Karin Slaughter - Broken

“Last night,” he admitted. Then, instead of making Will ask the right questions, he volunteered, “We got into a fight. She said she had to leave town. She wanted more money.”

“Did you give it to her?”

He shook his head. “Maxine had a couple hundred bucks in her purse. They got into a fight. Pretty bad.” He indicated the oxygen tank, the rails on his bed. “By the time I got up, she had Maxie on the ground, beating her.” Frank pressed his thin lips together. “I never thought I’d live to see anything like that—a child wailing off on her own mother. My child. That wasn’t who I raised her to be. That wasn’t my kid.”

“What happened?”

“She stole the money. Took some out of my wallet, too. Maybe fifty bucks.”

“We found almost three hundred dollars on the body.”

He nodded, as if that’s what he expected. “I got a call from Brock this morning. Said she was pulled out downriver from the granite field.” He looked at Will as if he didn’t quite believe the information.

“That’s right. She was near the college.”

“He said I didn’t need to see her right now. Give him time to clean her up.” Frank’s breath caught. “How many times have you said that to a parent who wants to see their kid, only you know the kid’s been beaten, cut, fucked up six ways to Sunday?”

“A lot of times,” Will admitted. “But Brock’s right. You don’t want to remember her like this.”

Frank stared at the ceiling. “I don’t know if I want to remember her at all.”

Will let his words hang between them for a few seconds. “Is there anything else you want to tell me?”

Frank shook his head, and again, Will wasn’t sure whether or not to trust him. The man had been a detective for over thirty years. There was no way he hadn’t at least suspected his daughter was involved in these crimes. Even if Frank didn’t want to say it out loud, surely he knew deep down that his inaction had at the very least cost Tommy Braham and Jason Howell their lives.

Or maybe he didn’t know. Maybe Frank was so good at deceiving himself that he was certain he had done everything right.

“I should let you get some rest,” Will offered.

Frank’s eyes were closed, but he wasn’t asleep. “I used to take her hunting.” His voice was a raspy whisper. “It was the only time we got along.” He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. The only sound in the room was the quiet hiss of the oxygen tank beside his bed. “I taught her to never aim for the heart. There’s ribs and bone all around it. Bullet ricochets. You end up chasing the deer for miles waiting for him to die.” He put his hand to the side of his neck. “You go for the neck. Cut off the stuff that supplies the heart.” He rubbed the sagging skin. “That’s the clean kill. The most humane.”

Will had seen the crime scenes. There was nothing humane about the murders of Allison Spooner and Jason Howell. They had been terrified. They had been butchered.

“I’m dying,” Frank said. His words were no surprise. “I was diagnosed with cancer a few months ago.” He licked his chapped lips. “Maxine said she’d take care of me as long as I gave her my pension.” His breath caught in his chest. He gave a strained laugh. “I always thought I’d die alone.”

Will felt an overwhelming sadness at the man’s words. Frank Wallace was going to die alone. There might be people in the same room with him—his bitter ex-wife, a few blindly loyal colleagues—but men like Frank were destined to die the same way they had lived, with everyone at arm’s length.

Will knew this because he often viewed his own life and death through a similar lens. He didn’t have any childhood friends he’d kept in touch with. There were no relatives he could reach out to. Faith had the baby now. Eventually, she would find a man whose company she could tolerate. There might be another baby. She would probably find a desk job to take some of the stress out of her life. Will would recede from her life like a tide rolling back from the shore.

That left Angie, and Will had no great hope that she would be a comfort to him in his old age. She lived fast and hard, showing the same reckless disregard that had landed her mother in the coma ward at the state hospital for the last twenty-seven years. Marriage, if anything, had pushed them further apart. Will had always assumed that he would outlive Angie, that he would find himself alone at her graveside one day. This image always brought him great sadness tinged with a modicum of relief. Part of Will loved Angie more than life itself. Another part of him thought of her as a Pandora’s box that held his darkest secrets. If she were to die, she would take some of that darkness with her.

But she would also take part of his life.

Will asked Frank, “Do you need me to get you anything?”

He coughed again, a dry, hacking sound. “No,” he answered. “I’m fine on my own.”

“Take care of yourself.” Will made himself reach out and touch Frank’s shoulder before he left the room.

SARA WAS IN the front yard with her greyhounds when Will pulled into the Linton driveway. The side of her face was bruised. The cut on her arm had needed stitches. Her hair was down, brushing across her shoulders.

She looked beautiful.

The dogs ran to greet him as he got out of the car. Sara had dressed them both in black fleece jackets to fight the cold. Will petted the excited animals as much as he could without falling over backward.

Sara clicked her tongue and they stopped accosting him. She asked, “I take it Frank wasn’t much help?”

Will shook his head, feeling a lump come into his throat. He used to be good at hiding his thoughts, but somehow Sara had cracked the code. “I don’t think he has long.”

“I heard.” She was obviously conflicted about the impending death of her longtime family friend. “I’m sorry that he’s sick, but I don’t know how I feel about him as a person after all of this.”

“Maybe he could’ve stopped it—for Jason, at least.” Will added, “Then again, people don’t see what they don’t want to see.”

“Denial doesn’t hold up as a good excuse. Darla could’ve killed me. She would’ve killed me if the bank hadn’t given out.”

Will didn’t look up because he didn’t want Sara to know what he was thinking. Instead, he leaned down to scratch Bob’s ear. “Frank’s ex-wife is with him. At least he’s not going to die alone.”

“Small comfort.”

“I think it is,” he countered. “Some people don’t get that. Some people just—” Will stopped himself before he started to sound like a blubbering child. “Anyway, I don’t think I’m ever going to find out what really happened this week.”

“Do you need to?”

“I don’t guess so. Nothing will bring Tommy back, but at least his name is clear. Darla’s not going to hurt anyone else. Frank’s in his own prison.”

“And Lena gets away clean yet again.”

She didn’t sound as bitter as she had before. “We’ll see.”

Sara laughed. “You want to make a bet?”

Will tried to think of a clever wager, something that involved him taking her to dinner when they got back to Atlanta, but he was too slow.

She said, “Brock called this morning. He found Lena’s Toyota key in Darla’s front pocket. I guess she was planning on taking Lena’s car and leaving town.”

He remembered the Celica’s sliced tires. Someone at the station had given Lena a parting gift. “Darla must’ve seen you get out of your car and decided to upgrade her ride.” Will had always known that the killer was good at improvising. “Did Hare say what made him check the files for Tommy’s name?”

“He’d seen Tommy in the clinic a couple of times. It’s not unusual for kids that age to still go to their pediatrician, but Tommy was there a lot, at least once a week. Hare got curious after the suicide and checked the paperwork for Tommy’s name.” Sara pulled the leash as Billy tried to pee on the side of Will’s car. “He confirmed what Darla said. He was going to the ethics committee to report the protocol breach.”