Triptych

by Karin Slaughter

  “Was the door locked or unlocked when the first cop got here?”

  “Unlocked.”

  Will played the scene in his mind, thinking Michael’s scenario was as likely as any. “Do you have the key?”

  “Yep.” Michael took a plastic bag out of his pocket. He unrolled it and showed Will a key with a red tag. “It was in her purse.”

  “Did you find anything else?”

  “Makeup, couple of dollars and some lint.”

  “Let’s go,” Will said, continuing up the stairs. He could feel the hair on the back of his neck standing up as they got closer to the top. Will had never been one to believe in ghosts and goblins, but there was no denying that a murder scene had a certain feel to it, an energy that told you violent death had occurred.

  “Here we go,” Michael said, slicing the yellow police tape with the edge of the key. He unlocked the door. “After you.”

  Aleesha Monroe had obviously not been rich, but from the looks of her apartment, she had taken great care of her few nice things. Besides the small bathroom, there were only two rooms in the apartment, a bedroom in one and a kitchen/living room space in the other. What struck Will was that the place was surprisingly clean. No dirty dishes were decaying in the sink and the same stink that hung out in the hall didn’t seem to permeate the walls.

  Will asked Michael, “This is how it looked when you got here?”

  “Yep.”

  Michael’s team had already tossed the place two nights ago. The fact that he now stood back by the door, leaning against the frame, indicated clearly that he thought this was a waste of time.

  Will ignored this message as he walked carefully around the room, looking for anything unusual. The kitchen was an efficiency with a single cabinet and only two drawers for storage. One was used for silverware, the other contained the usual household items that found their way into the junk drawer: a couple of pens, an array of receipts and a ring of keys that probably had outlived the doors they opened.

  He stopped at a plant by the window. The soil was bone dry; the plant was dead. The glass table by the couch was sparkling clean, the matching coffee table just as pristine. There was a neat stack of magazines beside an ashtray that had obviously been wiped out. There didn’t seem to be any dust on the floor or for that matter any indication that an addict had lived here. Will had been into many a junkie’s home and knew how they lived. Heroin was especially bad. Smack heads were like sick animals who had stopped grooming, and their surroundings generally reflected this.

  Will saw telltale signs of black dusting powder on the doorjambs and windowsills, but he still asked, “Did you find many fingerprints?”

  “About sixty thousand,” Michael said.

  “Not on the glass tables?”

  Michael was looking out into the hall as if he’d heard a noise. “She must’a brought her johns up here. There was enough DNA on the sheets to clone an entire village.”

  Will walked into the bedroom, making a mental note to follow up on the question. He checked the drawers, noting that the clothes hadn’t been rifled through. The closet was packed with clothes, an old Hoover tucked in between boxes of shoes. The vacuum’s bag was empty. The scene-of-crime techs had removed it for closer examination. They had probably taken the sheets off the bed, too. Monroe’s mattress was bare, a bloodstain flowering out from the center.

  Michael stood in the bedroom door. He obviously thought he could anticipate Will’s next question. “Menstrual blood, Pete says. She must have been on the rag.”

  Will was silent, continuing his search in the bedroom, still thinking about the clean glass tables. He could hear Michael walking around in the other room, impatient. Will followed the black dusting powder where the crime scene techs had looked for fingerprints on all the usual surfaces: the edge of the nightstand, the doorknobs, the small chest that held mostly T-shirts and jeans. They must have checked the tables in the other room. The absence of dust indicated that the glass had been clean of prints.

  Michael asked, “Did you see the story in the paper this morning?”

  “No,” Will admitted. For obvious reasons, he got most of his news from the television.

  “Monroe was the second story after some scandal over at the hospital.”

  Will got on his hands and knees, checking under the bed. “Did you release her name yet?”

  “Can’t until we find next of kin.” Michael added, “We’re holding back on the tongue thing, too.”

  Will sat back on his heels, looking around the room. “She didn’t list her parents on any of her arrests?”

