Famished by Meghan O'Flynn (latest ebook reader .TXT) đź“•
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- Author: Meghan O'Flynn
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Hooker heels and a tiny swath of cloth, maybe a tube top, lay discarded outside the door. Probably the reason they’d called him. Sex crime or not, no one else cared about prostitutes.
Petrosky ducked into the building. The air was thick, heavy with the tang of metal and rotting meat and other noxious fumes he didn’t want to consider. A row of tiny doors the size of apartment mailboxes, presumably niches for ashes, lined the back wall, keeping silent vigil over the cement room. Below the niches sat a waist-high stone table on concrete pillars, probably used for flowers. But there were no flowers today. Only the girl.
She was on her back on the slab, arms and legs bent awkwardly and tied together between the table legs. Her swollen tongue protruded over blackening lips that pulsed as if she were trying to talk, but that was only the maggots, writhing in her mouth. It had been a few days. How long exactly would be determined by the medical examiner, but he was guessing at least four or five days based on the lack of rigor mortis and the blisters on her marbled skin. Deep gouges that looked more like knife wounds than split flesh scored her arms and legs. Someone had beaten her badly before killing her. If she had been untied then, they’d at least get some skin samples if she had slashed him with her nails.
Someone’s baby girl. Petrosky’s stomach roiled, and he patted his front pocket for a spare antacid but came up empty. He inhaled through his nose and clenched his jaw.
The knife wounds continued onto her torso. Her abdomen had been torn apart. On top of her thighs lay coils of intestine, some of them shredded like strips of bacon. Another organ, black and jelly-like, sat on her chest, the sidewall torn, fluids oozing from beneath it.
Petrosky bent to examine the restraints binding her wrists and ankles. Metal cuffs, easy to come by, though forensics would have more on the specifics later. Dark stains dripped over the slab and onto the floor, which appeared clean or at least bore no discernible prints. She had bled a great deal in that little room. Hopefully she had been unconscious.
From the doorway behind Petrosky, Morrison’s camera phone clicked. “Holy shit.”
Petrosky straightened. “Suck it up, California, this is the job.” Not that Surfer Boy would be getting the full brunt of the smell halfway outside the room.
“Got it, Boss.” Morrison aimed the phone again and snapped a photo of the letters on the right wall, inky and dripping.
A boat beneath a sunny sky,
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening in July—
“Is that paint?” Morrison asked.
“I doubt it.” Petrosky backed out into the cool, muggy air.
“Detective!” The bug-eyed tech stood near the corner of the building, holding out two plastic bags. “Got a purse with I.D. We’re dusting the area now.”
Petrosky noted the purse, laying on the ground next to a tube of lip balm and a pen. “Needles?”
“No, sir.”
“Pills?”
“No, sir. Just some condoms, a little makeup. And this.” He held up one of the bags.
Petrosky peered through the clear plastic. “Meredith Lawrence. Morrison, you got your notebook?”
“You know it, Boss.”
“Seventy-three eleven Hoffsteader, apartment one-G.” Petrosky nodded to the tech and headed up the path toward the car.
Morrison fell into step beside Petrosky, hippie shoes squishing through the grass. “You think it’s like…a psychopath?”
“Maybe. He’s calculating. Aggressive. Not what you’d normally see in a crime of passion. I think we can be certain that he took her here to kill her since he had the cuffs. And there aren’t any clear signs of struggle around the building. Even the clothes by the door are in one piece. Either she knew him and trusted him enough to follow him in, or she was already unconscious when they got here.”
“What would motivate someone to—to cut her open like that?”
Petrosky shrugged. “Whatever she did, she didn’t deserve this.”
“I can’t imagine anyone does.”
Petrosky ground his teeth and studied the mournful clouds.
It’s okay, Hannah. Just breathe.
I breathed. It didn’t help. Probably because there was a big difference between entering employee files into a computer database and telling someone to get the hell out.
The paperwork rustled with a thick swoosh that sounded like the whisper of a thousand jerks before me getting rid of inconvenient people. It was the swoosh of the executioner’s axe over Marie Antoinette, the swoosh of Hitler throwing a swastika like a ninja dagger at a disobedient soldier. Though I was probably nicer than Hitler. I hoped.
I pulled the phone to my ear and punched in the numbers. “Mr. Turner?” My voice quavered. Darn it. “We need to see you down in HR… Yes, I will meet you here… Thank you.” Clunk went the phone receiver, like Marie Antoinette’s head.
Turner was one of seventy or so engineers the Harwick Technical contract house employed, and one of thousands we contracted out worldwide. He would be at my desk in five minutes, or as long as it took to get from his floor of big projects and design deadlines to my tiny piece of Hell.
Human resources: where happiness goes to die.
I rustled through the papers one last time, stood, and took a step toward the entrance of my office.
Well, not really an office. Unlike in the rest of the building, where you could touch your neighbor from your desk, the cubicles here were spaced for privacy—little islands in each corner further segregated by chest-high opaque acrylic. The partitions were low enough that you could still see who picked their nose while they typed. You could also tell who liked their dogs, who had children, and who was in that awkward in-between phase where a new child made a previously devout pet owner decide that it was just a stupid dog after all, leaving them to tuck Chihuahua pictures behind fresh shots of chubby babies. Maybe it made them feel less guilty about their shifting priorities.
The wall to the side of my desk was covered by an old corkboard. I had put it there just in case I ever got a dog, though worrying about Jake was enough for now. On my side of the room, my best and only friend Noelle stared at the computer in her corner. Across the room from Noelle, Ralph’s bookish glasses wobbled as he attacked an acne eruption on his cheek. In the corner behind Ralph, Tony was nearly invisible, his chalky skin and pale blond hair disappearing into the white of the room. I had never spoken to him, not once in four years. When I’d first started at Harwick, I tried smiling at him, but he swiveled his chair away. Noelle had said he was autistic—but maybe I just had spinach in my teeth. Neither would have surprised me.
The only other person in the room was Jerome, the security guard, who was summoned on an as-needed basis to our part of the building. His ebony skin and shaved head glistened under the fluorescent lights. I often wondered how much trouble I would get into if I were to rub his head like a shiny Buddha, but I didn’t have the guts to find out.
Jerome watched the door, Noelle watched the computer, Ralph glanced at the fingers he’d pulled from his pimply face, and none of them noticed me and my shaking hands. Maybe I had already started to fade.
Through the glass wall between my office and the hallway, David Turner approached the door. Turner was tall, with protruding eyes, a beak-like nose, and thin lips pulled into an uneven line. In contrast to his unimpressive face, his gray suit and tie were neatly pressed and impeccably matched. He strode with the confident gait of a man who knew his own worth.
He would not maintain that confidence for long; they never did. It was like watching a balloon deflate every time. I usually deflated with them, leaving me feeling spent and hollow.
Turner pulled the door open and looked at the other workers, who steadfastly pretended not to hear him or know why he was there. Clearly unaware of the nature of my job, he smiled at me and marched to my cubicle.
I drew myself up to my full five-foot-four inches. I wished I were taller. Magic beans. I needed magic beans. Or an earthquake. I paused, hoping for some catastrophe to strike, so someone else could pick this up later. Nothing.
Figures. Way to go, Michigan.
He sat, and I did too, lest I end up looking like even more of an overbearing asshole. My heart scampered around like a pissed-off weasel. I cleared my throat, readying my speech from the training manual script. “Mr. Turner, unfortunately, your services are no longer needed. As of today, you will no longer be an employee of Harwick Technical Solutions. We will mail your final paycheck to the address on file. You will have fifteen minutes to gather your belongings and make your way
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