Triptych

by Karin Slaughter

  Will smiled to himself at the thought of how ridiculous he must look, but his smile didn’t last long as his brain returned to the topic that had been plaguing his thoughts for most of the day.

  He was stalled in the case and the more he thought about it, the more his initial bad feelings about Michael Ormewood were amplified. The detective came off as an okay guy when he was right in front of you, but closer examination showed some flaws, the biggest being that he had used his job to force women to have sex with him. That was the one detail Will could not get past. Prostitutes weren’t walking the streets for the great sex and stimulating conversation. They took money, and Will guessed you could construe that as consent, but there hadn’t been any money exchanged when Michael had done it. He had used the power the badge gave him to control the women. That was rape in Will’s mind.

  Yet Will was having a hard time thinking of the guy he’d spent most of the last two days with as a rapist. Father, husband, seemingly a well-respected cop, sure. But rapist? There were definitely two sides to the man, and the more Will thought about it, the less he was certain about either one of them.

  Working with the GBI, most of Will’s time was consumed with chasing down horrendous criminals, but if his stint in the mountains had taught him one thing, it was that people were very seldom either really good or really bad. In Blue Ridge, where poverty and plant closings and a strike at the local mine had practically crippled the small mountain community, the line between right and wrong had been blurred. Will had learned a lot up there, not just about human nature but about himself.

  Region eight of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation was the largest district in the state, serving fourteen counties and stretching all the way to the Tennessee as well as North Carolina state line. The men Will met at the northwest Georgia field office were pretty callous about the locals, as if they were above the people they were meant to be serving. Will’s chief was called “Yip” Gomez for reasons Will had never been able to determine, and the man had jokingly told Will the first time they met to give up on trying to enjoy any of the local talent. “I’ve already had all the ladies who still have their own teeth,” he had laughed. “Slim pickin’s, my boy. Slim pickin’s.”

  Will’s face must have betrayed his thoughts—Angie always said he had more estrogen than was good for him—because Yip had given Will every crap assignment in the district after that. He’d been totally excluded from the sting operation that resulted in the biggest bust in the office’s history. Working with the locals, Yip had helped break up a cockfighting enterprise that reached into three different states and twelve counties. The case had implicated a neighboring town’s mayor, who’d had his own La-Z-Boy ringside so he wouldn’t miss any of the action. Even though the tip-off had come from a bunch of angry wives who were pissed off at their husbands for gambling away their paychecks, that still did not take away from the glory of the sting operation. Yip and the boys had celebrated at the Blue Havana on 515 that night while Will had been stuck in his car, casing an abandoned chicken farm that had reportedly been turned into a meth lab. Not that he wanted to drink with these men, but the point was he hadn’t been invited.

  Though he was always left out of the more glamorous busts, Will liked to think that what he did up in the mountains was important work. Meth was a nasty drug. It turned people into subhumans, made them leave their kids on the side of the road, open their legs for anything that would get them high. Will had seen plenty of lives ruined by meth well before he got to Blue Ridge. He didn’t need a primer to help him want to break apart every lab in his jurisdiction. The work was dangerous. The so-called chemists who made the compound were taking their lives into their own hands. A single spark could ignite the whole building. Dust from the manufacturing process could clog up your lungs like Play-Doh. Haz Mat had to be called in to clear the area before Will could go in and collect any evidence. The cleanup on these labs alone was bankrupting the local police and sheriff’s departments and the state wasn’t about to lend a helping hand.

  Will sometimes thought that for a certain type of mountain dweller, meth was the new moonshine, a product they trafficked in to keep their kids clothed and fed. He had a hard time reconciling the junkies he saw on the streets of Atlanta with some of the everyday people brewing meth up in the hills. Not that Will was saying they were angels. Some of them were awful, just plain trash doing whatever they could to finance their habit. Others weren’t so black and white. Will would see them in the grocery store or at the local pizza place or coming out of church with their kids on Sundays. They generally didn’t partake of the product. It was a job for them, a way—to some, the only way they saw—to make money. People were dying, lives were being ruined, but that wasn’t their business.

  Will didn’t know how they could section things off so neatly, but in Michael Ormewood, he saw the same tendency. The detective did his job—by all accounts he did it well—but then there was this other part of him that made him hurt the very people he was supposed to be helping.

  Betty made some business under a bush and Will leaned down, using a baggie to scoop it up. He dropped the bag into a trashcan as he made his way back toward the house. Will caught himself glancing into his neighbor’s windows as he passed, wondering when the old woman would be back. As if she sensed his thoughts, Betty pulled at her leash, tugging him toward the driveway.

  “All right,” he soothed, using his key to open the front door. He knelt to unsnap her leash, and she skittered across the room, jumping onto the couch and ensconcing herself on the pillows. Every morning before he left for work, he propped the pillows up on the back of the couch and every evening Betty had managed to push them down to make herself a bed. He could have called it a throne, but that was an embarrassing thought for a grown man to have about a little dog.

  Will went to his room and took off his jacket. He was unbuttoning his vest when the phone rang. At first, he didn’t recognize the high-pitched voice on the phone.

