Karin Slaughter - Broken

“Did you get the suicide note?”

“‘I want it over.’” She had the same reaction as Will. “Not exactly the ‘goodbye cruel world’ you’d expect. And the paper is torn from a larger sheet. That’s strange, right? You’re going to write a suicide note and you tear it from another sheet of paper?”

“What else did you get? You said there were seventeen pages.”

“Incident reports.” She read aloud, “Police were called to Skatey’s roller rink on Old Highway 5 at approximately twenty-one hundred hours …” Her voice trailed off as she skimmed the words. “All right. Last week, Tommy got into a fight with a girl whose name they didn’t bother to get. He wouldn’t stop shouting. He was asked to leave. He refused. The police came and told him to leave. He left. No one arrested.” Faith was quiet again. “The second report involves a barking dog at the residence from five days ago. The last one is about loud music. This was two days ago. There’s a note on the last page where the cop who took the report makes a reminder to follow up with Tommy’s father when he gets back in town.”

“Who took the reports?”

“Same cop. Carl Phillips.”

That name was more than familiar. “I was told Phillips was the booking officer on duty when all of this went down.”

“That doesn’t make sense. You don’t put a street cop on booking.”

“Either he’s a really bad liar or they’re afraid he’s going to tell me the truth.”

“So, find him and figure it out for yourself.”

“I was told he’s out camping with his wife and kids right now. No cell phone. No way to get in touch with him.”

“What an amazing coincidence. His name’s Carl Phillips?”

“Right.” Will knew Faith was writing down the name. She hated when people tried to hide. He told her, “Their security cameras in the cells aren’t recording, either.”

“Did they tape the interview with Tommy?”

“If they did, I’m sure the film met with some kind of dropping accident involving electricity and water.”

“Shit, Will. You numbered these pages yourself, right?”

“Yeah.”

“One through twelve?”

“Right. What’s going on?”

“Page number eleven is missing.”

Will thumbed through his originals. They were all out of order.

She asked, “You’re sure you numbered—”

“I know how to number pages, Faith.” He muttered a curse as he saw that the eleventh page was missing from his copies, too.

“Why would someone take out a page and send the incident reports instead?”

“I’ll have to see if Sara—”

He heard a noise behind him. A cough, maybe a sneeze. He guessed that Knox was standing in the viewing room listening to everything that was being said.

“Will?”

He stood up, stacking the pages together, putting them back in the file. “You still seeing your mom for Thanksgiving?”

She took her time answering, misinterpreting his meaning. “You know I’d ask you to come if—”

“Angie’s planning a surprise for me. You know how she loves to cook.” He walked into the hallway and stopped outside the storage room, where he rapped his knuckles on the door. “Thank you for your help, Officer Knox.” The door didn’t open, but Will heard feet shuffling on the other side. “I’ll let myself out.”

Faith didn’t question him until he was in the squad room. “You clear?”

“Give me another minute.”

“Angie loves to cook?” She gave a deep belly laugh. “When’s the last time you saw the elusive Mrs. Trent?”

Seven months had passed since Angie had made an appearance, but that was none of Faith’s business. “How’s Betty doing?”

“I raised a child, Will. I think I can take care of your dog.”

Will pushed open the glass front door and walked into the drizzle. His car was parked at the end of the lot. “Dogs are more sensitive than children.”

“You’ve obviously never spent time around a sullen eleven-year-old.”

He glanced over his shoulder. Knox, or at least a figure looking very much like Knox, was standing in the window. Will kept his gait slow, casual. He didn’t speak again until he was safely inside the car. “There’s something else going on with this girl’s murder, Faith.”

“What do you mean?”

“Call it gut instinct.” Will looked back up at the station. One by one, the lights went off in the front of the building. “It’s just convenient that the one person who could probably tell me the truth about what really happened is dead.”

LENA HELD BRAD’S HAND. HIS SKIN FELT COOL. THE MACHINES in the room beeped and blipped and hummed, yet none of them could tell the doctors how Brad was really doing. She’d heard a nurse use the phrase “touch and go” a few hours ago, but Brad looked the same to Lena. He smelled the same, too. Antiseptic, sweat, and that stupid Axe body wash he’d started using because of the TV commercials.

“You’re going to be okay,” she told him, hoping her words were true. Every bad thing she’d thought about Brad today was ringing in her head like a bell. He wasn’t street smart. He wasn’t cut out for the job. He didn’t have the skills to be a detective. Was Lena to blame for Brad’s injuries because she had kept her mouth shut? Should she have told Frank that Brad shouldn’t be on the force? Frank knew this better than anybody. Every week for the last two years he’d muttered something about firing Brad. Ten minutes before Brad was stabbed, Frank was chewing him out.

But was it really Brad’s fault? Lena could see this morning’s events like a movie playing endlessly in her head. Brad ran down the street. He told Tommy to stop. Tommy stopped. He turned. The knife was in his hands. The knife was in Brad’s stomach.

Lena rubbed her hands over her face. She should be congratulating herself for getting Tommy Braham to confess. Instead, she couldn’t get past the feeling that she had missed something. She needed to talk to Tommy again, pull out more details about his movements before and after the murder. He was holding out on her, which wasn’t unusual in murder cases. Tommy didn’t want to admit that he was a bad person. That much had been evident the entire interview. He had skirted around the gory details, and Lena had let him because she wanted—needed—to get to Brad to see if he was okay. Lena wasn’t so exhausted that she couldn’t see that Tommy had more to say. She just needed some sleep before she went at him again. She had to make sure that her part of the case, at least the part she could control, was airtight.

The biggest problem was that Tommy was so damn hard to talk to. Less than a minute into his interrogation, Lena had figured out the kid wasn’t right in the head. He wasn’t just slow, he was stupid. Eager to fill in whatever blanks Lena left open so long as she gave him a map and directions. She had promised him he could go home if he confessed. She could still see the confused look on his face when she’d taken him back to the cells. He was probably sitting on his bunk right now wondering how on earth he had gotten himself into this mess.

Lena was wondering the same thing. All the pieces had come together so quickly this morning that she hadn’t had time to consider whether they really fit or if she was just forcing them into place. The stab wound in Allison Spooner’s neck. The suicide note. The 911 call. The knife.

The stupid knife.

Lena’s phone vibrated in her pocket. She ignored it the same way she had ignored everything around her since she had gotten to the hospital. Two hours with Tommy at the station. Two hours driving to Macon. More hours spent standing vigil outside Brad’s room. She had given blood. She’d drunk too much coffee. Delia Stephens, his mother, was getting some air now. She only trusted Lena to stay with her son.