The next morning, he hadn’t even made it to his desk when the chief’s alto voice rang through the bullpen.
“Petrosky! My office.”
Ambushed before he’d even had a jelly doughnut. Tuesday was shaping up to be worse than Monday—all he needed was a dead dog and he’d have a damn fine country song … if you liked that kind of shit. Which he didn’t.
Petrosky followed Chief Carroll’s black braid down the hall to her office, glad that he’d done a shot before work so he wasn’t a shaky mess. Even gladder that he’d followed up the shot with four slugs of mouthwash. He blew a breath up toward his nose, just in case. Minty.
At least Stephanie Carroll was a step up from Chief Castleman; that asshole had been taking kickbacks from the mayor’s office. Castleman ended up indicted, the dominoes fell, and the department had been left without a chief until Carroll’s appointment. Though a few in the boy’s club had been annoyed when she’d taken over, their chagrin hadn’t lasted long—Carroll had as much balls as any of the men, and as she was always quick to remind them: vaginas were tougher. Petrosky didn’t give a shit one way or the other as long as she wasn’t a fuck-up. He was already fucked up enough for everyone.
He settled into the chair in front of her desk, but she stood behind her own chair, five-six on her best day, and stared him down with eyes the color of malt liquor. “Been trying to get ahold of you.”
“Been busy.”
She met his gaze, eyes narrowing slightly like she thought he was full of shit. “Sure you were. Tell me about the Walsh case.”
“Still working on it.”
Her full lips formed a tight line. “It’s high profile, Petrosky. We’ve got a dead grandmother, a murdered teenager and a newborn in critical care. People want answers—justice.”
“We’re going as fast as we can.” His voice was smooth, but Petrosky’s skin was jittering like it wanted to slither off. He glanced at his arm. It looked perfectly normal.
She sighed and finally sat in her chair, crossing her arms over her chest. “What have you got?”
“Found a few other cases, possibly related. One girl who disappeared wearing socks that might match the fibers found at the Salomon crime scene. A few other troubled teenage girls who might fit the profile—abducted. Found a note in one of their rooms about her being his number one girl.” Walsh’s carved flesh blinked into his mind, then her smashed skull—blood and bone and gore. He inhaled sharply through his nose. “Another got a gift from an older boyfriend prior to her disappearance—a necklace with an engraved number one.”
“The number carved into Lisa Walsh,” she said quietly.
He nodded. “And the one carved into Natalie Bell last year. It’s been his calling card since Dylan Acosta.”
He waited for her face to show disgust, but it remained blank.
“We’ve also got a potential lead on the jewelry,” he said. “The corporate office is going to send us some information this morning—we’ll try to track down the kids who sold the charms to our guy, and hopefully we can get a credit card from the purchases.” He rubbed his forehead and his fingers came away damp. “That’s the best case scenario. I’m betting on him paying cash. And it’s unlikely that any security tapes will have been saved that long, but we’ll check.”
“I see.” She adjusted the collar of her suit jacket like it was trying to choke her. “What else?”
“That’s what we’re chasing. I’m going to go visit Dr. McCallum for a little profile review this morning, too.”
She nodded. “Get on it. I want updates. Have Morrison send them over—he’s better at the paperwork than you are. Though you really shouldn’t get him to pick up the slack on that. He’ll be begging for a transfer before you know it.”
Petrosky stood and made for the door, calling, “He loves it,” over his shoulder.
On his way back across the bullpen he drew a few questioning looks from those who’d overheard the chief’s summons. Probably wondering if he’d been suspended—he’d been close to it far too many times.
Petrosky flashed his gun. Still got it, motherfuckers. No one took my badge today.
But Surfer Boy sure seemed to think he was gone—the kid was sitting in Petrosky’s chair, phone to his ear, pen scratching away. Petrosky put his hand on the back of the chair as Morrison replaced the phone and slid the chair backwards into Petrosky’s knee. Fucking shit.
“Oh … sorry. Bad news, Boss—”
“You’re answering my desk phone again? Don’t they teach you any manners in California?”
Morrison ignored him. “It’s a no-go on Forever Memories. We have the dates, but the purchases were all in cash, so no card trace. They don’t have security camera footage from that far back either—oldest is from a year ago. The guy said they’ll pull up the employee punch cards to find out who was working those dates, but for each shift, we’re looking at six or seven employees.” He grabbed the folder from the desktop. “Even with duplicates, we’ll end up with at least thirty kids to ask what they remember about an engraving they did at a part-time job as much as two years back. Unless he was really outlandish—which we already know he isn’t, from his composite—I’m not thinking we’ll get much.”
“Probably not. We’ll try anyway.” They couldn’t ignore that lead, even if they believed it was a waste of time; they didn’t have the luxury of being wrong.
“How was Carroll?” Morrison asked.
“Bitchy.”
