Pieces of Her

by Karin Slaughter

  She looked back.

  Blood slowly flushed into the white of his left eye, moving through the capillaries like smoke, curling around the cornea. His lips moved wordlessly. His hand was steady as he reached up to touch his head. The temple was crushed at a sharp angle, a perfect match to the edge of the frying pan. He looked at his fingers.

  No blood.

  Andy’s hand went to her throat. She felt like she had swallowed glass.

  Was he okay? Was he going to be okay? Enough to hurt her? Enough to suffocate her mother? To rape them? To kill them both? To—

  A trilling noise came from his throat. His mouth fell open. His eyes started to roll up. He reached for the chair, knees bent, trying to sit down, but he missed and fell to the floor.

  Andy jumped back like she might get scalded.

  He had fallen on his side, legs twisted, hands clutching his stomach.

  Andy could not stop staring, waiting, trembling, panicking.

  Laura said, “Andrea.”

  Andy’s heart flickered like a candle. Her muscles were stone. She was fixed in position, cast like a statue.

  Laura screamed, “Andrea!”

  Andy was jolted out of her trance. She blinked. She looked at her mother.

  Laura was trying to lean up on the couch. The whites of her eyes were dotted with broken blood vessels. Her lips were blue. More broken blood vessels pinpricked her cheeks. The plastic bag was still tied around her neck. Deep gouge marks ringed her skin. She had clawed the bag open with her fingers the same way Andy had chewed through the poncho trashbag.

  “Hurry.” Laura’s voice was hoarse. “See if he’s breathing.”

  Andy’s vision telescoped. She felt dizzy. She heard a whistling sound as she tried to draw air into her lungs. She was starting to hyperventilate.

  “Andrea,” Laura said. “He has my gun in the waist of his jeans. Give it to me. Before he wakes up.”

  What?

  “Andrea, snap out of it.” Laura slid off the couch onto the floor. Her leg was bleeding again. She used her good arm to edge across the carpet. “We need to get the gun. Before he comes round.”

  Hoodie’s hands moved.

  “Mom!” Andy fell back against the wall. “Mom!”

  Laura said, “It’s okay, he’s—”

  Hoodie gave a sudden, violent jerk that knocked over the leather chair. His hands started moving in circles, then the circles turned into tremors that quaked into his shoulders, then head. His torso. His legs. Within seconds, his entire body convulsed into a full-blown seizure.

  Andy heard a wail come out of her mouth. He was dying. He was going to die.

  “Andrea,” Laura said, calm, controlled. “Go into the kitchen.”

  “Mom!” Andy cried. The man’s back arched into a half-circle. His feet kicked into the air. What had she done? What had she done?

  “Andrea,” Laura repeated. “Go into the kitchen.”

  He started to make a grunting noise. Andy covered her ears, but nothing could block the sound. She watched in horror as his fingers curved away from his hands. His mouth foamed. His eyes rolled wildly.

  “Go into the—”

  “He’s dying!” Andy wailed.

  The grunting intensified. His eyes had rolled up so far in his head that it looked like cotton had been stuffed into the sockets. Urine spread out from the crotch of his jeans. His shoe flew off. His hands scratched at the air.

  “Do something!” Andy screamed. “Mom!”

  Laura grabbed the frying pan. She lifted it over her head.

  “No!” Andy leapt across the room. She wrenched the frying pan away from her mother. Laura’s arm snaked around her waist before Andy could get away. She pulled her close, pressed her mouth to Andy’s head. “Don’t look, baby. Don’t look.”

  “What did I do?” Andy keened. “What did I do?”

  “You saved me,” Laura said. “You saved me.”

  “I d-d-d . . .” Andy couldn’t get out the words. “Mom . . . he’s . . . I c-can’t . . .”

  “Don’t look.” Laura tried to cover Andy’s eyes, but she pushed her mother’s hand away.

  There was total silence.

  Even the rain had stopped tapping against the window.

