“Forget it,” John said, feeling like a monster for pushing the kid. The fear in his eyes cut like a piece of glass. John walked back through the store, past the television he wanted, and left before he said something he would regret.

Instead of going home, John crossed the street and sat on the bench beside the bus stop. He took one of the free community newspapers out of the stand and thumbed through it. The street had four lanes, but was pretty busy. Using the paper as a shield, he watched the store, tracking Randall and his fellow clerks as they talked people who should know better into signing away their lives.

Credit reports, credit cards, scores. Shit, he didn’t know anything about this.

A bus came, the driver glancing out the door at John. “You gettin‘ on?

“Next one,” John said. Then, “Thanks, man.” He liked the MARTA bus drivers. They didn’t seem to make snap judgments. As long as you paid your fare and didn’t make trouble, they assumed you were a good person.

Hot air hissed from the back of the bus as it pulled away. John turned to the next page in the paper, then went back to the front, realizing he hadn’t read any of it. He sat at the bus stop for two hours, then three, leaving only once to take a piss behind an abandoned building.

At eight o’clock, Randall the salesboy left the rental store. He got into a rusted Toyota, turning the key and releasing into the otherwise quiet night the most obnoxious music John had ever heard. It had been dark for at least an hour, but Randall wouldn’t have noticed John even if it had been bright as day. The kid was probably seventeen or eighteen. He had his own car, a job that paid pretty well, and not a care in the world except for the asshole with good credit who had tried to strong-arm him that afternoon.

The manager came out. At least, John guessed he was the manager: older guy, flap of hair stringing across a bald spot, yellowish skin and a round ass that came from sitting around all day telling people no.

The guy’s groan could be heard from across the street as he reached up and pulled down the chain mesh that covered the front windows of the store. He groaned again as he stooped to lock the brace, then groaned a third time as he stood. After stretching his back, he walked over to a taupe Ford Taurus and climbed in behind the wheel.

John waited as the guy slipped on his seat belt, adjusted the rearview mirror, then put the car into reverse. The Taurus backed up, white lights flashing over red, then straightened out and left the parking lot, the engine making a puttering sound like a golf cart.

Ten minutes, fifteen. Thirty minutes. John stood up, giving his own groan from the effort. His knees had popped and his ass hurt from the cold concrete bench.

He looked both ways before crossing the street and walking past the store. The chains guarding the front doors and windows were strong, but John wasn’t planning on smashing and grabbing. Instead, he went to the back of the building to the Dumpster.

The security camera behind the rental place was trained on the back door, the Dumpster free and clear. He slid open the steel door, releasing a metallic shriek into the night. The odor coming off the metal container was bad, but John had smelled worse. He started pulling out the small black kitchen garbage bags like the kind he had seen lining the trash cans in the rental store. He was careful, untying the knots instead of ripping the bags open to search them, then tying them back in the same knot before moving to the next one. After thirty minutes of going through the store’s trash, he had to laugh at the situation. There was enough information in the trash bags-social security numbers, street addresses, employment histories-to launch a major con. That wasn’t what he was looking for, though. He wasn’t a conman and he wasn’t a thief. He wanted information, but only his own, and of course he found it in the last bag he opened.

He tilted the credit report so that the security lights made it easier to read.

Same social security number. Same date of birth. Same previous address.

Jonathan Winston Shelley, age thirty-five, had two MasterCards, three Visas and a Shell gas card. His address was a post office box with a 30316 zip code, which meant he lived somewhere in southeast Atlanta- several miles from John’s current room at Chez Flop House on Ashby, just down from the Georgia state capitol.

His credit was excellent, his checking account with the local bank in good standing. Obviously, he was a pretty reliable customer and had been for about six years. But for one “slow pay” on the Shell card, all his creditors were satisfied with his prompt payments, which was kind of funny when you thought about it, because for the last twenty years, Jonathan “Winston Shelley hadn’t gotten out much. The guards at the prison tended to keep a close eye on you when you were serving twenty-two-to-life for raping and killing a fifteen-year-old girl.

John had known Mary Alice Finney all of his life. She was the good girl, the pretty cheerleader, the straight-A student, the person just about everybody in school knew and liked because she was so damn nice. Sure, there were some girls who hated her, but that’s what girls did when they felt threatened: they hated. They spread nasty rumors. They were nice to your face and then when you turned around they stuck the knife in as far as it would go and twisted it around for good measure. Even in the real world, find some woman who’s doing well for herself, being successful, and there’s always going to be a handful of other women standing around saying she’s a bitch or she slept her way to the top. That was just how the world worked, and it was no different in the microcosm of De-catur High School.

Actually, John later found that it was a hell of a lot like prison. The Shelleys lived a couple of streets over from the Finneys in one of Decatur’s nicer neighborhoods bordering Agnes Scott College. Their mothers knew each other in that circular world of the upper middle class. They had met the way doctors’ and lawyers’ wives have always met, at some fund-raiser or charity for the local high school, hospital, college- whatever institution served as an excuse to throw an elaborate party and invite strangers into their beautifully decorated homes.

Richard Shelley was an oncologist, head of the cancer treatment ward at Decatur Hospital. His wife, Emily, had at one point been a real estate agent, but she’d quit that job when Joyce, their first child, was born. John came three years later, and the Shelleys thought their world was complete.

Emily had been one of those mothers who threw herself into parenting. She was active in the PTA, sold the most Girl Scout cookies, and spent the end of most school years sewing costumes for the Quaker Friends School’s graduation gala. As her two children grew up and stopped needing her-or wanting her, for that matter-she found herself with a lot of time on her hands. By the time John was in junior high and Joyce was two years away from attending college, she had gone back to the real estate agency part-time just to give herself something to do.

Their lives were perfect except for John.

The lying came early on and seemingly for no reason. John was at home when he had said he would be at football practice. He was at football practice when he said he would be at home. His grades started slipping. He let his hair grow long. Then, there was that smell. It seemed like he wasn’t even bathing and his clothes, when Emily would pick them up off the floor of his dank bedroom to throw them in the washer, had an almost chemical feel to them, as if they had been sprayed with Teflon.

Richard worked long hours. His job was emotionally and physically demanding. He didn’t have the time or inclination to be concerned about his son. Richard had been sullen when he was John’s age. He had secrets when he was a teenager. He got into trouble but he straightened out, right? Time to take him off the tit. Give the boy some space.