[Ash Park 01.0] Famished

by Meghan O'Flynn

  Like, someone besides you? “I’ll look, but so far, I haven’t noticed any patterns. Seems random.”

  Tammy stood. “Take another look and see what you can find. We will talk about it next week.”

  Why do shrinks use shock treatment?

  To prepare patients for their bills!

  “Next Saturday, nine o’clock? I can’t do Sunday again.”

  I nodded, but I was already tuning her out.

  I don’t need her anymore. I only need him.

  I drove back to Dominic’s house and let myself in. No, I corrected myself. Our house. My heart felt as if it had sprouted wings.

  I glanced at the clock on the oven and caught a reflection of my face, grinning like an idiot. It was only ten. Dominic wouldn’t be home until eleven-thirty.

  What to do?

  I could watch TV, but I wasn’t really in the mood. I could try Noelle again, but I didn’t want to be all stalker-y, especially since she was probably busy with her boyfriend. Even Duke was out at the groomer’s.

  I frowned and peered across the living room, toward the far archway. After Dominic’s twilight poetry reading, the library was fast becoming my favorite room. I could still hear his voice in there if I concentrated: I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times … In life after life, in age after age, forever.

  Maybe I could find something beautiful to read to him.

  The library welcomed me with the subtly sweet scent of old books and furniture polish. I wonder where he stuck that poetry book. I headed to the back wall of shelves and ran my finger along the spines, each uniform ridge a smooth transition to the next book. A History of the World. Economics: Past, Present, Future. Global Transactions.

  A little much for light Saturday morning reading, I thought, though picturing him reading the educational stuff made my heart swell. That was the side he showed to the world: the businessman, the intellectual. His softer side he showed only to me.

  Thump. My hand stopped at a thick text sticking out further than the rest on the top shelf. I pulled it down. Poems for the lovestruck, here I come!

  I looked at the cover and frowned.

  Through the Looking Glass? That does not sound like poetry. The pages rippled when I leafed through them. Nope, not poetry.

  Or maybe it was?

  Tweedledum and Tweedledee

  Agreed to have a battle;

  For Tweedledum said Tweedledee

  Had spoiled his nice new rattle.

  Hmm. So some regular story, some poetry, and the occasional photo of chessboards or rabbits or obese children. Weird, but whatever. It had to be better than Economics and I could always find a romantic poem later.

  I walked to the couch, stretched out with my back against the arm rest, and dove in.

  “Any signs of physical harm?” Petrosky asked.

  The baby-faced rookie shook his head. “Nah, she just freaked out when he tried to get fresh. Went running into the woods. A group from a nearby house was out there roasting marshmallows and saw her before he even caught up. He did have handcuffs in his trunk though, so who knows what he had planned.”

  “Thanks for calling Morrison before you called Graves.”

  “Hey, you guys are dicks less often. Not a lot less, but still.”

  “I’ll get you a donut tomorrow.”

  “Make it a cruller.”

  “Deal.” Petrosky dismissed him with a wave and tapped the file with his thumb. James Clark, born Robert Fredricks, had completed his engineering degree during his five-year prison stint, and had somehow managed to score a respectable position at Harwick Technical Solutions. He had been up here in Michigan for less than two years: plenty of time to get comfortable and to explore out-of-the-way places to dump half a dozen bodies. And it took a cool head to go to work and smile every day with some woman’s blood still under your fingernails. Manipulative. Calculating. Then there were the photo souvenirs.

  Everything fit. Almost too nicely.

  Petrosky squinted at his suspect through the one-way mirror.

  Fredricks’s face was impassive, his fingers laced on the tabletop in front of him. His blue eyes raked the room as if looking for something. Probably someone else’s daughter.

  Fucking bastard.

  Petrosky’s fist clenched around the file. He squared his shoulders and marched into the interrogation room, letting the door slam behind him.

  “So, Jimmy, I just got back from your place. You live a long way from the office.”

