Triptych2

by Karin Slaughter

  The staple remover was in his coat pocket and he put it beside the stack of reports on his desk. He took two rulers out of his desk drawer and adjusted the shade on the desk lamp so that the bulb faced the wall, casting little more than a sliver of light onto the work surface.

  "All right, handsome," Will mumbled, looking at the photograph stapled to the top of the next report. The guy had about three teeth and the kind of greasy, thin hair that you only ever found in your lesser trailer parks.

  Will removed the photograph and set it aside. He put the two rulers on top of the page and isolated the first line of text. Using the tips of his index fingers, he blocked out individual words so that he could examine them one-by-one. His tendency was to read backward, and separating words with his fingers kept his eyes from darting where they shouldn't go. Oddly, long words were easiest. Will was always seeing something simple, like "never" and turning it into "very" so that the sentence made absolutely no sense by the time he got to the end.

  He picked out the three words at the top of the page, reading the name aloud so that he could better comprehend it. "Carter, Isaiah Henry." It didn't come out that easy, though. First, he said Cash, then Ford, probably because of the "car" part at the beginning of the last name. Isaiah was easy. Henry was another matter.

  Christ, he was stupid.

  Will looked up at the blank computer monitor in front of him, blinked to clear his vision. He turned on the computer just to buy some time while his mind played out the usual taunts, telling him he was probably retarded, that maybe he had something wrong with his brain that no one had ever bothered to figure out. God knew he had been beaten in the head enough times to knock something loose. At the end of the day, none of the possible reasons for his problem mattered and none of it changed the fact that there were kids in third grade who could read better than Will. And he was talking about the stupid ones who sat in the back.

  The computer booted up, the fan whirring like the propeller on a model plane. Will clicked open his e-mail program and stared at the in-box for a couple of minutes before deleting an offer to extend the warranty on an appliance he did not even own. There was nothing else to distract him.

  He returned to the stack of offenders, trying to make a game of it. The photograph was of a guy in his sixties. His white hair was combed in a neat part and his deep blue eyes made his ordinary face look more interesting. Put a hat on him and he could be a traveling salesman. Give him a Bible and he could be a deacon at the local church.

  Slowly, Will slid the rulers down the page, reading line by line. A feed supply salesman by occupation, the man was a rapist who enjoyed torturing his victims. He had been sentenced for twelve years but gotten out in seven for good behavior. What exactly constituted good behavior for a man who pulled the fingernails off the hands of a twenty-two-year-old college student, Will was uncertain.

  Another photo came off, another sheet of paper was put under the rulers. Will kept at it for hours, reading all the horrifying details of the sexual predators who had served their time and been paroled for good behavior. None of them did their full time, all but a handful looked like the sort of man you would smile at if you saw him walking down the street. Time crawled by, but Will did not look up until he was three rap sheets away from being finished.

  Will stretched back, feeling his spine adjust against the hard edge of the chair. His knee bumped the desk, and the computer monitor flickered on.

  It was past midnight. He might as well take a break and check his e-mail before he deciphered the details of the last three offenders.

  There was a new mail from Amanda in his in-box, but he had no desire to read it. There were two requests from Caroline, Amanda's secretary, asking about evidence in a case. Will opened his speech program and used the microphone to dictate a response, then did spell-check and had the computer read it back. When he was satisfied the words made sense, he highlighted the text and pasted it into the body of an e-mail, then did another spell-check before sending it off.

  A hot stock tip had come in while he was doing this and Will clicked it into the trash. Next, he went into the trash folder and deleted all the crap he had sent there.

  Will figured if there was an Olympic medal in wasting time, he was at least qualified enough to be an alternate. Surely there was more he could do, though. He opened up his spam folder, highlighted everything and slid the cursor over to delete. A message popped up and judging by the shape of it, Will assumed it was asking him if he was sure he wanted to do this. Will clicked the blue button that meant okay, then watched the junk e-mails drain off the list.

  He scrolled back into his unread mail, thinking he might take a moment to check out what Amanda had to say. A new e-mail from Caroline had come in. She was probably just making a joke about both of them working so late, but at this point, Will would have opened an herbal Viagra offer to postpone reading reports for even a second.

  There was a jpeg file attached to Caroline's e-mail, and he clicked on download before highlighting the text of the e-mail so he could copy it into his speech program. Betty stirred on the couch, giving a muffled bark, and he turned around to make sure she was okay. The little dog was on her back with her skinny legs kicking in the air as she dreamed about... whatever it was little dogs dreamed about. Cheese?

