Triptych

by Karin Slaughter

  Michael was staring back up at the building. A curtain twitched, and he said, “That’s her place. Third floor up.”

  “Is her mother home?”

  “Shit,” he said, his tone asking if Will was actually that stupid. Michael touched the gash on his cheek then looked at the blood on the tips of his fingers. “I guess her fingernail caught me or something. Does it look bad?”

  “Not too bad,” Will lied. He took out his handkerchief and offered it to Michael. “Do you want to go get her or something?”

  “What? Throw the cuffs on her and get my picture on the nightly news for roughing up a child? No thank you. Besides, she wouldn’t talk to us now if her hair was on fire.” He sat on the curb with a groan. Will didn’t know what else to do but join him.

  Michael laughed again. “Christ, she got me.” He looked at the dots of blood on the handkerchief. “I should’ve let you handle her. Maybe she would have responded to a softer touch.” He realized what he’d said. “Hey, no offense—”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Still,” Michael said, folding the handkerchief in two, then pressing it to his cheek again. He said, “I didn’t know people still carried these.”

  “Old habit,” Will admitted. Ms. Flannery had made all the boys in the state home carry handkerchiefs in their pockets. Will had never questioned the practice, just assumed that it was something normal boys did.

  Michael asked, “You get anything from her brother?”

  “Cedric’s not talking.”

  “You think he knows anything?”

  Will did, but for some reason he felt the need to lie. “No. He doesn’t know anything.”

  “You sure?”

  “Positive,” Will said. “He’s got a big mouth. He would’ve talked.”

  “You’re lucky he didn’t kick you in the balls or something.” Michael folded the handkerchief again and started to hand it back to Will. “Sorry,” he said, taking it back. “I’ll get my wife to clean this for you.”

  “That’s okay.” Will took the cloth, feeling uncomfortable at the prospect of Michael Ormewood’s wife doing his laundry.

  “Man,” Michael said, resting his elbows on his knees, dropping his head. “I gotta say, the girl reminds me a lot of Cynthia. Got that same fire in her eyes, you know?”

  “That so?” Will asked, thinking Michael was painting a very different picture of the neighbor than the one he had offered before.

  “Cyn was a good kid, don’t get me wrong about that. It’s just she had that rebellious streak, too. Your parents divorced?”

  Will was caught off-guard by the question. His face must have shown it.

  “None of my business, right?” Michael rubbed the back of his neck, looking up at the building again. “My father died when I was about her age. Maybe that’s why I kind of took care of her.”

  Will wasn’t sure which girl the man was talking about now.

  “I was just thinking that you get a little rebellious streak when you’re a teenager and that it gets worse if your parents split up at the same time. You start to push things, right? Trying to test the limits, see how far you can go before they pull you back. My mom yanked me back by the collar—we’re talking Wile E. Coyote yanked. She was always looking out for me, always using the heavy hand. Kids today, their parents don’t do that. They don’t want to be the bad guy.”

  Will guessed, “Cynthia was a little wilder than Phil knew?”

  “Maybe a little wilder than I knew,” he admitted. “Or than I wanted to know.”

  “That sounds like an honest mistake.”

  Michael smiled at Will. “There was this girl I knew back in high school. God, she was gorgeous. Wouldn’t give me the time of day. My cousin hooked her. He was just this scrawny-ass kid, didn’t have a hair anywhere on his body except for his head.” Michael glanced at him. “You know the type I’m talking about?”

  Will nodded because it seemed expected of him.

  “Total pud puller,” Michael continued. “And he ends up with this beautiful girl. Not just that, but she’s letting him touch her, going to let him do her.” His laugh was different this time. “I was usually the one who scored, you know? Not him.” He turned, facing Will. “I’m thinking I shouldn’t have chased her.”

  Will was confused. “Jasmine?”

