Triptych

She asked John, “You doing okay?”

He was smiling now, almost hopeful. “Yeah. How about you?”

“No,” she insisted. “Last time I saw you, you were in some trouble.”

He nodded, looked down at his feet. Why did she always end up talking to men who looked at their feet?

“It’s good to see you,” he said. “I know I said I was going to stay away, but it’s really nice seeing you.”

“You hardly know me.”

He smiled again. God, he had such a sweet smile. “I know about Stewie.”

He knew lies, she thought. The first of many, if history told her anything.

“You really look nice.”

“You already said that.”

John laughed. “I’m trying to think of something else to say.” He laughed again, not so much uncomfortable as really enjoying himself and her company. He looked down at his shoes again, and she saw that he had the prettiest eyelashes she had ever seen on a man. They were a soft, delicate brown. John was a big guy, almost as tall as Will, with a broader chest and a hell of a lot more self-confidence. Despite the cold weather, his face was ta

She said, “You look nice, too.”

He smiled, and again she got the feeling that there was nothing more he wanted to do than stand there and talk to her all day.

What lies would she tell him? How long before she ended up taking John to a broom closet or a bathroom and screwing him, then hating him because he had fucked her? How long before she messed up his life, too?

She asked, “What were you in for, John?”

His smile dropped. His shoulders dropped, too.

Angie had already read his parole sheet, but that had only told her the charges, not the details of the crime. “Tell me what you did.”

“You don’t want to know.”

“I had an aluminum siding salesman last night who wanted me to suck his toes and call him daddy,” she said. “You think you’re going to come up with something that shocks me?”

“I made some mistakes.”

“We’ve all made mistakes.”

He shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about this.”

“You were in a long time,” she noted. “Did you kill somebody?”

He licked his lips, nervous. He was so much like Will that they could have been brothers. Hell, considering Will’s slutty mother, maybe they were brothers.

John told her, “I should get back with Ray-Ray, make sure he’s not talking himself into any trouble.”

Angie looked out the glass doors. Gina Ormewood was standing with the smokers, her blue nurse’s scrubs a stark contrast to the cigarette she was sucking on.

John said, “It was real good seeing you.”

“Take care of yourself.”

He started to walk away, then stopped. “When this is over,” he said, spreading his hands out like there was a tangible thing between them. “When what’s going on is over,” he said, still being obtuse, “maybe we can go out to di

“John,” she began. “Do you think that’s really go

He shook his head, but he still told her, “I’m going to hope it does, Robin. That’s what’s going to keep me going. I’m going to think about seeing a movie with you, buying you some popcorn, maybe holding your hand during the scary parts.”

“It’d be cheaper if you just gave me the money to hold your scary parts.”

He took her hand in his. She stood dumbstruck as he brought his lips to the back of her hand and gently kissed it. “Think about a movie you want to see,” he told her. “Something really scary.”

Then he was gone.

Angie leaned against the wall. She let out a stream of breath. Here was another perfectly sweet man she was ruining. Okay, he was a perfectly sweet pedophile and murderer, but glass houses and all that.

Gina Ormewood passed through the sliding doors. She did a double take when she saw Angie, but kept walking toward the ER.

“Hey,” Angie said. “Wait up.”

Gina stopped but didn’t turn around. She said, “I just want to be left alone.”

Angie walked around the woman to get a good look at her. Gina’s lip was split. Her left eye had a bruise that was painful to look at. No wonder the guy at the desk hated Michael.

Angie asked, “What the hell happened to you?”

“I fell down,” Gina told her. She tried to walk away, but Angie blocked her path.

“Did he hit you?”

“What do you think?”

“Christ.”

Gina narrowed her eyes, finally recognizing Angie. “You fucked my husband.”

“Yeah, well.” Angie knew better than to lie. “If it’s any consolation, I’ve had much better.”

Gina laughed, then winced as her lip split open again. She put her hand to her mouth and looked at the blood on her fingers. “God,” she groaned. “Let’s go in here.”

She pushed open the door to the women’s restroom and Angie followed. Gina was petite, maybe five-three in her sneakers and around a hundred pounds. Michael had at least eighty pounds on her. This was like kicking a puppy.

“I met him when I was fifteen,” Gina said. She was leaning over the sink basin, looking at her split lip in the mirror. “He was interested in my cousin. She was a year younger than me. I thought I was protecting her.”

Angie knew to let her talk.

“He was so sweet,” Gina said. “I’d get these letters from him when he was in the Gulf, talking about how much he loved me, that he wanted to take care of me.” Her eyes met Angie’s in the mirror. “This is how he takes care of me now.”

Angie rummaged in her purse. “They’re all sweet at first.”

“You know that for a fact?”

“Even got the blood-stained T-shirt.”

Gina took a tissue from the dispenser and wet it under the faucet. “After Tim was born,” she began, “things changed. He started getting angry about everything. He didn’t want to touch me anymore. He’d leave the house at night, stay out for hours at a time.” She dabbed the tissue at her bloody lip. “Sometimes, he’d go away for the whole weekend. I’d check the odometer and he’d put five, sometimes six hundred miles on the car.”

Angie found what she was looking for in her purse. “Where was he going?”

“You get punched in the face enough times, you stop asking questions.”

Angie told her, “Turn around.” She dabbed some foundation onto the sponge and patted it around Gina’s black eye. “This is Clinique,” she said. “If you go a little lighter than your usual shade, do a little blending with your finger, it helps soften the bruise.”

“Did he hit you, too?”

“No,” Angie answered, concentrating on hiding the bruise. The truth was, Angie had been too drunk to remember exactly what Michael had done. All she knew was that she had woken up the next morning in the backseat of her car with a deep bite mark on her breast and a pain between her legs that took a couple of weeks to go away.

It wasn’t like this was the first time something bad like that had happened, but it was the first time it had happened with a guy from work.

Gina said, “He told me he was with Ken.”

“Wozniak?” Angie asked. Michael’s partner in Homicide. “What was he doing with Ken?”

“He said they went fishing up in the mountains together.”

Angie pressed her lips together, holding back comment. She couldn’t picture Ken with a fishing pole, and even if she could, Ken wasn’t exactly Michael’s kind of guy.

Gina’s voice dropped to almost a whisper. “Was he rough with you?”

Angie nodded. She used her fingers to tilt up Gina’s chin so she could check her handiwork in the light.

“He’s a bastard,” Gina said, still whispering. “I just want to get away.”

Angie added some more foundation. “You left him?”

“Two days ago.”

“Where are you staying now?”

“With my mother,” she answered. “He told me he’d come get me.”

Angie checked her again. Perfect. “Did you file a report?”

She laughed. “You’re a cop. You know how useless that would be.”