Triptych Read online

  “Fuck!” Michael twisted the steering wheel hard to the left, narrowly avoiding a Chevy Blazer that had the right of way.

  Trent had grabbed the side of the door, but he wasn’t stupid enough to say anything about slowing down.

  Michael straightened the wheel, making another hard left onto a back road that would take them out of heavy traffic and hopefully get them home sooner. The clutch slipped but quickly caught again as he accelerated. A light was flashing on the dashboard, the engine temperature gauge pushing well into the red. All he needed was for the piece of shit car to get him to the house. That’s all Michael needed.

  He hit the redial on his cell phone again, listening to the phone ringing at his house for the fiftieth time. Barbara’s cell wasn’t picking up and he hadn’t been able to find Gina at the hospital.

  “God damn it!” Michael screamed, smashing the phone against the dashboard, breaking it to pieces.

  Greer had called Will Trent to tell him there was a problem, like Michael was some pansy civilian instead of a seasoned cop. All the lieutenant had said was that there had been some kind of accident involving a kid at Michael’s house. Standard fucking procedure—don’t tell them on the phone, don’t freak them out so they drive their car over a bridge on the way to the scene. When Michael had tried to call Greer back for more details, the fucker had talked to him like he was twelve. “Just get home, Michael,” Greer had said. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

  “Bike,” Trent said, and Michael saw the cyclist at the last second, nearly clipping the guy as he darted the car into the other lane. There was an oncoming truck, and Michael jerked the wheel back just in time to avoid a head-on collision.

  “We’re almost there,” Michael said, as if Trent had asked. “Shit,” he hissed, slamming the heel of his palm into the steering wheel. Tim was always getting into things he shouldn’t. He didn’t know any better. Barbara was getting old. She was tired most days, didn’t have the energy to keep up.

  The car fishtailed as he turned onto his street. There were two cruisers in front of his house, one of them parked in the driveway behind Barbara’s car. Uniformed cops were milling around on the sidewalk in front of Cynthia and Phil’s house. Michael’s heart stopped when he saw Barbara sitting on the front porch, head in her hands.

  Somehow, Michael got out of the car. He ran to her, bile rushing up his throat as he tried not to be sick. “Where’s Tim?” he asked. She didn’t answer quickly enough and he repeated himself, yelling, “Where’s my son!”

  “In school,” she screamed back as if he was crazy. He had grabbed her wrists, dragging her up to standing. She had tears in her eyes.

  “Hey,” Trent said, a quiet word that held a warning.

  Michael looked at his hands, not knowing how they had wrapped themselves around Barbara’s wrists. There were red marks where he held her. He made himself let go.

  Behind him, a coroner’s wagon pulled up, its brakes grinding as it stopped and idled by the mailbox.

  He put his hands on Barbara’s shoulders, this time to hold himself up. They had said it was a kid. Maybe they got it wrong. Maybe Greer had lied.

  “Gina?” Michael asked. Had something happened to Gina?

  One of the cops was at the meat wagon. He motioned the driver toward the house next door. “In the backyard.”

  Michael’s feet were moving before he knew it. He slammed open his front door and bolted up the hall. He heard footsteps pounding behind him and knew it was that bastard Trent. Michael didn’t care. He threw open the back door and ran into the yard, stopping so fast that Trent bumped into him from behind.

  Michael saw the white first, the skimpy robe, the see-through camisole. She was on her stomach, feet tangled up in the broken chain-link fence. Six or seven men stood around her.

  Michael managed to walk toward her, his knees giving out when he reached the body. The mole on her shoulder, the birthmark on the back of her arm. He pressed his fingers into the palm of her small hand.

  Somebody warned, “Sir, don’t touch her.”

  Michael didn’t care. He stroked her soft palm, tears streaming down his face, whispering, “Jesus. Oh, Jesus.”

