Triptych2

by Karin Slaughter

  Angie passed City Hall East, then took a right into Poncey-Highlands. She slowed the car, checking to make sure Will's motorcycle was out front before she parked on the street.

  She got out of the car, not giving herself time to change her mind. She used her fist to knock on his door, then pushed the bell a couple of times for good measure.

  He took his sweet time opening the door. She saw he had rolled down his sleeves but not buttoned the cuffs. He was still wearing his vest and that stupid little dog was scooped into his left hand like a bag of candy.

  She demanded, "Why do you always take so long to answer the fucking door?"

  "What's wrong?"

  She dropped her purse by the door and walked past him into the house. An audiobook was playing in the background and a pocket watch was laid out on the worktable where he had taken it apart to repair it. She looked at the tiny springs and gears he had stuck into a piece of cork, the various instruments he used to repair the winding mechanism. Angie had always been shocked by the fact that Will could figure out how a watch worked in about ten seconds but it took him half an hour to understand a page in a book.

  Will put the dog on the floor. She trotted off into the kitchen. Angie heard her drinking some water.

  "What's wrong?" Will repeated, muting the stereo.

  "You need to talk to Aleesha's pimp."

  "Baby G?" Will asked. "He's dead."

  "What?"

  "He died this afternoon," Will told her. "His cousins got sick of being pushed around."

  "Slow down," she said, though she was the one with the racing heart. "Tell me what happened."

  He narrowed his eyes, but still told her. "The day that Michael and I talked to Baby G, there were two kids sitting on the hood of his BMW. G said they were his cousins."

  Angie sat on the couch. "Okay."

  "He chased them off with a bat. I guess they didn't like it. They ambushed him, shot him three times."

  "Sit down," Angie told him. She hated when he hovered over her. "Are you sure that's what happened? The cousins shot him?"

  "As sure as you can be when you're dealing with these thugs." Will sat beside her. "I talked to the arresting officer this afternoon. The kids will probably be tried as adults. One's already flipped on the other. He's got a record, a drug bust, an assault. This would be his third strike. He's trying to talk his way out of a life sentence."

  "Are you sure they're not involved in the case?"

  "Neither one of them even knew Aleesha."

  Angie nodded, letting him know that she had heard him. She was too shocked to talk. Whatever Baby G knew about Michael Ormewood would be taken to his grave.

  Will said, "You look bad."

  "Thanks."

  "I mean it," he said. "What's wrong with you?"

  "I had a really hard day," she told him, suddenly feeling everything catch up with her. "I had to go to the hospital."

  He sat up, took her hand. "Are you okay?"

  "Not for me." She lied because it was easier than dealing with his anger if he found out she'd gone to Piedmont this morning to put the fear of Jesus into Ormewood's wife. "I took one of the girls in. It wasn't anything bad. Women stuff."

  Will nodded, and she knew he wouldn't press her.

  Christ, what a mess. She had things to tell him but didn't know where to begin. What could she say? That the night of Ken's party, Michael was rough with her? That Michael was the kind of guy you couldn't change your mind with? That with him, once things got started, there was no such thing as stopping?

  She could still remember how much it hurt the next day, the bruises on her thighs, the feeling that something deep inside her had been torn. Shit, she'd been drunk out of her mind, but the marks on her skin were clear enough to tell the story.

  "You okay?" Will tucked her hair behind her ear. The gentle gesture was something new. He never touched her like that, or maybe she never let him.

  She said, "It was hard being there," not telling him exactly where "there" was. "I kept thinking about my mom."

  Will stroked her hair and she wanted to close her eyes, put her head on his shoulder. Angie had taken him to see her mother a couple of times. Going to her mother's grave would have been easier for Angie than seeing Deidre lying in that hospital bed, not knowing if somewhere behind those closed eyes she was screaming for help. Why did Angie love the one person she should hate the most?

  "Come here," Will said, pulling her close, putting his arms around her. He leaned back on the couch, taking her with him. "Just stay like this for a while."

  Angie wanted to cry, but she couldn't let herself break down in front of Will. She pressed her face to his shoulder, smelling the detergent he used and the soy sauce that had dripped onto his tie. If she could stay like this, if she could just let him hold her, then maybe things would get better. Maybe they could make each other whole.

  She turned her face toward him and kissed his neck. His skin reacted, and she kissed his Adam's apple as he swallowed.

  He said, "We don't have to..."

