Triptych (Will Trent #1) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,37
never had a lover take his hand in her own, stroke the back of his neck, pull his body closer to hers. The last woman he had kissed was, in fact, the only woman he had ever kissed and even then, she wasn’t a woman but a girl. John remembered the date like it was seared into his brain: June 15, 1985.
He had kissed Mary Alice Finney, and the next morning, she was dead.
CHAPTER TEN
JUNE 10, 1985
When John was a little kid, he had loved playing in the dirt, building things with his hands then tearing them apart chunk by chunk. His mother would see him walking up the street, the mud on his pants, the twigs sticking out of his hair, and she’d just laugh and grab the hose, making him strip off his clothes in the backyard so she could squirt him down before letting him into the house.
At night, he slept hard from his busy days. John wasn’t the type of kid to do things halfway. He was scrawny for his age, his chest almost concave, but he made up for it with sheer willpower. If there was any kind of game in the street, he was there, and despite his size, he was never picked last for any team. Stickball, baseball, dodgeball—he loved moving. Football was hardly a natural fit for his small frame, but he did all the leagues as soon as he was old enough to qualify. By junior high, he’d grown taller but his body was closer in proportion to a rubber band than a jock’s athletic build. Still, the football coach had been impressed with his drive and John’s first week of junior high found him on the field sweating his ass off, every muscle in his body screaming with joy at the prospect of playing with the big dogs.
In high school, he found out that you weren’t allowed to play football when your grades sucked. He was more upset than he thought he’d be when he got dropped from the team. In a sudden burst of anger, he had thrown his helmet at the wall, punching a large hole into the Sheetrock. He had started walking around the neighborhood after school because he knew if he went home, his mother would ask him why he wasn’t at practice. He had trashed the note the coach sent home and paid for the damaged wall with money from his illicit drug sales. He figured his parents would know soon enough what had happened when report cards were in and he wanted to enjoy his freedom as much as he could before Richard came down on him like the wrath of God.
Even after the rest of his life started falling apart, John still liked to walk. That first time he was suspended from school for the pot in his locker, he spent most of the day strolling around the neighborhood. After the cassette tape theft, his father grounded him for six months and except for his mother’s kind heart (“Be back in an hour and don’t tell your father”) John probably would have atrophied in his room. Sometimes, he thought that was just what his dad wanted. Let the bad son fade away on his own; out of sight, out of mind. Dr. Richard still had Joyce, after all. He had one good child left.
John liked being outdoors, seeing the trees sway in the breeze, watching the leaves sail to the ground. He never got high on his jaunts. He didn’t want to spoil things. Besides, the allure of coke was quickly fading. The visit to the emergency room, waking up feeling like his head was on fire, blood streaming out of his nose as he puked up the charcoal they had forced into his stomach, had been somewhat of an eye-opener. He had decided then and there to stick to pot. Nothing was worth dying for. Woody would give him shit for it, but John wasn’t going to kill himself because he couldn’t stand up to his cousin.
The night of the overdose, John’s father had come to the hospital, shirt hastily thrown on, buttons done up wrong. The nurse had left John alone with his dad, thinking they’d have a bonding moment or something.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Richard had demanded. He was beyond angry. His voice was strained like it was going through a sieve and John’s ears, already buzzing from being sick, could barely comprehend what he was saying.