Repressed Read online

  Morrison sipped at his water, but set it down when his stomach rebelled. “Decantor came by last night.”

  “After my house?”

  “Before.”

  Petrosky narrowed his eyes and dipped a fry in ketchup. Said nothing. But he just glared at the fry instead of eating it.

  “I didn’t want to say anything in front of your friends.” Morrison looked at him pointedly. “And because I was … thinking.” No, I was trying not to think. He cleared his throat. “Our first choice nanny, Natalie Bell, was found murdered in her apartment, stabbed in the abdomen and groin.”

  Petrosky tossed the fry onto his plate where it landed in a pool of ketchup. “What the fuck, Surfer Boy? Why the hell wouldn’t you tell me?”

  “Like I said, I was trying—“

  “How’d Decantor catch that, anyway?” He drummed his fingers on the table. “Sounds like more than a standard homicide. Should have come through us.”

  “They figured we had enough to do?”

  Petrosky stared at the fry like he wanted to slap the shit out of it. “What else, California?”

  Morrison looked at his water glass and grimaced. “Bell died on Monday of wounds just like those on Acosta’s back. And the killer took my card from her wallet and used Bell’s phone to call me Tuesday night to tell me she wasn’t taking the job.” They’d used Bell’s phone. Maybe they’d also used Shannon’s to text him. Was she dead too? Morrison tried to shake the thought from his head, but it stuck.

  Petrosky’s fingertips beat frantically against the table. Morrison half expected the spoon to start vibrating and work its way to the floor where the clatter would surely alert everyone to his predicament—his sanity was hanging by a thread as thin as spider silk.

  “You’re certain they called you after she was dead?” Petrosky asked.

  “I’m sure … or rather Decantor is. He thinks they were just fucking with me.” The question was why.

  “How the hell would they know about Bell’s job offer? You think that just randomly came up while she was being stabbed to death?” Petrosky pulled his hands from the tabletop and the silence was more nerve-wracking than his incessant tapping. “Maybe they’re coming after you because you’re investigating the Acosta case. Hence the similar wounds.”

  The thought had occurred to Morrison and he’d pushed it from his head before it had eaten him alive. “But if they wanted to threaten me, they would have. They didn’t ask for anything. Just said Bell wouldn't be in to work. Either they didn’t want people looking for her because they planned to come back and … mess with the body, or it’s a prank.” Even though it doesn’t feel like one.

  “Mm-hmm.” Petrosky picked up the fry again and shoved it into his mouth. “How many times did Shannon call her?”

  “Two. I think. No one answered.”

  Petrosky shook his head. “She probably called at least three or four times; she’s persistent as fuck. Maybe they just called back because they wanted the phone to stop ringing.”

  They could have turned it off. Petrosky still hated his smart phone—one day he’d probably put it through the wall before he found the ignore button.

  Maybe Shannon’s pushing ignore on my calls. His finger twitched with the desire to hit redial, but if she hadn’t picked up by now she wasn’t going to. And there was surely a logical reason. Had to be.

  Petrosky was drumming on the tabletop again, his pork sandwich getting cold and soggy with coleslaw. “I know there’s more, Surfer Boy.”

  Morrison pushed his water glass away. Someone had called him and pretended to be Bell and they’d had enough information to know what to say to him. He should have recognized that the voice was disguised—that it hadn’t been Bell at all. Some fucking detective he was. “I don’t like it, Boss. I can’t figure out any reason for them to call me at all. And the way Decantor described the wounds … I mean, there are clearly differences in the crimes, but this isn’t right.” He ran a hand through his hair.

  “And?”

  And I need to find her. Now. We need backup. “It’s driving me crazy that I can’t get ahold of Shannon. I put a block on our credit cards. She’s texted me but—”

  “I’ll call Valentine, put out an APB on her car.” Petrosky gestured for the check, practically ripping his wallet from his pocket.

  He’s worried. And if Petrosky was worried—

  “You call Alex first, just to make sure she didn’t drive all night and then pass out when she got there. Then we’ll keep on this case because if it’s the same person who did Acosta, we need to follow what leads we have.”

