Famished by Meghan O'Flynn (most popular novels txt) 📖

“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. The 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.”

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, but 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 needs 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 steamroller 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.