Triptych (Will Trent, #1)

by Karin Slaughter

Leo was an idiot, but he wasn’t stupid.

Michael did not like the way the doctor was looking at him, and he sure as hell didn’t want to hear his opinions on sexual predators.

John loved the relief that came from smoking a joint, the way it took the edge off of everything. He no longer cared that his father thought he was a total fuck-up or that his mother was constantly disappointed with him. His sister Joyce’s perfection as she followed in their father’s footsteps didn’t grate as much after a toke, and he actually enjoyed being around his family more when he was high. When his parents finally realized what was happening, they blamed that age-old culprit, the bad crowd. What they did not realize was that John Shelley was the bad crowd. In a few weeks, he’d graduated from gawky nerd to pothead, and he loved the attention his newfound transformation gave him. Thanks to Woody, he was the kid who had the stash.

John’s first impulse was to stay exactly where he was. You didn’t get involved in other people’s shit. That was how you got yourself killed.

“More qualified to pack boxes?” he had asked one of them, the shipping manager at a pie company. “Listen, buddy,” the guy had answered. “I’ve got a teenage daughter, all right? You know why you’re not getting this job.” At least he was honest.

The truth was that John had never really made love to a woman. He had never experienced that intimacy that you read about in books, never had a lover take his hand in her own, stroke the back of his neck, pull his body closer to hers. The last woman he had kissed was, in fact, the only woman he had ever kissed and even then, she wasn’t a woman but a girl. John remembered the date like it was seared into his brain: June 15, 1985. He had kissed Mary Alice Finney, and the next morning, she was dead.

John stubbed his toe into the sand. “I’m sorry, Mary Alice.” She was crying, and he could see her watching her tears hit the sand just like he had watched his blood a few moments before. He hated her, right? Only, he wanted to put his arm around her, tell her it was going to be okay. He had to think of something to say, something to help her feel better. He blurted out, “You wanna go to a party?”

Ms. Lam would be going through his stuff now, and even though John knew there was nothing for her to find, he felt guilty, terrified she’d toss him back in prison. Guys back in the joint talked about parole officers, how they planted stuff on you if they didn’t like you, how they were especially hard on sex offenders, looking for any excuse to send you back inside. She was holding a framed photo of his mother when he got back. “That was taken last year,” he said, feeling a lump in his throat. Emily was standing in the visitor’s hall at the prison. John had his arm around his mother, the dirty white cinderblock wall behind them serving as a backdrop. It had been his birthday. Joyce had taken the photo because his mother had insisted.

John hated people going through his shit. The most important thing he had learned in prison was that you never touched another man’s property unless you were willing to die for it.

She sighed again. He was upsetting her. Why had he called her? Why did he have to bother her with this? He felt tears in his eyes and pressed his fingers into the corners to try to stop them. He remembered when they were little, how she used to play with him, dress him up in Richard’s clothes, pretend she was his mother. They had tea parties and cooked cupcakes in her Easy-Bake Oven.

This usually left him with a little less than seventy-five dollars each week for things that he needed. That was from a good week, though, and some weeks he pulled in considerably less. John forced himself to save money, skipping meals sometimes, making himself so dizzy from lack of food that he practically fell into bed at night.

After the ill-fated phone call to his sister, John walked through the rain, kicking puddles, wishing he could kick himself for calling Joyce. She had enough trouble without him putting more on her. The truth was, he just wanted to talk to her, wanted to see how she was doing. John called her maybe once a month and she was always as happy to hear from him as she had been this morning.

John stood up as the bus pulled away, looking out the window, keeping his eyes on the man. How many years had passed? His brain wouldn’t let him do the math, but he knew it was him. John was slack-jawed as he watched the man give up on the umbrella and toss it into the parking lot before slamming his car door shut. Yes. It was him. It was definitely him. Just as a million raindrops fell from the sky, there existed a million chances that John would go to the post office on the right day at the right time. A million to one, but he had done it.

“Mother used to drive it to church every Sunday but her gentleman friend, Mr. Propson, takes her now,” Ben said. “Beulah Carver. I daresay she’s the only one in the book. She’ll give you the key, but don’t tell her how you know me.” “You’ve been in jail for almost thirty years. Don’t you think she’ll figure it out?” “I kept men’s nipples in her refrigerator for three years and told her they were herbal treatments for alopecia. What do you think?” John conceded the point.