  “We don’t know that Bell and Acosta are connected. And Shannon doesn’t have enough gas to make it there, she hasn’t filled up since—”

  “Unless she paid cash at some rinky-dink station. Just fucking call Alex.” Alex. The man who’d moved away and made Shannon’s postpartum period with Evie that much more horrible, like she’d lost everything important to her all at once.

  She still had me.

  I wasn’t enough to make her happy. Morrison followed Petrosky out to the car, tapping his phone. The car felt like a prison cell.

  She won’t even call me back.

  Alex answered on the first ring, and Morrison tried to keep his voice even as Petrosky pulled from the lot and headed toward the home of their last potential contact—a guy who had owned a nail studio next to the tattoo place back during the time their rapist had been there. “Hey, Alex. I was just wondering … did Shannon make it there yet?”

  “Not yet, but I wasn’t expecting her until later this evening. Figured she’d need lots of breaks with the baby.” Alex was quiet a beat, then said, “Why, did she leave earlier or something?”

  She’s not there. But he’d known it would be a long shot. “Nah, I’ve just been trying to get through on her cell. Figured I’d ask if she’d called.”

  Another pause. A sound like a crinkling candy bar wrapper. “Something wrong?”

  Morrison didn’t answer. He didn’t want to lie. Petrosky pulled down a side street.

  “Should I be worried?” Alex asked, his voice a touch higher than usual.

  Yes. “No, of course not. I just got some bad news on one of the nannies we were considering hiring. Thought she’d want to know.”

  “Hope you had a backup choice.” His voice was back to normal, though Morrison’s heart rate climbed with every word. He fought for control.

  “Yeah, we have a backup—I just wanted to tell her. But if you talk to her first, maybe leave out the part about it being bad news. You know she’ll want all the details and she’ll have a laundry list of questions all set before she even calls back.” He tried to force a laugh but it came out strangled.

  “Yeah, she sure will.” Alex said, and Morrison could hear his smile over the phone. “I’ll have her call as soon as I see her, okay?”

  “Deal.”

  Petrosky pulled out his phone, keeping one eye on the road. His jaw was tight. “Calling in the APB. I’ll take the fall on it. She won’t think it was you.”

  “Because it wasn't me.” But he didn’t care if she thought it was him, not anymore. His heart was beating a thousand times faster than it should, almost whirring at the speed of the tires on the road.

  She’s dead.

  She just left yesterday.

  Evie’s dead.

  Shannon texted me.

  Someone took them, stomped them to death in a field.

  Shannon told me she wasn’t going to use me as a crutch.

  His heart slowed, but the thoughts remained, fighting, screaming at one another in his brain.

  “Valentine will tell her it was me anyway. Or his wife will.” Petrosky stopped at a light and pushed a button on the phone. “And I don’t give a fuck if she hates me.”

  “Yes you do,” Morrison muttered as Petrosky put the phone to his ear.

  “Valentine. Need an APB on a white Enclave. Yes. Shannon Morrison.”

  Valentine’s exclamation of
surprise emanated from the phone, but Petrosky shut him down. “Just do it, Valentine. And call me back.” Morrison listened numbly to Petrosky’s side of the conversation, trying to focus on something else. Anything else. Anything but the nausea in his gut and the knot throbbing between his shoulder blades. He raised his hand to massage the knot but his limbs felt weak—shaky. He lowered his arm.

  Petrosky shoved his phone into the console and sighed, the sound raising Morrison’s hackles more than anything his partner could have said. “Let’s toss the Acosta case at Detective Young, maybe even Decantor—if they are connected he’ll solve them both at once. Then we’ll drive down to Alex’s place to visit your niece. See Roxy. You know you miss that mutt, and she is kinda cute.”

  “You hate that dog.” Morrison still couldn’t believe he’d given Roxy away last year, but Abby had felt unsafe after Griffen had stomped her kitten to death. Stomped. An image of Dylan Acosta’s body sprouted in his brain and he shoved it away before it could take root.

  “How do you know I hate Roxy?” Petrosky half grinned, but it looked forced.

