Karin Slaughter - Triptych

Michael did not like the way the doctor was looking at him, and he sure as hell didn’t want to hear his opinions on sexual predators. He said, “Tell Trent I’m downstairs when he’s finished yapping on the phone.”

He left through the emergency exit, taking the steps at a full trot. His instinct was to get into his car and leave Trent with his thumb up his ass, but he wasn’t about to fuck around with the guy. Even if Greer didn’t call him on it, Michael knew better than to make an enemy of the well-dressed asshole from the GBI.

“Where’s the fire?” Leo asked. He was standing at the bottom of the stairs smoking a cigarette.

“Give me one,” Michael said.

“Thought you quit.”

“You my mother?” Michael reached into Leo’s shirt pocket and took the pack.

Leo clicked the lighter and Michael took a deep drag. They were on the garage level of the building. The odor of car exhaust and rubber was overwhelming, but the cigarette smoke burning through Michael’s nostrils cut the smell.

“So,” Leo began. “Where’s fucknuts?”

Michael let out a stream of smoke, feeling the nicotine calm him. “Upstairs with Pete.”

Leo scowled. Pete had banned him from the morgue after a predictably ill-timed joke. “I went down to Records.”

Michael squinted past the smoke. “Yeah?”

“Will Trent’s file is sealed.”

“Sealed?”

Leo nodded.

“How do you get your file sealed?” Got me.

They both smoked for a minute, silent in their thoughts. Michael looked down at the floor, which was covered with cigarette butts. The building was strictly nonsmoking, but telling a bunch of cops they couldn’t do something was like telling a monkey not to throw its shit.

Michael asked, “Why’d Greer call him in? Him specifically, I mean. This SCAT team, whatever the fuck it is.”

“Greer didn’t call him.” Leo raised his eyebrows like he was enjoying the mystery. “Trent was sitting in his office when Greer got to work.”

Michael felt his heart start beating double time in his chest. The nicotine was getting to him, making him light-headed. “That’s not how it works. The state boys can’t just come in and take over a case. They have to be asked in.”

“Sounded to me last night like Greer was gonna ask him anyway. What’s the big deal how it came down?”

“Never mind.” Despite Leo’s disgusting people skills, the man knew a lot of people on the force. He had made an art out of developing contacts and could usually get the dirt on anybody.

Michael asked, “You able to find out anything about him?”

Leo shrugged, winking his eye against the smoke from his cigarette. “Sharon down in Dispatch knows a guy who dated a girl he worked with.”

“Christ,” Michael hissed. “Next you’re gonna tell me you gotta friend who knows somebody who’s gotta friend who-”

“You wanna hear or not?”

Michael bit back what he really wanted to say. “Go.”

Leo took his time, rubbing his cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, taking a drag, then letting it out slow. Michael was two seconds from throttling him when Leo finally provided, “The news is that he’s a good cop. Doesn’t make a lot of friends-”

“No shit.”

“Yeah.” Leo chuckled, then coughed, then smacked his lips like he was swallowing it back down.

Michael looked at the cigarette in his hand, his stomach turning.

Leo paused, made sure he had Michael’s attention. “He’s got an eighty-nine percent clearance rate.”

Michael felt sick, but not because of the smoke. In its infinite wisdom, the Federal government had called for measuring the clearance rate-the number of solved cases-in each police agency so that some pencil pusher in Washington could track the progress on his little charts. They called it accountability, but to most cops it was just a shitload more paperwork. Any idiot could have predicted that this would cause a massive pissing contest among the detectives, and Greer fed into it by posting their numbers each month.

Trent had them all beat by about twenty points.

“Well,” Michael said, forcing himself to laugh. “It’s easy to solve a case when you take it over from some cop who’s already done all the work.”

“This SKIT thing is new to him.”

“SCAT,” Michael corrected, knowing Leo was trying to bait him but unable to stop playing.

“Whatever,” Leo mumbled. “What I’m saying is, Trent was working major crime before he was tapped.”

“Good for him.”

“He had a huge case a few years back with some gal over in kiddie crimes.”

“Gal got a name?”

Leo shrugged again. “Couple of guys were snatching kids down in Florida, swapping them back and forth with their buddies in Montana.

It was all going out of Hartsfield; they were moving them through there like cattle. Your buddy’s team cracked it open in a month. Gal gets a big promotion, Trent stays where he is.“

“He was head of the team?” Yep.

“”Why didn’t he get promoted?“

“Have to ask him that.”

“If I could ask him, I wouldn’t be here talking to you.”

Leo’s eyes flashed, like his feelings had been hurt. “That’s all I got, man. Trent’s a straight arrow, knows his job. You want more, you need to call somebody downtown and find out yourself.”

Michael stared at his cigarette, watching it burn. Gina would kill him if she saw him smoking. She’d smell it on his hands as soon as he got home.

He dropped the butt onto the ground, grinding it in with his heel. “Is Angie still working Vice?”

“Polaski?” Leo asked, like he didn’t quite believe his ears. “You don’t wanna go fucking with that pollack.”

“Answer the fucking question.”

Leo took out another cigarette and lit it from the first. “Yeah. Last I heard.”

“If Trent comes looking for me, tell him I’ll meet him back down here in a few minutes.”

Michael didn’t give Leo time to answer. He ran back up the steps to the third floor, his lungs rattling in his chest by the time he opened the door. Vice was a mostly nighttime endeavor, so half the squad was in the room filling out paperwork from last night’s sweep. Angie had obviously worked catch. She was wearing a halter-top that stopped three inches above her belly button and a blonde wig was splayed on her desk like a dead Pomeranian.

He waited for her to look up, and when she did, she wasn’t exactly happy to see him. As Michael walked over, she leaned back in her chair, crossing her legs under a skirt so short he looked away out of decency.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded. “Jesus, you look like hell.”

Michael ran his fingers through his hair. He was sweating from the sprint up the stairs. The smoke was still in his lungs and he coughed something that sounded like a death rattle. Christ, he’d be joining Ken in a wheelchair if he kept this up.

He said, “I need to talk to you a minute.”

She looked wary. “About what?”

Michael leaned over her desk, trying to keep the conversation between them.

“Uh-uh,” she said, pushing him back as she stood up. “Let’s go out into the hall.”

He followed her, aware that the rest of the squad was watching. The truth was that Michael had liked working Vice. You watched the girls, you picked up the Johns, you seldom got shot at or had to tell a parent that their son or daughter had been found floating in the Chattahoochee. He hadn’t left because he wanted to. Angie had been a problem for him. They hadn’t exactly gotten along, and the fact that she was agreeing to talk to him now was up there with the world’s biggest surprises.

She tugged at her skirt as she stepped into a nook across from the elevators. Beside her, an ancient vending machine hummed, the lights flickering. She asked, “You here to talk about Aleesha Monroe?”