Triptych2

by Karin Slaughter

  The mother grabbed the letter like it was a lifeline. Tears fell down her cheeks as she stared at the words. She must have read it a dozen times before she murmured, "The pariah."

  "Can you tell me what she was talking about?"

  Miriam held the letter in her lap, her hands trembling. "There was this house across the street—three doors down and a world away." She stared out the window as if she could see it. "We were the only black family in the neighborhood back then. Tobias and I laughed about people saying, 'There goes the neighborhood' when they already had the devil living in their own backyard."

  "Does the family still live there?"

  She shook her head. "There's been about ten different families in that house since the Carsons moved out. It's been added onto, turned into some kind of palace, but back then, it was just this little house where bad things happened. Every neighborhood has that, don't they? That one bad house with that one bad kid?" Yes, ma am.

  She looked back out the window. "Parties every weekend. Cars racing up and down the road. That boy was poison to everybody he came into contact with. We called him the Pariah of Paisley Street."

  Will thought of the letter, the way Aleesha had referred to herself as a pariah.

  Miriam continued, "His mother was never home. She was a lawyer, if you can believe that." She turned back to Will. "I suppose I could blame her until I was blue in the face, but the fact was that she was just as incapable of controlling her child as we were."

  "Aleesha ran off with this boy?"

  "No," the woman said. "She ran off with a thirty-nine-year-old man named Marcus Keith. He was one of the advisors in her treatment program. We found out later he had already served time for interfering with a minor." She gave a humorless laugh. "They might as well put a revolving door on every prison in America."

  Will tried to tread carefully. "In the letter, she seems to be blaming you for something."

  Miriam gave a tight smile. "When Aleesha was eleven years old, I left my family. There was a man. Like mother, like child, I suppose." She held up the letter. "Or, 'the sins of the parent,' as my daughter so eloquently put it."

  "Obviously, you came back."

  "Tobias and I worked it out, but things were very rocky for a long while. Aleesha got lost in the shuffle, and then she fell in with that boy up the street." She put her hand to her collar, pulling at a small cross that hung from a gold chain around her neck.

  Will reached into his pocket and took out the cross from Aleesha's letter. "We found this, too."

  Miriam looked at the cross but did not take it. "All my children have one.

  He did not want to tell her that Aleesha had sent it back. The letter was bad enough. Still, he had to ask, "Is there any significance to the cross?

  "Tobias bought them when I returned home. We all gathered around the table and he passed them out one by one. It signified our unity, our faith that we could be a family again."

  Will put the cross in her hand and folded her fingers around it. "I'm sure she'd want you to have this."

  He left her alone in the room, walking down the hall, past the artwork, the photographs, everything Miriam and Tobias Monroe had accumulated over the years to turn their house into a home. There was a tall table by the door, and Will was leaving her one of his cards when he heard her speaking in the other room. Her tone was muffled by distance and grief. She was obviously on the telephone.

  "It's Mama," she told one of her many children. "I need you."

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  9:16 PM

  Angie was dead tired by the time she finished her shift. Thanks to her hard work, a pair of visiting propane salesmen, a truck driver and an unemployed father of three were sitting in jail right now, trying to figure out how they were going to explain to their wives that they had been arrested for soliciting a prostitute. If their explanations were anything like the ones they gave Angie—My wife doesn't understand me... I get lonely on the road... my kids hate me—they were looking at a long night in a cold cell.

  In the scheme of things, Angie figured what she did every day was a pointless endeavor. The Johns still kept coming back, the girls still kept going out. No one was interested in getting to the root of the problem. Angie had spent the last six years getting to know these women. They all had the same stories of sexual abuse and neglect in their pasts; they all had run away from something. It didn't take a Harvard economist to figure out that it'd be a hell of a lot cheaper spending money on helping keep kids safe when they were younger than it was to put them in jail when they were older. That was the American way, though. Spend a million dollars rescuing some kid who's fallen down a well, but God forbid you spend a hundred bucks up front to cap the well so the kid never falls down it in the first place.

  Jasmine Allison was probably one of those lost kids who would never be found. She'd end up on the street with a new name, new attitude, new addictions that a pimp could use to control her. Angie could tell from the way Will talked about the girl that he was worried. He had good reason, considering Jasmine had been paid to make that phone call the night Aleesha was murdered. Angie also knew that there could have been a million other little things that chased the girl from her home. Still, she'd called a couple of guys downtown and asked them to look into the case.