  “Slow down,” Will said. “Who is this?”

  “It’s Cedric,” the boy cried. “Jasmine’s gone.”

  Cedric must have been waiting for Will, because the front door opened and the boy ran out of building nine as soon as Will pulled his car into the lot.

  “You gotta do something,” the boy demanded. His face was puffy from crying. Gone was the wannabe gangster from that morning. He was a scared little kid who was worried about his sister.

  “It’s going to be okay,” Will told him, knowing the words meant nothing but feeling compelled to say them.

  “Come on.” Cedric took his hand and dragged him toward the building.

  Will followed the boy up the three flights of stairs. On the landing, he was about to ask Cedric what was going on, but then he saw the old woman standing in the doorway.

  She was in a faded purple housedress with matching socks that slouched down around her thick ankles. A cane was in one hand, a cordless telephone in the other. She wore glasses with black plastic rims and her hair stood out in disarray. A frown creased her face.

  “Cedric,” she said, her deep tone resonating through the long hallway. “What are you doing with that man?”

  “He a cop, Granny. He gonna help.”

  “He is a cop,” the old woman corrected, sounding like a schoolteacher. “And I doubt that very seriously.”

  Will was still holding Cedric’s hand, but he used his other one to find the badge in his pocket. He took a step forward to show it to the woman. “Cedric told me that your granddaughter is missing.”

  She scrutinized the badge and the identification underneath. “You don’t look much like a cop.”

  “No,” Will admitted, tucking his ID back into his pocket. “I’m trying to learn to take that as a compliment.”

  “Cedric,” the woman snapped. “Go clean your room.”

  “But, Gran—” She stopped him with a sharp look that sent him running.

  The old woman opened the door wider and Will saw that her
apartment was an exact duplicate of Aleesha Monroe’s. The couch obviously served as a bed; a pillow, sheets and a blanket were neatly folded on the end. Two wingback chairs flanked the couch, slipcovers hiding obvious flaws underneath. The kitchen was clean but cluttered, dishes drying on a rack. Several pairs of underclothes hung from a laundry stand that was tucked into the corner. The bathroom door was open but the bedroom door was closed, a large poster of SpongeBob SquarePants taped to the outside.

  “I’m Eleanor Allison,” she informed him, hobbling toward the chair by the window. “I suppose you want to sit down?”

  Will realized that his mouth had dropped open. Books were everywhere—some packed into flimsy-looking cases that looked ready to fall over, more stacked around the floor in neat piles.

  “Are you surprised that a black woman can read?”

  “No, I just—”

  “You like to read yourself?”

  “Yes,” Will answered, thinking he was only telling a partial lie. For every three audiobooks he listened to, he made himself read at least one complete book. It was a miserable task that took weeks, but he made himself do it to prove that he could.

  Eleanor was watching him, and Will tried to mend things. He guessed. “You were a teacher?”

  “History,” she told him. She rested her cane beside her leg and propped her foot on a small stool in front of the chair. He saw that her ankles were wrapped in bandages.

  She explained, “Arthritis. Had it since I was eighteen years old.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Not your fault, is it?” She motioned him toward the chair opposite but he did not take a seat. “Tell me something, Mr. Trent. Since when does a special agent from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation give a hill of beans about a missing black girl?”

  He was getting annoyed with her assumptions. “There weren’t any white ones missing today, so we drew straws.”

  She gave him a sharp look. “You’re not funny, young man.”

  “I’m not a racist pig, either.”

  She locked eyes with him for a moment, then nodded as if she’d made up her mind about him. “For goodness’ sake, sit.”

  Will finally did as he was told, sinking so low into the old chair that his knees were practically around his ears.

  He tried to get to the point. “Cedric called me.”

  “And how do you know Cedric?”

  “I met him this morning. I was out here with a detective from the Atlanta Police Department investigating the death of the young woman who lived upstairs.”

  “Young woman?” she echoed. “She was forty if she was a day.”

  Will had heard Pete Hanson say as much during the autopsy, but hearing the old woman say it now somehow gave it more resonance. Aleesha Monroe had been at least twenty-five years older than the other victims. What had made the killer break from his usual target group?

  Eleanor asked, “Why is the GBI mixed up in the death of a drug-addicted prostitute?”

  “I’m with a division that reaches out to local law enforcement when help is needed.”

  “That’s a very fine response, young man, but you’ve not really answered my question.”

  “You’re right,” he admitted. “Tell me when you realized that Jasmine was missing.”

  She studied him, her gaze steely, lips pursed. He forced himself not to look away, wondering how she had been in the classroom, if she was one of the types who let the dumb kids sit in the back or if she would have dragged him by the ear to the front row, yelling at him for not knowing the answer to the question on the board.

  “All right,” Eleanor decided. “I assumed Jasmine was in her room doing homework. When I called her for supper, she didn’t come. I looked in the room and she wasn’t there.”

  “What time was this?”

  “Around five o’clock.”

  Will glanced at his watch, but the digital clock on the TV told him the actual time. “So, to your knowledge, she’s been gone about five hours?”