  Stop changing the subject. “We can’t just leave now—Acosta’s murderer is still out there and we don’t know these cases are connected in the first place. And our best shot at finding who did Bell, and who called me, is to follow these leads.” The APB was probably a better way to go about finding Shannon anyway. If she had made it to Alex’s fine, she’d be pissed when Morrison showed up, and if she was in trouble, he wasn’t going to find out just by going Alex’s; he’d still have no idea where to look for her, and in Atlanta he might be a lot farther from Shannon and from his little girl. Which meant he might as well stay here, which meant he needed … distraction.

  “I bet she calls soon. She’s probably just trying to prove to herself that she can handle the trip all on her own.”

  “Sounds like her.” Petrosky didn’t turn from the windshield, but the muscles in his jaw were working overtime in his fleshy face. “We’ll wait on the APB before we head out there.”

  “Plus she always says I’m overprotective.”

  “That’s a dad’s job, California,” Petrosky said, and the pain was apparent in the creases around his eyes, the tightening of his jowls. He pulled into a drive, checked the address and shut the car off. “Let’s meet Mr. Xu.”

  The owner of the nail salon had answered their questions with frantic little hand movements that belonged to a twittering sparrow, not a grown man. But they didn’t come away empty-handed. Xu swore that he’d seen their rape suspect with another man—skinny with a buzz cut—exchanging a large paper sack for an envelope. But whether it had a bearing on the case remained to be seen; despite Xu’s vehemence about what he’d witnessed, this many years after the fact and the distance from the tattoo parlor to the nail salon made it just as likely that he’d seen another man with scraggly hair selling something to a friend. All the same, they’d look on local buying and selling websites, but it was doubtful they’d find anything of value.

  By the time they left Xu’s, Morrison was actively listening for Petrosky’s phone, a buzzing to tell them where Shannon’s car might be. But if she was on her way to Alex’s, and already out of state, no one would have seen her yet. Not like she’d be likely to get pulled over.

  Petrosky slammed his car door and lit a cigarette. “Let’s pretend Xu did see our guy. Thoughts on the exchange?”

  “Not sure. Something worth cash, if that’s what was in the envelope.”

  “Right. And they wouldn’t be so careless if it was porn.” Petrosky checked his phone. Watching for Shannon too? For information to come back on her car?

  Morrison’s scalp itched but he balled his fist instead of picking at it. Focus on Xu. The package. He couldn’t make the APB go faster by fucking up his case. “The boots?” He squinted out his window, hating the tightness in his voice. Whatever these men had exchanged in the daytime had to be something less overtly threatening—less illegal—but still something they didn’t want others to see. “But that’d mean our tattooed suspect made the boots for the man he eventually tried to stop from using them. And if these guys got together that long ago, you’d think we’d have seen other victims pop up well before now.”

  “You’d think so, but—”

  Morrison’s phone buzzed and he ripped it from his pocket with enough force that he nearly tossed it through the front windshield. Shannon.

  No, not Shannon. His heart rate quickened, liquefying his insides, pulsing faster and hotter within his chest.

  That number—he’d seen it just yesterday when Decantor had come by his house.

  Natalie Bell’s cell.

  He put the phone to his ear, the world around him slowing to a crawl, even the persistent whisper of the tires disappearing into some imperceptible void. “Morrison.”

  “How’s the pig, Curt? Not the food, your partner.” Female voice, alto, same as before. Breathy, but clear now and laced with venom.

  Bolts of panic slithered up Morrison’s back. “Miss Bell?” The world around him returned and he eased his notepad from his pants pocket, positioning the pen so he wouldn’t miss some crucial bit of information. She wanted something. From him? Or was he merely convenient because they had his private number?

  Petrosky jerked his face to Morrison, eyes wide, then back to the street, unable to stop the car as he merged onto the freeway.

  “You know very well this isn’t Natalie. I hear she was a pretty girl, Curt. Were you going to hire her, get a little strange on the side?”

  Petrosky hit the gas, glancing at Morrison out of the corner of his eye. From the phone, there was a rumble like laughter, but not of the amusement variety—this was more like a ripple of madness.

  Morrison’s mouth was too dry to speak, not that he would have said anything anyway. You don’t push crazy.

