Triptych (Will Trent #1) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,51

a car.”

“What?”

“It’s at my mother’s house. I’ll call her today and say a friend is going to borrow it.”

Ben was smarter at this than him. John was just going step by step, not even thinking it through. So what if he found out the guy’s address? It’s not like he could follow him around on a MARTA bus.

John asked, “Does it still run?”

“Mother used to drive it to church every Sunday but her gentleman friend, Mr. Propson, takes her now,” Ben said. “Beulah Carver. I daresay she’s the only one in the book. She’ll give you the key, but don’t tell her how you know me.”

“You’ve been in jail for almost thirty years. Don’t you think she’ll figure it out?”

“I kept men’s nipples in her refrigerator for three years and told her they were herbal treatments for alopecia. What do you think?”

John conceded the point.

“Okay.” Ben’s eyes darted somewhere over John’s shoulder, and he spoke quickly, dropping the act for a moment. “You need to follow him,” he said. “Follow this man and find out what he’s doing, where he’s going. Everything happens for a reason. Everything.” He stood as another guard walked by. “Now go, my love, and thank you for the lovely gift.” He tapped the carton of cigarettes.

John stood, too. “Ben—”

“Go,” he insisted, throwing his arms around John’s shoulders, hugging him close.

The guards converged en masse—physical contact was strictly forbidden—but Ben held on tight, his wet lips brushing just under John’s ear. He was laughing like a hyena when they pulled him off, but he had the presence of mind to hold on to the cigarette carton.

“Good-bye, sweet boy!” Ben called as they dragged him to the door.

John waved back, resisting the urge to wipe off Ben’s saliva until the man had been taken out of view.

About five years into his sentence, John had asked Ben why the older man never made a pass or tried anything with him. John was bigger then. Just like his mother had always predicted, he had finally grown into his hands and feet. Weights at the gym had bulked him up and he had enough hair on his body to warm a polar bear.

Ben had shrugged. “Don’t eat where you shit.”

“No,” John persisted, not letting him get away with a sarcastic nonanswer. “Tell me. I want to know.”

Ben had been doing a crossword, and he was annoyed at first, but then he saw John was serious and set the paper aside.

“There’s no sport in it,” Ben finally said. “I like the seduction of the show, my boy. I am an actor on a stage and you…” He gave his wet smile. “You are a rube.”

The rube hadn’t done too bad this time, though. In the few seconds Ben’s face had been pressed close to his, John had been able to tell him all he needed to know.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

After the jury returned with his sentence, John had been taken back to his cell at the county jail. They had left the cuffs on but taken away his belt and the laces in his shoes so he wouldn’t do anything crazy. They needn’t have bothered. He was too stunned to move, let alone figure out a way to kill himself in his tiny five-by-eight cell.

Twenty-two to life. Twenty-two years. He would be thirty before he was eligible for parole. He would be an old man.

“It’s good,” his mother had said, tears in her eyes. She didn’t cry much after he was arrested, but now she let the tears flow. “It’s good, baby.”

She meant it was good because he had avoided the death penalty. A fourteen-year-old in Massachusetts had just made national headlines for beating another fourteen-year-old to death with a baseball bat. A twenty-eight-year-old in Texas had recently been executed for a crime he committed at the age of seventeen. Juvenile offenders were no longer a novelty. John could have been on his way to death row right now instead of looking at a lifetime behind bars.

“We can appeal,” his mother told him. “It won’t be long,” she said. “We’ll appeal.”

Behind her, his aunt Lydia looked dubious. Later, he would find out that but for one juror, a father of three boys, one of whom was John’s age, everyone else had voted for death. The rest had taken one look at John, then at the supersized photos of Mary Alice’s mutilated body, and wanted him to die, too.

In the holding cell, John kept going over and over everything that was said about him