  “Are you going to tell me I need to wait another day before it matters?”

  “I wouldn’t drive all the way down here to tell you that, Ms. Allison. I would just call you on the phone.”

  “You think she’s just another black girl run off with a man, but I’m telling you, I know that girl.”

  “She wasn’t in school today,” Will reminded her.

  The old woman looked down. Will saw that her hands were like claws in her lap, arthritis twisting them into unusable lumps. “She was suspended for back-talking a teacher.”

  “Cedric, too?”

  “This is turning adversarial,” she noted, but she still kept talking. “I don’t get around very easily, especially since they took my Vioxx away. Their mother has been incarcerated for more than half of Cedric’s life. She’s a heroin addict, just like Aleesha Monroe. The only difference is that my Glory got caught.”

  Will knew better than to interrupt.

  “I laid down the law with Glory. Stayed up nights, followed her whenever she left the house. I was that child’s skin, I was so close to her. She hated every minute of it—still hates me now—but I was her mother and that’s what I was going to do. Same with them.” With difficulty, she lifted a hand, indicating the closed bedroom door. Will saw a shadow move underneath and guessed that Cedric was listening.

  Eleanor continued, “Glory pretty much let those two run wild. She didn’t care what they did so long as she didn’t get into trouble and could still keep putting that needle in her veins.” The woman sighed, lost in her own memories. “Jasmine’s as wild as Glory was, and I can’t keep up with her. It took me five minutes to walk to that doorway tonight to see what Cedric was running on about.”

  Will wanted to say that he was sorry, but knew she would only correct him, remind him that her condition, the miserable way she must have spent her life trying to do the right thing while the walls fell in around her, was not his fault.

  Eleanor told him, “Cedric was a baby when Glory lost custody.” She managed to lean forward. “He’s a smart boy, Mr. Trent. A smart boy with a future if I can keep him out of this mess long enough for him to grow.” She pressed her lips together. “There’s something he’s not telling me. He loves his sister and she loves him—loves him like a mother because that’s what she had to be when Glory was busy shooting that trash into her system.” She paused. “I think I have more influence on him. And there’s no denying Jasmine loves him. She doesn’t want him mixed up in the life around here, the thugs and the gang bangers and the hoodlums. She embraces it, but she knows her baby brother can do better.”

  Will asked, “Has Jasmine run away before?”

  “Twice, but always because there was a fight. We didn’t fight yesterday. We haven’t fought all week, for a change. Jasmine wasn’t angry with me, or at least no more angry than any teenager is at the person in charge.”

  “Does she have a boyfriend?”

  “Boy? He’s fifteen years older than she is.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Luther Morrison. He lives on Basil Avenue, about three miles from here, in the Manderley Arms. I already called him. He says she’s not there.” She explained, “Each time she ran away before, I called him. Both times he told me she was there. Luther pretends that he believes Jasmine is seventeen, but he knows that child’s age just as sure as I’m sitting here and he’ll do anything I say to keep me from calling the cops on him.”

  Will had to ask, “Why haven’t you called the police on him? She’s thirteen, he’s almost thirty. That’s statutory rape.”

  “Because I learned with her mother that a girl who’s set on destroying herself will not be stopped. If I get this one arrested, she’ll just go to the next one, and he’ll be even worse than this Morrison, if that’s possible.”

  “Gran?” Cedric asked. He was still in the bedroom, peeking around the edge of the door. “I finished cleaning the room.”

  “Come here, child.” She reached out her ar
m for him and he came. She told Will, “I called the police as soon as I realized Jasmine was missing. I’m sure you can guess their response.”

  “They told you to give it twenty-four hours, maybe forty-eight if they know she’s run away before.”

  “Correct.”

  Will addressed his words to Cedric. “You sounded pretty upset when you called me. Can you tell me why?”

  Cedric looked at his grandmother, then back at Will. His shoulders went up into a shrug.

  The old woman stirred, reaching into the front pocket of her housedress. “Walk Mr. Trent out and check the mail for me, baby. Mr. Trent?” Will struggled to get out of the chair. “Thank you for your concern.”

  “Please don’t bother,” he said, noticing that she was trying to stand. “I’ll let you know what I find out.” He reached out to shake her hand, remembering at the last moment that the arthritis would make it too painful. She grabbed his hand before he could stop her, and he was surprised by the intensity of her grip. “Please,” she begged. “Please find her, Mr. Trent.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, knowing that she was proud and that it took everything she had to ask him for help.

  He followed Cedric down the stairs and out into the parking lot. The overhead lights cast a strange glow over everything and Will realized that it was only a few hours past the time that Aleesha Monroe had been murdered on Sunday night. Cedric walked to the grassy area by the mailboxes where Jasmine had jumped him this morning.

  Will watched the boy slip his key into the lock, waiting until he’d retrieved the mail to tell him, “This is serious, Cedric.”

  “I know.”

  “You’ve got to tell me what you know about Jasmine. Why did she tell you not to talk to the cops?”

  “She said y’all are bad.”

  That was a sentiment shared by pretty much everyone within a five-mile radius. “Tell me what happened on Sunday.”