Triptych

by Karin Slaughter

  He cubed the cheese with the knife, trying to ignore the expectant look Betty gave him. “What did you hear about what happened this afternoon?”

  “Michael’s neighbor?” Angie clarified. “Not much. Just that it’s probably connected to the Monroe case.”

  “The neighbor’s tongue was severed. They haven’t found it yet.”

  “Why would someone go after Michael’s neighbor?”

  “That’s what I was wondering.”

  “Do you think it’s random?”

  He leaned his back against the counter and looked at her. “Doesn’t seem likely. Does Ormewood have many enemies?”

  “I’m not his best friend, but from what I can tell, the guys like him. He hangs around with that asshole Leo Donnelly a lot, so there’s no explaining his taste.”

  “Were there any cases you heard about where he might have angered somebody?”

  “You mean pissed them off?” She shrugged again, a new habit she’d picked up since he had last seen her. “Nothing spectacular. You really think it’s connected to Monroe?”

  “The coroner’s report on the girl will be ready tomorrow. From what I could see, there were some differences.” He paused, recalling the scene in his head. “The top of her foot was scratched. She had obviously tripped over the fence. There was a wound here.” He touched his temple. “She hit a rock when she fell, pretty hard from the look of it. And the blood.” He paused again. “There wasn’t enough blood. With Monroe, the mouth filled with blood pretty quickly, enough to choke her. This kid was facedown, of course, but there wasn’t much blood on the ground. If I had to guess, I’d say her heart had stopped beating before the tongue was removed.”

  “Was she raped?”

  “There was bruising on her thighs, but we won’t know for certain until they get her on the table.”

  “Pete Hanson’s handling this?”

  “Yeah. The murder was in DeKalb County, but I asked them to let him handle the body just for continuity.” He provided, “Hanson did Aleesha Monroe this morning. He seems like a good man.” Will thought of something the doctor had raised during autopsy. “Do condoms with spermicide and lubricant cost that much more than the ones without?”

  She stared at him. “Do I look like an expert?”

  He knew that she probably was but did not want to have that particular discussion right now. “Monroe’s killer used a condom that had lubricant and spermicide on it. I was just curious if they cost more.”

  Angie made the obvious conclusion. “He didn’t want to leave his DNA.”

  “Ormewood thinks it means he didn’t intend to kill her.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Angie countered. “The johns don’t bring rubbers with them. They’re not exactly worried about the girls they’re banging. You know what they call all that extra skin around the vagina? A woman.” She added, “Michael Ormewood of all people should know that.”

  “Then that brings me back to the original question. Are they more expensive?”

  Angie studied him for a few seconds. She knew he had never bought a condom in his life. “The girls are just like everybody else in the world: they think if something costs a little bit more then it’s better. They’ll spend the extra thirty, forty cents if they think it’ll stop hep C.”

  “They’re not more worried about AIDS?”

  “AIDS you can usually hide. Hepatitis turns you yellow. Leesha was one of the smart ones. She took whatever precautions she could.”

  Angie looked at her hands as if she was checking her nail polish. She seldom let the job get to her—she would probably end up an alcoholic in the street if she did—but Will could see that she was struggling with this one. As much as she hated working Vice, she had a sort of kinship with the girls. They shared similar backgrounds of abuse and abandonment. She could have just as easily been one of them.

  “I liked her,” Angie finally said. “Monroe. We locked her up about six times in a row last year. She was sweet. Got into the game for the usual reasons, didn’t know how to get out. I tried to get her into treatment, but you know how it is. Can’t make someone do it unless they want to.”

  He tried to think of something nice to say about the dead hooker, knowing it would comfort Angie in some way. He settled on, “She was pretty.”

  “Yeah, she was.” Angie stood up and walked over to Will. He kept perfectly still, foolishly expecting her to do something, but she only took a few cubes of cheese and sat back down. “I asked Michael about her this morning. He didn’t even remember her.”