  Michael turned back, looking at the building. “I should’ve just let her go, but there was this second where…you know how when your brain thinks of about a billion things at the same time? I kept thinking about Cynthia running, and how she tripped over that fence. I should’ve fixed that fence last year. I should have fucking fixed that fence.” He put his fists to his eyes. “Oh, God.”

  Will was at a loss. An hour ago, he had wanted to pummel this man to the ground for sleeping with Angie. Now he just felt sorry for him.

  Michael continued, “That’s what I was thinking about when Jasmine ran—Cynthia running across our yard. And without even thinking, I grabbed her foot to stop her. You know—so she wouldn’t get hurt like Cynthia did.” He turned to Will. “I think I need that time off Greer was talking about. This is hitting me harder than I thought it would. Do you mind?”

  Will was surprised by the question, but readily agreed. “It’s fine.”

  “I’m sorry to let you down like this. I sound like a freaking woman. Hell, I’m acting like one, too. All this crazy talk; you must think I’m some kind of psycho or something.” He shook his head again. “I think a couple of days is what I need. Just some time to get over this, come to terms with what happened.”

  “It’s okay,” Will said, thinking he was glad that Michael had come to this conclusion on his own. It was clear now that the other man had been fighting to hold it together all morning. “You do what you need to do.”

  “I just need to be kept in the loop. I need to know what’s going on. Would you mind that? I don’t want to step on your toes, buddy. I just can’t be out there cut off from everything. I know you’re gonna catch this fucker, but I need to know what’s going on with the case.”

  Will wasn’t happy about it, but he offered, “Call whenever you want.”

  “Thank you,” Michael said. Will heard the relief in the other man’s voice, read the gratitude in his eyes. “Thank you.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  7:22 PM

  John was so exhausted that he almost missed his bus stop. He bolted up from the seat, calling, “Wait!” as the driver started to close the door.

  He practically fell onto the sidewalk, his body feeling as if his muscles had been jackhammered. Art had asked for a volunteer to work late and John had gladly raised his hand, thinking he’d be better off having something to occupy his mind other than Joyce and the mess he had gotten himself caught up in. He couldn’t even close his eyes without thinking about that little blonde girl in Michael’s backyard. Last night, he had been shivering so hard that he woke himself up. Sweat covered his body and he had started keening like a child, rocking himself back and forth until he fell back into a fitful sleep.

  Art’s overtime job was the kind of shitwork you wouldn’t ask your worst enemy to do: cleaning out a clog in the main canister of the vacuum system. The tank was buried underground and designed to hold what seemed like a million gallons of carpet fuzz, Cheerios and what smelled like sour candy gone bad—all the debris they vacuumed out of cars before sending them through the washer. John had barely fit through the opening, and when he had gotten inside, he’d guessed the tank was maybe ten feet wide and eight feet round, more like a coffin than he wanted to think about.

  Art had given him a flashlight and a pair of rubber gloves. The battery in the light had lasted about thirty minutes. The gloves had stuck together before he uncovered the intake. John had stuck his bare hand up into the grimy pipe and pulled out a chunk of what felt like human hair. He thought about the flecks of skin and snot that the average body sloughed off on a daily basis and gagged up his banana sandwich before he could make it back to
fresh air.

  “You are some kind of trooper,” Art had told him. The man had looked at John’s ashen face, seen the vomit on his shirt and shoved a fifty in his hand. Fifty dollars for less than two hours’ work. John would have jumped back into his own vomit if Art had offered to double it.

  The fresh air felt good as he walked back to his room at the flophouse. There was always a smell on the street, no matter the weather or the time of day. John had come to associate the odor with poverty. His lungs were probably absorbing it, carcinogens clinging to the insides like the hair clinging to a vacuum tank.

  “Hey, cowboy.”

  John looked up to find Martha Lam sitting on the front stoop of the house. She was in head-to-toe black leather and her makeup was heavier than usual. He wanted to ask the parole officer something flip, like if a date had stood her up, but he said instead, “Hello, Ms. Lam.”