  Hoodie had gone still. The muscles in his face were relaxed. One eye stared up at the ceiling. The other looked toward the window. His pupils were solid black dimes.

  Andy felt her heart tumble back down her throat.

  The waist of the man’s hoodie had slipped up. Above the white waistband of his underwear, Andy could see a tattoo of a smiling dolphin. It was cresting out of the water. The word Maria was written in an ornate script underneath.

  “Is he—” Andy couldn’t say the words. “Mom, is he—”

  Laura did not equivocate. “He’s dead.”

  “I k-k-k . . .” Andy couldn’t get the word out. “K-kill . . . k-kill—”

  “Andy?” Laura’s tone had changed. “Do you hear sirens?” She turned to look out the window. “Did you call the police?”

  Andy could only stare at the tattoo. Was Maria his girlfriend? His wife? Had she killed someone’s dad?

  “Andy?” Laura pushed herself back along the carpet. She reached under the couch with her hand. She was searching for something. “Darling, quickly. Get his wallet out of his pants.”

  Andy stared at her mother.

  “Get his wallet. Now.”

  Andy did not move.

  “Look under the couch, then. Come here. Now.” Laura snapped her fingers. “Andy, come here. Do as I say.”

  Andy crawled toward the couch, not sure what she was supposed to do.

  “Back corner,” Laura told her. “Inside the batting on top of the spring. Reach up. There’s a make-up bag.”

  Andy leaned down on her elbow so she could reach into the innards of the couch. She found a vinyl make-up bag, black with a brass zipper. It was heavy, packed tight.

  How had it gotten here?

  “Listen to me.” Laura had the man’s wallet. She pulled out the cash. “Take this. All of it. There’s a town called Carrollton in West Georgia. It’s on the state line. Are you listening to me?”

  Andy had unzipped the bag. Inside was a flip phone with a charging cable, a thick stack of twenty-dollar bills, and a white, unlabeled keycard like you’d use to get into a hotel room.

  “Andy,” Laura was reaching for the framed photo on her desk. “You want the Get-Em-Go storage facility. Can you remember? G-e-t-e-m-g-o.”

  What?

  “Take his wallet. Throw it in the bay.”

  Andy looked down at the leather wallet that her mother had tossed onto the floor. The driver’s license showed through a plastic sleeve. Her eyes were so swollen from crying that she couldn’t see the words.

  Laura said, “Don’t use the credit cards, all right? Just use the cash. Close your eyes.” She broke the picture frame against the side of her desk. Glass splintered. She picked away the photo. There was a small key inside, the kind you’d use to open a padlock. “You’ll need this, okay? Andy, are you listening? Take this. Take it.”

  Andy took the key. She dropped it into the open bag.

  “This, too.” Laura wedged the wallet into the make-up bag alongside the cash. “Unit one-twenty. That’s what you need to remember: One-twenty. Get-Em-Go in Carrollton.” She searched the man’s pockets, found his keys. “This is for a Ford. He probably parked in the cul-de-sac at the end of Beachview. Take it.”

  Andy took the keys, but her mind would not register what she was holding.

  “Unit one-twenty. There’s a car inside. Take that one, leave his Ford. Unhook the battery cables. That’s very important, Andy. You need to cut the power to the GPS. Can you remember that, baby? Unhook the battery cables. Dad showed you what the battery looks like. Remember?”

  Andy slowly nodded. She remembered Gordon showing her the parts of a car.

  “The unit number is your birthday. One-twenty. Say it.”

  “
One-twenty,” Andy managed.

  “The sirens are getting closer. You have to leave,” Laura said. “I need you to leave. Now.”

  Andy was incapacitated. It was too much. Way too much.

  “Darling.” Laura cupped Andy’s chin with her hand. “Listen to me. I need you to run. Now. Go out the back. Find the man’s Ford. If you can’t find it, then take Daddy’s car. I’ll explain it to him later. I need you to head northwest. Okay?” She gripped Andy’s shoulder as she struggled to stand. “Andy, please. Are you listening?”