  “I bet you were,” the voice said. “You always were a whore.”

  That was a new one. “If you’re not Natalie, then who am I talking to?”

  “Tsk tsk, Curt. Don’t ask, don't tell.”

  Curt. She knew his name. It wasn’t on his business card—even Shannon barely called him that.

  “I rather think you might enjoy this, Curt. It has to do with everyone’s favorite prosecutor.”

  Shannon. No, not—

  “Roger McFadden.” Tires squealed as Petrosky skidded past the right-hand lane onto the shoulder and slammed the car into park.

  Morrison’s heart descended from his throat back into his chest where it fluttered weakly, trying to pulse within the tightness of his ribs.

  “Roger’s been a very bad boy. Which I suspect you know already.”

  Roger. This was about Roger? Probably someone he’d prosecuted, pissed off—career criminal, angry at Roger for putting him away? A criminal’s lover? But why kill Bell? Why harass Morrison? Unless … they’d just seen Morrison’s card in Bell’s wallet, did a little research and only later decided to bring him into the game. But that seemed too haphazard, too coincidental.

  “Roger is an asshole, I’ll give you that,” Morrison said.

  “He’s dirty too. How would you like to take down your wife’s ex? Cathartic, yes?”

  His chest constricted. This woman knew a lot about him. But then, Shannon’s former marriage to Roger was public record; the caller didn’t need much to find out that information. Just motivation enough to mess with the police.

  “I’d love to put Roger away. But I need a reason. Evidence.” Too bad—anything he got from this woman was probably moot or a flat-out lie. “I’m more interested in Natalie Bell.”

  “I’m sure you are.” That laugh again. Almost manic. “Roger’s got a book in his safe deposit box. A log. Bribes. He needs to go to jail, Curt. And you need to get him locked up in the next twenty-four hours.”

  Morrison had long suspected Roger of taking bribes, of dropping reasonable charges for a price—though he’d never been able to prove it. But this … how would this woman know about Roger’
s safe deposit box? Lucky guess? Either she was full of shit or she actually knew Roger. Or … he knew Roger; the higher register could still be the trick of a voice-over contraption if this caller really was the same person who’d killed Dylan Acosta.

  “Investigations like this take time,” Morrison said slowly. “Weeks to uncover evidence, scour bank accounts. I can’t exactly walk into a bank and get into his deposit box without hard evidence. Sounds like you’ve done your homework, so surely you know that.”

  “He’ll give you the book. Then you can go to your chief.”

  “There’s no way—”

  “Be persuasive and arrest him. Or kill him. It doesn’t matter to me. One way or another, he needs to be punished.”

  Kill him. The silence stretched on as Morrison jotted notes on the pad: Natalie Bell relationship to Roger? Bribery? Notes in safe? Or bullshit? The buzz of other motorists on the freeway, approaching, then whipping by with the hiss of tires, made him suddenly claustrophobic. He circled “bullshit.” The caller was fucking with him because she could. Opportunity, right? Sociopaths took what they could get. Unless she was just a normal—albeit impulsive—person who was really fucking pissed at Roger. He could see that happening too.

  But this person wasn’t normal. Whoever had Bell’s cell had murdered her, tortured her—or at least knew about it. At least the caller wasn’t after Shannon. He hadn't even recognized how worried he’d been until he felt the relief at the absence of a ransom demand. Shannon was just driving. Busy. And okay.

  “So … what does Natalie Bell’s murder have to do with Roger?” he asked.

  Silence. “We’ve got a lot to work through, you and I.” The woman’s voice was hard, angry, and the words sounded personal—and not at all about Roger.

  “I’m not sure I follow.” Something about the voice suddenly nagged at him, the lilt of it tugging a memory from somewhere, a memory he couldn’t quite retrieve. “Why don’t you tell me how we know each other so I can make sure I don’t mess up again?”

  “You still don’t get it, do you? You see me, but you don’t. But you’ll figure it out—you’ll remember me. And once you do, you’ll know exactly how to find me.” Her words felt less like a promise and more like a threat. Was she stalking him? He tried to place her voice, but the timbre did not call to mind anyone he knew.