  “Just Baby G.”

  He opened the drawer in the bedside table. Empty. “No address book?”

  “She didn’t have a telephone—no land line, no cell.”

  “That’s odd.”

  “Everything costs money. Either you got it or you don’t.” Michael was still watching Will. “Mind if I ask you what you think you’re gonna find?”

  “I just want a feel of the place,” Will answered, though he was getting plenty more than that. Either Aleesha Monroe was the Mr. Clean of hookers or someone had taken great care to scrub down her apartment.

  Will stood and walked back into the main room. Michael was at the front door again, arms folded across his chest. Why hadn’t he noticed that the apartment had been cleaned? Even an armchair detective with nothing but television cop shows for training would have picked up on this detail.

  Will said, “Sink’s been scrubbed clean.” The sponge was still damp and when he held it to his nose, he caught the strong odor of bleach.

  “You sniffing that for a reason?” Michael asked. He was watching Will carefully, no longer casually leaning against the doorjamb.

  Will dropped the sponge back in the sink. “She have any money stashed in here?” he asked, purposefully avoiding Michael’s question.

  “It’s in the log.”

  Will hadn’t had time to decipher the scene-of-crime log, so he said, “Run it down for me.”

  Michael was obviously irritated by the request, but he still provided, “She had some cash in a sock shoved down the back of the couch. There was about eight bucks in it. Her kit was in a metal box on the kitchen counter. Syringes, foil, a lighter, the usual.”

  “No drugs?”

  “Residue in the bottom of the tin, but nothing we found.”

  “So, she had to work.”

  “Yeah,” Michael said. “She didn’t have a choice.”

  Will turned back to the bathroom. The shower curtain was a spotless dark blue, as were the matching rug on the floor and cover on the toilet seat. He lifted the rug, noting that the linoleum floor had been swept.

  Thirty-two minutes for a cruiser to show up. The killer had counted on the slow response time, taken advantage of it so he could clean up after himself. There was no sign of panic here, no rush to cover his tracks and get out. The guy knew what he was doing.

  “Well?” Michael asked. He was standing outside the bathroom, watching Will.

  “She kept a clean house,” Will said, opening the medicine cabinet. Besides the usual Tylenol and toothpaste, it was pretty much as he would have expected. He said, “No condoms here.”

  “I thought we’d established that the perp brought them.”

  “Maybe,” Will answered, thinking that he trusted Angie more on the matter. He stopped in the doorway because the detective was blocking his way. “Is something wrong?”

  “No.” Michael took a step back. “I just get the feeling you’re checking my work.”

  “I told you I’m not,” Will said, though being honest, he was beginning to question Michael’s skills as a detective. A blind man could see the apartment had been scrubbed top to bottom.

  Will asked, “Did you already call in the cleaners?”

  “What?”

  “I saw the stairs had been scrubbed,” Will told him. “I assumed you called in a crew to clean up.”

  “Must have been one of the tenants,” Mi
chael answered, walking toward the door. “Tape wasn’t cut and I didn’t call anybody. I can ask Leo.”

  “That’s fine. I was just curious.” Will pulled the door closed. He was twisting the key in the lock just as a loud bang rang through the stairwell, followed by a child’s scream.

  Will passed Michael on the stairs, grabbing the banister as he swung across the landing. He could hear more screaming, a second child yelling, “Help!” as he bolted down the last set of stairs and threw open the door.

  “Help!” a small boy screamed as he ran across the parking lot, a girl chasing him.

  “Oh, fer fuck…” Michael breathed. He was panting from the run. “Jesus Christ,” he exhaled, bending at the waist.

  The boy darted onto a small patch of grass that had the mailboxes for the building. He circled once before the girl caught up with him. She was sitting on his back by the time Will reached them.

  “You give that back!” she demanded, delivering a sharp kidney punch to her captive.

  “Jazz!” the boy screamed.

  “Hold up,” Will said. “Come on.” Gently, he took the girl’s arm.

