Triptych (Will Trent #1) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,9
of forty, he had learned that a woman who was eager to go down on you every time she saw you wasn’t in love—she was looking for something. Maybe Cynthia liked the thrill of banging Michael in Phil’s bed. Maybe she liked the idea of seeing Gina out the kitchen window and knowing she was taking something that belonged to another woman. Michael couldn’t let himself consider her motivations. He knew his own well enough. For those fifteen or twenty minutes he spent next door, his mind went blank and he wasn’t thinking about paying the specialists or making the mortgage or the phone call from the credit card company asking when they could expect some money. Michael was just thinking about Cynthia’s perfect little mouth and his own pleasure.
She would want something someday, though. He wasn’t so stupid that he didn’t at least know that.
“Yo, Mike,” Leo called, rapping his knuckles on Michael’s desk. “Get your head out of your ass.”
“What’s going on?” Michael asked, sitting back in his chair. The station was empty but for the two of them, Greer locked behind his office door with the shades drawn.
Michael indicated the closed door. “He jerking off in there again?”
“Got some Lurch-looking freak from the GBI with him.”
“Why?” Michael asked, but he knew why. Last night, Greer had said he was going to call in help on this one, and the next step up the ladder was the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
“He don’t consult with me,” Leo said, sitting on the edge of Michael’s desk, scattering papers in the process. He did this all the time, no matter how many warnings Michael gave him.
Leo asked, “You get in trouble with the wife last night?”
“No,” Michael lied, letting his eyes travel around the squad room. The place was depressing and dark, the wall of windows looking out at the Home Depot across the street thick with grime that blocked out the morning sun. City Hall East was a twelve-story building, a onetime Sears department store, that sat at the base of a curve in Ponce de Leon Road and took up a whole city block. A railroad track separated the structure from an old Ford factory that had been turned into pricey lofts. The state had bought the abandoned Sears building years ago, turning it into various government offices. There were at least thirty different departments and over five hundred city employees. Michael had worked here for ten years but other than the overcrowded parking garage, he had only seen the three floors the Atlanta Police Department used and the morgue.
“Yo,” Leo repeated, banging the desk again.
Michael pushed his chair from the desk and away from Leo. Between the chain-smoking and constant nips Leo took from the bottle he kept in his locker, the guy had breath like a dog’s fart.
“You daydreaming about some pussy?”
“Shut up,” Michael snapped, thinking he’d hit too close to home. Leo always did—not because he was a good detective, but because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut.
“I was thinking about going to see Ken later on.” Leo took a tangerine out of his suit pocket and started peeling it. “How’s he doing?”
“Okay,” Michael told him, though the truth was he hadn’t talked to Ken in a week. They had been partners for a while, close as brothers, until Ken had clutched his arm one day and dropped to the ground. He had been talking to Michael about a gorgeous woman he’d met the night before, and for a split second, Michael thought the fall was some kind of joke. Then Ken had started to twitch. His mouth sagged open and he pissed himself right there on the squad room floor. Fifty-three years old and he’d stroked out like an old man. The whole right side of his body was gone now, his arm and leg useless as a wet newspaper. His mouth was permanently twisted so that dribble poured down his chin like he was a baby.
No one from the squad wanted to see him, to hear him try to talk. Ken was a reminder of what was just around the corner for most of them. Too much smoking, too much drinking, two or three failed marriages, all ending with your lonely last days spent catatonic in front of the tube, stuck at some crappy, state-run nursing home.
Greer’s door opened, and a lanky man in a three-piece suit came out. He was toting a leather briefcase that looked like a postage stamp in his large