Triptych (Will Trent #1) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,116

the hall, past the artwork, the photographs, everything Miriam and Tobias Monroe had accumulated over the years to turn their house into a home. There was a tall table by the door, and Will was leaving her one of his cards when he heard her speaking in the other room. Her tone was muffled by distance and grief. She was obviously on the telephone.

“It’s Mama,” she told one of her many children. “I need you.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

9:16 PM

Angie was dead tired by the time she finished her shift. Thanks to her hard work, a pair of visiting propane salesmen, a truck driver and an unemployed father of three were sitting in jail right now, trying to figure out how they were going to explain to their wives that they had been arrested for soliciting a prostitute. If their explanations were anything like the ones they gave Angie—My wife doesn’t understand me…I get lonely on the road…my kids hate me—they were looking at a long night in a cold cell.

In the scheme of things, Angie figured what she did every day was a pointless endeavor. The johns still kept coming back, the girls still kept going out. No one was interested in getting to the root of the problem. Angie had spent the last six years getting to know these women. They all had the same stories of sexual abuse and neglect in their pasts; they all had run away from something. It didn’t take a Harvard economist to figure out that it’d be a hell of a lot cheaper spending money on helping keep kids safe when they were younger than it was to put them in jail when they were older. That was the American way, though. Spend a million dollars rescuing some kid who’s fallen down a well, but God forbid you spend a hundred bucks up front to cap the well so the kid never falls down it in the first place.

Jasmine Allison was probably one of those lost kids who would never be found. She’d end up on the street with a new name, new attitude, new addictions that a pimp could use to control her. Angie could tell from the way Will talked about the girl that he was worried. He had good reason, considering Jasmine had been paid to make that phone call the night Aleesha was murdered. Angie also knew that there could have been a million other little things that chased the girl from her home. Still, she’d called a couple of guys downtown and asked them to look into the case.

Angie looked at the directions she’d scrawled on the page she’d torn from the phone book. Ken Wozniak was living at a nursing home on Lawrenceville Highway. The charge nurse who had given Angie directions had sounded excited to hear the man was going to have a visitor. Angie had only met Ken a couple of times. She doubted he would even remember her.

Visiting hours were over at ten. Judging from the empty parking lot, Ken wasn’t the only person who didn’t get many guests. The lobby was sparse but clean, with the usual white tiles and fluorescent lights. Some fake flowers were on a table in the small waiting area and a water cooler burped as she walked to the receptionist’s desk.

The man leaned back in his chair, a knowing smile on his face as he looked Angie up and down, taking in every inch of her whore’s outfit with the kind of sneer that said he knew exactly what she was and how much she should cost. He laced his fingers behind his head, making his shirt ride up so that she could see his bloated, hairy belly.

He licked his lips, asked, “How much?”

Angie reached into her purse and pulled out her badge.

The guy literally fell out of his chair. He scrambled to stand back up, mumbling, “I was just—”

“I’m here to see Ken Wozniak.”

“Oh, God.” His voice shook as he tried to right the chair. “I need this job.”

She wondered if he needed it so he could diddle the old ladies while they slept in their beds. “Take a pill, Cletus, I’m not here to bang you up.”

“I just—”

“Wozniak,” she repeated. “Where is he?”

His hands trembled as he tapped something into the computer keyboard. “Up the hall and to the left. Room three-ten. Jesus, lady, I’m sorry, okay? I’ve never done this before.”

“Yeah, right. Me, either.”

Angie’s spiked heels clicked as she walked up the hallway. She could still see