  She jerked away from him, snapping, “This ain’t none of your business, fool.”

  “All right,” Will said, kneeling down to talk to the boy. “You all right?”

  The boy rolled onto his back. Will guessed the wind had been knocked out of him. He helped the boy sit up, knowing that would help. The kid was probably nine or ten, but the clothes he was wearing seemed better suited for a grown man. Even his shoes were too large for his feet.

  Will asked the girl, “Tell me what happened here.”

  “He took my—” She stopped as Michael joined them, her mouth open, eyes wide with fear as she stared at Michael.

  “It’s all right,” Michael told her, holding out his hands. The girl hadn’t pegged Will but Michael might as well have worn a sign around his neck that read “cop.” She had probably been taught at her mother’s knee that you don’t talk to the police.

  She stepped back, reaching for her brother and yanking him up by one arm. “You get away from us. We ain’t got nothing to say to you.”

  Michael indicated the boy. “This your brother?” He smiled at the boy. “What’s your name, buddy? I’ve got a son about your age.”

  “Don’t talk to him,” the girl cautioned.

  “We’re not here to bang you up,” Will assured her. She looked about thirteen or fourteen, but the way her little fists were balled up told him he didn’t want to be sitting on the ground if she got angry enough to start swinging.

  He told her, “We’re looking into something bad that happened here Sunday night.”

  “Leesha,” the boy said, just as the girl clamped her hand around his mouth. He squirmed impatiently. Obviously, the boy had something to say that his sister did not want them to hear.

  “What’s your name?” Michael asked.

  “We ain’t got nothing to say,” the girl repeated. “We didn’t see nothing on Sunday night. We didn’t see nothing. Ain’t that right, Cedric?”

  “You said—” the boy tried, but his mouth was covered again before he could get anything else out.

  Michael lowered his voice, asking Will, “Which one do you want?”

  Will offered, “Your choice.”

  “You sure?”

  Will nodded.

  “All right.” Michael raised his voice. “Girl, this is the last time I’m going to ask this. What’s your name?”

  She stood defiant, but answered, “Jasmine.”

  “That’s a pretty name,” Michael tried. When she didn’t soften, his voice became authoritative again. “Come with me.”

  “The fuck you say.”

  Michael exchanged a look with Will. “That’s quite a mouth you’ve got on you, little girl.”

  “I ain’t your little girl!”

  “Sweetheart, do you really want to make this hard?” Michael put his hands on his hips. The gesture would have been almost feminine if not for the fact that his jacket swung open, revealing his holstered nine-millimeter. Typical cop move: scare them early and scare them often. It worked. Fear flashed in her eyes, and she looked down at the ground, all of the fight gone out of her.

  Michael actually winked at Will, as if to say, “That’s how you do it.” He asked Jasmine, “Is your mother inside?”

  “She at work.”

  “Who’s watching you?”

  She mumbled something.

  “What’s that?”

  She glanced at the boy. “I asked if Cedric gonna be okay.”

  “He’s your brother?” Michael asked.

  She hesitated, then nodded.

  “He’s going to be fine once you and I figure out who’s supposed to be watching you and why you aren’t in school.” He put his hand on the girl’s shoulder and led her back toward the building. “You shouldn’t be running around screaming like that.”

  She mumbled something again that Will couldn’t hear. Michael laughed, then told her, “We’ll see about that.”

  Will watched them go into the building, then turned back to the boy. “Cedric?” he asked. “That’s your name, right?”

  The boy nodded.

  “Come with me.” He held out his hand but the child gave an ugly frown.

  “I ain’t no kid, bitch.”

  Will sighed. He leaned against the mailboxes, tried to make this go a little easier. “I just need to ask you some questions.”

  Cedric echoed his sister. “I ain’t got nothing to say to you.” His lower lip went out in an exaggerated pout and he crossed his stick-thin arms over his chest in an imitation of a gangster. Will would have laughed but for the fact that the kid probably had more access to weapons than most cops did.

