Karin Slaughter - Triptych

“The pross?” He hadn’t even thought to pull her record.

“You don’t remember her?” Angie asked. “We banged her up a couple of times until she hooked up with Baby G.”

Michael answered “Yeah,” though Angie shouldn’t really expect him to remember one hooker out of the thousands they had arrested on the weekend sweeps. Some Saturday nights, they called out a wagon just to transport all the girls to the station. Cabs lined up outside the precinct to take them right back out onto the street a couple of hours later.

Michael began, “I just-”

The elevator door dinged behind him. Michael looked over his shoulder and saw Will Trent.

“Shit,” Michael muttered.

“Kit Kat,” Trent said, and Michael’s brain took its sweet time figuring out what the fuck the guy was talking about. Trent stood in front of the vending machine, digging in his pocket for change.

Michael decided to make nice. “This is Angie Polaski,” he said. Then, as if it wasn’t obvious from the way she was dressed, he added, Vice.

Trent was sticking coins into the machine. He gave her a nod, but his eyes didn’t quite meet hers. “Good morning, Detective Polaski.”

“Trent’s with the GBI,” Michael said. “Greer called him in to give us a hand with the Monroe case.”

Michael was watching Trent, waiting for the guy to point out that Greer hadn’t actually called him, that he’d shown up at the lieutenant’s doorstep on his own. Trent, for his part, was tracing his finger along the glass front of the machine, trying to read the code under the Kit Kat bars so he could press it into the control panel. He was squinting; Michael figured the guy needed glasses.

“Oh, fer fucksakes,” Angie muttered. “It’s E-six.” She punched the code in herself, her garishly long fake fingernails clicking on the plastic keys. She told Michael, “I’ll get the file on Monroe.”

She was walking back toward her squad before Michael could think to say anything else. He saw Trent watching her walk, the way her ass moved in the high heels.

“I worked with her a while back,” Michael told him. “She’s all right.”

Trent peeled back the wrapper on the candy bar and took a bite.

Michael felt the need to explain. “She’s kind of got an attitude.”

“If I had to dress that way for work every day, I don’t imagine I’d be very cheerful.”

Michael watched Trent’s jaw work as he chewed. The scar on his cheek seemed more pronounced. “How’d you get the scar?”

Trent looked at his hand. “Nail gun,” he said, and Michael could see a pink scar cutting through the skin on the webbing between the man’s thumb and index finger.

That hadn’t been the scar Michael had meant, but he played along. “You into home repair or something?”

“Habitat for Humanity.” Trent shoved the last of the Kit Kat into his mouth and tossed the wrapper into the trashcan. “One of my fellow volunteers shot me with a galvanized nail.”

Michael felt another piece of the puzzle slide into place. Habitat for Humanity was a volunteer group that built homes for low-income families.

Most cops eventually ended up volunteering for something. Working the streets, you tended to forget that there were actually good people out there. You tried to salve this wound in your psyche by helping people who actually wanted your help. Michael had worked at a children’s shelter before Tim had been born. Even Leo Donnelly had volunteered with the local Little League team until they’d told him he couldn’t smoke on the field.

Trent said, “I’d like to see the crime scene.”

“We tossed her place last night,” Michael told him. “You think we missed something?”

“Not at all,” Trent countered. Michael tried to find any guile in his tone but came up empty. “I’d just like to get a feel for the place.”

“You do this with the other cases?”

“Yes,” Trent said, “I did.”

Angie was back, her high heels click-clacking on the tile floor. She held out a yellow file folder. “This is what I’ve got on Monroe.”

Trent didn’t reach for the file, so Michael took it. He flipped open the cover, seeing Aleesha Monroe’s mug shot. She was attractive for what she was. The hardness in her eyes was a challenge as she stared straight into the camera. She looked irritated, probably doing the math, figuring how much money she was going to lose before she made bail.

“Her pimp’s Baby G,” Angie told them. “Mean motherfucker. Been up for assault, rape, attempted murder-probably ordered a hit on two other guys, but there’s no way they can pin it on him.” She indicated her mouth, showing her front teeth. “Has a gold grill with crosses cut into them like he’s Jesus’s own.”

Michael asked, “Where does he hang out?”

“At the Homes,” she said. “His grandmother lives in the same building as Aleesha.”

Trent had tucked his hands into his pockets again, and he was staring at Polaski like she was a Martian from space. His silence was annoying, and he exuded an air of superiority, like he knew more than he was saying and thought it was some kind of joke that they couldn’t figure it out.

Michael asked him, “You got anything to add to this?”

“It’s your case, Detective,” Trent answered. He told Angie, “Thank you for your assistance, ma’am,” flashing what might have been a smile on someone less patronizing.

Angie looked at Michael, then Trent, then back at Michael. She lifted an eyebrow, asking a question Michael couldn’t answer. “Whatever,” she muttered, holding up her hand in the universal sign of dismissal. She turned her back on both of them, and Michael was too pissed to admire the view this time.

He asked Trent, “What’s your fucking problem?”

Trent seemed surprised by his tone. “I’m sorry?”

“You gonna just stand there all day or are you here to get your hands dirty?”

“I told you-I’m just here to advise.”

“Well, I’ve got some advice for you, Mr. Here to Advise,” Michael said, his fists clenching so hard he could feel his fingernails digging into his palms. “Don’t fuck with me.”

Trent didn’t seem threatened by the warning, but considering Michael had to crane his neck up to give it, this didn’t come as a complete surprise.

“All right,” Trent said. Then, as if that had settled everything, he asked, “Would you mind going to the Homes again? I’d really like to see the crime scene.”

Everything Will Trent said and did grated on Michael’s nerves, from his “of course,” when Michael said he would drive to the way he stared blankly out the car window as they traveled up North Avenue toward the Homes. The GBI agent reminded him of those geeky kids in high school, the ones who kept slide rules in their breast pockets and quoted obscure lines from Monty Python. No matter how many times he watched it, Michael still didn’t get Monty Python and he sure as shit didn’t get geeks like Trent. There was a reason these guys got the shit beaten out of them in school. There was a reason it was guys like Michael doing the beating.

Michael took a deep breath, then coughed, his lungs still pissed about the cigarette. He thought about Tim, how his son wasn’t normal, how this attracted abuse from other kids. There was already a group of bullies at Tim’s school who had given him some grief-stealing his hat, flattening his sandwich at the lunch table. The teachers tried to stop it, but they couldn’t be everywhere all the time and some of them weren’t real happy to begin with about Tim’s being mainstreamed into their classrooms. Maybe Will Trent was Michael’s karma playing out. He was being tested. Be nice to this freak and maybe Tim would get the same kind of pass.