Martin Misunderstood: Karin Slaughter

This was a powerful short story about a "less than average" white guy. His life has been filled with disappointments after his father committed suicide. The kids that bullied him in school grew up to work with him and continue the mean pranks. Martin lives with his mother and one night after coming come from work (after cleaning up a prank his boss played on him) he takes his mom to pick up pruning shears she left when she got kicked out of the garden club. While waiting for her in the car, he sees an advertisement for a massage. He feels he deserves a massage after the brutal day he had and drops his mom off at home and goes back. The massage ends up being a hand job. The whole story centers around trying to figure out what Martin was doing that night because around the time he was getting the "massage" his boss was run over three times with his car. Martin is too humiliated to use the massage place as an alibi. The police detective, Albada, doesn't believe Martin murdered his boss and begins to get a crush on him. Once Martin is released from jail by Albada he is told he was fired from his job and he needed to pack up his stuff. Once he gets to work he finds his assistant, Unique Jones, stealing his stuff and office supplies. She asks him about the murder of their boss and for once she shows him respect. Caught up in the feeling of being respected, he implies he murdered her, which turns Unique on and she basically rapes him. Later that evening she is found murdered in the women's bathroom, of course Martin is the suspect. Once Martin is in prison facing a life sentence for murder, we learn Martin has put together the actual story. His mother murdered the women because they picked on Martin and she wanted revenge for him since he wouldn't take it himself. She has become famous doing interviews and writing books since her son is a "murderer" and she tells Martin he shouldn't be so gloomy because his life has improved as well. He realizes she is right because he has fallen in love with the detective, Albada.