Triptych (Will Trent 1)

“You’ve still got people?” John was surprised Ben was admitting this where he might be heard. There had been “sources close to the case” at the time of Ben’s trial who claimed that he had used the post office’s intercompany mail to send some of his souvenirs to fellow fetishists.

Ben slapped on a wide smile. “Through rain, sleet and snow…but you have yet to tell me the information I need to know.”

The name. He needed the name. John glanced around, opened his mouth, but—

“Hush, hush,” Ben warned.

Another guard walked by, standing just opposite their table. Both men fell silent again, and John stared at his hands, questioning the logic of coming here. Who else could he talk to? He couldn’t get Joyce wrapped up in this. The only people he knew were convicted felons and whores.

The guard moved along and Ben made a funny face. In a lot of ways, this man had been a father to John. How had that happened? How could somebody so evil, so absolutely without any redeeming qualities, be his friend?

There was no explaining it except to say that Ben thought he and John were two of a kind.

“I’ll tell you what,” Ben said. “I have 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 during the trial. The state’s psychologist had seemed nice enough when they talked a few months ago, but at trial he had told the entire courtroom that John was obviously a delusional psychopath, a cold-blooded killer who showed no remorse. Then, there were the kids from John’s school who had stood up during the sentencing phase to talk about what a good girl Mary Alice was and what a horrible person John Shelley had always been. Principal Binder, Coach McCollough…they had all talked about him like he was Charles Manson.

Who was that person they were talking about? John didn’t recognize him. Half of those kids hadn’t even said two words to him in the last three years, but now they acted as if they knew everything about him. There had been that split when they went from elementary to middle school, and the popular clique had left John behind. If not for sports, he would have been some kind of geek left to hang in the wind. When he was kicked off the football team, none of them would even meet his eye in the hallway. Now, according to these “friends” of his, John was some kind of…monster.

John had been staring at the concrete floor of the cell, following the cracks spreading out like a palm reader trying to divine his future. When he looked up, Paul Finney was standing on the other side of the bars.

Mary Alice’s father was smiling.

“Enjoy yourself now, you little piece of shit,” he told John. “This is as good as it gets from here on out.”

John didn’t answer. What would he say?

Mr. Finney leaned closer, hands gripping the bars. “Think about what you did to her,” he whispered. “Think about her when you bend over in the shower.”