  Angie looked at the directions she'd scrawled on the page she'd torn from the phone book. Ken Wozniak was living at a nursing home on Lawrenceville Highway. The charge nurse who had given Angie directions had sounded excited to hear the man was going to have a visitor. Angie had only met Ken a couple of times. She doubted he would even remember her.

  Visiting hours were over at ten. Judging from the empty parking lot, Ken wasn't the only person who didn't get many guests. The lobby was sparse but clean, with the usual white tiles and fluorescent lights. Some fake flowers were on a table in the small waiting area and a water cooler burped as she walked to the receptionist's desk.

  The man leaned back in his chair, a knowing smile on his face as he looked Angie up and down, taking in every inch of her whore's outfit with the kind of sneer that said he knew exactly what she was and how much she should cost. He laced his fingers behind his head, making his shirt ride up so that she could see his bloated, hairy belly.

  He licked his lips, asked, "How much?"

  Angie reached into her purse and pulled out her badge.

  The guy literally fell out of his chair. He scrambled to stand back up, mumbling, "I was just—"

  "I'm here to see Ken Wozniak."

  "Oh, God." His voice shook as he tried to right the chair. "I need this job."

  She wondered if he needed it so he could diddle the old ladies while they slept in their beds. "Take a pill, Cletus, I'm not here to bang you up.”

  “I just-“

  "Wozniak," she repeated. "Where is he?"

  His hands trembled as he tapped something into the computer keyboard. "Up the hall and to the left. Room three-ten. Jesus, lady, I'm sorry, okay? I've never done this before."

  "Yeah, right. Me, either."

  Angie's spiked heels clicked as she walked up the hallway. She could still see the way the prick receptionist had leered at her when she walked in the front door. That knowing look on his face like she was just a hole he was going to fuck. By the time she got to room three-ten, she felt about two feet tall.

  "Hello?" she called, knocking on the door. Over the blare of the television, she heard a pleasant kind of grunt that she took as an invitation to come in.

  "Ehn," Ken said when he saw her, his mouth curved up on one side as he tried to smile. He had lost about sixty pounds sitting in his wheelchair, and she wondered how he managed to wake up every morning knowing this was the life he had to look forward to.

  "Remember me?" Angie asked.

  He gave a deep, knowing laugh, as if to say, "How could I forget?"

  Angie pulled a chair over and sat across from him. Ken fumbled with the remote in his lap, trying to mute the television. She hated nursing homes
almost as much as she hated hospitals, and here she was visiting both in the same day. The chemical stench of disinfectant, the white sheets and flickering lights, reminded her of the first time she had seen her mother after the overdose. Deidre had been lying in bed, her body completely still, her mouth hanging open as if she had been surprised to find herself here. Irreversible coma. Angie was only a kid, but between General Hospital and Days of Our Lives, she knew exactly what that meant: baby, you are fucked.

  "Deh," Ken said. He had finally managed to mute the television.

  Angie tried to sound cheerful. "How you been?"

  One shoulder went up. He'd certainly been better.

  "Stupid question, huh?"

  Ken allowed a smile on the side of his face that he could control.

  "You can't talk well?"

  "S'bad," he admitted.

  "I'm here about Michael Ormewood."

  He looked at the silent television for a couple of minutes. Finally, he blew out a puff of air.

  Angie cut to the chase. "I know he's an asshole, so you don't have to bother telling me that."

  Ken nodded.

  "Did you know he beats his wife?"

  Shock flickered in his eyes.

  "Guess not," Angie said. "I saw her this morning. She looks like he took a bat to her."

  His jaw set and his good hand clenched in his lap. Still a cop, even though he probably couldn't go to the toilet without someone there to wipe his ass.

  Angie leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. "I know you didn't like him. Why? What was it about him that you didn't like?"

  He blew out a noisy stream of air in answer.

  Angie shook her head. "I'm not following."

  He blew out some more air.

  "Oh," she said, finally getting it. "Hot air. He's full of hot air."

  Ken nodded, excited, and she felt like she was playing a painful game of charades.

  Still, she couldn't stop now. "When Michael worked Vice," she confided, "he was taking advantage of the girls."

  Ken shrugged.

  "Is that a 'what do you expect' shrug or an 'I'm not surprised' shrug?"

  He looked at his hand in his lap, the index and middle finger slowly pointing up to show it was the second choice. I'm not surprised.

  "I told him to leave or I'd report him, so he left."

  "An ah ga..." His mouth closed. She could see he hated trying to talk. "Ah gah hih."

