Karin Slaughter - Broken

“It’s not that. There was this girl we pulled out of the lake this morning.”

“I heard.”

“Tommy confessed to killing her. Took him a while, but we broke him. He was in love with the girl. She didn’t want to give him the time of day. You know the kind of thing.”

“Then it’s just remorse,” she said, though she found the behavior strange. In Sara’s experience, the first thing most criminals did after they confessed was fall into a deep sleep. Their bodies had been so shot through with adrenaline for so long that they collapsed in exhaustion when they finally got the weight off their chests. “Give him some time.”

“It’s more than that,” Frank insisted. He sounded exasperated and slightly desperate. “I swear to God, Sara, I really hate asking you this, but something’s gotta help him get through. It’s like his heart’s gonna break if he doesn’t see you.”

“I barely remember him.”

“He remembers you.”

Sara chewed her lip. “Where’s his daddy?”

“In Florida. We can’t get hold of him. Tommy’s all alone, and he knows it.”

“Why is he asking for me?” There were certainly patients she had bonded with over the years, but, to her recollection, Tommy Braham had not been one of them. Why couldn’t she remember his face?

Frank said, “He says you’ll listen to him.”

“You didn’t tell him I’d come, did you?”

“Course not. I didn’t even want to ask, but he’s just bad off, Sara. I think he needs to see a doctor. Not just you, but a doctor.”

“It’s not because—” She stopped, not knowing how to finish the question. She decided to be blunt. “I heard you took him down hard.”

Frank couched his language. “He fell down a lot while I was trying to arrest him.”

Sara was familiar with the euphemism, code for the nastier side of law enforcement. Abuse of prisoners in custody was a subject she never broached with Jeffrey, mostly because she did not want to know the answer. “Is anything broken?”

“A couple of teeth. Nothing bad.” Frank sounded exasperated. “He’s not crying over a split lip, Sara. He needs a doctor.”

Sara looked through the window into the kitchen. Her mother was sitting at the table beside Tessa. Both of them stared back at her. One of the reasons Sara had moved back to Grant County after medical school was because of the paucity of doctors serving rural areas. With the hospital downtown closed, the sick were forced to travel almost an hour away to get help. The children’s clinic was a blessing for the local kids, but, apparently, not during holidays.

“Sara?”

She rubbed her eyes with her fingers. “Is she there?”

He hesitated a moment. “No. She’s at the hospital with Brad.”

Probably concocting a story in her head where she was the hero and Brad was just a careless victim. Sara’s voice shook. “I can’t see her, Frank.”

“You won’t have to.”

She felt grief tighten her throat. To be at the station house, to be where Jeffrey was most at home.

Lightning crackled high up in the clouds. She could hear rain, but not see it yet. Out on the lake, waves crashed and churned. The sky was dark and ominous with the promise of another storm. She wanted to take it as a sign, but Sara was a scientist at heart. She had never been good at relying on faith.

“All right,” she relented. “I think I have some diazepam in my kit. I’ll come through the back.” She paused. “Frank—”

“You have my word, Sara. She won’t be here.”

SARA DID NOT want to admit to herself that she was glad to leave her family, even if it meant going to the station house. She felt awkward around them, a piece of a puzzle that didn’t quite fit. Everything was the same, yet everything was different.

She took the back way around the lake again, avoiding her old house that she had shared with Jeffrey. There was no way to get to the station without driving down Main Street. Thankfully, the weather had turned, rain dripping down in a thick, hazy curtain. This made it impossible for people to sit on the benches that lined the road or stroll up the cobblestone sidewalks. All the shop doors were tightly closed against the cold. Even Mann’s Hardware had taken down their porch swing display.

She turned down a back alley that ran behind the old pharmacy. The paved road gave way to gravel, and Sara was glad that she was in an SUV. She had always driven sedans while she lived in Heartsdale, but Atlanta’s streets were far more treacherous than any country road. The potholes were deep enough to get lost in and the constant flooding during the rainy season made the BMW a necessity. Or at least that’s what she told herself every time she paid sixty dollars to fill up her gas tank.

Frank must have been waiting for her, because the back door to the station opened before Sara put the car in park. He unfolded a large black umbrella and came out to the car to walk her back to the station. The rain was so loud that Sara did not speak until they were inside.

She asked, “Is he still upset?”

Frank nodded, fiddling with the umbrella, trying to get it closed. Sutures crisscrossed the knuckles of his right hand. There were three deep scratches on the back of his wrist. Defensive wounds.

“Christ.” Frank winced from pain as he tried to get his stiff fingers to move.

Sara took the umbrella from him and closed it. “Do they have you on antibiotics?”

“Got a prescription for something. Not sure what it is.” He took the umbrella from her and tossed it into the broom closet. “Tell your mama I’m sorry for taking you away your first day back.”

Frank had always seemed old to Sara, mostly because he was a contemporary of her father’s. Looking at him now, she thought Frank Wallace had aged a hundred years since the last time she had seen him. His skin was sallow, his face etched with deep lines. She looked at his eyes, noticing the yellow. Obviously, he was not well.

“Frank?”

He forced a smile. “Good to see you, Sweetpea.”

The name was meant to put up a barrier, and it worked. She let him kiss her cheek. His dominant odor had always been cigarette smoke, but today she smelled whisky and chewing gum on his breath. Instinctively, she looked at her watch. Eleven-thirty in the morning, the time of day when a drink meant that you were biding time until your shift ended. On the other hand, this wasn’t like a usual day for Frank. One of his men had been stabbed. Sara probably would have had her share of alcohol in the same situation.

He asked, “How you been holding up?”

She tried to look past the pity in his eyes. “I’m doing great, Frank. Tell me what’s going on.”

He quickly shifted gears. “Kid thought the girl was into him. He finds out she’s not and sticks her with a knife.” He shrugged. “Did a real bad job covering it up. Led us right to his doorstep.”

Sara was even more confused. She must be mixing up Tommy with one of her other kids.

Frank picked up on this. “You really don’t remember him?”

“I thought I did, but now I’m not so sure.”

“He seems to think y’all have some kind of bond.” He saw Sara’s expression and amended, “Not in a weird way or anything. He’s kind of young.” Frank touched the side of his head. “Not a lot going on up there.”

Sara felt a flash of guilt that this boy she barely remembered had felt such a connection to her. She had seen thousands of patients over the years. There were certainly names that stuck out, kids whose graduations and wedding days she had witnessed, a couple whose funerals she had attended. Other than a few stray details, Tommy Braham was a blank.

“It’s this way,” Frank said, as if she had not been in the station a thousand times. He used his plastic badge to open the large steel door that led to the cells. A blast of hot air met them.