  “Was Monroe one of the prostitutes he interfered with?”

  “No idea,” Angie admitted. “It was mostly a rumor going around with the girls. ‘There’s some cop who’ll give you a slide for some action.’ That sort of thing. I didn’t really believe it but one of them told me his name. It’s not like Ormewood’s a common name, right? I asked him about it and he didn’t deny it, so I said, ‘Lookit, either transfer out or this goes to the lieutenant.’ He took door number one.”

  Will turned back around, crossing his arms over his chest. “What kind of guy is he?”

  “An okay cop.” She took a bite of cheese. “For what that’s worth anymore.” She chewed, obviously thinking through his question. “Truth is, I never liked him. He was always sniffing around me, offering to show me the ropes. I told him to fuck off.”

  “In your usual ladylike manner.” He tossed Betty some cheese.

  “You shouldn’t feed her that,” Angie warned. “She’ll get corked up and then you’ll be sorry.”

  “Moderation.”

  “Don’t come crying to me when the little rat starts farting the ‘Copacabana.’ ”

  Will tossed Betty another piece of cheese, though he usually limited her to one a night. “Tell me more about Ormewood.”

  Angie shrugged. “I didn’t really see how much he annoyed me until he was gone. Always acting like he was the big man on campus, you know? He’s a war veteran—”

  “He told me.”

  “Yeah, he likes to make sure people know that about him.” She looked down at Betty suspiciously, as if the dog had already started to ferment. “Even after he transferred, he kept coming back to Vice like it was old home week. Once a week at least he was down there sniffing around, telling us about the big cases he’d caught, like being on the murder squad made his dick bigger.”

  “He has a pretty good clearance rate.”

  “Better than yours?”

  Will asked, “Do you think he kept poking around because he was worried you’d change your mind about his extracurricular activities?”

  “I think he just couldn’t let it go that I’d gotten the upper hand with him.” She smiled that sweet smile that meant she was going to push him. “Come on, baby. Your clearance rate is bigger than his, right?”

  “Let’s talk about Ormewood.”

  She pretended to pout, but couldn’t hold it for long. “I just told you—Michael likes to be in control.”

  “He seemed all right to me.”

  “Guys don’t see it, but it’s there, right under the surface. Trust me, ask any woman and she’ll tell you after spending ten minutes with him that he’s a control freak.”

  “All right.” This wasn’t an unusual trait for a policeman and Will ran into it often. “I did notice that he’s pretty competitive.”

  “That’s an understatement,” she told him. “He took the transfer, but he just couldn’t let go of it that I’d beat him. He’d always come around at the end of my shift, right after I’d typed all my DD-fives.”

  “Did he go through them?”

  “I would’ve ripped his fucking cock off if he did.” She tossed another cube of cheese into her mouth. “But I think if I’d left him alone for two seconds, he would’ve turned my desk upside down.”

  “He got a temper?”

  “No more than the rest of us.”

  Will wondered what she meant by that, but didn’t press it. “Sounds like he’s making sure you
’re not banging him up.”

  “Could be.” She chewed some more, keeping her thoughts to herself.

  Will studied her for a moment, trying to guess what she was hiding. With Angie, there was always something she kept in reserve. Even after all these years, Will wasn’t certain whether or not she did this on purpose or if it was just a protection mechanism. There was lying and then there was what he thought of as survival instinct. He was the last person on earth who could fault her for that.

  Will said, “Ormewood seemed very upset about his neighbor this afternoon.”

  “He really likes kids,” she told him. “His son’s got some mental problem, but I met him once and he’s super sweet. The wife is pretty cold, but I would be too if I had to bang that prick every night.” She explained, “I met them at a retirement dinner for his partner. Ken Wozniak, black guy but another pollack. I thought I’d go and support the home team.”

  “Nice of you.”

  “I doubt he’s long for this world. Had some kind of stroke right in the middle of the squad. Half his body’s gone.”

