Triptych (Will Trent #1) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,46

as he stood at the bus stop, cursing himself and the rain. He would have to start looking for a new job. Maybe something inside, something that had regular hours and didn’t depend on the weather. Something where they didn’t mind if you had a record, and if that record said you were the kind of man who should be put down like a rabid dog to protect the rest of the world from the evil inside of you.

John’s job choices were limited to the dangerous ones. Half the guys in prison were there because they’d knocked over a convenience store or a mom-and-pop diner. Most of the guys on death row had gotten their start robbing the local Quickie Mart, ending their criminal careers by putting a bullet in some low-wage worker’s head for the sixty bucks in the cash drawer. Before Ms. Lam had hooked him up at the Gorilla, John had almost been desperate enough to try the convenience stores. He knew now that he couldn’t keep working at the car wash, not through the winter. He needed a way to find money, and fast.

The bus was late, the driver irritated when he finally pulled up. John’s mood matched everybody else’s as he sloshed up the stairs and walked to the back, his thirty-dollar sneakers practically disintegrated from the rain. He fell into the empty seat at the back of the bus, half-wishing the lightning zig-zagging out of the sky would come through the window and hit him right in the head. He’d end up brain-damaged, a drooling vegetable taking up space in a hospital somewhere. He was beginning to see why so many guys ended up back in prison. He was thirty-five years old. He had never driven a car, never really dated, never really lived. What the hell was the point, John thought, staring glumly out the window as some guy struggled to close an umbrella and get into his car at the same time.

John stood up as the bus pulled away, looking out the window, keeping his eyes on the man. How many years had passed? His brain wouldn’t let him do the math, but he knew it was him. John was slack-jawed as he watched the man give up on the umbrella and toss it into the parking lot before slamming his car door shut.

Yes. It was him. It was definitely him.

Just as a million raindrops fell from the sky, there existed a million chances that John would go to the post office on the right day at the right time.

A million to one, but he had done it.

He had found the other John Shelley.

CHAPTER TWELVE

John couldn’t remember being arrested—not because he was in shock at the time but because he had been semiconscious. Woody had come by that morning to check on him and hooked him up with some Valium. John had taken enough to tranquilize a horse.

Apparently, the cops had come to his house with an arrest warrant. His father had led them up to John’s room and they had found him passed out on his bed. John remembered coming to, his face on fire where his father had slapped him. The cops dragged him out of the house, handcuffs biting into the skin on his wrists. He passed out again on the lawn.

He woke up in the hospital, the familiar taste of charcoal in his mouth. Only, this time, when he tried to move his hand to wipe his face, something clattered against the bed rail. He looked down at his wrist, his eyes blurry, and saw that he was cuffed to the bed.

A cop was sitting by the door reading a newspaper. He scowled at John. “You awake?”

“Yeah.” John fell back asleep.

His mother was in the room when he next came around. God, she looked horrible. He wondered how long he had been asleep because Emily looked like twenty years had passed since he had climbed up the stairs to his room, turned Heart down low on the stereo and taken a handful of the little white pills his cousin had given him.

“Baby,” she said, rubbing his forearm. “Are you okay?”

His tongue was lolled back in his mouth. His chest hurt like he had been slammed in the sternum with a sledgehammer. How had he managed to breathe all this time?

“You’re going to be okay,” she said. “It’s all a mistake.”

It wasn’t though—at least as far as the police were concerned. The district attorney came in an hour or