Page 15 of Girl, Fractured

‘No.The Bureau’s help was requested but denied.’

‘Then we wouldn’t have all the details.’

Ella tapped her temple.‘If I remember reading about stones in eyes, then I read about stones in eyes.My memory doesn’t fabricate details.’

‘You forget things all the time, Dark.You forgot where you lost your cell phone.Maybe you’re conflating two different cases.’

Ella glanced at her partner.Ripley looked smaller than usual, like she’d been compressed by grief or age.Since learning about Frank Sullivan’s death, she’d retreated into herself, speaking only when spoken to.It was hard to reconcile this Ripley with the woman who’d given Ella hell in the field for eighteen months.

‘I know Jennifer Marlowe was found in her living room.’Ella kept her voice low; the businessman across the aisle had the hungry look of someone who’d eavesdrop on a suicide hotline call.‘I know she was shot in the stomach.I know she was thirty-two, lived in Palm Harbor and worked as a real estate agent.And I’m almost certain her eyes were replaced with white stones.’

Ripley made a contemplative noise.‘Almost certain.’

‘I read it somewhere.’

‘But not in the official files, apparently.’

The plane shuddered through a pocket of turbulence, and Ella’s laptop screen flickered.She steadied it with her palm.‘What did official files look like in the seventies?’

‘Like everything else: bad.Could be you read some bullshit newspaper article.There was no journalistic integrity back then.’

‘Or maybe it was one of those details they held back.’

‘Could be.But that still doesn’t explain how you’d know about it.’

Ella leaned back and stared at the gray ceiling panels.The not-knowing was its own form of torture.It was like trying to locate the edges of a puzzle without the box picture.

‘What if...’Ella started, then paused to unravel the thought fully.‘What if I read about it in one of Frank Sullivan’s case files?He was in Florida back in the seventies, right?Miami PD?And this case from 1976 took place in the exact same town Frank Sullivan lived in.’

‘Sullivan transferred to the Bureau in ‘81.But here’s an idea.’Ripley planted her case file on the small table between them.‘How about we forget about this 50-year-old homicide that may or may not have happened and focus on the case in front of us?’

‘Fine.’Ella conceded that her partner had a point.She flipped open Sullivan’s file and spread crime scene photos across her tray table.She arranged them in chronological order, starting with the entry wound and ending with those unsettling white orbs.‘Let’s break this down.’

Ripley leaned in.‘Tell me what you think.’

‘Let’s start with the basics.’Ella tapped the first photo.‘Single gunshot wound to the stomach.Clean entry, minimal powder stippling.Still need to wait for a full autopsy but the bullet probably punctured an organ.Sullivan would have died in, what?Less than a minute?’

‘Thirty seconds at best.At his age, the shock to the nervous system might have killed him right there.’Ripley spoke without breathing, like she needed to shed the words from her throat as fast as possible.

‘Not a point-blank shot, but not a million miles away.Based on the stippling, the killer was ten feet away at most.’

‘Killer shot him in the middle of the living room, then dragged him into the recliner.Look at how the blood smear narrows.That’s directional.’

‘Gun suggests physical inadequacy.Our killer got in the house and shot Frank as quickly as possible.His intention was death.There’s no sadism here.’

Ripley nodded.‘Yeah.’

Ella waited for Ripley to continue the profiling waltz but no further comment came.Fair enough.Some victims punctured the professional membrane, and Frank Sullivan had clearly torn straight through Ripley’s.Compartmentalization was the FBI agent’s best friend until the body on the table belonged to someone who’d taught you how to look at bodies in the first place.

‘So he’s not physically adept.He probably didn’t spend much time with Frank while he was alive.’

‘No.The main event came postmortem.’

Looking at a close-up of the white orbs in Frank’s eyes, it was clear they’d been inserted in there after Frank’s heart had stopped beating.‘No blood around the orbital cavities, so the unsub started cutting around in there at least twenty minutes after death.’

‘Right.So he stayed at the scene for a while.Let’s hope he left a trace.’

Ella didn’t want to burst her partner’s optimistic bubble, but any killer who’d brought his own eyeball replacements to a murder scene probably wasn’t clumsy enough to leave much trace of himself behind.This unsub knew exactly what they were doing.They had one goal in mind, and they achieved it.

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