Famished by Meghan O'Flynn (latest ebook reader .TXT) 📕

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 last week.”

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 short stay there. 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.