Triptych (Will Trent #1) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,97

their husbands for gambling away their paychecks, that still did not take away from the glory of the sting operation. Yip and the boys had celebrated at the Blue Havana on 515 that night while Will had been stuck in his car, casing an abandoned chicken farm that had reportedly been turned into a meth lab. Not that he wanted to drink with these men, but the point was he hadn’t been invited.

Though he was always left out of the more glamorous busts, Will liked to think that what he did up in the mountains was important work. Meth was a nasty drug. It turned people into subhumans, made them leave their kids on the side of the road, open their legs for anything that would get them high. Will had seen plenty of lives ruined by meth well before he got to Blue Ridge. He didn’t need a primer to help him want to break apart every lab in his jurisdiction. The work was dangerous. The so-called chemists who made the compound were taking their lives into their own hands. A single spark could ignite the whole building. Dust from the manufacturing process could clog up your lungs like Play-Doh. Haz Mat had to be called in to clear the area before Will could go in and collect any evidence. The cleanup on these labs alone was bankrupting the local police and sheriff’s departments and the state wasn’t about to lend a helping hand.

Will sometimes thought that for a certain type of mountain dweller, meth was the new moonshine, a product they trafficked in to keep their kids clothed and fed. He had a hard time reconciling the junkies he saw on the streets of Atlanta with some of the everyday people brewing meth up in the hills. Not that Will was saying they were angels. Some of them were awful, just plain trash doing whatever they could to finance their habit. Others weren’t so black and white. Will would see them in the grocery store or at the local pizza place or coming out of church with their kids on Sundays. They generally didn’t partake of the product. It was a job for them, a way—to some, the only way they saw—to make money. People were dying, lives were being ruined, but that wasn’t their business.

Will didn’t know how they could section things off so neatly, but in Michael Ormewood, he saw the same tendency. The detective did his job—by all accounts he did it well—but then there was this other part of him that made him hurt the very people he was supposed to be helping.

Betty made some business under a bush and Will leaned down, using a baggie to scoop it up. He dropped the bag into a trashcan as he made his way back toward the house. Will caught himself glancing into his neighbor’s windows as he passed, wondering when the old woman would be back. As if she sensed his thoughts, Betty pulled at her leash, tugging him toward the driveway.

“All right,” he soothed, using his key to open the front door. He knelt to unsnap her leash, and she skittered across the room, jumping onto the couch and ensconcing herself on the pillows. Every morning before he left for work, he propped the pillows up on the back of the couch and every evening Betty had managed to push them down to make herself a bed. He could have called it a throne, but that was an embarrassing thought for a grown man to have about a little dog.

Will went to his room and took off his jacket. He was unbuttoning his vest when the phone rang. At first, he didn’t recognize the high-pitched voice on the phone.

“Slow down,” Will said. “Who is this?”

“It’s Cedric,” the boy cried. “Jasmine’s gone.”

Cedric must have been waiting for Will, because the front door opened and the boy ran out of building nine as soon as Will pulled his car into the lot.

“You gotta do something,” the boy demanded. His face was puffy from crying. Gone was the wannabe gangster from that morning. He was a scared little kid who was worried about his sister.

“It’s going to be okay,” Will told him, knowing the words meant nothing but feeling compelled to say them.

“Come on.” Cedric took his hand and dragged him toward the building.

Will followed the boy up the three flights of stairs. On the landing, he was about to ask Cedric what was going on, but