Triptych (Will Trent #1) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,95
it toward the six inches of open space.
Ms. Lam turned back toward him as if in slow motion. He held his breath, his peripheral vision catching a glint of metal as the folding knife sailed toward the window.
Instinctively, he coughed, leaning over, hoping to muffle the sound when the knife hit the window sash and fell back into the room.
“Here you go,” Ms. Lam said, twisting the bottle open. “Take a couple of drinks.”
John did as he was told, then chanced a look down as he wiped his brow, scanning the carpet below the window. Empty. The space was empty.
“That’s good, now,” Ms. Lam said, patting his back. “You just had a bad spell, didn’t you?”
He nodded, unable to answer.
“Let’s look under the mattress now.” She shook her head when he offered her the water. “You keep that. I’ve got plenty more in my car.”
John stood up, his legs still shaky. He looked again at the window, the empty space on the carpet beneath it. The knife had to have gone out the window. There was no other explanation.
When John had propped the mattress against the wall, Ms. Lam requested, “Box spring, too.”
There was no roach under the bed this time, but the carpet was still caked with grime. John was so nervous about the knife that he could have fallen to the floor.
“Go on and put it back.” She thumbed through the books on the table beside his bed. If she saw the torn photograph of his mother, she didn’t say. “You finish your book? Tess of the D’Urbervilles?”
“Uh,” John said, surprised by the question. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Tell me, John, who christened Tess’s baby?”
He stared at her expertly made-up eyes. She blinked. “John?”
It was a trick question. She was trying to trick him. “Tess did,” he finally said, and even though he knew he was right, he was terrified of being wrong. “The priest wouldn’t do it, so she did it herself.”
“Good.” She smiled, then looked around the room again. “No luck finding another place?”
She had asked this once before. “Should I be looking?”
Ms. Lam tucked her hands into her narrow hips. “I don’t know, John. Looks like you’ve outgrown this place.”
“Well, I—”
“There’s a house over on Dugdale. A Mr. Applebaum runs it. I’ll put in a call for you tonight if you like.”
“Yeah,” he said. She hadn’t offered to help him before and he was worried that she was now. Still, he said, “Thank you,” and, “that’d be nice.”
“You move real soon now, hear? As in tomorrow.”
He didn’t understand the rush, but he said, “Okay.”
She pulled her purse over her shoulder, digging inside for her keys. “And John?”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Whatever you just threw out the window when my back was turned?” She looked up from her purse, flashing him a cat’s smile. “Make sure it doesn’t follow you to your new place.”
He opened his mouth but she shook her head to stop him.
“I don’t like it when somebody tries to set up one of my charges,” she told him. “When you go back in—and trust me, sixty-five percent of your fellow parolees tell me that you will—it’s gonna be because you screwed it up, not because some dipshit, Barney Fife, Atlanta cop has a hard-on for you.”
His heart was in his throat. Michael had called her. He had found what John had left in the bottom of his toolbox and decided to do something about it. The only reason John wasn’t in jail right now was because Ms. Lam played by the rules.
“Watch yourself, John.” She pointed at him with her car keys. “And remember, hon, I’ll be watching you, too.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
8:48 PM
Betty’s toenails clicked along the road as Will took her for her evening walk. He had tried to take the dog running their first day together, but ended up having to carry her most of the way. It had unnerved him the way she had adapted to the up and down jogging of her body, tongue lolling out, back legs tucked neatly into the palm of Will’s hand, body pressed close to his chest as he tried to ignore the strange looks people were giving him.
Poncey-Highlands was a middle-of-the-road kind of neighborhood with its mixture of struggling artists, gay men and the occasional homeless person. From his back porch, Will could see the Carter Center, which housed President Carter’s library, and Piedmont Park was a short jog away. On the weekends, Ponce de Leon took him straight up to Stone Mountain Park, where he rode his bike, hiked