  Will turned back around, the grin on his face dropping when he saw what was on his monitor. The photo had finished downloading. The boy was probably sixteen, his hair long to his collar, his mouth in a half-smile that came automatically from having a camera stuck in your face at every holiday or family outing. He held a signboard in front of his narrow chest, the skin of his fingertips ragged where he'd bitten his nails down to the quick. Will did not try to read the sign; he knew it told a name, a date of conviction, a charge. The eyes were what gave the boy away. A lot could change from fifteen to thirty-five, but the eyes were constant: the almond shape of the opening, the variation of color in the iris, the long, long lashes that were almost like a girl's.

  The photo from the rap sheet Will had been about to read was still at his elbow. He held it up, thinking that there was no mistaking that the boy on the screen had grown up to be the felon in the photo.

  Will pasted Caroline's mail into the speech program. He turned up the sound to his speakers, then clicked the menu bar and scrolled down to speak. The words were slow and metallic, their content enough to make him feel like he had been punched in the gut.

  The program finished. Will did not need to hear it a second time. He grabbed his car keys.

  Angie's lieutenant had told Will she was at a liquor store on Cheshire Bridge Road. Will found the store easily enough, but Angie was not among the prostitutes leaning against the building.

  He said, "I'm looking for someone."

  "Me, too, handsome."

  "No," Will said. He knew Angie didn't go by her real name when she did this, but she had never told him her chosen alias. "She's about five-eight. Brown hair, brown eyes. Olive skin."

  "Sounds like me, sweetheart." This came from a short platinum blonde with a gap between her front teeth so pronounced that she whistled when she talked.

  Another one said, "You looking for Robin, baby?"

  "I don't know," he admitted, turning to the older woman. She had a black eye that was made worse by the makeup she had spackled over it.

  "I'm Lola." She pushed herself away from the wall. "You her brother?"

  "Yes," Will managed, not bothering to explain. "I need to talk to her."

  "Give it a minute, honey," Lola soothed him. "She went back to the pokey with a date about ten minutes ago. She should be finishing up about now."

  "Thank you," Will said. He tucked his hands into his pockets, realizing it was cold. He had been in such a hurry to leave the house that he hadn't even brought his coat.

  Behind him, a car door slammed. A woman got out and while Will was watching, she reached between her legs, wiped herself and shook out her hand. She saw Will, then glanced back at the oth
er girls, a question in her eyes.

  Lola provided, "He's Robin's brother."

  The woman walked her hooker's stroll past Will, giving him the once-over. "I had a brother like that, I would'a never left home."

  Will glanced at his watch. He started to pace to try to work out the tension that was coiling every muscle he had into a tight ball, but each second that passed with Angie not showing her face only served to make it worse.

  She always did this. She always put herself right in the middle of trouble and did not give a damn that Will suffered the consequences. As long as he had known her, Angie had pushed people as hard as she could, constantly testing their limits. It was a game that would get her killed one day, and then Will would be the one sitting on the couch, some other cop the unlucky bastard who had to hold his hand and tell him that she had been found strangled, beaten, raped, murdered.

  The girls had been trash-talking, but Will noticed they'd turned quiet. He heard a rustling from the woods and Angie came out, flashlight in her hand.

  She looked at Will, then the girls, then back at Will. Her mouth was set, her eyes lit with fury. She turned on her heel, heading back into the woods, and Will followed her.

  "Stop," he said, trying to keep up. "Would you just stop?" She wouldn't listen. All he could do was follow the beam of her flashlight.

  About twenty feet into the woods, she turned on him. "What the fuck are you doing here?" Her tone was sharp as a knife. "I'm just your brother paying you a call."

  Angie looked over his shoulder and Will followed suit. He could clearly see the girls standing in front of the liquor store. They made no attempt to hide their interest.

  She whispered hoarsely, trying to keep her voice down. "This is the wrong fucking place for this, Will. Lola already thinks something's up." 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.

  "Read it," he ordered. "Read it to me so that I know I've got it right." Angie shined the flashlight on the first page. He saw her eyes moving, reading the words. She looked up, said, "Will," like he was being unreasonable. "Read it."

  She held the flashlight under her arm, training the beam on the first page, then flipping to the second and third.

  Finally, she looked up again. "So?"

  He wanted to shake her. "Did you read what it says?"

  Taking her time, she turned back to the first page and read aloud in a bored tone, " 'Jonathan Winston Shelley, six-one, one hundred ninety-five pounds, brown hair, brown eyes. Prior record: theft by taking. Received May 10, 1986, Coastal State Prison, maximum security, special offender's wing, age sixteen. Paroled July 22, 2005, age thirty-five. Registered sexual offender, pedophile.' " She looked back up, repeated, "So?"

  "Read the last page," he said, meaning the part he'd printed out from Caroline's e-mail. Shelley's rap sheet had been brief, just listing the highlights of his crimes, but the records Caroline had found filled in all the blanks in horrid detail.

  "Read it," he demanded.

  She didn't want to. He could tell that from the steely way she glared at him.