  "Yeah," she said. Michael had been assigned as Ken's partner. "You got him."

  They both sat there, Ken's mouth working but no noises coming out. Angie tried to keep her face blank, tried not to let on how hard it was seeing him like this.

  Finally, he said, "You," clear enough for anyone to understand him.

  "You what?"

  He just stared, and Angie realized he was looking straight down her shirt. She straightened up, laughing. "Jesus, Wozniak. You old poon hound."

  "Nah." He waved her off with his hand. "Nah dah." He glanced around the room as if he needed a prop. Finally, he looked back at his hands. She watched as he forced his right index finger straight out, then made a circle with his left thumb and index finger. He slid the circle up and down the finger.

  Angie crossed her arms. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

  "Nah," he insisted. No.

  "Yeah," she snapped, duplicating the fucking gesture with her own hands. "I got you, Ken. I know exactly what you're saying and I gotta say I'm impressed you still got it, but no way in hell is it gonna happen."

  "You!" he yelled back, jabbing an angry finger at her. "Ma-ahl." He made the sign again.

  "Ohhhh." She drew out the word, his meaning finally sinking in. You and Michael.

  She asked, "You knew about that?"

  Ken raised his eyebrows. Who doesn't?

  "Yeah," she admitted. "I fucked him."

  "He... old... me."

  "I bet he did." Jesus, they all knew.

  "Eh," Ken said. Hey.

  She looked up. He held out his hand in an open shrug, asking her what else.

  "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. Then, she realized what he was asking.

  "I don't know if Aleesha was one of the girls who went with him to get out of a bust," Angie admitted. "I stopped working the Homes about the same time he partnered up with you. My cover was blown."

  "Who?"

  Angie laughed at herself. She'd never even considered the question, just assumed that there was only a certain number of times you could take a John out and not come back with him before people started realizing you were a cop.

  "I guess Michael could have outted me," she allowed. "He might have thought he was getting me in trouble, but they just moved me to a different strip. New girls. New Johns." She thought about one John in particular. "Michael came to my new drag a few months ago," she told Ken. "I thought he was just being an asshole, but he told us to look out for this guy who'd just been paroled, said he was a bad motherfucker."

  Ken snorted. He had obviously had the pleasure of being on the receiving end of Michael's trash-talking.

  "Yeah, I didn't think anything about it, either," she admitted. "Then I ran into the guy he'd warned us about. His name is John Shelley."

  Ken shrugged. Never heard of him.

  "Anyway," Angie said, knowing she was talking in circles. "The day after Aleesha Monroe died, Michael's next-door neighbor was found dead in her backyard."

  "Huhn?"

  "Yeah," Angie agreed. She told him the things he wouldn't have heard on the news. Angie herself would not have known the details but for Will. "The neighbor's tongue was cut out. Monroe's was bitten off, but still..."

  Ken sat there. Angie felt bad. The old fucker was confused enough without her pouring her heart out to him.

  "I shouldn't be bugging you with this."

  "Mo." Ken made a circling motion with his hand. He wanted to hear more.

  "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?"

  Ken made a suggestive sound, the meaning loud and clear.

  "Tell me something," she began. "You ever go fishing with Michael up in the mountains?"

  The expression on his face was as clear as if he had spoken the words. Hell no.

  Angie drove right past her house, her mind still trying to grasp what she had figured out while she talked to Ken. The fact that Michael Ormewood had pursued and married a teenage girl almost fifteen years ago wasn't exactly evidence that he was involved in something now, but the coincidence was still there and Angie had been a cop too long to believe in coincidences.

  She worked a scenario in her head as she made a U-turn at the end of her street, passing by her house again and heading down Piedmont. She took a left at the light, then another left onto Ponce de Leon, as she let the
possibilities play out. Michael was still using the girls, pulling rank for freebies. Baby G had figured this out. Maybe Aleesha Monroe had been one of the girls Michael used and G hadn't liked the cut in his income. He had killed Monroe, then killed Michael's next-door neighbor as a lesson.

  But why would Baby G kill Cynthia Barrett? Even if Michael did have a thing for teenage girls, that didn't mean he was screwing his neighbor. And it wasn't like that kind of lechery was unusual in a man of forty. All you had to do was look at a fashion magazine or go to the local cinema to find images of scantily clad girls hanging on to men who were old enough to be their fathers. Hell, you couldn't walk through the local shopping mall without seeing a bunch of twelve-year-olds wearing T-shirts up to their nipples and jeans down to their hooches. And their mothers were usually wearing the same thing.