  She cupped her hand around his neck and put her lips to his. Will was reluctant, but she teased the passion out of him, using her teeth and tongue until he started kissing her in earnest. His arms tensed as he gently lifted her up and laid her back on the couch. He kept his weight on his left elbow, his hand brushing her face as he kissed her neck.

  The cuff of his shirt had slipped back, and Angie saw the angry pink scar on the inside of his wrist. She had taken him to the hospital that night, stayed by his bed as she waited for him to wake up and realize that it hadn't worked, that he was still alive.

  Tentatively, she touched his wrist, tracing her ringer along the same path the razor blade had taken as it had flayed open his skin.

  Will jerked away, staring at her in shock.

  "I'm sorry," she apologized.

  He tried to sit up, but she grabbed his vest in her fists, pulling him back. "I said I'm sorry."

  "Angie—" He tried to pull away again, but she wouldn't let him. They struggled but Will would never use his full strength against her. She managed to pull him down, pressing her lips firmly to his. She arced up into him and he stopped resisting. Angie kissed him deeper, rougher than usual, and to her surprise he returned it with the same intensity.

  She felt her breath quicken, her mind blur. The weight of him on top of her was enough to bring tears to her eyes, and she slid her hand down into the waist of his pants, needing for this to go quickly before she lost herself.

  "Christ," she mumbled, pulling open his vest, tugging his shirt out of his pants, then his undershirt, so that there was room enough for her hand.

  He had pushed up her shirt, his mouth finding her bare breast. When she wrapped her hand around him, he lost his rhythm. She took over, using her free hand to slide down her panties. Angie guided him inside her before he could stop her.

  His breath caught as she thrust up to him, tightening herself around him, trying to make him come.

  "No," he whispered, struggling to slow down. His eyes were squeezed shut and he shook from the effort of restraining himself. She licked her tongue in his ear, bit the lobe, did everything in her power to force his release. He groaned loudly as he gave in, shuddering in climax.

  "Oh, God," he breathed. "Angie..."

  She let him kiss her some more, stopping him when his mouth started to move down on her. "No," she told him, pulling him back up to her face. "I need to go."

  He was sweating, his breathing hard as he kissed her breasts. "Let me taste you."

  The raw growl of his voice sent a tingle through her body. She bit her bottom lip, trying not to think about how good his mouth would feel down lower as his lips grazed her stomach.

  "No," she managed, gently pulling him back up. "I need to go."

  "Stay with me."

  Somehow, the begging quality to his voice made it easier for her to leave. "I've got work tomorrow."

  "So do I."

  She pushed him away mo
re firmly this time. "Will."

  He rolled off her and fell against the back of the couch with another groan, but this one was far from an expression of pleasure.

  She pulled her underwear back on as she stood. Her shirt was still crooked and she leaned over as she adjusted it.

  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?"

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  FEBRUARY 9, 2006 9:58 AM

  Martha Lam had apparently made not one but several phone calls. John had gotten a full refund on the rent he had paid at the flophouse and the room at Mr. Applebaum's was almost thirty dollars cheaper a month. Combined with the fifty bucks John had gotten for crawling through the vacuum tank, he might actually be able to eat this month.

  "Damn," Ray-Ray said. He was looking at a woman who had just pulled up with a Toyota Camry full of screaming kids. "She cain't help that she ugly, but the least she could do is stay at home."

  John gave him a sideways glance. "When'd you learn to speak in complete sentences?"

  "They's a lot more to a brother than what you see," Ray-Ray told him.

  He left John at the dryer and went to help wipe down one of the cars. John's uneasy peace with Ray-Ray had settled into some kind of friendliness on the other man's part since he'd taken him to the hospital. John wasn't sure what had brought about this transformation, but he wasn't about to complain. He had enough people after him right now. Anything that got Ray-Ray off his back was all right with him.

  The hospital visit had been a good thing for John, too. He still felt his heart skip in his chest when he thought about seeing Robin in the waiting room. She'd been wearing her work attire, but he couldn't help seeing past that to her soft skin, her full lips. The way she stood with her weight shifted to one leg, her hip jutting out. What would it be like to run his hand along that hip, pull her close to him? These were the kinds of thoughts that kept a man awake at night.

