Page 29 of Girl, Fractured

‘Can’t remember the first name, but Frank said she was a writer lady.Interested in the Marlowe investigation.’

Ella made a mental note of the name.Perhaps there was someone out there whodidshare Frank’s obsession.‘Any other names?’

‘No, but there are still people around here remember the case, too.Just because it’s not out there, doesn’t mean people don’t know about it.’

If Frank had discussed the Marlowe case – including the signature stone detail – with others over the years, the circle of knowledge might be wider than she’d initially assumed.It wasn’t necessarily just Frank, Cole, and the killer anymore.Who else had Frank confided in?

To Ella’s surprise, Ripley suddenly pushed off from the wall.‘Mr.Cole, did Frank have any enemies?’

Ramsey’s expression recalibrated, noting the change in interrogator.He measured Ripley with the cautious respect of one career detective assessing another.

‘Enemies?Frank?The man was a hermit.Lived on fish he caught himself and conversations with his cat.’

‘Are you sure?No jealous friends, crazy ex-wives, old grudges?’

‘I’m sorry, but we’re both pushing 80.We don’t have time for any of that nonsense.The only people who’d want to hurt him are dead themselves.Besides, if someone had a grudge against Frank, they wouldn’t have bothered with...that.’He nodded toward where the photos had been.‘They’d have just shot him and left.’

Ella weighed Ramsey’s responses against what she knew.The trembling hands when he saw the photos.The precise recall of the Marlowe crime scene.The candid admission of his frustration with Frank’s obsession.None of it felt like deception.Just the weariness of an old cop who’d put his ghosts to bed only to have them show up on his doorstep decades later.

Whatever Frank had suspected Cole was hiding, it wasn’t murder.The man could barely manage his cane, let alone perform a precise post-mortem enucleation.And his alibi – Martha, who’d need to be complicit – seemed improbable at best.

Ella caught Ripley’s eye and received a nod in return.Time to go.They’d squeezed this stone dry.

‘We should let you rest, Mr.Cole,’ Ella said.‘We appreciate your time.’

‘I’m not going anywhere.’Ramsey patted his cane.‘Not quickly, anyway.’

Martha materialized from the kitchen, keeper of her husband’s energy reserves.‘I’ll show you out.’

Just as they were leaving the living room, Ramsey’s voice cut through the air again.

‘Agents.It’s not possible that...after all this time...?’

The question hung incomplete, but Ella knew exactly what he couldn’t bring himself to ask.

‘Yes, Mr.Cole,’ she said quietly.‘It’s entirely possible.’

Ramsey’s eyes locked with hers, ancient cop to modern agent, a half-century of police work compressed into a terrible understanding.The tremor in his hand had spread to his entire arm now.

They left Ramsey and Martha to their afternoons.Outside, heat shimmered off the asphalt as they walked to their car.Ella felt the weight of everything hit her at once.

Ramsey Cole had finally articulated what she’d been circling.Either someone was using the Marlowe case as elaborate misdirection – which required intimate knowledge few possessed – or the unthinkable alternative:

Jennifer Marlowe’s killer had returned after nearly fifty years.

Somewhere out there, a murderer who’d placed white stones in a young woman’s eye sockets in 1976 was still alive, still killing, and had specifically targeted the detective who couldn’t let the case go.

CHAPTER TEN

The first white stone slipped from his fingers and clinked against the others in the dish.Cold little eyeballs.Dead little planets.He’d spent a hundred dollars on them, and they still looked like something you’d buy at a craft store to spruce up a fish tank.

Which was the point, of course.Mundane objects transformed by context.

A stone in a garden: decoration.A stone in an eye socket: horror.

Thankfully, the teenage cashier with a septum piercing down at Shell World on Gulf Boulevard hadn’t even looked up from her phone when he’d brought them.As well as the stones, he’d also purchased two Acer plants and a ceramic turtle.

Why?He hated plants, and turtles even more, but it was the little things that changed the narrative.A good murderer was a magician and a salesman rolled into one.Like a magician, you needed to confuse the sequence of events in the spectator’s mind.Like a salesman, you had to use that subtle terminology that disguised the truth.

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