  She stood, holding her arms out at her sides as she did a little turn. “I’m all dressed up for your random inspection.”

  He didn’t know what to say. “You look nice,” seemed forward, something that might be construed as flirting.

  He settled on, “Yes, ma’am,” opening the door and standing aside so she could go in first.

  “Got Mr. George back in Bosticks this morning,” she told him.

  “Who?”

  “Your buddy from upstairs.”

  John didn’t know who she was talking about. Then he did. “He’s not my buddy,” he told her, and she gave him a look that said he had better check his tone. “I’m sorry,” he apologized. “It’s been a long day. I didn’t expect you to be here.”

  “That’s why they call them random.”

  There were thirteen stairs up to his floor, and John felt like he had to practically drag himself up each one. The truth was that he hadn’t really slept since he had followed Michael to Grady Homes two days ago and found out what his cousin was doing. The black woman’s terrified screams still echoed in his head. John was reminded of his own screams when Zebra started going at him that first night at Coastal. They were almost exactly the same.

  John unlocked the dead bolt and pushed open his door. The first thing he noticed was that the window was cracked open about six inches, the construction-paper shade ripped at the bottom. The other thing he noticed was the smell. It took him a couple of seconds to realize the odor was coming off of his own body. It was fear.

  “You’ve changed the place around.” Ms. Lam looped her purse around the doorknob so she could free her hands. “Like what you’ve done with it.” She started going through his clothes, but John could only stare at his bed, the way it had been angled out from the corner instead of left flat against the wall like he always had it.

  Whoever had broken in wanted John to know he’d been here.

  Ms. Lam was lifting up the cooler, checking inside. She said, “Your urine test came back okay.”

  John could not answer. The photograph of his mother was altered. Someone had ripped it down the center, taken John out of the picture.

  “John?”

  His head snapped around to look at her.

  “It was clean,” she said, then pointed to the bed. “Want to lift that for me?”

  He leaned down to lift his mattress. His fingertips made contact with something solid, something cold.

  John froze, one hand under the mattress, the other on top.

  “John?” Ms. Lam asked. She clapped her hands together to spur him on. “Let’s go, sweetheart. I don’t have all night.”

  Saliva fell out of his open mouth. His chest constricted. He started to shake.

  “John?” Ms. Lam was beside him, her hand on his back. “Come on, cowboy. What’s going on?”

  “S-s-sick,” he stuttered, tremors wracking his body. He felt his bowels loosen and was terrified they would let go.

  “Let’s just sit you down,” she soothed, guiding him to sit down on the bed. She pressed the back of her hand to his forehead. “You feel real clammy. You’re not getting sick on me, are you, boy?”

  “I’m…” John couldn’t form a sentence. “I’m…” He looked at the open window, the six inches of space.

  “You want some water?”

  He nodded, quick up and down jerks of his head.

  “I’ve got some bottled water in my purse.”

  She turned her back to him to get her purse off the door and in one desperate motion he pulled the knife out from under the mattress and tossed it toward the six inches of open space.

  Ms. Lam turned back toward him as if in slow motion. He held his breath, his peripheral vision catching a glint of metal as the folding knife sailed toward the window.

  Instinctively, he coughed, leaning over, hoping to muffle the sound when the knife hit the window sash and fell back into the room.

  “Here you go,” Ms. Lam said, twisting the bottle open. “Take a couple of drinks.”

  John did as he was told, then chanced a look down as he wiped his brow, scanning the carpet below the window. Empty. The space was empty.

  “That’s good, now,” Ms. Lam said, patting his back. “You just had a bad spell, didn’t you?”

  He nodded, unable to answer.

  “Let’s look under the mattress now.” She shook her head when he offered her the water. “You keep that. I’ve got plenty more in my car.”

  John stood up, his legs still shaky. He looked again at the window, the empty space on the carpet beneath it. The knife had to have gone out the window. There was no other explanation.