  Fredricks stared at him. “It’s quiet there.” His voice was bland, but with an edge, as if he were struggling to keep it even.

  “Try again.”

  A manic rapping sounded under the table. Fredricks’s foot. He was nervous, panicked even. How nervous had he been when he was slicing through his victims’ bellies, torturing them, until they probably begged for death?

  “I couldn’t live anywhere else. I was supposed to report my residence and my status as a sex offender. Three neighborhoods petitioned before I gave up and went somewhere where no one would care.”

  That felt like the truth. He let it go for now. “How’d you manage to score such a ripe gig at Harwick Tech?”

  Fredricks looked down at his hands. “I put in an application, I think. They called me and I went.”

  “Once you got here, you met some nice girls, huh?”

  Fredricks’s jaw worked furiously. His hands balled into fists on the table.

  Here we go.

  “How about Hannah Montgomery?” Petrosky’s heart quickened at her name, but he snuffed the feeling and kept his eyes on the shithead at the table. “She’s pretty, isn’t she? Is that how you chose the other women? Did you follow her to the shelter?”

  Fredricks’s face twisted with rage. “She has nothing to do with this.” Spittle flew from his mouth and landed on the table.

  “We’re going to make this easy on each other,” Petrosky said. “You are going to tell me what I want to know. I am going to pretend that I didn’t see the pictures of all the little girls you have at your house. They don’t take kindly to pedophiles in prison, though I suspect you already know that.”

  The blood drained from Fredricks’s face. His body listed unsteadily and he caught himself on the table, knuckles white. “I … I … They all told me they were eighteen!”

  Fucking liar. “And the dead girls?”

  Fredricks stared at him. “What?”

  “You’re not fooling anyone. You have photos of each of the murder victims in your closet.”

  Understanding crept across Fredricks’s face. His mouth dropped open. “Wait, hang on! I … those were just—” He collapsed into sobs. “I just liked the pictures, the excitement. I paid them all. They … they all went home. Oh, God—” He wheezed.

  Maybe Fredricks would pass out and crack his head open on the floor. The thought was comforting.

  “You have young women in your past who almost didn’t go home. Remember Charlotte Ostick?”

  Fredricks paled still more. His lips opened and closed in manic little movements as if his brain was working far too quickly for his mouth.

  “She almost died too,” Petrosky said savagely. “You didn’t bring her inside a building, though. You anally raped her, beat her, and left her in a fucking field to die from internal bleeding. Would she have been your first, Jimmy? Did the fact that a twelve-year-old girl survived make you rethink your locations so a well-meaning farmer wouldn’t find your victims before they were beyond saving? Maybe this shit isn’t as satisfying if you think they may survive.”

  Fredricks’s tears fell on his clenched, white knuckles. “I tried to stop.” It was a whisper. “I … I couldn’t. I hired people. I paid every one of them. They all agreed—”

  “Did they agree to die?”

  A muffled choking sound.

  Choke, fucker.

  “I didn’t kill anyone!”

  “It’s all over, Jimmy. Let’s work together and I’ll make sure yo
ur sexual escapades don’t get broadcast all over the prison mess hall. Deal?”

  “No! I didn’t do anything! I mean … I didn’t kill them! You have to believe me!”

  “Too late for that, Jimmy. Enjoy prison.”

  He’d let Fredricks sweat and come back later for his confession.

  The bell rang again. The white shag rug was too soft under Noelle’s bare feet, as if toying with her, teasing her with nice comforting things while she waded through the knowledge that she had almost been the next dead girl on the news.

  “Noelle, open up!” Hannah’s voice. Noelle had called her after Thomas had left this morning because she hadn’t wanted to be alone. Now the pine door to her apartment seemed bigger than usual, alien.

  The door squealed as Noelle pulled on the knob.

  “I’m so glad you’re okay!” Hannah threw her arms around her. “I can’t believe this.”

