Triptych by Karin Slaughter Page B

sandwich from lunch.
    “Okay,” he said, not knowing why she felt like sharing and wishing to hell she’d stop.
    “Makes me shit funny,” she told him, giving him a sideways glance. “I thought I should tell you if that’s what you were planning.”
    “I’m just going to make sure you get back,” he assured her. “Don’t worry about that other stuff.”
    “Nothin comes for free,” she told him, then laughed. “ ‘Cept maybe this time. Of course, the walk-now, if you consider that your payment, it ain’t exactly free.”
    “I was going this way anyway,” he lied. “I live down here.”
    “Morningside?” she asked, referring to one of the wealthier neighborhoods backing onto Cheshire Bridge Road.
    “Yeah,” he said. “Three-story house with a garage.” She stumbled again and he kept her from falling on her face. “Come on.”
    “You don’t gotta be rough, you know.”
    He looked at his hand around her arm, saw immediately how tight he was holding it. When he let go, there were marks where his fingers had been. “I’m sorry about that,” he told her, and really meant it. Jesus, he was thinking about women all this time and he didn’t even know how to touch one without hurting her. “I’m just going to walk you back, okay?”
    “Almost there,” she told him, then mercifully fell into silence as she concentrated on navigating the bumpy path where the sidewalk ended and dirt took over.
    John let her take the lead, keeping two steps behind her in case she fell over into the street. He let the enormity of what had just happened wash over him. What had he been thinking? There was no reason to get himself involved in Ray-Ray’s troubles, and now he was losing a day’s pay so he could take this pross back to her strip, where she’d probably make more money in one hour than he made in three. Christ. He could have lost his job. He could’ve been thrown back in prison.
    Art got a nice stipend from the state for employing a parolee, plus extra tax breaks from the feds. Even with all that-all the so-called incentives that were out there-finding somewhere to work had been almost impossible when John had gotten out. Because of his status, he couldn’t work with kids or live within a hundred yards of a school or day-care center. Legally, employers couldn’t discriminate against a felon, but they always found a way around the law. John had been on nineteen interviews before finding the car wash. They always started out, “How you doing/we’d love to have you here/just fill this out and we’ll get back to you.” Then, when he called the next week because he hadn’t heard from them, it was always, “We’ve filled that job/we found a more qualified candidate/sorry, we’re cutting back.”
    “More qualified to pack boxes?” he had asked one of them, the shipping manager at a pie company. “Listen, buddy,” the guy had answered. “I’ve got a teenage daughter, all right? You know why you’re not getting this job.”
    At least he was honest.
    The question was standard on every application. “Other than misdemeanor traffic violations, have you ever been convicted of a crime?”
    John had to check yes. They always ran a background check and found out anyway.
    “Please explain your conviction in the space provided.”
    He had to explain. They could ask his P.O. They could get a cop to run his file. They could go on the Internet and look him up on the GBI’s site under “convicted sex offenders in the Atlanta area.” Under Shelley, Jonathan Winston, they’d read that he raped and killed a minor child. The state didn’t differentiate between underage offenders and adults, so he came up not as a person who had committed this crime when he was a minor child himself, but as an adult pedophile.
    “Hello?” the hooker said. “You in there, handsome?”
    John nodded. He’d been zoning out, following her like a puppy. They were in front of the liquor store. Some of the girls were already working,