Famished by Meghan O'Flynn (latest ebook reader .TXT) 📕
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- Author: Meghan O'Flynn
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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 place?”
“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 muscly 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 through the screen. “Why? Is she dead too?”
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 ‘us’ 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…I 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
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