“So are you.”
“True. Maybe more than she is.” Petrosky tapped his fingers on the back of the chair. “When did Forever Memories say the employee names would be ready?”
“They’re going to email them over to me as soon as they have them. I’ll get them on my phone.”
Petrosky squinted at the cell. Nodded. “Good trick.”
Morrison stayed silent until Petrosky said, “Okay, Mr. High Tech, let’s go take five minutes downstairs with McCallum.”
“You call him to make an appointment? Last time you forgot.”
He hadn’t forgotten—he’d been drunk. Same as this time. “I texted him,” Petrosky said.
“Really?”
No.
The psychiatrist’s office was located next door to the precinct on the ground floor of the prosecutor’s office where Shannon and her intolerable ex-husband worked. The place itself was uglier than sin—boxlike and squat, painted an uneven brown, like a rectangular block of shit. Even McCallum’s single window glowered like it was pissed as hell to be part of the hideous building.
But having McCallum this close was convenient for the cops who were assigned to therapy after burying a partner, or for the softies who felt guilty about shooting some asshole during a robbery. Easier, too, for the brass to check up on those cops forced into therapy—he’d been Petrosky’s mandated shrink after Julie’s murder.
Petrosky yanked the handle hard against the blustery wind. Inside, three old dining room chairs sat along a paneled wall painted a blue-green color that reminded Petrosky of mold growing on an orange. Rot and decay—so fucking relaxing.
The wind howled against the exterior glass as Petrosky listened at the office door for the mumble of voices, the rustle of a tissue box, someone blowing their nose. He heard only the wind—nothing on the other side of the door to indicate the doctor was with a patient. He rapped his knuckles against the frame.
McCallum was close to three hundred pounds, what a hug would look like if you brought it to life and gave it a green tweed jacket. He opened the door and his fleshy face stretched into a grin. “Ed. And Curt too. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Petrosky could feel Morrison’s eyes on him. “How are you, Doc?”
“I’m just fine, just fine.” McCallum stepped back around his desk and eased into his chair, presumably to avoid breaking it. Morrison followed Petrosky into the room and they took seats across from the doctor, the legs of Petrosky’s wingback creaking as he lowered himself into it.
McCallum looked at Morrison. “I hear that little baby of yours is growing up fast.”
Probably from Shannon. She still came to see McCallum every week, Petrosky knew—postpartum depression was a bitch, and her kidnapping ordeal sure hadn’t helped her nerves. But at least this time she wasn’t dealing with those things while locked in Norton’s closet.
Because Lisa Walsh had been the one locked up. And Ava Fenderson. And Margot Nace.
It could have been Shannon.
It could have been Julie.
Petrosky cleared his throat. It sounded syrupy and tasted like rust.
McCallum’s face turned solemn. “I heard Adam Norton is back. Double homicide this time, yes?” He examined Morrison, eyes narrowed. Shannon must have been down here already, no doubt re-experiencing her own trauma with Norton’s reemergence. McCallum was surely helping her feel better about the situation, even if he couldn’t promise her things would be fine. They’d done all they could—she was surrounded by cops and would be until they found Norton, but there were never guarantees in life and death. He’d learned that the hard way.
“Catch me up,” McCallum said.
Petrosky did his best, starting with the Salomon crime scene and working through the medical examiner’s disgusting report on Lisa Walsh’s death, and their leads on the jewelry. All the dead ends that weren’t helping shit.
McCallum sat back and tapped his sausage fingers on the desk. “So he took the Walsh girl immediately after Shannon’s escape. And Fenderson and Nace the following year.” He leaned forward with effort. “I think it’s clear his MO has changed since we last spoke. And his victims—there are more of them. And they’re getting younger, though he’s never been picky about who he harms.” For a few seconds there was only the sound of McCallum’s labored breathing over Petrosky’s erratic heartbeat. Petrosky rubbed at his chest as memories seared through his brain—Evie locked in Norton’s dog cage, Shannon, her lips sutured together, an iron collar around her throat. Morrison didn’t seem to be breathing at all.
“You want to know what kind of person does this,” the doctor said.
The silence stretched. McCallum actually looked like he expected an answer. Why else would they be there? This guy wasn’t simple—not some Romeo pimp, buttering up girls with jewelry so he could groom them to fuck a john. “Yeah. We need to know who Norton is.” They needed to know how to catch him.
McCallum cleared his throat, apparently satisfied. “During the last case, Norton was exposed to things he might not have had the guts to do by himself. Rape. Murder. Kidnapping. Watching Janice in action, he figured out what turned him on.” He’d been watching. Learning. Now, Norton knew what he liked—and exactly how to get it.
“Your guy might be numb to empathy, but he feels the rage and pain of rejection more deeply than you can imagine. It’s consumed him. He’s made it his life’s mission to avenge himself against a sex he sees as threatening—their rejection is the ultimate cause of everything wrong with his life.”
