Page 7

Prior to boarding the plane bound for Florida, a thorough search of the FBI database had given the name Ella craved: Jennifer Marlowe.

But up here in the sky, altitude must have numbed her brain.

Thirty thousand feet made everything below seem toy-sized and unreal.

That’s what Ella told herself as any further scrutiny into the case came up empty.

The plane’s WiFi crawled like a wounded insect, and each query timeout felt like another tiny betrayal by technology.

The information in front of her disputed her memories, because she could find no mention of such mutilation being inflicted upon Jennifer Marlowe’s eyes. All she could find was the victim’s name and the basic details of her death.

Ripley’s eyes cracked open. She was leaning against the window opposite her. ‘You’re still on that?’

‘It’s there. I know it’s there. The victim’s name was on the tip of my tongue – Jennifer Marlowe – but these old articles just say she was shot in the stomach. Even our database doesn’t mention anything else.’

‘Was it an FBI case?’

‘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.

‘According to the police report, those things he left in Frank’s eye sockets were alabaster stones. You know the types?’

‘Unfortunately, yes. I’ve got some in my planters at home.’

‘Yeah. You can get them at garden stores, craft shops, anywhere that-’

‘I know where you get alabaster stones from, Dark,’ interrupted Ripley. ‘I’m more concerned with the psychopathology of a man who can cut out someone’s eyeballs.’

‘Actually,’ Ella said, then paused, gauging whether to continue. ‘No, it doesn’t matter.’

‘Go on. You were probably going to tell me that removing eyeballs isn’t that difficult.’

‘It’s not, but Frank was your friend. Some details don’t need to be said.’

‘If it helps us figure out what kind of person our unsub is, then I’m all for it. Besides, it’s what Frank would have wanted.’

Ella figured that going into the grisly details was a bad idea, but when Ripley was in moods like this, it was best not to oppose her. And sometimes, the grim specifics helped with the healing process.

‘Enucleation isn’t that technically difficult.

The eyeball is suspended in the socket by six extraocular muscles and the optic nerve.

Once you sever those connections, it comes out pretty easily.

’ She traced the path with her finger on the photo.

‘You’d need a curved blade, something like a melon baller or a grapefruit spoon would work.

Start with the conjunctival tissue, then work your way around, snipping the muscles one by one.

The optic nerve is the toughest part, but it’s just one clean cut at the back.

You don’t need any surgical knowledge. Anyone could brute force their way through, provided they had the stomach for it. The worst part would be the sound.’

‘The sound?’

‘Yeah. Snipping those muscles makes this wet click sound. Like scissors cutting through rubber bands underwater.’

Ripley’s face drained of what little color remained. The clinical analysis had pushed her past some invisible threshold. She looked like she was going to vomit, and Ripley never vomited.

‘For God’s sake.’ Ripley turned back to the window. This wasn’t the Ripley that once told Ella that death was sometimes just a puzzle to solve. This was raw Ripley, bleeding Ripley. Ella immediately regretted the detour into surgical technique.

‘Sorry.’

‘Don’t be. This is what I trained you for.’

Ella spun the scenario on its head. If this was thirty years in the future and Ripley was found in her recliner with her eyeballs missing, would Ella scold her hypothetical protégée for divulging the inner workings of enucleation?

No, probably not. Ella suddenly became aware that the businessman across the aisle was no longer pretending not to listen.

‘Frank used to say the eyes were God’s surveillance cameras,’ Ripley muttered. ‘Said they recorded everything, even stuff the brain didn’t consciously process.’

‘Frank was right.’

‘And he figured it out years before textbooks laid it all out for you. Pure trial and error. Human insight.’

‘Maybe that’s why the killer took them.’

‘And replaced them with blanks. Like wiping the tape.’

‘Jealousy is a hell of a motivator.’

Ella studied the photos one last time before tucking them away.

In the field of human monstrosity, she’d seen worse, but this felt like a message written in a language she almost understood, like finding hieroglyphics in her mailbox.

The stones weren’t just macabre decoration; they were syntax in some grammar of violence.

And Frank Sullivan had been both the message and the medium.

This was punctuation. The period at the end of a sentence no one knew they were reading.

‘837429,’ Ripley said suddenly.

‘What’s that?’ Ella looked up.

‘Frank’s badge number. I always remembered it.

’ Ripley’s voice held the flat certainty of someone reciting their childhood address.

‘Eight-three-seven-four-two-nine. He had it tattooed on his shoulder right before he retired. Said if he ever got dementia, if he ever forgot who he was, that number might trigger something. Might remind him of his better days.’’

‘Well,’ Ella said, ‘let’s hope Frank never got there.’

‘He didn’t. Frank was as sharp as a knife right ‘til the end. I know it. Sharp enough to see his killer coming. Just not sharp enough to stop them.’

The plane shuddered through another patch of turbulence, then the captain’s voice crackled over the intercom about their imminent descent into Tampa.

‘When we land, we go straight to Frank’s place,’ Ripley continued. ‘I want to see what the killer saw.’