  “He got any family?”

  “Nope.”

  They were both quiet for a while.

  Angie opened her mouth to speak, then changed her mind. Will knew better than to prompt her, and sure enough she finally told him, “The thing about Michael is, he’s not his own person.”

  “Which means?”

  “He’s always trying to fit in, but it just doesn’t work for him.”

  Will thought the same thing could be said about himself. “Is that a bad thing?”

  She stopped a few seconds to think before explaining, “Like with Wozniak. We weren’t close, but I’d seen him around. Big guy, has a gut out to here.” She held out her hand several inches in front of her stomach. “But he’s a real lady’s man, right? Always has a comment about what I’m wearing, ‘Can I have some fries with that shake,’ and that kind of bullshit, but he’s an older guy, a real teddy bear, so it’s funny and maybe kind of flattering instead of being creepy.”

  “Okay,” Will said, not really understanding the line but knowing the important part was that the man hadn’t crossed it.

  She continued, “Ken has these sayings. Like, he hands a civilian his card and says, ‘Something to wipe your ass on,’ and it’s kind of disarming, and they laugh, but they keep the card, you know? He may be a freaking cop, but they know he’s a cool guy.”

  “Right,” Will agreed. Cops had all kinds of tricks they used to connect with potential witnesses. Everybody had a different bag they pulled from, but they all needed the same magic if they were going to get anything done on the street.

  “So, Ken’s in the hospital, right? Laid out on his ass. I mean, frankly, the guy’s not gonna make it.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “Yeah,” she waved her hand, dismissing his words. “The point is, a couple of weeks later, I’m on my strip with the girls and Michael drops by. The girls know he’s a cop because…well, fuck, he’s a cop. They can smell it, right?” She sat back in the chair, and Will could see she was getting angry at the memory. “So Michael goes up and down the line, cock-of-the-walk, gives me a fucking wink like what he’s doing is funny and not stupid and risking my fucking cover, and he asks the girls if they’ve seen this guy hanging around, says he’s one bad motherfucker and to stay clear of him. Then he hands out his card and says…?”

  Will guessed, “Something to wipe your ass on?”

  “Right,” she said. “He’s always like that, always trying so hard to be the cool guy, to fit in, but the thing is, he doesn’t know how so he has to mimic other people.”

  “Like guys who copy lines from movies.”

  She did a perfect Austin Powers, “Yeah, baby.”

  Will thought it through, considered the brief time he had spent with Michael Ormewood before they had found the dead girl in the detective’s backyard. Angie had obviously given a lot of thought to the man’s personality, but Will wasn’t totally buying her conclusion. “I didn’t pick up on that.”

  “No,” she said. “But you think there’s something off about him. Your radar went up.”

  Her words cut straight to the core of their relationship. Twenty-five years ago, they had met each other in a state children’s home. Will was eight, Angie was eleven. They had both already spent a lifetime honing their instincts; both learned the hard way to listen to their gut when it said that just because someone was wearing a white hat, that didn’t make them one of the good guys.

  “Yeah,” Will admitted. “I didn’t get a good read on him. I assumed that was because he was irritated with me. Nobody likes to be forced to play well with others.”

  “There’s more to it than that,” she insisted. “And you know it just as well as I do.”

  “Maybe.” He picked up Betty to give her a scratch behind her ears.

  Angie stood up. “I need you to look up a name for me.”

  “What name?”

  She walked back into the living room to get her purse. Will followed, holding Betty to his chest. The dog’s tiny frame was so fragile that sometimes he felt as if he was holding a bird.

  “Here.” Angie held up a pink Post-it note with block letters neatly printed across the middle. “He said he was mixed up in something. It sounded bad, but I just got this feeling…” She shrugged off the rest of the sentence. “I think he’s in trouble.”

  Will hadn’t taken the note. He tried to sound like he was kidding. “Since when do you save people?”

