Karin Slaughter - Triptych

“All right,” he soothed, using his key to open the front door. He knelt to unsnap her leash, and she skittered across the room, jumping onto the couch and ensconcing herself on the pillows. Every morning before he left for work, he propped the pillows up on the back of the couch and every evening Betty had managed to push them down to make herself a bed. He could have called it a throne, but that was an embarrassing thought for a grown man to have about a little dog.

Will went to his room and took off his jacket. He was unbuttoning his vest when the phone rang. At first, he didn’t recognize the high-pitched voice on the phone.

“Slow down,” Will said. “Who is this?”

“It’s Cedric,” the boy cried. “Jasmine’s gone.”

Cedric must have been waiting for Will, because the front door opened and the boy ran out of building nine as soon as Will pulled his car into the lot.

“You gotta do something,” the boy demanded. His face was puffy from crying. Gone was the wannabe gangster from that morning. He was a scared little kid who was worried about his sister.

“It’s going to be okay,” Will told him, knowing the words meant nothing but feeling compelled to say them.

“Come on.” Cedric took his hand and dragged him toward the building.

Will followed the boy up the three flights of stairs. On the landing, he was about to ask Cedric what was going on, but then he saw the old woman standing in the doorway.

She was in a faded purple housedress with matching socks that slouched down around her thick ankles. A cane was in one hand, a cordless telephone in the other. She wore glasses with black plastic rims and her hair stood out in disarray. A frown creased her face.

“Cedric,” she said, her deep tone resonating through the long hallway. “What are you doing with that man?”

“He a cop, Granny. He gonna help.”

“He is a cop,” the old woman corrected, sounding like a schoolteacher. “And I doubt that very seriously.”

Will was still holding Cedric’s hand, but he used his other one to find the badge in his pocket. He took a step forward to show it to the woman. “Cedric told me that your granddaughter is missing.”

She scrutinized the badge and the identification underneath. “You don’t look much like a cop.”

“No,” Will admitted, tucking his ID back into his pocket. “I’m trying to learn to take that as a compliment.”

“Cedric,” the woman snapped. “Go clean your room.”

“But, Gran-” She stopped him with a sharp look that sent him running.

The old woman opened the door wider and Will saw that her apartment was an exact duplicate of Aleesha Monroe’s. The couch obviously served as a bed; a pillow, sheets and a blanket were neatly folded on the end.

Two wingback chairs flanked the couch, slipcovers hiding obvious flaws underneath. The kitchen was clean but cluttered, dishes drying on a rack. Several pairs of underclothes hung from a laundry stand that was tucked into the corner. The bathroom door was open but the bedroom door was closed, a large poster of SpongeBob SquarePants taped to the outside.

“I’m Eleanor Allison,” she informed him, hobbling toward the chair by the window. “I suppose you want to sit down?”

Will realized that his mouth had dropped open. Books were everywhere-some packed into flimsy-looking cases that looked ready to fall over, more stacked around the floor in neat piles.

“Are you surprised that a black woman can read?”

“No, I just-”

“You like to read yourself?”

“Yes,” Will answered, thinking he was only telling a partial lie. For every three audiobooks he listened to, he made himself read at least one complete book. It was a miserable task that took weeks, but he made himself do it to prove that he could.

Eleanor was watching him, and Will tried to mend things. He guessed. “You were a teacher?”

“History,” she told him. She rested her cane beside her leg and propped her foot on a small stool in front of the chair. He saw that her ankles were wrapped in bandages.

She explained, “Arthritis. Had it since I was eighteen years old.”

“I’m sorry.

“Not your fault, is it?” She motioned him toward the chair opposite but he did not take a seat. “Tell me something, Mr. Trent. Since when does a special agent from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation give a hill of beans about a missing black girl?”

He was getting annoyed with her assumptions. “There weren’t any white ones missing today, so we drew straws.”

She gave him a sharp look. “You’re not funny, young man.”

“I’m not a racist pig, either.”

She locked eyes with him for a moment, then nodded as if she’d made up her mind about him. “For goodness’ sake, sit.”

Will finally did as he was told, sinking so low into the old chair that his knees were practically around his ears.

He tried to get to the point. “Cedric called me.”

“And how do you know Cedric?”

“I met him this morning. I was out here with a detective from the Atlanta Police Department investigating the death of the young woman who lived upstairs.”

“Young woman?” she echoed. “She was forty if she was a day.”

Will had heard Pete Hanson say as much during the autopsy, but hearing the old woman say it now somehow gave it more resonance. Aleesha Monroe had been at least twenty-five years older than the other victims. What had made the killer break from his usual target group?

Eleanor asked, “Why is the GBI mixed up in the death of a drug-addicted prostitute?”

“I’m with a division that reaches out to local law enforcement when help is needed.”

“That’s a very fine response, young man, but you’ve not really answered my question.”

“You’re right,” he admitted. “Tell me when you realized that Jasmine was missing.”

She studied him, her gaze steely, lips pursed. He forced himself not to look away, wondering how she had been in the classroom, if she was one of the types who let the dumb kids sit in the back or if she would have dragged him by the ear to the front row, yelling at him for not knowing the answer to the question on the board.

“All right,” Eleanor decided. “I assumed Jasmine was in her room doing homework. When I called her for supper, she didn’t come. I looked in the room and she wasn’t there.”

“What time was this?”

“Around five o’clock.”

Will glanced at his watch, but the digital clock on the TV told him the actual time. “So, to your knowledge, she’s been gone about five hours?”

“Are you going to tell me I need to wait another day before it matters?”

“I wouldn’t drive all the way down here to tell you that, Ms. Allison. I would just call you on the phone.”

“You think she’s just another black girl run off with a man, but I’m telling you, I know that girl.”

“She wasn’t in school today,” Will reminded her.

The old woman looked down. Will saw that her hands were like claws in her lap, arthritis twisting them into unusable lumps. “She was suspended for back-talking a teacher.”

“Cedric, too?”

“This is turning adversarial,” she noted, but she still kept talking. “I don’t get around very easily, especially since they took my Vioxx away. Their mother has been incarcerated for more than half of Cedric’s life. She’s a heroin addict, just like Aleesha Monroe. The only difference is that my Glory got caught.”

Will knew better than to interrupt.

“I laid down the law with Glory. Stayed up nights, followed her whenever she left the house. I was that child’s skin, I was so close to her. She hated every minute of it-still hates me now-but I was her mother and that’s what I was going to do. Same with them.” With difficulty, she lifted a hand, indicating the closed bedroom door. Will saw a shadow move underneath and guessed that Cedric was listening.