In the holding cell, John kept going over and over everything that was said about him during the trial. The state’s psychologist had seemed nice enough when they talked a few months ago, but at trial he had told the entire courtroom that John was obviously a delusional psychopath, a cold-blooded killer who showed no remorse. Then, there were the kids from John’s school who had stood up during the sentencing phase to talk about what a good girl Mary Alice was and what a horrible person John Shelley had always been. Principal Binder, Coach McCollough … they had all talked about him like he was Charles Manson. Who was that person they were talking about? John didn’t recognize him. Half of those kids hadn’t even said two words to him in the last three years, but now they acted as if they knew everything about him.

“You will not give up in here,” she told John, her grip tight, as if she could force some of her strength into him, take the pain away and carry it herself. She had always said that she would rather suffer herself than see her children hurt, and John saw for the first time that it was true. If Emily could, she would trade places with him right now. And he would let her.

What John found out in prison was that he was smart. He didn’t come to the realization out of vanity. It was more like an epitaph, a sort of eulogy to the person he could have been. He understood complex formulas, mathematical equations. He liked to study. Sometimes, he could almost feel his brain growing inside of his head, and when he solved a problem, figured out a particularly difficult diagram, he felt like he’d won a marathon. And then the depression would set in. His father had been right. His teachers were right. His pastor was right. He should have applied himself. He should have—could have—put his brain to work and done something with his life. Now, what did he have? Who cared if you were the smartest convicted murderer in prison?

A letter penned by John and attached to his file stated that his mother was sick, and he just wanted to go home and be there for her the way she had been there for him all these years. The official notice granting him parole came on July 22, 2005. Emily had died two days earlier.

“Hey, girlie,” Woody said, leaning against John as he stared at Mary Alice. “What took you so long? I was beginning to think my cousin here made you up.” John started to make introductions, but something stopped him. He didn’t like the way Woody was looking at her, the open lust in his eyes. The guy already had Alicia back in the house ready to do whatever he wanted and now he was going after Mary Alice. It wasn’t fair. “We were just going,” John said, taking Mary Alice’s hand as if she belonged to him. “So soon?” Woody asked, and John realized he was blocking their way.

“Stay away from her,” John warned. “I mean it.” “No hard feelings,” Woody said, but he was still leering at Mary Alice like a lion who had been denied its prey.

“Hey!” John called, chasing after her through the living room, the kitchen. “Hold up,” he yelled, but she had already flown through the open door and into the yard. She chanced a look over her shoulder as she made for the fence. He remembered that he still had Woody’s knife in his hand, realized how that must look to her, and stopped. She hesitated again, but her body was still moving. Moving forward. He watched her fall in slow motion, her bare foot catching on the broken fence, her head slamming into the ground. John waited. She didn’t get up. He waited some more. She still did not move.

Lydia had told him not to talk about drugs with the police, not to mention Woody because bringing her son into it would open up John’s past drug abuse and they didn’t want that, did they? If Woody was put on the stand, he’d tell the truth. They didn’t want Woody telling the truth, did they? That night at the party, Woody had said, “No hard feelings,” tossing him the baggie. Was that when he had decided to hurt Mary Alice?

Will Trent was brushing his dog when the doorbell rang. Betty started barking, her body nearly skittering off the table from the force. He shushed her and was rewarded with a curious look. Will had never told the dog no. A full minute passed. Will and Betty waited, hoping whoever was at the door would go away, but the doorbell rang again, then three more times in rapid succession.

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.”

At first, Angie had assumed he was a nerd but she later figured out that Will was staring at the words, trying to get them to make sense. The irony was that he loved words, adored books and stories and anything else that might take him out of his surroundings. In a rare moment of candor, he had once told her that being in a library was like sitting down at a table laid with all his favorite foods but not being able to eat any of them. And he hated himself for it. Even now, he would not accept that his dyslexia was anything but his own personal failure. No matter how much Angie prodded and even begged, he would not get help. By the time she met him, Will had learned all kinds of tricks to hide his problem and Angie doubted his teachers thought of him as anything but slow. His current job was no different. He used colored folders so that he could find cases by sight, and different types of paper so that he could locate them by texture.