  “Me either. It’s just …” She really didn’t want to talk about it. Not now. Noelle stepped back, her jaw dropping when she saw Hannah’s face. “What happened to your hair?”

  Hannah ran a hand through her blond waves. “Do you like it?” She sounded like she wasn’t sure about it, or maybe she was just unsure of Noelle’s reaction.

  “I love it. Now we can be twins.”

  Hannah’s face lit up. “I don’t have the boobs.”

  “Now that you landed a rich dude, you can inflate those puppies.”

  Hannah shrugged. “Eh, Dominic likes them the way they are.”

  They sat on the loveseat bought with her late father’s money, the very least he could contribute to her life. Noelle suddenly wondered if things would have been different if he were still alive. Would she have called him to tell him she was okay? What would he have done besides vow litigation and his firm’s involvement in a high profile case? At least she had Thomas. He had stayed with her all night, holding her and apologizing for suggesting she go out with Jim. He’d probably never forgive himself. She understood that feeling.

  Noelle’s stomach knotted. “I still feel like an idiot,” she whispered.

  “Me too. To think that Jim might have killed Jake, that I might have played a part in that is just …” Hannah leaned back against the couch. “But there’s no way we could have known. That guy fooled everybody. I used to get nervous around him and I still didn’t suspect that he was … you know … that kind of crazy. And if Dominic hired him he must have been a damn good faker, because Dominic’s no fool.”

  “It’s one thing to see someone in a job interview and another to be in the same room over and over again and just not … see it. I’m so … stupid.”

  Hannah searched Noelle’s eyes. “You’re smarter than you think. Give yourself some credit, everyone else does. Hell, Dominic was shocked when he found out. Said you had a good head on your shoulders and that Jim must have been a really good faker.”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  Had Dominic really said that?

  “Plus, there’s the way you strong-armed your way out of there. Like a freaking kick boxer.”

  Noelle almost smiled. “It was kinda bad ass.” Thomas had compared her to Wonder Woman. “Hopefully I never have to do it again, though I think Thomas might be sticking around. So no more serial killer dates for me.”

  “He’s not a no-good murdering psycho, is he?”

  Noelle laughed. “I sure as hell hope not. He’d have a hard time explaining his comic book fascination to other inmates. Same with that cat.”

  “Thomas might have weird hobbies, but at least he was honest about them. He put his weirdness right up front. It’s scary how Jim seemed so normal. But he must have just pretended so he could fit in.”

  Noelle shrugged. “Even psychos need to have a life, I guess.”

  Hannah squeezed her hand. “Everybody does.”

  Thursday, December 3rd

  No out, no help, no hope. Robert’s will to fight had disappeared the first day he’d begged his attorney to believe him.

  “I’m not sure what to tell you,” the troll of a man had said. “The evidence is pretty compelling. You don’t have one single alibi. Pleading guilty should at least make the process easier on you.”

  “I didn’t do anything!” He’d had to clasp his hands together to avoid grabbing his attorney and shaking the shit out of him.

  “You did enough to kill any sympathy a jury might have had.” The lawyer had tapped his foot, obviously eager to be dismissed and on to a case he had a chance of winning.

  “But I didn’t kill anyone! How can that not matter?” It was more critical than a lifelong prison sentence. It was a matter of eternity, of salvation versus writhing on a blistering bed of coals.

  If I can’t get out soon, I will never see her again.

  If I stay in here, I am doomed to Hell.

  The lawyer had merely shrugged his meaty shoulders. “Consider pleading guilty. It’s your best bet.” Because you’re bad, Robert. His innocence was irrelevant. Any attorney he hired would see his depravity and seek to punish him.

  That had been the beginning of the end. Each day his panic was replaced by a hopelessness that wound itself around his chest, growing tighter and tighter as days turned to nights and back to days again. His face itched from the dark hair that crawled across his lower jaw. There was no mirror in his cell, but he knew his eyes looked like hollow orbs, blank and eerily unexpressive as if the life had been sucked right out of him.

