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

It’s quiet here.

An hour from Petrosky’s usual domain, far from the brick and mortar of the city, the howling wind lashed against fields of dead grass and grain. While nearby areas were covered with higher-end condos and lakefront housing developments, this town just outside Lapeer had peaked and declined well before his killer had made the trek out here.

The run-down barn was tucked in the back corner of an abandoned wheat field, at the end of a gravel drive. To his right, he could make out a trailer park in the distance, though it was too far for anyone to have heard much.

I’ll question them anyway.

In the middle of a pasture on his other side, an enormous metal chicken loomed, the only thing around that appeared to be in good repair, despite deposits of graying snow on its beak. Fucking country folk. Maybe his killer had a sense of humor.

The barn itself was missing boards like many of the other barns in the area. Through holes in the ceiling, frosty sunlight speckled the straw-covered floor. The air was redolent with damp hay and the iron scent of freshly spilled blood.

The girl was laid out on a wooden table at the back of the barn. Like the other girls, her wrists and ankles were secured by leather restraints, which had been fastened to the table legs. Her stomach had been sliced neatly in half, like two sections of a broken heart. The pieces lay on top of her chest, the remnants of her last meal teeming with ants. Jumbled corkscrews of intestine dangled from her belly down onto the sawdust and what might have been the top of an ant’s nest below the table—they’d probably been hibernating when they were disturbed by the dripping of warm bodily fluids. The techs bustled around the perimeter of the room, either done with the table or simply avoiding the mess.

“The location is different,” Petrosky said finally. “This rural thing isn’t his style.”

Morrison’s face was green. Rookies. You never knew when they were going to lose their cool or their lunch. Here it was probably the bugs, the way Morrison was staring at them.

“Well…yeah, Boss, the location is different, but the building is just as dilapidated. And the place itself probably has the same number of people within a two-mile radius as those old housing projects. The modus operandi is consistent with the first two as well.”

“Modus what?”

“It’s Latin. It means—”

“I don’t give a fuck what it means, Surfer Boy. And breathe through your mouth before you throw up.”

A winter bird, blue and orange, squalled and fluttered out through a gap in the ceiling above. Petrosky watched the bird disappear into the frigid sky.

“Maybe our killer ran out of places in the city,” Morrison said.

Or he’s escalating, broadening his territory. “They know who the girl is?”

Morrison looked at his notes. “Working girl, same deal. Bianca Everette. Her driver’s license was under the table. Not bothering to hide their identities, is he?”

It was a dare, a tease. “This guy’s fucking with us,” Petrosky said.

“We’ve got something over here.” A tiny wisp of a woman with a tattoo behind her ear and short-cropped platinum blond hair waved a flashlight from the front corner of the barn.

Petrosky headed her way, leaving Morrison by the body.

“What’ve you got?”

She pointed near the corner where a splintered piece of plywood leaned against the wall. “Behind it. I was dusting above the board and touched it to secure my tape, and—”

Petrosky squinted in the dim light. “Show me.”

She pinched a corner of the board and lifted it away from the wall. He peered into the space, past threads of cobweb strung with sawdust. There were marks there, uniform, deliberate.

“Need a bigger light over here!”

The crime tech slid the plywood out of the way.

Morrison shone a thick flashlight beam onto the words, dark brown now, hard to read against the grime. With a blood tracking LED, they’d light up like Christmas.