Famished, Meghan O'Flynn [free ebooks romance novels .txt] 📗
- Author: Meghan O'Flynn
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Tammy nodded thoughtfully. If something ever happened to my shrink, someone could make her life-sized bobblehead twin, and it would be just as effective as she was now.
“It is possible that his presence makes you feel safer. It is also possible that the days you sleep better are the result of less outside stress, maybe fewer work issues. Is this increase in quality sleep usually on the weekends?”
I furrowed my brows. Was it? No, some days, I showed up to work in the middle of the week, ready to take on the world. And sometimes, I had to sleep in on Sunday because I’d tossed and turned all night long. I shook my head.
Tammy put a finger to her lips. “Before attributing these improvements in sleeping patterns to another person, perhaps you should look in your journal at your sleep recording exercise. I don’t want you giving all the credit to someone else.”
Like, someone besides you? “I’ll look, but so far, I haven’t noticed any patterns. Seems random.”
Tammy stood. “Take another look and see what you can find. We will talk about it next week.”
Why do shrinks use shock treatment?
To prepare patients for their bills!
“Next Saturday, nine o’clock? I can’t do Sunday again.”
I nodded, but I was already tuning her out.
I don’t need her anymore. I only need him.
I drove back to Dominic’s house and let myself in. No, I corrected myself. Our house. My heart felt as if it had sprouted wings.
I glanced at the clock on the oven and caught a reflection of my face, grinning like an idiot. It was only ten. Dominic wouldn’t be home until eleven-thirty.
What to do?
I could watch TV, but I wasn’t really in the mood. I could try Noelle again, but I didn’t want to be all stalker-y, especially since she was probably busy with her boyfriend. Even Duke was out at the groomer.
I frowned and peered across the living room toward the far archway. After Dominic’s twilight poetry reading, the library was fast becoming my favorite room. I could still hear his voice in there if I concentrated: I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times… In life after life, in age after age, forever.
Maybe I could find something beautiful to read to him.
The library welcomed me with the subtly sweet scent of old books and furniture polish. I wonder where he stuck that poetry book. I headed to the back wall of shelves and ran my finger along the spines, each uniform ridge a smooth transition to the next book. A History of the World. Economics: Past, Present, Future. Global Transactions.
A little much for light Sunday morning reading, though picturing him reading the educational stuff made my heart swell. That was the side he showed to the world: the businessman, the intellectual. His softer side, he showed only to me.
Thump. My hand stopped at a thick text sticking out further than the rest on the top shelf. I pulled it down. Poems for the lovestruck, here I come!
I looked at the cover and frowned.
Through the Looking-Glass? That does not sound like poetry. The pages rippled when I leafed through them. Nope, not poetry.
Or maybe it was?
Tweedledum and Tweedledee
Agreed to have a battle;
For Tweedledum said Tweedledee
Had spoiled his nice new rattle.
Hmm. So some regular story, some poetry, and the occasional photo of chessboards or rabbits or obese children. Weird, but whatever. It had to be better than Economics, and I could always find a romantic poem later.
I walked to the couch, stretched out with my back against the armrest, and dove in.
“Any signs of physical harm?” Petrosky asked.
The baby-faced rookie shook his head. “Nah, she just freaked out when he tried to get fresh. Went running into the woods. A group from a nearby house was out there roasting marshmallows and saw her before he even caught up. He did have handcuffs in his trunk, though, so who knows what he had planned.”
“Thanks for calling Morrison before you called Graves.”
“Hey, you guys are dicks less often. Not a lot less, but still.”
“I’ll get you a donut tomorrow.”
“Make it a cruller.”
“Deal.” Petrosky dismissed him with a wave and tapped the file with his thumb. James Clark, born Robert Fredricks, had completed his engineering degree during his five-year prison stint and had somehow managed to score a respectable position at Harwick Technical Solutions. He had been up here in Michigan for less than two years: plenty of time to get comfortable and to explore out-of-the-way places to dump half a dozen bodies. And it took a cool head to go to work and smile every day with some woman’s blood still under your fingernails. Manipulative. Calculating. Then there were the photo souvenirs.
Everything fit. Almost too nicely.
Petrosky squinted at his suspect through the one-way mirror.
Fredricks’s face was impassive, his fingers laced on the tabletop in front of him. His blue eyes raked the room as if looking for something. Probably someone else’s daughter.
Fucking bastard.
Petrosky’s fist clenched around the file. He squared his shoulders and marched into the interrogation room, letting the door slam behind him.
“So, Jimmy, I just got back from your place. You live a long way from the office.”
Fredricks stared at him. “It’s quiet there.” His voice was bland, but with an edge, as if he were struggling to keep it even.
“Try again.”
A manic rapping sounded under the table. Fredricks’s foot. He was nervous, panicked even. How nervous had he been when he was slicing through his victims’ bellies, torturing them until they probably begged for death?
“I couldn’t live anywhere else. I was supposed to report my residence and my status as a sex offender. Three neighborhoods petitioned before I gave up and went somewhere where no one would care.”
That felt like the truth. He let it go for now. “How’d you manage to score such a ripe gig at Harwick Tech?”
Fredricks looked down at his hands. “I put in an application, I think. They called me, and I went.”
“Once you got here, you met some nice girls, huh?”
Fredricks’s jaw worked furiously. His hands balled into fists on the table.
Here we go.
“How about Hannah Montgomery?” Petrosky’s heart quickened at her name, but he snuffed the feeling and kept his eyes on the shithead at the table. “She’s pretty, isn’t she? Is that how you chose the other women? Did you follow her to the shelter?”
Fredricks’s face twisted with rage. “She has nothing to do with this.” Spittle flew from his mouth and landed on the table.
“We’re going to make this easy on each other,” Petrosky said. “You are going to tell me what I want to know. I am going to pretend that I didn’t see the pictures of all the little girls you have at your house. They don’t take kindly to pedophiles in prison, though I suspect you already know that.”
The blood drained from Fredricks’s face. His body listed unsteadily, and he caught himself on the table, knuckles white. “I…I… They all told me they were eighteen!”
Fucking liar. “And the dead girls?”
Fredricks stared at him. “What?”
“You’re not fooling anyone. You have photos of each of the murder victims in your closet.”
Understanding crept across Fredricks’s face. His mouth dropped open. “Wait, hang on! I…those were just—” He collapsed into sobs. “I just liked the pictures, the excitement. I paid them all. They…they all went home. Oh, God—” He wheezed.
Maybe Fredricks would pass out and crack his head open on the floor. The thought was comforting.
“You have young women in your past who almost didn’t go home. Remember Charlotte Ostick?”
Fredricks paled still more. His lips opened and closed in manic little movements as if his brain was working far too quickly for his mouth.
“She almost died too,” Petrosky said savagely. “You didn’t bring her inside a building, though. You anally raped her, beat her, and left her in a fucking field to die from internal bleeding. Would she have been your first, Jimmy? Did the fact that a twelve-year-old girl survived make you rethink your locations so a well-meaning farmer wouldn’t find your victims before they were beyond saving? Maybe this shit isn’t as satisfying if you think they may survive.”
Fredricks’s tears fell on his clenched, white knuckles. “I tried to stop.”
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