Famished, Meghan O'Flynn [free ebooks romance novels .txt] 📗
- Author: Meghan O'Flynn
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“How were they as a couple?”
She hesitated. Petrosky saw a flash of agitation in her eyes before she looked away. She’s a killer. Don’t forget what you’re dealing with.
“She doesn’t open up much.” Her face was a blank slate.
“Did she ever mention Mr. Campbell?”
Morrison’s pen scratched. LaPorte stared.
“Ma’am?”
LaPorte shook her head again. “When she did, it was in passing. I remember thinking she might have been afraid of him.”
“Fights?” Petrosky asked.
LaPorte looked away from him, toward the window. The hairs on the back of his neck danced, though Jacob Campbell hitting his girlfriend was hardly a revelation. And why was Campbell dead? If their killer was picking off abusers, he’d have taken Meredith Lawrence’s boyfriend down instead of Lawrence herself.
“She never fought with him,” LaPorte said. “He yelled at her sometimes, though. Just him. I never once heard her yell.” She sighed. “Poor dear.” Her voice was soft but tight. Irritated.
Morrison’s pen froze.
Poor dear? What do you know, Ms. LaPorte? Was LaPorte in danger here? Was Hannah? Were the other girls at the shelter? Petrosky shifted his weight and lowered his voice. “Poor dear, as in Mr. Campbell, the man who was brutally killed?”
“If you ask me, officers, anything that happened to him, he brought on himself.”
I blinked sandpaper from my eyes and shut the desk drawer for the fourth time. I should have brought my cell phone to work. I probably would have if I’d thought I was strong enough to ignore Jake’s calls. If he ever called. So far, he hadn’t even come by to pick up his things.
What’s the difference between boyfriends and condoms? Condoms have changed. They’re no longer thick and insensitive.
The office phone rang. I jumped.
It’s him!
It’s not him.
It rang a second time. I grabbed the receiver.
“Ms. Montgomery?” The voice was deep and gravelly—familiar, but I couldn’t place it.
My back tensed. “Yes, this is.”
“Detective Petrosky. Ash Park PD. I would like to speak with you as soon as possible regarding Jacob Campbell.”
“Jake—”
Oh, God. Someone must have called the police about the other night after all the yelling…or maybe about my eye. I stared accusingly in the direction of Noelle’s cubicle but only saw the empty corkboard, which wavered as my vision blurred.
Shit. He’s going to be furious.
“Ms. Montgomery?”
“Yes. I…can I just drop the charges over the phone?” I gripped the receiver harder.
There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Ma’am?”
My hand cramped. I tried to loosen my grip. “I mean, everything is fine, I just… I mean, I’m fine. I don’t want to press charges.”
This time the pause was longer. Dread thickened in the pit of my stomach. Maybe I was the one in trouble. Maybe it was all my fault. Maybe the cops already knew that.
“Is he there with you already?” I asked. “If it’s about his stuff, he can come get it. I wasn’t trying to, like…steal it. It’s all by the front door.”
“Ma’am, Mr. Campbell is dead. I’m sorry, I thought someone had already been by to tell you.”
The room expanded around me, then vanished as if it had been an apparition. The suddenly thin air didn’t want to fill my lungs. The phone clattered against the desk and dropped to the carpet, but the sound was muffled as if I were underwater.
A hand on my back. “Hannah?” Noelle.
A small, tinny voice buzzed from the receiver. I reeled it in and put it back to my ear. Everything vibrated: my chest, my legs, my hands.
“Ms. Montgomery? Hello? Are you there?”
“Yes,” I whispered. Noelle squeezed my shoulder.
“I know this is difficult, but we need to speak with you. Can you make it to the station, or would you like us to meet you at your home?”
“Um…I don’t…the station.” Where all the cops are. Where it’s safer.
“Can you come now?”
I nodded.
“Ma’am?”
Oh, right. “Yes. Yes, I can come.”
“Do you have someone who can look after you?” His voice was softer now—kind, even.
I met Noelle’s eyes. “Yes.”
“Good.” The line clicked.
I dropped the receiver and fled the office.
“Hannah!” Noelle’s voice faded halfway down the hall. I threw myself into the bathroom, locked a stall door, and sat on the toilet seat. The stall pulsed around me in time with the knifing beats of my heart. My breath wheezed out of me, dissipating, disappearing into the air, and I was jealous, so jealous of this ability to…vanish.
I’m safe right now.
You can’t stay in the bathroom stall forever.
I pushed my hair from my face with shaking hands.
You have nowhere to go.
The room went black at the edges.
He’s found me.
Petrosky considered Hannah—Ms. Montgomery—through the two-way mirror in the interrogation room. She seemed fragile, dwarfed as she was by the large metal table.
She looked just as innocuous on paper: Hannah Montgomery. Born in Vermont. Parents: divorced. One sister. Employment history began five years ago at an Ash Park convenience store, then at Harwick Technical. No arrests, no warrants. Not even a speeding ticket.
Beside him, Morrison toed the linoleum, face drawn up with just the right amount of sympathetic concern. Petrosky crushed his empty coffee cup, wishing he had something stronger to drink, and reread the notes off the file in his hand. It had taken two hours for her to arrive, which had given the medical examiner extra time to get his shit together.
There were significant differences between this crime and the others. This one had used metal cuffs instead of leather restraints, and nails instead of silver clasps to hold the skin back. There was no note. They had also found a pair of tread marks in the room, though those could have been left behind at another time.
The two hours had also given Morrison time to go poking into Montgomery’s whereabouts over the last week. What he had told Petrosky was interesting to say the least.
“You think she’s got something to do with it? That whole double dating thing is pretty coincidental,” Morrison said.
Petrosky stared at the notes in his hand, written in the flowing script you’d expect from an English major. “We’ll see. You did good, California.”
“Thanks, Boss.”
In the interrogation room, Montgomery folded her hands in her lap.
She’s just a grief-stricken girlfriend.
She was on a date hours after he died. The facts won’t go away just because you don’t want them to be true.
“I’m going in. Watch. Take notes. You’re good at that.”
“Right on, Boss.”
Petrosky tossed the cup into the garbage and entered the interrogation room. Montgomery straightened, her dark hair falling over her shoulders. He had tried to braid Julie’s hair into pigtails once, and she had ended up looking like Medusa. Fucking hell, Petrosky.
He cleared his throat. “Thank you for coming, Ms. Montgomery. Do you know why you’re here?”
“Because Jake—” She shivered, closed her eyes, then opened them again. “You said you wanted to talk to me.”
Petrosky nodded. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you.” Her lower lip quivered, and Petrosky smothered the rush of warmth in his belly that tried to well up for her.
Focus. He stood on the other side of the table and put his hands, palms down, on the top. “I need to know about his movements in the days before his death. Tell me anything you can remember.”
“I think he went to his mother’s. Dinner the night before, maybe.” Her brows furrowed. “Everything is so…fuzzy.”
“Try.”
“I think dinner with his mom. That’s all I know about. He…I…I work during the day. I don’t really know what he did when I
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