Triptych by Karin Slaughter Read Free Book Online

cigarette.
    “Give me one,” Michael said.
    “Thought you quit.”
    “You my mother?” Michael reached into Leo’s shirt pocket and took the pack.
    Leo clicked the lighter and Michael took a deep drag. They were on the garage level of the building. The odor of car exhaust and rubber was overwhelming, but the cigarette smoke burning through Michael’s nostrils cut the smell.
    “So,” Leo began. “Where’s fucknuts?”
    Michael let out a stream of smoke, feeling the nicotine calm him. “Upstairs with Pete.”
    Leo scowled. Pete had banned him from the morgue after a predictably ill-timed joke. “I went down to Records.”
    Michael squinted past the smoke. “Yeah?”
    “Will Trent’s file is sealed.”
    “Sealed?”
    Leo nodded.
    “How do you get your file sealed?” Got me.
    They both smoked for a minute, silent in their thoughts. Michael looked down at the floor, which was covered with cigarette butts. The building was strictly nonsmoking, but telling a bunch of cops they couldn’t do something was like telling a monkey not to throw its shit.
    Michael asked, “Why’d Greer call him in? Him specifically, I mean. This SCAT team, whatever the fuck it is.”
    “Greer didn’t call him.” Leo raised his eyebrows like he was enjoying the mystery. “Trent was sitting in his office when Greer got to work.”
    Michael felt his heart start beating double time in his chest. The nicotine was getting to him, making him light-headed. “That’s not how it works. The state boys can’t just come in and take over a case. They have to be asked in.”
    “Sounded to me last night like Greer was gonna ask him anyway. What’s the big deal how it came down?”
    “Never mind.” Despite Leo’s disgusting people skills, the man knew a lot of people on the force. He had made an art out of developing contacts and could usually get the dirt on anybody.
    Michael asked, “You able to find out anything about him?”
    Leo shrugged, winking his eye against the smoke from his cigarette. “Sharon down in Dispatch knows a guy who dated a girl he worked with.”
    “Christ,” Michael hissed. “Next you’re gonna tell me you gotta friend who knows somebody who’s gotta friend who-”
    “You wanna hear or not?”
    Michael bit back what he really wanted to say. “Go.”
    Leo took his time, rubbing his cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, taking a drag, then letting it out slow. Michael was two seconds from throttling him when Leo finally provided, “The news is that he’s a good cop. Doesn’t make a lot of friends-”
    “No shit.”
    “Yeah.” Leo chuckled, then coughed, then smacked his lips like he was swallowing it back down.
    Michael looked at the cigarette in his hand, his stomach turning.
    Leo paused, made sure he had Michael’s attention. “He’s got an eighty-nine percent clearance rate.”
    Michael felt sick, but not because of the smoke. In its infinite wisdom, the Federal government had called for measuring the clearance rate-the number of solved cases-in each police agency so that some pencil pusher in Washington could track the progress on his little charts. They called it accountability, but to most cops it was just a shitload more paperwork. Any idiot could have predicted that this would cause a massive pissing contest among the detectives, and Greer fed into it by posting their numbers each month.
    Trent had them all beat by about twenty points.
    “Well,” Michael said, forcing himself to laugh. “It’s easy to solve a case when you take it over from some cop who’s already done all the work.”
    “This SKIT thing is new to him.”
    “SCAT,” Michael corrected, knowing Leo was trying to bait him but unable to stop playing.
    “Whatever,” Leo mumbled. “What I’m saying is, Trent was working major crime before he was tapped.”
    “Good for him.”
    “He had a huge case a few years back with some gal over in kiddie crimes.”
    “Gal got a name?”
    Leo shrugged again. “Couple of guys