  “Hey,” Will began, trying another tactic. “What did the number zero say to the number eight?”

  Cedric shrugged, but Will could tell he was curious.

  “ ‘Nice belt.’ ”

  Cedric’s mouth went up in a smile before he caught himself. “That was lame, man.”

  “I know,” Will admitted. “I’m just trying to get you to talk to me.”

  “Nothin’ to talk about.”

  “Did you know Aleesha?”

  His bony shoulders went up in another shrug, but he was still a child and hadn’t yet mastered the ability to hide his emotions.

  “Aleesha was a friend of yours?” Will guessed. “Maybe she looked out for you?”

  Again, the shoulders went up.

  “I asked around about her, you know? Asked some friends about her. Seemed to me that she was a really nice lady.”

  Cedric stubbed his toe against the concrete. “Maybe.”

  “Did she look out for you?”

  “My granny told me to keep away because of what Leesha did.”

  “Yeah,” Will said. “I guess Aleesha didn’t have a very good job. But she was nice to you, wasn’t she?”

  This time, he nodded.

  “It’s hard to lose a friend.”

  “My cousin Ali died last year. Got shot in his bed.”

  Will knelt down in front of the boy. “Did you see something that night, Cedric?”

  His eyes were red with tears he obviously didn’t want to fall.

  “You can tell me, Cedric. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m not going to get you into any trouble downtown. All I care about is finding out who killed Aleesha, because she was a good lady. You know she was a good lady. She looked out for you and now it’s time you looked out for her.”

  “I can’t tell you nothing.”

  Will parsed the sentence. “Can’t or won’t?” He thought of something. “Did somebody threaten you? Maybe Baby G?”

  Cedric shook his head.

  “I’m just trying to find out who hurt your friend.” Will tried, “You can trust me.”

  The child’s gaze turned hard, and the gangster face came back. “Trust ain’t a word I know.”

  Will hadn’t grown up in the Homes, but
as a kid, he had confided in plenty of adults who wouldn’t—or couldn’t—help him. There was no telling who was good or bad. A shiny badge did not necessarily help point the way.

  “You see this?” Will asked, putting his finger to the side of his face, touching the scar that twisted its way down his neck. “This is what I got once for telling on somebody. I wasn’t that much older than you.”

  Cedric tilted his head, looked at the scar. “Did it hurt?”

  “At first,” Will admitted. “But then I couldn’t feel it anymore, and when I woke up, I was in a hospital.”

  “Were you sick?”

  “I lost a lot of blood.”

  “Were you going to die?”

  Will had wanted to, but he had told the story to draw out Cedric, not confess his darkest secrets. “The doctors took care of me.”

  The boy stared at the scar a moment longer before he nodded his approval. On the streets, a near-death experience was a badge of honor, especially if it came by dangerous means.

  Will reached into his pocket and took out a business card. “This is my cell phone number, okay? You think of anything, or just need to talk, you call me. All right? It doesn’t even have to be about Aleesha.”

  Cedric glanced at Will’s scar again, then quickly palmed the card in case anyone was watching. “Can I go now?”

  “Yeah,” Will said. “But you call me, okay? Call me day or night.”

  “Right.” He darted off, his hand trailing down the row of mailboxes as he headed for the street.

  Will straightened, turning around to see Michael walking across the parking lot again, this time without Jasmine. As the other man got closer, Will saw that he had a scratch down the side of his face. Blood was trickling into his collar.

  Will looked back at the building, then at Michael. “You okay?”

  “She hit me. Can you believe that? What is she, twelve?” He shook his head, more shocked than angry. “I was following her up the stairs and before I knew it, she bolted. I went after her, grabbed her leg, and the little thing turned around and whapped me across the face with her fist.” He slung out his own fist to illustrate. “Good thing she punched me like a girl, huh?” Will had never understood that phrase. He’d only ever had one woman punch him, and Angie always put her shoulder into it.