  Trent was making noises to the group of cops, words Michael couldn’t understand. He could only look at the back of Cynthia’s head, see the long strands of her silky blonde hair draping around her shoulders like a scarf. He pulled the robe down, covering her bare bottom, trying to give her some dignity.

  “Detective,” Trent said. His hand was tucked under Michael’s arm, and Trent easily pulled him up to his feet. “You shouldn’t touch her.”

  “It’s not her,” Michael insisted, trying to kneel back down, wanting to see her face. It was some kind of trick. It couldn’t be Cynthia. She was at the mall spending Phil’s money, hanging out with her friends.

  “I want to see her,” Michael said. His body was shaking like he was cold. His knees didn’t want to work again, but Trent supported him, keeping him up so he didn’t fall back down. “I want to see her face.”

  One of the men, obviously the medical examiner, said, “I was just about to flip her anyway.”

  With help from another cop, the doctor gripped her by the shoulders and turned her so that she was facing up.

  Cynthia’s mouth gaped open, blood spilling out and dribbling down her neck like a slow leak from a faucet. Her beautiful face was marked by a deep cut slashing across her temple. Vacant green eyes stared up at the open sky. Strands of hair were stuck to her face, and he tried to lean down to brush them back but Trent wouldn’t let him.

  Michael felt hot tears stinging his eyes. Somebody should cover her. She shouldn’t be exposed like this for everybody to see.

  The medical examiner leaned down, pressing her jaw open, peering into her empty mouth. He said, “Her tongue is gone.”

  “Christ,” one of the cops whispered. “She’s just a kid.”

  Michael swallowed, feeling like he was choking on his grief. “Fifteen,” he said. She’d just had a birthday last week. He’d bought her a stuffed giraffe.

  “She’s fifteen.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  OCTOBER 2, 2005

  John Shelley wanted a television. He had been working the same crappy job for the last two months, showing up every day on time, making sure he was the last to leave, doing every nitpicking shit job his boss assigned, and to him it wasn’t just a matter of wanting, but deserving a television. Nothing fancy for him, just something in color, something with a remote control and something that would pick up the college games.

  He wanted to watch his teams play. He wanted to hold the remote in his hand and if Georgia was playing bad, which was highly likely, he wanted to be able to turn the channel and watch Florida getting its ass kicked. He wanted to watch the cheesy halftime shows, hear the stupid commentators, see Tulane at Southern Mississippi, Texas A&M at LSU, Army-freakin’-Navy. Come Thanksgiving, he wanted an orgy of bowl games and then he’d switch to the big dogs: the Patriots, the Raiders, the Eagles, all leading up to that magic moment come February when John Shelley would sit in his crap room in his crap boardinghouse and watch the freaking Super Bowl all alone for the first time in his life.

  Six days a week for the last two months, he had looked out the bus window and stared longingly at the Atlanta City Rent-All. The sign in the window promised “your job is your credit,” but the asterisk, so tiny it could be a squished bug, told otherwise. Thank God he had been too nervous to walk right into the store and make a fool of himself. John had stood outside the front door, his heart shaking in his chest like a dog shitting peach pits, when he noticed the fine print on the poster. Two months, the tiny type said. You had to hold down a steady job for at least two months before they would allow you the honor of paying fifty-two weekly installments of twenty dollars for a television that would retail for around three hundred bucks in a normal store.

  But John wasn’t a normal person. No matter his new haircut or his close shave or his presse
d chinos, people still felt that otherness about him. Even at work, a car wash where mostly transients showed up to wipe down cars and vacuum Cheerios out of the backs of SUVs, they kept their distance.

  And now, two months later, John sat on the edge of his chair, trying to keep his leg from bobbing up and down, waiting for his TV. The pimply faced kid who had greeted him at the door was taking his time. He’d gotten John’s application and rushed to the back about twenty minutes ago. Application. That was another thing they hadn’t put on the sign. Street address, date of birth, social security number, place of employment, everything but his freaking underwear size.