  “You wanna help me with this or you wanna stand there with your ass clenched, petting your little dog?”

  “Can I do both?”

  Her lips twisted in a smile. “His parole sheet only listed the highlights and the complete file is too old to be on the computer. You think you can work your GBI magic and get me a copy out of archives?”

  He realized this was why she had really come tonight, and tried not to show his disappointment. He took the note, glancing at the words, which were little more than a blur across the page. Will had never been able to see his letters right, especially when he was upset or frustrated.

  “Will?”

  He warned, “It might take a while to find it if it’s archived.”

  “No rush,” she said. “I’ll probably never see him again.”

  He felt relieved, which must have meant he had felt jealous before.

  She was already opening the door to leave. “It’s got two e’s. Can you read that okay?”

  “What?”

  She sounded annoyed, as if he hadn’t been listening. “The name, Will. The one on the note. It’s Shelley with two e’s.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Angie lived less than five miles from Will’s house. She drove away with the radio down low, letting her mind wander as she turned down familiar roads. He looked the same as always, maybe a little thinner, and God knows what he had done to his hair. Angie had always cut it for him, and she assumed he’d gotten an electric shaver to avoid going to a hairdresser who might see the scar on the back of his head and ask him who had tried to kill him.

  She knew that Will had been living in the north Georgia mountains for the last two years. Maybe he hadn’t gotten out much while he was up there. Will had always let his dyslexia limit his life. He didn’t like going to new restaurants because he couldn’t understand the menus. He bought food at the grocery store based on the familiar colors of the labels or the identifiable photographs on the packages. He would rather starve than ask for help. Angie vividly recalled the first time he had gone shopping on his own. He had returned with a can of Crisco shortening, thinking the fried chicken on the label indicated the contents.

  Turning into her driveway, Angie tried to remember how many times she had left Will Trent. She counted them off by the names of the men she had left with. George was the first one, way back in the mid-eighties. He’d been a punk rock enthusiast with a closet heroin addiction. Number two and number eight were Rogers, dif
ferent men, but both with the same shitty character flaws; as Will often pointed out, Angie was only attracted to guys who were going to hurt her.

  Mark was number six. He was a real winner. It had taken Angie five months to figure out he was running up debt on her credit cards. The idiot had been so shocked when she’d called a buddy from Fraud and had him arrested that she still laughed when she thought about the stupid expression on his face. Paul, Nick, Danny, Julian, Darren…there had even been a Horatio, though that one only lasted a week. All told, none of them had ever lasted, and she always found herself back on Will’s doorstep, ruining his life again until she found another man who might take her away from him.

  Angie parked the car in the driveway. The engine kept knocking even after she’d taken out the key and she thought for the millionth time that she should have the poor thing serviced. The car was leaking like an old lady and the muffler was hanging on by a thread, but she couldn’t bring herself to let some strange man work on the engine that Will had restored with his own two hands. It took him about six hours to read the morning newspaper, but he could take apart an engine and put it back together blindfolded. Whether it was a pocket watch or a piano, he could repair just about anything that had moving pieces. He looked at cases the same way—how the pieces were put together to make a crime work—and he was one of the best agents the bureau had. If only he could turn that razor-sharp mind on his own life.

  The security lights came on as she walked to the back door and slid her key into the lock. Rob. How had she forgotten about Rob, with his carrot-colored hair and sweet smile and gambling addiction? That made eleven men, eleven times she had left Will and eleven times he had taken her back.

  Shit, that didn’t even include the women.

  Angie turned on the kitchen lights and pressed the keys on the alarm pad. Will did love her. She was certain of that. Even when they fought, they were careful not to go too far, not to say that one thing that would cut too deep, hurt too much, and make it all final. They knew everything about each other—or everything that mattered. If someone held a gun to her head and asked her to explain why she and Will always ended up together again, Angie would have died not knowing the answer. Not being one for introspection, Will would probably suffer the same fate.