Will was worried about John Shelley, but he could not have been more wrong if he’d tried. It was only a matter of time before Will figured out the truth. He could barely read a book, but he could read the signs clearly enough. One of the biggest regrets in Angie’s life wasn’t the eleven men or her comatose mother or even the hell she routinely put Will through. Her biggest regret was that she had slept with that asshole Michael Ormewood.

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.

“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.’ ”

“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.”

“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.

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.

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.

“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 said, “I guess you found out my guy’s a pedophile.” Will stood up so quickly he got a head rush. “What?” “Shelley,” she said matter-of-factly. “I’m assuming you pulled his sheet?” Will put his hand to his eyes, like taking away his ability to see her would change what he had just heard. “He’s a pedophile?” She gave him a funny smile. “You realize you’re yelling?”

Angie told him, “She spells her name differently when she signs it: A-L-I-C-I-A instead of A-L-E-E-S-H-A.” Will made a disgusted sound in the back of his throat. She had to know that she might as well be speaking Chinese to him. “She spells her name correctly—the more common way—when she signs it. She probably changed the spelling when she hit the streets.”

Anybody who thought America didn’t have socialized medicine should spend a couple of hours in their local ER. Someone was paying for the uninsured and indigent to see a doctor, and it sure as shit wasn’t the uninsured and indigent.

He started to walk away, then stopped. “When this is over,” he said, spreading his hands out like there was a tangible thing between them. “When what’s going on is over,” he said, still being obtuse, “maybe we can go out to dinner or something? See a movie?” “John,” she began. “Do you think that’s really gonna happen?” He shook his head, but he still told her, “I’m going to hope it does, Robin. That’s what’s going to keep me going. I’m going to think about seeing a movie with you, buying you some popcorn, maybe holding your hand during the scary parts.” “It’d be cheaper if you just gave me the money to hold your scary parts.” He took her hand in his. She stood dumbstruck as he brought his lips to the back of her hand and gently kissed it. “Think about a movie you want to see,” he told her. “Something really scary.” Then he was gone. Angie leaned against the wall. She let out a stream of breath. Here was another perfectly sweet man she was ruining. Okay, he was a perfectly sweet pedophile and murderer, but glass houses and all that.

Gina narrowed her eyes, finally recognizing Angie. “You fucked my husband.” “Yeah, well.” Angie knew better than to lie. “If it’s any consolation, I’ve had much better.” Gina laughed, then winced as her lip split open again.

“I thought I knew the guy,” Leo said, meaning Ormewood. “This is out of left field, you know? At first, I thought maybe the bitch was making it up, but then I called Michael and …” His voice trailed off. “He tried to laugh it off, said it was a big misunderstanding, that she was withdrawing the order, had just made it up to get back at him for working so much.” Leo’s mouth twisted to the side, like the explanation still didn’t sit right with him. The man had been a cop for much longer than Will and he had probably heard that same excuse from many an abusive husband. Leo continued, “Then I started pushing him about it, asking what was going on. Gina’s a good girl, you know? Smart as a whip. I don’t see her putting his nuts in a vice just for shits and giggles.” Leo glanced at Will, then back out the window. “He told me to mind my own fucking business.” Leo had obviously taken that as an admission of guilt. Will took it as proof that Michael was answering his phone only when the caller ID told him it was somebody he wanted to talk to.

Miriam interrupted his thoughts. “Dr. Monroe and I realized very gradually that drug addiction is a terminal disease. It is a cancer that eats families alive.” She stood up and walked across the room to the grand piano, saying, “You get to a point where you look around and you ask yourself, ‘What is this doing to the rest of my family? What harm am I doing to my other children by concentrating all of my energy on rescuing this one child who will not be saved?’ ”

“One of my girls was killed.” He pointed to the television. “Home.” He had obviously seen the story on the news. “Yeah, she lived at Grady Homes,” Angie told him. “Her tongue was bitten off. She choked to death on her own blood.” “Ma-ahl?” For a minute, Angie thought he was asking if Michael had killed her.

