John unlocked the dead bolt and pushed open his door. The first thing he noticed was that the window was cracked open about six inches, the construction-paper shade ripped at the bottom. The other thing he noticed was the smell. It took him a couple of seconds to realize the odor was coming off of his own body. It was fear.
“You’ve changed the place around.” Ms. Lam looped her purse around the doorknob so she could free her hands. “Like what you’ve done with it.” She started going through his clothes, but John could only stare at his bed, the way it had been angled out from the corner instead of left flat against the wall like he always had it.
Whoever had broken in wanted John to know he’d been here.
Ms. Lam was lifting up the cooler, checking inside. She said, “Your urine test came back okay.”
John could not answer. The photograph of his mother was altered. Someone had ripped it down the center, taken John out of the picture.
“John?”
His head snapped around to look at her.
“It was clean,” she said, then pointed to the bed. “Want to lift that for me?”
He leaned down to lift his mattress. His fingertips made contact with something solid, something cold.
John froze, one hand under the mattress, the other on top.
“John?” Ms. Lam asked. She clapped her hands together to spur him on. “Let’s go, sweetheart. I don’t have all night.”
Saliva fell out of his open mouth. His chest constricted. He started to shake.
“John?” Ms. Lam was beside him, her hand on his back. “Come on, cowboy. What’s going on?”
“S-s-sick,” he stuttered, tremors wracking his body. He felt his bowels loosen and was terrified they would let go.
“Let’s just sit you down,” she soothed, guiding him to sit down on the bed. She pressed the back of her hand to his forehead. “You feel real clammy. You’re not getting sick on me, are you, boy?”
“I’m…” John couldn’t form a sentence. “I’m…” He looked at the open window, the six inches of space.
“You want some water?”
He nodded, quick up and down jerks of his head.
“I’ve got some bottled water in my purse.”
She turned her back to him to get her purse off the door and in one desperate motion he pulled the knife out from under the mattress and tossed it toward the six inches of open space.
Ms. Lam turned back toward him as if in slow motion. He held his breath, his peripheral vision catching a glint of metal as the folding knife sailed toward the window.
Instinctively, he coughed, leaning over, hoping to muffle the sound when the knife hit the window sash and fell back into the room.
“Here you go,” Ms. Lam said, twisting the bottle open. “Take a couple of drinks.”
John did as he was told, then chanced a look down as he wiped his brow, scanning the carpet below the window. Empty. The space was empty.
“That’s good, now,” Ms. Lam said, patting his back. “You just had a bad spell, didn’t you?”
He nodded, unable to answer.
“Let’s look under the mattress now.” She shook her head when he offered her the water. “You keep that. I’ve got plenty more in my car.”
John stood up, his legs still shaky. He looked again at the window, the empty space on the carpet beneath it. The knife had to have gone out the window. There was no other explanation.
When John had propped the mattress against the wall, Ms. Lam requested, “Box spring, too.”
There was no roach under the bed this time, but the carpet was still caked with grime. John was so nervous about the knife that he could have fallen to the floor.
“Go on and put it back.” She thumbed through the books on the table beside his bed. If she saw the torn photograph of his mother, she didn’t say. “You finish your book?
“Uh,” John said, surprised by the question. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Tell me, John, who christened Tess’s baby?”
He stared at her expertly made-up eyes. She blinked. “John?”
It was a trick question. She was trying to trick him. “Tess did,” he finally said, and even though he knew he was right, he was terrified of being wrong. “The priest wouldn’t do it, so she did it herself.”
“Good.” She smiled, then looked around the room again. “No luck finding another place?”
She had asked this once before. “Should I be looking?”
Ms. Lam tucked her hands into her narrow hips. “I don’t know, John. Looks like you’ve outgrown this place.”
“Well, I-”
“There’s a house over on Dugdale. A Mr. Applebaum runs it. I’ll put in a call for you tonight if you like.”
“Yeah,” he said. She hadn’t offered to help him before and he was worried that she was now. Still, he said, “Thank you,” and, “that’d be nice.”
“You move real soon now, hear? As in tomorrow.”
He didn’t understand the rush, but he said, “Okay.”
She pulled her purse over her shoulder, digging inside for her keys. “And John?”
Yes, ma am?
“Whatever you just threw out the window when my back was turned?” She looked up from her purse, flashing him a cat’s smile. “Make sure it doesn’t follow you to your new place.”
He opened his mouth but she shook her head to stop him.
“I don’t like it when somebody tries to set up one of my charges,” she told him. “When you go back in-and trust me, sixty-five percent of your fellow parolees tell me that you will-it’s gonna be because
His heart was in his throat. Michael had called her. He had found what John had left in the bottom of his toolbox and decided to do something about it. The only reason John wasn’t in jail right now was because Ms. Lam played by the rules.
“Watch yourself, John.” She pointed at him with her car keys. “And remember, hon, I’ll be watching you, too.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Betty’s toenails clicked along the road as Will took her for her evening walk. He had tried to take the dog running their first day together, but ended up having to carry her most of the way. It had unnerved him the way she had adapted to the up and down jogging of her body, tongue lolling out, back legs tucked neatly into the palm of Will’s hand, body pressed close to his chest as he tried to ignore the strange looks people were giving him.
Poncey-Highlands was a middle-of-the-road kind of neighborhood with its mixture of struggling artists, gay men and the occasional homeless person. From his back porch, Will could see the Carter Center, which housed President Carter’s library, and Piedmont Park was a short jog away. On the weekends, Ponce de Leon took him straight up to Stone Mountain Park, where he rode his bike, hiked the trails or just sat back and enjoyed the sunrise as it peered over the largest chunk of exposed granite in North America.
As beautiful as the north Georgia mountains had been, Will had missed the familiarity of home, knowing instinctively where everything was, the areas that were safe, the restaurants that looked shady on the outside but had the best food and service in the city. He loved the diversity, the fact that there was a Mennonite church across from a rainbow-colored hippie commune at the end of his street. The way the homeless people went through your trash and yelled at you if there wasn’t anything good inside. Atlanta had always been his town, and if Amanda Wagner knew how happy he was to be back, she would have jerked him up to the hills faster than he could say,
