Karin Slaughter - Triptych

Woody asked, “You think you can handle a little drink, little girl?”

Her lips went into this sexy kind of half-smile. “I can handle it.”

“Mary Alice,” John said.

Woody had taken away his hand and wrapped his arm around Mary Alice’s shoulders. He licked his lips as he looked down her shirt, telling John, “Shut up, Cousin.”

Mary Alice laughed. “Yeah, John, shut up.”

Woody pulled her closer in and she tilted up her head. He kept his eyes locked on John’s as he pressed his open mouth to Mary Alice’s.

She started to kiss him back and John felt like somebody had ripped his heart out of his chest. He stood helpless as Woody’s hand went down Mary Alice’s blouse, cupped her breast like groping her was something he did every day. His mouth got wider against Mary Alices and she jerked away, coming to her senses a second later than she should have.

She yelled, “Stop it!” as she tumbled toward John.

John caught her, holding her up. The button had ripped off her shirt where Woody’s hand had reached inside.

“You’re disgusting,” she told Woody, clasping the blouse closed, tears springing into her eyes.

Woody was smiling. “Come on, baby. Don’t be like that.”

“I can’t believe you,” she cried. “Your tongue is disgusting.”

His smile became more sinister. “Watch it now.”

She curled in closer to John, crying, “Please, take me home.”

John started to lead her away, his eyes on Woody, not liking the way his cousin was staring at them.

“Get back here,” Woody ordered, reaching out for her again.

“Leave her alone!” John yelled, fists clenched. Woody had about a hundred pounds on him but John firmly believed he could and would kick his ass if he so much as touched another hair on Mary Alice’s head.

“Whoa.” Woody held up his hands, taking a step back. “Didn’t know you’d already claimed her, little man. Go on. Take her home to her mommy.”

“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. “Best man wins.”

“Damn straight.”

“Here,” Woody said, digging into his front pocket. “Parting gift.” He tossed a bag of powder to John. “No hard feelings, right, Cousin?”

John had found out about the news story by accident. He had been vacu-U uming out the cargo space of a mud-splattered Subaru Forrester. He picked up a stack of newspapers to throw in the trash and the whole pile fell from his hand like playing cards scattered on a table. He bent down to gather up the pages and saw two words he had never noticed before: Local Edition.

The Subarus owner was from Clayton County, but John knew if there was a special insert for one town, there had to be one for the others.

He had told Art he was having stomach problems so he could leave work early and headed straight downtown to the main branch of the Fulton County Public Library. The newspaper’s online archive required a credit card for access, so instead he requested microfiche of the Gwinnett County local editions going back the last three months. Two hours later, he’d found what he was looking for. The story was dated December 4, 2005.

SNELLVILLE GIRL ABDUCTED FROM LOCAL NEIGHBORHOOD.

There weren’t many details. No name was mentioned, just the age- fourteen-and that she had been walking from her home to visit an aunt down the street. Obviously, the family wasn’t talking to the press and there was no mention of suspects or leads the police were following. John scanned the next few weeks and found only one more story. This one added the detail that the girl had been found hiding in a ditch the next day.

John’s heart had been in his throat from the moment he’d found the article. Slowly, he put the pieces of the puzzle together. Ben’s game of what-if kept coming back to mind. What if Woody had been using John’s identity to cover his tracks for the last six years? What if Woody had assumed John would never get out of prison? What if Woody found out John was walking among the free and had decided to do something about it?

The car behind beeped its horn and John sped up, taking the first side street he came to and pulling up behind a parked cable truck. His heart was pounding so hard that he felt dizzy. Vomit swirled in the back of his throat, threatening to come up in a hot rush of panic and fear.

He put his head on the steering wheel, playing out the night before. Sunday. Super Bowl Sunday. The fucking Falcons were playing that night and John didn’t want to watch it on TV, didn’t want to hear the game on the radio. He wanted to see what Woody was doing, wanted to watch him like he could stop what had happened from happening again. And again.

The wife had gone to work and Woody had waited thirty minutes before heading out. He had taken his usual route into Atlanta, but this time he’d turned into Grady Homes. John had followed him, so tense he’d forgotten to keep back, a couple of times thinking for sure Woody had seen him, that he’d been caught.

A white guy driving a dark blue Ford Fairlane through the projects on a late Sunday afternoon was too conspicuous, but John had followed him in anyway. When Woody had stopped in front of a row of hookers, John had driven past him, thinking he’d be better served keeping an eye on his cousin in the rearview mirror. Nothing ever worked out as planned, though, and when Woody drove with the hooker to the back of the complex, John got out of his car and followed on foot.

Now, John broke into a cold sweat when he thought about what had happened next, what he had seen. He could still hear it, those piercing screams, the primal fight for life.

John got out of the car, nodding to the guy in the cable truck. Casual. Cool. He belonged here.

He tucked his hands into his pockets as he walked down Woody’s tree-lined street, trying to convey the image that he was just a normal guy going for a stroll, even though having his hands in his pockets made him uncomfortable; they didn’t allow pockets in prison.

The woman John guessed was the grandmother took the kid to school Monday mornings. She did some shopping after, sometimes had coffee with her friends. She stayed out of the house for at least an hour and that was all John needed.

He took the same route behind the houses, head up, whistling like he didn’t have a care in the world. He trudged through the backyards, keeping a careful eye on the houses, figuring that in a working-class neighborhood like this most people were either at work or too busy to look out their back windows.

The chain-link fence was still broken. John hopped over it, heading straight for the back door as he slipped on a pair of latex gloves he had stolen from the guys in the detail shop. Woody didn’t have a dog, but there was a dog door cut into the bottom panel of the back door. John was too big to fit through, but he reached his arm in, feeling blindly for the lock. His fingers grazed the knob and he twisted the catch.

He stood back up, looking around to make sure he wasn’t being watched, then opened the door. John tensed as he waited for an alarm to go off. He wasn’t an experienced burglar, but he assumed Woody was too arrogant to spend money on an alarm system.

He was a cop, for Chrissakes.

John bypassed the kitchen and went straight to the family room. He went to the desk in the corner, ignoring the big-screen TV, the digital equipment lying around the house that screamed out that Woody made a good living, that he could afford to buy an expensive pair of shoes or a nice meal whenever he wanted. Hell, he could afford a lot of things, couldn’t he? Two identities, to begin with. What else was he up to?