“He doesn’t even know these girls before he starts grooming them.” Morrison’s voice trembled, almost imperceptibly, but enough that Petrosky’s own heart squeezed like it was in a vise.
“Ah, but don’t you see? He doesn’t have to. They represent something to him. And because his victims are all girls, young teenagers … that may be the time in his life he was hurt. Perhaps he feels entitled to their affection—common in a culture like ours.”
Petrosky coughed, his throat irritated by the stale heat now huffing from the vent. McCallum had a point. With the way western women were sexualized nowadays, young men were groomed to see them a certain way—and to expect a certain response. When women didn’t return their affections, it wasn’t merely a blow to their self-esteem. It felt like they were being mistreated. Petrosky saw it every week, some dickhead claiming he was entitled to rape a woman behind a dumpster because she’d been dressed provocatively, or a college girl beaten for refusing her boyfriend’s advances. Norton wasn’t different or new, even if he thought he was; that asshole was a product of their fucked-up society.
“Fine, so how does this help us?” Petrosky said. “We’re looking for a misogynist. A guy who thinks women should be subservient.”
“Hence his crawl back to the torture devices of the middle ages, where women would have been expected to meet his demands.”
“But these aren’t women we’re talking about. These are little girls. I know we assumed he wasn’t a pedophile in the past, but the infant we found is definitely his child—he raped Lisa Walsh.”
“Lisa Walsh wasn’t that little.”
Heat flooded Petrosky’s face. “She wasn’t even fifteen when he took her.”
“Teenagers would have been perfectly acceptable as brides during the medieval period. Remember that. And not to say that he isn’t a pedophile, but he’s choosing girls who look like women—it’s more about vulnerability and fear. Let us not forget that his first solo victim, Natalie Bell, was twenty-nine, but small in stature—frail. Childlike. An older woman might reject him or be more able to fight him off. These girls can’t. Might even be why he told you how to find Janice. He wanted to punish her because he felt slighted by her, even threatened by her, because she was stronger than he preferred.”
Weak men hated strong women. Made sense. “He's refined his tastes since then,” Petrosky said slowly.
McCallum nodded. “Norton might have found a position where he has unfettered access to the type of girls he’s after: a camp counselor, a bus driver, even a Sunday school teacher. He picks one girl and grooms her. Gives her gifts. Then he waits for her to come to him—less risk of rejection.”
And once he had them, he took whatever he wanted. Because he thought they owed him that.
“He’s staying local—or at least hunts locally,” Petrosky said.
“He may also be hunting locally and taking them to a secure location elsewhere; he’s proven himself to be rather intelligent, and he knows you’ve seen his face.” McCallum studied the ceiling, and when he drew his eyes back down, his face was solemn. “If these girls trust him, it’d be easy for him to get them into his car and take them for a ride.”
Maybe that was how Lisa Walsh had escaped with her child. Had he taken her with him as bait for someone he wasn’t sure would go without a fight? A girl could lure another closer simply by being female—that was why baby-snatching rings always included women. None of that was really Norton’s MO, but then again, neither was having children, or giving gifts, or grooming his victims—Norton had snatched Shannon and Evie off the side of the road. Petrosky didn’t know shit for certain outside of the fact that Norton was a sadistic asshole who’d take as many little girls as he could. Girls. Daughters. Petrosky rubbed his shoulder where a dull ache pulsed with every beat of his heart—weak but persistent.
McCallum cleared his throat, one harsh, staccato bark. “Though he thrives on the energy of others, it’s hard to say whether he’s living alone. He may desire emotional reinforcement as he did when he was working with Janice, but I suspect he would rather avoid the complication of a partner after last time.” McCallum’s brows furrowed. “He’s keeping these girls at his home or another place where he can access them—he might be leading a rather normal life that allows him to garner emotional support in other ways.”
A normal life, aside from snatching kids every once in a while and running them through with an axe. Paper crinkled to his right. Petrosky glanced at Morrison who was scratching notes as fast as McCallum was talking.
“We’ll start with the schools,” Petrosky said. “He had to have a way to meet these girls.” With the Dylan Acosta case, Norton had known exactly how to position himself to avoid being seen. Likely he knew his way around these other schools too.
Morrison nodded but didn’t look up from his writing.
Petrosky stood, unsteadily enough that he had to rest his hand on the desk to stay upright. He needed some fucking sleep … and another shot. “I’ll come back and hash things out once we get a little more information.”
“Come back either way, Ed.” McCallum said, examining Petrosky’s hand. “You and I should have a good sit-down one of these days.”
Petrosky ripped a cigarette from the pack in his shirt pocket. “I’ll be back.”
“See that you are,” McCallum called after him.
Petrosky tongued the roof of his mouth. It tasted like peppermint.