  When John had propped the mattress against the wall, Ms. Lam requested, “Box spring, too.”

  There was no roach under the bed this time, but the carpet was still caked with grime. John was so nervous about the knife that he could have fallen to the floor.

  “Go on and put it back.” She thumbed through the books on the table beside his bed. If she saw the torn photograph of his mother, she didn’t say. “You finish your book? Tess of the D’Urbervilles?”

  “Uh,” John said, surprised by the question. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Tell me, John, who christened Tess’s baby?”

  He stared at her expertly made-up eyes. She blinked. “John?”

  It was a trick question. She was trying to trick him. “Tess did,” he finally said, and even though he knew he was right, he was terrified of being wrong. “The priest wouldn’t do it, so she did it herself.”

  “Good.” She smiled, then looked around the room again. “No luck finding another place?”

  She had asked this once before. “Should I be looking?”

  Ms. Lam tucked her hands into her narrow hips. “I don’t know, John. Looks like you’ve outgrown this place.”

  “Well, I—”

  “There’s a house over on Dugdale. A Mr. Applebaum runs it. I’ll put in a call for you tonight if you like.”

  “Yeah,” he said. She hadn’t offered to help him before and he was worried that she was now. Still, he said, “Thank you,” and, “that’d be nice.”

  “You move real soon now, hear? As in tomorrow.”

  He didn’t understand the rush, but he said, “Okay.”

  She pulled her purse over her shoulder, digging inside for her keys. “And John?”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Whatever you just threw out the window when my back was turned?” She looked up from her purse, flashing him a cat’s smile. “Make sure it doesn’t follow you to your new place.”

  He opened his mouth but she shook her head to stop him.

  “I don’t like it when somebody tries to set up one of my charges,” she told him. “When you go back in—and trust me, sixty-five percent of your fellow parolees tell me that you will—it’s gonna be because you screwed it up, not because some dipshit, Barney Fife, Atlanta cop has a hard-on for you.”

  His heart was in his throat. Michael had called her. He had found what John had left in the bottom of his toolbox and decided to do something about it. The only reason John wasn’t in jail
right now was because Ms. Lam played by the rules.

  “Watch yourself, John.” She pointed at him with her car keys. “And remember, hon, I’ll be watching you, too.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  8:48 PM

  Betty’s toenails clicked along the road as Will took her for her evening walk. He had tried to take the dog running their first day together, but ended up having to carry her most of the way. It had unnerved him the way she had adapted to the up and down jogging of her body, tongue lolling out, back legs tucked neatly into the palm of Will’s hand, body pressed close to his chest as he tried to ignore the strange looks people were giving him.

  Poncey-Highlands was a middle-of-the-road kind of neighborhood with its mixture of struggling artists, gay men and the occasional homeless person. From his back porch, Will could see the Carter Center, which housed President Carter’s library, and Piedmont Park was a short jog away. On the weekends, Ponce de Leon took him straight up to Stone Mountain Park, where he rode his bike, hiked the trails or just sat back and enjoyed the sunrise as it peered over the largest chunk of exposed granite in North America.

  As beautiful as the north Georgia mountains had been, Will had missed the familiarity of home, knowing instinctively where everything was, the areas that were safe, the restaurants that looked shady on the outside but had the best food and service in the city. He loved the diversity, the fact that there was a Mennonite church across from a rainbow-colored hippie commune at the end of his street. The way the homeless people went through your trash and yelled at you if there wasn’t anything good inside. Atlanta had always been his town, and if Amanda Wagner knew how happy he was to be back, she would have jerked him up to the hills faster than he could say, “chicken-fried steak.”

  “Hiya.” A passing jogger flirted, his cut chest glistening in the evening moonlight. Having lived in a city with a large gay population for his entire life, Will had learned to take these casual passes as flattering rather than a challenge to his manhood. Of course, walking a six-pound dog on a hot pink leash (it was the only one he could find that was long enough) was asking for attention no matter where you lived.