  Robin wasn't the reason John had gotten in to work early this morning, showing up even before Art. Moving from one place to the other wasn't a big deal. John had tossed his clothes into the cooler and used it as a suitcase as he walked the six blocks over to Mr. Applebaum's house. Once John was settled in, he went back to Ashby Street one more time and dug up the knife where he had buried it under a tree for safekeeping. He'd sweated all the way on the bus, scared he'd be caught with a weapon. At the car wash, John had dropped it in the vacuum canister and sat on the retaining wall under the magnolia tree until Art had driven up in his Cadillac, asking, "What's with you, Shelley? You bucking for a promotion?" as he locked his car door.

  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.

  It was one thing to set up John all those years ago, but to keep it up, to use his identity while he was locked away in prison... that was some kind of sick obsession. Michael hated him. You didn't hold on to another man's name for all these years unless you really fucking hated the guy. And the prick had obviously used his position on the police force to reach out to Ms. Lam, trying to get her to throw John back into Coastal with the pedophiles and rapists. It wasn't enough to frame him. He wanted John to suffer.

  John had adjusted to his loss of freedom over the years, letting himself believe on some level that he belonged with men like Ben Carver. He had been a bad kid, a bad son. Richard Shelley could have testified to that. 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.

  The crime scene photographs in the courtroom had been shocking, but John had been there, had seen her body with his own two eyes. The bite marks on her small breasts. The dark bruises and deep lacerations on her inner thighs. The way her eyes were still open, staring at the door like she thought her mother would walk through at any minute and wake her for church. Her mouth had been brimming with her own blood, her hair stuck to the pillow with it.

  That fucking bastard. That God damn sick bastard.

  It didn't stop with Mary Alice, though. Michael was still out there, still doing whatever the hell he wanted to do in John's name. And he was a cop. A cop! He could jam up John anytime, was probably sitting on his ass right now thinking of yet another way to put John in the frame for his own sick crimes. The thought of last night, the tips of John's fingers touching the folding knife, almost getting caught with a weapon in his hands, made him break out into a cold sweat. Michael could do anything. He could arrest John right now and there was nothing John could do about it.

  And maybe John deserved it. Maybe after what he had done to Michael's neighbor, he deserved to be tossed back in jail with all the other sick bastards. He had mutilated a child. He had used his own hands to defile that girl. It didn't seem right that he should get away with such a thing.

  The way things were looking, he probably wouldn't.

  The dryer stopped and John started folding the towels, piling them up in a rolling sixty-drum trashcan so they could move them around the cars as they worked. He needed to talk to Ben again. John had grown up in prison, but he thought like a prisoner, not a criminal. He needed someone to tell him what to do.

  "Are you John?"

  The woman in front of him was slim, about five-eight or -nine. Her black hair was in a pixie cut and she wore a close-fit cropped jacket over her tight blue jeans.

  "Can I help you?" he asked, looking for the telltale bulge under her jacket. She didn't look like a cop to him, her jacket was too nice, but John had never been good at spotting the bad guys.

  "You're John Shelley?" she asked.

  He glanced over her shoulder. Ray-Ray was sucking on a lollipop, but John could see his eyes were taking in the scene.

  John asked, "Do I know you?"

  "You moved," she said. "I thought you lived on Ashby Street."

  He tried to smile when what he really wanted to do was drop the towels and run. "What's going on?"

  She had her hands on her hips, and he thought about Ms. Lam. He couldn't help himself. He looked right at the metal cap screwed onto the vacuum tank.

  "I'm Kathy Keenan," she said. "A friend of your sister's."

  He dropped the towels. "Is Joyce—"

  "She's fine," the woman assured him. "You just need to talk to her."

  "I..." He looked down at the pile of towels, then back up at the woman. He didn't know who she was or why she was here, but she was crazy if she thought she could make Joyce do anything she didn't want to do.

  John knelt down to scoop up the towels. "She doesn't want to talk to me."

  "I know she doesn't," Kathy said. "But she needs to."

  "Who are you?"

  "I told you. I'm a friend of hers."

  "You can't know her very well if you think this will work."

  "I've shared her bed for the last twelve years, John. I think I pretty much know her better than anyone on earth."

  So, Joyce was gay. John wondered what Richard thought about that. One child a convicted rapist and murderer, the other queer as a three-dollar bill. John couldn't help but smile at the
probable magnitude of Richard's disappointment.

  Kathy had asked, "Does it bother you that your sister's a lesbian?"

  "I really don't think I have room to talk," John had admitted, all the while thinking, God, Richard must have been livid when he found out. His perfect Joyce was batting for the other team.