw, but no one’s out at five, Hannah.”

  Jake’s mother usually slugged back half a dozen beers and smoked a pack before she took Jake home. Last time I went to visit her, we got home at midnight—not because we were having a blast, but because his mother had fallen asleep on the couch and Jake said she’d be angry if he didn’t say goodbye to her. “If we can get out of there by ten thirty, I should be fine.”

  “Okay, Cinderella, I will return you home punctually and as virtuous as when you left.” Noelle’s eyes said she would do anything to break that promise if I was willing. She smiled. “You won’t regret it.”

  Robert ate a late dinner at Johnny’s, an Italian pizza kitchen around the block from his house. The food was good but not great, eaten over a nondescript tablecloth and served by a nondescript waiter. Despite his obvious boredom, the waiter looked expectant when he handed over the check, like he thought he deserved a tip.

  He’s going to be disappointed.

  The car ride was no better. Every accident within sixty miles was clustered along his route to the club. Robert bit back his rage as best he could, though it didn’t stop him from aiming expletives and obscene hand gestures at an elderly woman in a neighboring car. Her horrified eyes improved his mood considerably.