  The Atlanta City Rent-All was noisy for a Sunday afternoon. All of the televisions were on, bright images flashing from a wall of tubes, whispered undertones from nature shows, news channels and do-it-yourself programs buzzing in his ears. The noise was getting to him. Too much light was pouring in from the floor-to-ceiling windows. The televisions were too bright.

  He shifted in his chair, feeling a bead of sweat roll down his back. John didn’t wear a watch, but there was a big clock on the wall. This represented poor judgment on the store planner’s part, considering the fact that all it served to do was remind people they were stuck here waiting for some kid fresh out of high school to tell the lucky customer that they had qualified for the extreme honor of paying five hundred bucks for a Simzitzu DVD player.

  “Just a TV,” John whispered to himself. “Just a small TV.” His leg was bobbing up and down again and he didn’t bother to stop it. His hands were clenching and unclenching, and that was bad. He had to stop doing that. People were staring. Parents were keeping their kids close.

  “Sir?” Randall, John’s own personal sales assistant, stood in front of him. He had a smile plastered onto his face that would have given a Labrador pause. “Sorry to keep you waiting.” Randall reached out his hand as if John might need help up.

  “It’s okay,” John said, trying not to mumble as he stood. He started looking around, wondering what was going on. The kid was being too nice to him. Had something happened? Did someone call the police?

  “We can show you these sets here,” Randall offered, leading him to the back of the store where the big screens were displayed.

  John stood in front of a television that looked as huge as a movie screen. The set was almost as tall as him and twice as wide.

  Randall picked up a remote control the size of a book. “The Panasonic has advanced real black technology that gives you—”

  “Wait a minute.” John was walking around the television. It was only a few inches thick. He saw the price tag and laughed. “I told you what I make, man.”

  Randall flashed him a smile, took a step forward that made John want to take a step back. He kept his ground, though, and the kid lowered his voice, saying, “We understand when some of our customers have outside income sources they can’t list on their credit applications.”

  “That right?” John asked, recognizing something illicit was happening but not quite sure what.

  “Your credit report…” Randall seemed almost embarrassed. “The credit cards came up.”

  “What credit cards?” John asked. He didn’t even have a damn checking account.

  “Don’t worry about it.” Randall patted John on the shoulder like they were old buddies.

  “What credit cards?” John repeated, the muscles in his arm aching to slap the kid’s hand away. He hated admitting he didn’t know something. Being in the dark made you vulnerable.

  Randall finally dropped his hand. “Listen, guy,” he began. “No big deal, right? Just make the payments and we don’t care. We don’t report to anybody unless you stop paying.”

  John crossed his arms over his chest, even though he knew it made him look bigger, more threatening, to other people. “Lookit,” he said. “I want that crappy TV up front, the twenty-two inch with the remote control. That’s all I want.”

  “Dude,” Randall said, holding up his hands. “Sure. No problem. I just figured with your credit score—”

  John had to ask again. “What score?”

  “Your credit score,” the kid said, the tone of his voice passing incredulous and settling on plain dumbfounded. “Your credit score’s the best I’ve ever seen here. We get some people in, they’re not even breaking three hundred.”

  “What was mine?”

  Randall seemed startled by the question. “We’re not allowed to tell you.”

  John made his voice firm, let some of the gravel come out. “What was mine?”

  Randall’s pimples turned white, his skin a bright red. He whispered, “Seven-ten,” glancing over his shoulder to see if his boss was watching him. “You could go to a real store, Mr. Shelley. You could walk into a Circuit City or a Best Buy—”

  “Let me see it.”

  “Your report?”

  John closed some of the space between them. “You said there were credit cards on there. I want to know what cards.”

  Randall looked over his shoulder again, but he should have been more concerned about what was in front of him.

  “Stop looking behind you, kid. Look at me. Answer my question.”

  Randall’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “Maybe I put in your social security number wrong. The current address was different—”

  “But the name?”

  “Same name.”

  “Same previous address in Garden City?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He summed it up for the kid. “You think there’s another Jonathan Winston Shelley out there with my birth date and my previous address, living in Atlanta, who has a social security number that’s close to mine?”