  And it had.

  He left his food tray on the floor of his cell, untouched. He spent his days sitting silently on the cot, searching the cinderblock wall for some answer to his plight, refusing to speak to another soul.

  But he listened. He had always listened. And the more he ignored the world that had forsaken him, the louder the voices became.

  And into the gates of Hell, the sinners of the world shall pass. A woman from his father’s church whispered the words into his ear, her beautiful blond locks shimmering against his cheek, awakening the lust in his belly.

  Those whose hearts are pure are temples of the Holy Spirit. He saw Mindy Jacobs writhing underneath him, her eyes vacant, St. Lucy’s words crackling from her lips with the hiss of Hellfire.

  He stood in the dark and pulled the sheet from his bed.

  Only the chaste man and the chaste woman are capable of true love. And it was the girl in the field, her scrawny hip bones sharp under his hands as he threw her over a hay bale and forced himself into her, her insides rupturing, his thighs covered in her blood.

  He looped the sheet around the pipe in the ceiling and tied a smaller loop close enough that his feet would not touch the ground when it was time.

  And your sins will follow you, casting you down away from those who sought the love of Jesus Christ, your immortal soul to be punished, writhing in agony for all eternity, for the sins of the flesh you cannot escape. Hannah came to him now, his Hannah, smiling as he climbed the bars to the top of the cell. He gripped the pipe with one hand and slid his head through the knotted cotton.

  Do not be afraid; our fate cannot be taken from us. All of them chorused in unison, each lustful apparition pleased with his penance as they’d never been pleased before. He deserved this. Always had. He closed his eyes and released himself into the abyss. Tightness seared his throat and he lurched, his feverish fingers clawing at the noose as his feet kicked air. A rush of blood blistered his face as his airway constricted—demons preparing him for the heat of eternity.

  He opened his eyes. Below him, his father smiled knowingly as Robert swung from the hanging tree in front of his childhood home, a final sunset blazing red in the distance like the blood that had been spilled there long before his time. The crimson orb sank silently into darkness. Above him, pinpricks of light twinkled into existence and swelled until he was blinded by their brilliance.

  Robert raised his sightless eyes to the heavens and smiled.

  Friday, December 4th

  She lay on the couch, arm extended, palm open
to the sky as if she were begging for something. A needle hung from one swollen vein. He wondered if it would eventually rip free. If he stayed there long enough, he might get to watch it happen.

  He knelt in front of her. She stared at him, unfocused, unseeing, not really there at all. In a way, she never had been.

  A white crust clung to her blue lips, and a slippery trail of vomit ended in a milky puddle on the floor. Her chest rose and fell, again and again. Much too fast, much too shallow.

  He touched her hand. Cold.

  A single tear trailed a path down her face. He traced it with his finger.

  He did not cry. He did not understand the gesture. As if watery eyes made bad things any less terrible. Not that this was bad.

  He looked at the Mickey Mouse watch he had found, dropped by some john, the only thing that was just his. Twelve minutes, he guessed; it would take twelve minutes before she stopped breathing altogether. That was seven hundred and twenty seconds. Most five-year-olds did not know their multiplication tables, but he did, from counting out baggies of drugs and figuring out how long it took for her to sleep off a hit. It was safer to be hidden before she woke up.

  He pulled a banana from a bag on the table, the latest delivery from the church outreach. They smelled even better now that he would not have to share them. Her breath quickened, then slowed abruptly. He peeled the fruit and counted out the seconds in earnest.

  Five hundred and forty-two, five hundred and forty-three—

  The life drained from her in a matter of seconds. He watched her eyes, trying to catch a glimpse of … something. But there was nothing. She was no less dull in death than she had been in life.

  He sighed. Off by one hundred and seventy-seven seconds. He hated to be wrong, even if it was not by much. Perhaps eventually, if he practiced enough, he would get better at guessing things like that.