“Michael’s neighbor was just fifteen.” Angie stopped. Hadn’t Gina Ormewood said she was fifteen when Michael met her? She asked, “When was the Gulf War? Ninety? Ninety-one?” Ken held up one finger. “How old do you think Michael is? He’s forty, right? They had some kind of party for him last year. I remember there were black balloons everywhere.” Ken nodded. Angie sucked at math. Will would have figured all of this in his head, but she needed something to write on. She found a scrap of paper in her purse and scribbled the numbers down with her eyeliner pencil, muttering, “Michael was born in sixty-six, minus two thousand six.” She checked the numbers, making sure she had it right. Slowly, she looked up at Ken. “Gina was fifteen when she met him. She said at first he was interested in her cousin, who was a year younger.” She held up the sheet for Ken to see. “He was twenty-five. What’s a twenty-five-year-old man doing with a fifteen-year-old girl?”

He wrapped his hand around her leg. “Why do you do this?” She stepped out of his reach, finding her purse on the table by the front door. “Why do you let me?”

John was trying to think logically, figure out what to do next, but as much as he tried to concentrate, all he could feel was a burning anger. Michael had put that knife under his mattress in the flophouse just like he’d stashed the kitchen knife, the so-called murder weapon, in John’s closet all those years ago. What the hell did the guy have against him? What did John ever do to Michael to bring this down on his head? Not just John’s head, but on his entire family.

Even without his father’s damning testimony, in John’s own court of opinion, he did not come out completely blameless in Mary Alice’s murder. He had invited her to the party. He had been stoned. He had given her the alcoholic drink. He had gone back to her house, sneaked into her bedroom. He had snorted the speedball that knocked him on his ass. He had let it all happen. But knowing it was Michael, his own cousin Woody, who had butchered Mary Alice made John sick with rage. He couldn’t be angry for his own sake, but he could be angry for Mary Alice, livid as hell that Michael had not just raped the girl, not just killed her, but ravaged her like a rabid animal.

There were a couple of Oriental-looking paintings that weren’t to John’s taste, but the pictures on the credenza under the windows made his heart hurt in his chest. A young Joyce and John on the log ride at Six Flags. Baby John in Richard’s lap as he gave him a bottle.

“Emily knew she wasn’t going to get better,” Kathy told him. “She spent the last days of her life doing exactly what she wanted to do.” He was really crying now—big, fat tears as he thought about his mother poring over all this information every night, trying to find something, anything, that would get him out. “She never told me,” John said. “She never told me she was doing this.” “She didn’t want to get your hopes up,” Joyce said. He swung around, wondering how long his sister had been standing behind him. Joyce didn’t look angry when she said, “Kathy, what are you doing?” “Interfering,” the other woman answered, smiling the way someone smiles when they’ve done something wrong but they know you’ll forgive them.

Joyce paused, probably thinking back on the scene. “Mom’s eyes were closed—I don’t even think she was aware that Lydia was there.” She tilted her head. “But Lydia was sobbing. Really sobbing, John, like her heart was broken. She was shaking, and she kept saying, ‘I’m so sorry, Emily. I’m so sorry.’ ” Joyce concluded, “She never forgave herself. She never got over losing your case.” Right, John thought. Aunt Lydia was probably plenty over it now. Nothing like unburdening your sins to someone who wouldn’t live to tell them.

He shoved John Shelley’s rap sheet in her face. She did a double take when she saw the photograph, and he could have sworn her eyes softened.

Her voice was eerily calm when she said, “Did you ask Michael how old his wife was when he met her?” She didn’t let him respond. “She was fifteen, Will. He was twenty-five.” “Did he rape her and bite out her tongue?” Will asked. “Because, unless he did, I don’t see why that makes a bit of difference.” “I’m telling you, John didn’t do this.” “I’ll ask him myself when I bring him in.” “No.” She grabbed his arm as if she could physically stop him. “I’ll do it.” Will could only stare at her. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” “The minute you put those cuffs on him, he’s shutting down.” “You don’t know that.” “He’s a con. Of course he’ll shut down. He won’t so much as fart until his lawyer shows up, and then the lawyer will tell you to go fuck yourself.”