Page 37 of Girl, Fractured

Sarah Webb’s voice rang in her ears.She’d hung up the call minutes ago, but the phrase was still playing on repeat in her skull:‘Frank’s dead, Diana.Someone put stones in his eyes.Just like Jennifer Marlowe.’

Frank Sullivan.Dead.The word itself felt refused to attach itself to the cantankerous image of the man she’d known – sometimes tolerated, sometimes actively avoided – for the better part of ten years.Frank wasn’t the type to justdie.He was the type to hang on out of sheer stubbornness, probably arguing with gravity itself if it tried to pull him under early.

Murdered.That was the part that twisted Diana’s insides.Not a heart attack fishing off his stupid little dock, not a stroke arguing with the television, but murdered.

And stones for eyes, just like the case that haunted him so.

Marlowe.1976.Frank’s personal, fifty-year albatross.

Diana found herself standing in her living room, though she had no memory of walking there.How long had she been here, rooted to the spot like one of the ancient cypress trees out back?Minutes, surely.Time had decoupled itself from the steady tick of the grandfather clock in the hall.Her rational brain, the part shaped by thirty years on the streets, scrambled to impose order on this sudden chaos.

Okay.Analyze.Frank Sullivan.Victim.

But a tsunami of considerations overwhelmed her, and Diana found herself struggling to see this in any clear light.Frank wasn’t just a victim; he was Frank.Cranky, obsessive, tunnel-visioned Frank, who could recall the exact weather conditions on the day Jennifer Marlowe’s body was found in 1976 but probably couldn’t remember what he’d eaten for breakfast.

Why would someone hurt him?He lived like a hermit crab.He scuttled between his house, his back garden and the occasional reluctant meeting of their cold case klatch.Enemies?Yes, every cop has them, but Frank’s active enemies, the ones with lingering grudges, were probably underground themselves by now.He hadn’t been on the job in decades.Old scores settled this late felt unlikely.

Unless it wasn’t about Frank the retired Fed.

What if it was about Frank, the keeper of the Marlowe flame?

Whatever it was, it worked.Because Diana Jewell, who’d spent her career catching drug dealers and murderers, who’d stared down the barrel of countless guns and lived to file the paperwork, was scared.

The admission triggered an immediate defensive response.No.She didn’t do scared, yet her feet swept her to every door in her house.Front door: locked, deadbolted, security chain engaged.Back door: same.Sliding glass doors to the lanai: locked with the bar in place.

Diana paused at the sliding door to her garden.The rain that pelted the glass was not the civilized Florida rain that sometimes drifted down like an afterthought, but the vindictive kind that seemed to be punishing the earth for some unknowable transgression.Outside, her koi pond had transformed into a battlefield of colliding circles.

Locked.Secure.The drumming rain should have been a white noise blanket, but instead it seemed to amplify the house’s internal sounds.The groan of old timbers settling, the low hum of the ancient refrigerator she needed to replace.

Then, through the percussive roar of the storm, another sound.

Faint, but definitely not the rain.

The basement.

Diana froze.Every nerve ending went taut.She strained her ears, held her breath, tried to filter out the rain’s assault.Had she imagined it?

Thump-thump.

Louder this time.Something metallic hitting the concrete floor?A loose tool falling off a shelf?

Shit.The bulkhead door.

Her blood ran cold.She hadn’t checked it.That door was barely hanging on by a thread, which is why she’d had to move the White Whale meetings up to ground level.Frank and Sarah always complained about the draft down there.

Which meant someone might know that my basement door is breachable.

Panic surged.No more rationalization.No more pretending she wasn’t scared.Someone could be down there.Had the noise been them gettingin?This was one of the few houses in Palm Harbor that actually had a basement – and any potential intruder would jump at that advantage.

Forget procedure.Forget assessment.Get the equalizer.

Diana rushed to the living room and found her Glock 26 in the drawer.Six bullets in the chamber.More than enough.She hadn’t shot in a while, couldn’t remember the last time she had, but it was like driving.Once you learned, you never forgot.

She made sure her cell was still in her pocket too, then she edged towards the basement door with her gun held high.Don’t rush.Rushing gets you ambushed.Rushing gets you dead.When she reached it, she pressed an ear to the wood.

There were no obvious sounds from down below.All Diana could hear was the rain outside.

Slowly, she turned the old brass knob.It resisted for a fraction, then gave with a soft groan.The door swung inward onto absolute blackness.A wave of cool, musty air flowed out.

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