Broken (Will Trent 4)

Frank continued, “She worked so hard to get her nursing degree. I never thought she’d …” His voice trailed off. “I didn’t know.”

“She’s been in trouble before.”

Frank would only nod.

“Bad checks,” Will supplied. Darla’s fingerprints were on file. They matched the print on the Windex bottle Will and Charlie had found in the dorm bathroom closet. Will made an educated guess. “She was in trouble before that.”

Frank gave a tight nod. “I’d get calls every now and then. Professional courtesy, one cop to another. Austin. Little Rock. West Memphis. She was taking care of old people, skimming their money. She was good. She never got caught, but they knew it was her.”

Will had found many times that there was a fine line between knowing someone was guilty and proving it. Being a cop’s daughter had probably given Darla an extra layer of protection.

“I was sure Tommy killed that girl. I just didn’t want anything to come back on Darla.”

“You did everything you could do to make sure Lena’s case was solid.”

He stared at Will with rheumy eyes, obviously trying to guess what he knew.

The truth was that Will didn’t know anything for certain. He guessed that Frank had hidden evidence. He guessed that Frank had delayed the call center in Eaton sending the audio of Maxine’s voice on the 911 call. He guessed that the man had impeded an investigation, acted with reckless endangerment, and blindly if not willfully contributed to the deaths of three people.

As Frank had said, there was knowing and then there was proving.

“I never wanted to get Lena involved in any of this,” Frank said. “She didn’t know nothing about any of it. It was all down to me.”

Will imagined Lena would say the same thing about Frank. As long as he lived, he would never understand the bond that held them together. “When did you figure out that Darla was involved?”

“When Lena—” He started coughing again. This time, there was so much blood that he had to spit into a tissue. “Jesus,” Frank groaned, wiping his mouth. “I’m sorry.”

Will fought to keep his stomach under control. “When did you figure it out?”

“When Lena told me there was another kid got killed the same way …” His voice trailed off again. “I couldn’t see Darla doing this. You’ll understand when you have kids. She was my baby. I used to walk the floor with her at night. I watched her grow from a little girl into …” Frank didn’t finish his words, though it was obvious what Darla had grown into.

“When’s the last time you saw her?”

“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.