  He asked, "You want me to read it for you?"

  "I only get an hour break for supper."

  He snatched the pages from her hand, tried to find the right section. He was so angry that the words kept reversing on the page, their shapes morphing one into the other. He tried, "Ca..." Will felt a knife-sharp pain in the front of his temple. God damnit, he knew at least two of the words. "Jonathan Shelley." He tried to pick out another one. "Drain. No, he—dead. He killed—"

  Angie put her hand over his. She tried to take the report but he wouldn't let go. "Come on," she coaxed, gently, pulling the pages from his grasp.

  Will clenched his fists as he stared at the ground. Christ. No wonder she couldn't stand to be with him.

  She spoke softly. "I'm sorry."

  He wanted to sink into the ground, just magically to somewhere else.

  “I’m sorry.

  "I read it before."

  "I know you did," she told him, taking his hand again. "Look at me, Will. I'm sorry."

  He could not look at her.

  "You want me to read it out loud?"

  "I don't care what you do."

  "Will."

  He knew he was sounding petulant, but couldn't stop. "I really don't."

  The flashlight had fallen to the ground and she reached down to pick it up, still holding on to him. She shined the light on the pages and read, " 'On June 15, 1985, Shelley sexually assaulted Mary Alice Finney, a fifteen-year-old white female, then removed her tongue with a serrated kitchen knife, resulting in her death. In addition, Shelley made several deep bite marks in the victim's flesh and urinated on the body. Shelley's bloody fingerprints were found at the scene and on the body. The murder weapon was found in Shelley's bedroom closet. Known drug addictions: heroin, cocaine.'''

  "Angie," was all he could say.

  She was silent, letting a couple of cars pass before she said, "Remember I told you that Michael Ormewood came by here that one time?"

  He was sick of hearing about Ormewood. If he never heard the man's name again, Will would die a happy man.

  Angie said, "He told us to look out for a recently released sex offender named John Shelley. He said he was really a bad guy and to stay away from him." She looked down at the rap sheet. "Michael went to Decatur High School. He must have grown up in the area."

  "Did you manage to ask him about his childhood years while you were going down on him?"

  "Do you want me to go down on you, too, Will? Is that what this is about?"

  He slapped her hand away. "Stop it."

  She told him, "I read his personnel file."

  "You're real interested in Michael for some reason. Why is he different? What makes him so special?"

  "You're not listening to what I'm saying." She was talking to him like he was a child and he did not like it. "Michael went to Decatur High School, so he must have lived in the area. He was a few years older than John, but he would have heard about the crime. He would have known the details about the tongue. Why didn't he mention it to you? Why didn't he say, 'Hey, this reminds me of something that happened about twenty years ago right down the street from me.' "

  Will was too upset to even consider the question.

  She said, "John told me that someone was blackmailing him."

  Will laughed. "You think that Michael Ormewood knows there's a guy out there raping and murdering women, taking out their tongues, but instead of arresting the doer, Michael's blackmailing him? For what? What could John Shelley possibly have that Michael Ormewood would want?"

  "How do you explain Michael telling me to look out for John Shelley? How do you explain his not mentioning this same thing happening to a girl in the same neighborhood where he grew up?"

  Will tried to make her see reason. "How do you explain the other girls?"

  "What other girls?"

  "Last year, two girls were sexually assaulted by a man wearing a black ski mask. Both of them had their tongues bitten off."

  Her lips parted in surprise.

  "John Shelley's been out seven months," Will told her. "Both girls lived thirty, forty minutes away from here." She was silent, so he added, "Julie Cooper's fifteen. The other girl was only fourteen. What do these crimes have in common? What's the link here?"

  Angie said, "You know perps have their way of doing things. Why would he deviate? Why would he cut off some and bite off the others? Why would he go from little girls to a grown woman?"

  Will recalled Michael's answer to this question, but he did not share it with Angie.

  She asked, "Why didn't you tell me about the other cases before?"

  "When, Angie? Over dinner? Maybe when we were holding hands, taking a long stroll in the park?"

  "You could have told me."

  "Why?" he asked. "Who knew you'd end up screwing around with a convicted pedophile?"


  Her head jerked up. "I haven't slept with him."

  "Yet."

  Angie gave a heavy sigh.

  "Here's an indisputable fact: Shelley raped and killed a fifteen-year-old girl. He cut out her tongue."

  "He's not..." She looked back at Shelley's photograph. "Whatever he did, he's not that guy anymore."

  "Julie Cooper was fifteen," Will told her. "He raped her in an alley behind a movie theater. He bit off her tongue."

  Angie shook her head.

  "Anna Linder was fourteen. They found her in Stone Mountain Park the next day. She was holding her tongue in her hand like a security blanket. They had to pry it from her fingers."