Karin Slaughter - Triptych

Michael asked, “How long you been on the job?”

“Twelve years.”

Michael figured Trent was at least ten years younger than him, but that didn’t tell him what he wanted to know. “Ex-military?” he asked.

“No,” Trent answered, opening the conference room door. The windows were actually clean in this room, and in the sunlight Michael could see a second scar running along the side of Trent’s face. The pink lightened to an almost white as it jagged from his ear down his neck, following his jugular and disappearing into his shirt collar.

Somebody had cut him pretty deep.

“Gulf War,” Michael said, putting his hand to his chest, thinking that might draw the man out. “You sure you weren’t enlisted?”

“Positive,” Trent replied, sitting down at the table. He opened his briefcase and pulled out a stack of brightly colored file folders. In profile, Michael could see his nose had been busted at least a couple of times and wondered if the man was a boxer. He was too thin, though, his body lean, his face angular. No matter what his past, there was something about the guy that set Michael on edge.

Trent was paging through the files, putting the folders into some kind of order, when he noticed Michael was still standing. He said, “Detective Ormewood, I’m on your team.”

“Is that so?”

“I don’t want any glory,” Trent said, though in Michael’s experience, that was what the “G” in “GBI” stood for. The state boys had a reputation for coming in, doing half the work and taking all of the credit.

Trent continued, “I don’t want to steal the spotlight or be on the news when we catch the bad guy. I just want to assist you in your job and then move on.”

“What makes you think I need assistance?”

Trent looked up from the files, studying Michael for a few seconds. He opened a fluorescent pink folder flat on the table and slid it toward Michael. “Julie Cooper of Tucker,” he said, naming a town about twenty miles outside Atlanta. “Fifteen years old. She was raped and beaten- almost to death-four months ago.”

Michael nodded, flipping through the file, not bothering to read the details. He got to the victim’s photograph and stopped. Long blonde hair, heavy eyeliner, too much lipstick for a girl that age.

Trent opened another folder, this one neon green. “Anna Linder, fourteen, of Snellville.”

Just north of Tucker.

“December third of last year, Linder was abducted while walking to her aunt’s house down the street from her home.” Trent passed the folder to Michael. “Raped, beaten. Same M.O.”

Michael flipped through the file, looking for the photo. Linder’s hair was dark, the bruises around her eyes even darker. He picked up the girl’s picture, studying it closer. Her mouth had been beaten pretty bad, the lip cut, blood dripping down her chin. She had some kind of glitter on her face that picked up the flash from the camera.

“She was found hiding in a ditch in Stone Mountain Park the next day.”

“Okay,” Michael said, waiting for the connection.

“Both girls report being attacked by a man wearing a black ski mask.” Trent laid out an orange folder, a photograph paper-clipped to the top sheet. “Dawn Simmons of Buford.”

Michael did a double take, thinking this girl couldn’t be more than ten. “She’s younger than the others,” he said, disgusted by the thought of some sick fuck touching the child. She wasn’t much older than Tim.

“She was assaulted six months ago,” Trent told him. “She reports that her attacker wore a black ski mask.”

Michael shook his head. Buford was an hour away and the girl was too young. “Coincidence.”

“I think so, too,” Trent agreed. “Guys like this don’t hunt outside their comfort area.”

Without realizing it, Michael had taken a seat at the table. He put down the photo of the ten-year-old and slid it back toward Trent, thinking he’d be sick if he looked at it one more minute. Jesus, her poor parents. How the hell did people live through this sort of thing?

Michael asked, “What’s that mean? Comfort area?”

Trent went back to his professor voice. “Child sexual predators have a specific age group they go after. A man who’s sexually attracted to ten-year-olds might think fifteen, sixteen, is too old. The same goes for a man who’s interested in teenagers. He’d probably be just as disgusted as you are by the thought of molesting a girl that young.”

Michael felt his stomach clench. Trent was so matter-of-fact about it, as if he was discussing the weather. He had to ask, “You got kids?”

“No,” Trent admitted, not returning the question. Maybe he already knew the answer, probably from Greer. Michael wondered what the bastard had said about Tim.

Trent continued, “I’ve put in a call to the parents in each case to see if we can talk to the girls, perhaps get some new information now that some time has passed since the attacks. From what I’ve seen, victims of these sorts of crimes remember more as they get some distance from the event.” He added, “It might be a waste of time, but then we might hear something that they couldn’t recall during the initial interviews.”

“Right,” Michael agreed, trying not to sound annoyed. He had worked plenty of rapes on his own and didn’t need a lesson.

“I think the perpetrator is probably a well-educated man,” Trent said. “Probably in his mid- to late-thirties. Unhappy with his job, unhappy with his home situation.”

Michael held his tongue. In his opinion, profiling was a load of shit. Except for the well-educated part, Trent could be talking about most of the men in the squad. Throw in banging his next-door neighbor and he’d be describing Michael.

“The files show a clear pattern of escalation,” Trent continued.

“Cooper, the first girl, was attacked outside a movie theater; quick, efficient. The whole thing took maybe ten minutes and all of it was out of range of the theater’s closed-circuit cameras. The second, Anna Linder, was abducted right off the street. He took her somewhere-she’s not sure where-in a car. He left her right outside the gates of Stone Mountain Park. Park police found her the next morning.”

“Any tire tracks?”

“About twelve hundred,” Trent answered. “The park had just started its annual Christmas lights show.”

Michael had taken Gina and Tim to see the lights. They went every year.

“DNA?” Michael asked.

“He wore a condom.”

“Okay,” Michael said. So he wasn’t a moron. “What does this have to do with my girl last night?”

Trent narrowed his eyes, like he wondered if Michael had heard a word he said. “Their tongues, Detective.” He slid the reports back over. “They all had their tongues bitten off.”

The tongue is basically like a piece of tough steak,“ Pete Hanson said, slipping on his latex gloves. He stopped, looking at Trent. ”I take you for a runner, sir. Is that correct?“

Trent didn’t seem surprised by the question. Being on the job for twelve years, Michael figured the man had been around his share of eccentric coroners.

He answered, “Yes, sir.”

“Long distance?” Yes.

“Marathons?”

“Yes.”

“Thought so.” Pete nodded to himself, like he had scored a point, though Michael had noticed that Will Trent hadn’t volunteered any information about himself.

Pete went back to the corpse lying on the table in the center of the room. Aleesha Monroe’s body was draped in a white sheet, her head exposed. The third eyelash was gone, the makeup removed. Thick sutures lined her forehead where her scalp and face had been peeled back to examine her skull and remove her brain.