  “No—I mean, yes.” Sweat had broken out on Randall’s upper lip and his voice began to shake. “I’m sorry, mister. I could lose my job if I showed you that. You can get a copy of it yourself for free. I can give you the num—”

  “Forget it,” John said, feeling like a monster for pushing the kid. The fear in his eyes cut like a piece of glass. John walked back through the store, past the television he wanted, and left before he said something he would regret.

  Instead of going home, John crossed the street and sat on the bench beside the bus stop. He took one of the free community newspapers out of the stand and thumbed through it. The street had four lanes, but was pretty busy. Using the paper as a shield, he watched the store, tracking Randall and his fellow clerks as they talked people who should know better into signing away their lives.

  Credit reports, credit cards, scores. Shit, he didn’t know anything about this.

  A bus came, the driver glancing out the door at John. “You gettin’ on?”

  “Next one,” John said. Then, “Thanks, man.” He liked the MARTA bus drivers. They didn’t seem to make snap judgments. As long as you paid your fare and didn’t make trouble, they assumed you were a good person.

  Hot air hissed from the back of the bus as it pulled away. John turned to the next page in the paper, then went back to the front, realizing he hadn’t read any of it. He sat at the bus stop for two hours, then three, leaving only once to take a piss behind an abandoned building.

  At eight o’clock, Randall the salesboy left the rental store. He got into a rusted Toyota, turning the key and releasing into the otherwise quiet night the most obnoxious music John had ever heard. It had been dark for at least an hour, but Randall wouldn’t have noticed John even if it had been bright as day. The kid was probably seventeen or eighteen. He had his own car, a job that paid pretty well, and not a care in the world except for the asshole with good credit who had tried to strong-arm him that afternoon.

  The manager came out. At least, John guessed he was the manager: older guy, flap of hair stringing across a bald spot, yellowish skin and a round ass that came from sitting around all day telling people no.

  The guy’s groan could be heard from across the street as he reached up and pulled down the chain mesh that covered the front windows of the store. He groaned again
as he stooped to lock the brace, then groaned a third time as he stood. After stretching his back, he walked over to a taupe Ford Taurus and climbed in behind the wheel.

  John waited as the guy slipped on his seat belt, adjusted the rearview mirror, then put the car into reverse. The Taurus backed up, white lights flashing over red, then straightened out and left the parking lot, the engine making a puttering sound like a golf cart.

  Ten minutes, fifteen. Thirty minutes. John stood up, giving his own groan from the effort. His knees had popped and his ass hurt from the cold concrete bench.

  He looked both ways before crossing the street and walking past the store. The chains guarding the front doors and windows were strong, but John wasn’t planning on smashing and grabbing. Instead, he went to the back of the building to the Dumpster.

  The security camera behind the rental place was trained on the back door, the Dumpster free and clear. He slid open the steel door, releasing a metallic shriek into the night. The odor coming off the metal container was bad, but John had smelled worse. He started pulling out the small black kitchen garbage bags like the kind he had seen lining the trash cans in the rental store. He was careful, untying the knots instead of ripping the bags open to search them, then tying them back in the same knot before moving to the next one. After thirty minutes of going through the store’s trash, he had to laugh at the situation. There was enough information in the trash bags—social security numbers, street addresses, employment histories—to launch a major con. That wasn’t what he was looking for, though. He wasn’t a conman and he wasn’t a thief. He wanted information, but only his own, and of course he found it in the last bag he opened.

  He tilted the credit report so that the security lights made it easier to read.

  Same social security number. Same date of birth. Same previous address.

  Jonathan Winston Shelley, age thirty-five, had two MasterCards, three Visas and a Shell gas card. His address was a post office box with a 30316 zip code, which meant he lived somewhere in southeast Atlanta—several miles from John’s current room at Chez Flop House on Ashby, just down from the Georgia state capitol.