Karin Slaughter - Broken

Christ. What else was he capable of?

She took a right onto Taylor Drive. The rain had come in torrents last night, washing away the blood on the street. Still, she could see it in her mind’s eye. The way Brad had blinked away the rain. The way his skin had already started to turn gray by the time the helicopter landed.

Lena steered the car onto the far side of the road and stopped. “This is where Brad was stabbed.”

Will asked, “Where’s Spooner’s apartment?”

She pointed up the road. “Four houses, left-hand side.”

He stared straight down the street. “What’s the number?”

“Sixteen and a half.” Lena put the car into gear and rolled past the scene of Brad’s stabbing. “We got the address from the college. We came here to see if there was a roommate or landlord we could talk to.”

“Did you have a warrant to search the house?”

He had asked the question before. She gave him the same answer. “No. We didn’t come to search the house.”

She waited for him to ask something else, but Will was silent. Lena wondered if what she had told him was the truth. If Tommy hadn’t been in Allison’s apartment, they still would have found a way to get into the garage. Gordon Braham was out of town. Knowing Frank, he would’ve broken the lock and gone into Allison’s apartment anyway. He would have made some comment about how it was better to ask for forgiveness than permission. No one would have minded a simple breaking and entering when a young girl from the college had been murdered.

Will asked, “Did you canvass the neighbors?”

Lena stopped the car in front of the Braham house. “Patrol did. No one saw anything different from what happened.”

“And what exactly did happen?”

“Brad was stabbed.”

“Tell me from the beginning. You pulled up here …”

She tried to take a breath. Her lungs would only fill to half capacity. “We approached the garage—”

“No,” he interrupted. “Go back to the very beginning. You drove up to the scene. Then what?”

“Brad was already here.” She didn’t tell him about the pink umbrella or Frank’s screaming fit.

“You got out of the car?” Will prodded. He really was going to make her go through this step-by-step.

She opened her door. Rain splattered her face with lazy, fat drops. Will had gotten out of the car, too. She told him, “The rain had died down. Visibility was good.” She started up the driveway. Will was beside her with his briefcase in his hand. At the top of the hill, she could see that the garage was marked with yellow crime scene tape. Frank must have come back last night. Or maybe he had sent patrol to mark the space so it looked like they were taking this seriously. There was no telling anymore what he was doing or why.

Will opened his briefcase and pulled out a sheet of paper. “The search warrant came in while you were getting your coat.”

He handed the document to Lena. She saw it had been issued by a judge out of Atlanta.

He asked, “What next? I take it the garage door was closed when you approached?”

She nodded. “We were standing about here. All three of us. The lights were out. There weren’t any cars in the driveway or on the street.” She pointed to the scooter. Mud was caked around the plastic fenders. “The lock and chain appeared to be the same.” Lena stared at the scooter, feeling good about the debris lodged in the tires. Tommy could have gone to the woods on the scooter. They wouldn’t be able to find tracks, but the mud on the wheels would match the mud around the lake.

“Detective?”

Lena turned around. She had missed his question.

“Did you knock on the front door of the house?”

She glanced back at the house. The lights were still off. There was a small bouquet of flowers propped against the door. “No.”

Will leaned down and opened the garage’s metal door. The noise as it rolled up was deafening, a loud clanging that must have been heard by half the neighborhood. Lena saw the bed, the table, the scattered papers and magazines. There was a small pool of blood where Frank had fallen by the mouth of the entrance. Ice glazed the top. The cut in his arm was deeper than she thought. There was no way the letter opener had done the damage. Had he stabbed himself?

Will asked, “Is this how you found the garage?”

“Pretty much.” Lena crossed her arms over her chest. She could feel the cold seeping in through her jacket. She should have come back to the scene after getting Tommy’s confession and searched Allison’s things for more clues to back up Tommy’s story. It was too late for that now. The best thing Lena could do for herself was to start thinking like a detective instead of acting like a suspect. The murder weapon was probably in here. The scooter was a good lead. The stain by the bed was an even better one. Tommy could’ve hit Allison in the head, then taken her into the woods to kill her. Maybe his plan was to drown her by the lake. The girl had come to, and he’d stabbed her in the back of the neck. Tommy had lived in Grant County all his life. He’d probably been to the cove hundreds of times. He would know where the bottom dropped in the lake. He would know to take the body out deep so that she wouldn’t be easily found.

Lena exhaled. She could breathe now. This was making sense. Tommy had lied to her about how he’d killed Allison, but he had killed her.

Will cleared his throat. “Let’s go back a few steps. All three of you were standing here. The garage was closed. The house looked empty. Then what?”

Lena took a minute to regain her composure. She told him about Brad seeing the masked intruder inside, the way he had circled the building before they fanned out to confront the suspect.

Will seemed to be only half listening as she laid out the events. He stood just under the garage door with his hands behind his back, scanning the contents of the room. Lena was telling him about Tommy refusing to lower the knife when she noticed that Will was focusing on the brown stain by the bed. He walked into the garage and knelt down for a better look. Beside him was the bucket of murky water she had seen yesterday. The crusty sponge was beside it.

He looked up at her. “Keep going.”

Lena had to think to find her place. “Tommy was behind that table.” She nodded to the table, which was crooked.

Will said, “That door isn’t exactly quiet when it rolls up. Did he already have the knife in his hand?”

Lena stopped, trying to remember what she’d said the first time Will asked her the question. He wanted to know if Tommy had a sheath on his belt where he kept a knife. He wanted to know if it was the same knife that had killed Allison Spooner.

She said, “When I saw him, he already had the knife in his hand. I don’t know where it came from. Maybe the table.” Of course it had come from the table. There was a partially opened envelope there, the kind of junk mail that contained coupons nobody used.

“What else did you notice?”

She indicated the bucket of brown water by the bed. “He’d been cleaning. I guess he hit her in the head or knocked her out here. He put her on the scooter and—”

“He didn’t mention cleaning up in his confession.”

No, he hadn’t. Lena hadn’t even thought to ask him about the bucket. All she had been thinking about was Brad, and how gray his skin had looked the last time she’d seen him. “Suspects lie. Tommy didn’t want to admit how he did it. He made up a story that painted him in a better light. It happens all the time.”

Will asked, “What happened next?”

Lena swallowed, fighting the image of Brad that kept popping into her head. “I approached the suspect from the right.”