  “Northwest,” Andy whispered.

  “Try to make it to Macon first, then buy a map, an actual paper map, and find Carrollton. Get-Em-Go is near the Walmart.” Laura pulled Andy up by the arm. “You need to leave your phone here. Don’t take anything with you.” She shook Andy again. “Listen to me. Don’t call Daddy. Don’t make him lie for you.”

  “Lie for—”

  “They’re going to arrest me for this.” She put her finger to Andy’s lips to stop her protest. “It’s okay, darling. I’ll be okay. But you have to leave. You can’t let Daddy know where you are. Do you understand? If you contact him, they’ll know. They’ll trace it back and find you. Telephone calls, email, anything. Don’t reach out to him. Don’t try to call me. Don’t call any of your friends, or anyone you’ve ever had contact with, okay? Do you understand me? Do you hear what I’m saying?”

  Andy nodded because that’s what her mother wanted her to do.

  “Keep heading northwest after Carrollton.” Laura walked her through the kitchen, her arm tight around Andy’s waist. “Somewhere far away, like Idaho. When it’s safe, I’ll call you on the phone that’s in the bag.”

  Safe?

  “You’re so strong, Andrea. Stronger than you know.” Laura was breathing hard. She was clearly trying not to cry. “I’ll call you on that phone. Don’t come home until you hear from me, okay? Only respond to my voice, my actual voice, saying these exact words: ‘It’s safe to come home.’ Do you understand? Andy?”

  The sirens were getting closer. Andy could hear them now. At least three cruisers. There was a dead man in the house. Andy had killed him. She had murdered a man and the cops were almost here.

  “Andrea?”

  “Okay,” Andy breathed. “Okay.”

  “Get-Em-Go. One-twenty. Right?”

  Andy nodded.

  “Out the back. You need to run.” Laura tried to push her toward the door.

  “Mom.” Andy couldn’t leave without knowing. “Are you—are you a spy?”

  “A what?” Laura looked bewildered.

  “Or an assassin, or government agent, or—”

  “Oh, Andy, no,” Laura sounded as if she wanted to laugh. “I’m your mother. All I’ve ever been is your mother.” She pressed her palm to the side of Andy’s face. “I’m so proud of you, my angel. The last thirty-one years have been a gift. You are the reason I am alive. I would’ve never made it without you. Do you understand me? You are my heart. You are every ounce of blood in my body.”

  The sirens were close, maybe two streets over.

  “I’m so sorry.” Laura could no longer hold back her tears. Yesterday, she had killed a man. She had been stabbed, cut, almost suffocated. She had pushed away her family and not a tear had dropped from her eyes until this moment. “My angel. Please forgive me. Everything I’ve ever done is for you, my Andrea Heloise. Everything.”

  The sirens were out front. Tires screeched against pavement.

  “Run,” Laura begged. “Andy, please, my darling, please—run.”

  5

  Wet sand caked into the insides of Andy’s sneakers as she ran along the shore. She had the make-up bag clutched to her chest, fingers holding together the top because she dared not take the time to zip it. There was no moon, no light from the McMansions, nothing but mist in her face and the sounds of sirens at her back.

  She looked over her shoulder. Flashlights were skipping around the outside of her mother’s house. Shouting traveled down the beach.

  “Clear on the left!”

  “Clear in the back!”

  Sometimes, when Andy stayed on a 911 call, she would hear the cops in the background saying those same words.

  “It’s okay to hang up now,” she would tell the caller. “The police will take care of you.”

  Laura wouldn’t tell the cops anything. She would probably be sitting at the kitchen table, mouth firmly closed, when they found her. Detective Palazzolo wouldn’t be making any deals after tonight. Laura would be arrested. She would go to jail. She would appear in front of a judge and jury. She would go to prison.

  Andy ran harder, like she could get away from the thought of her mother behind bars. She bit her lip until she tasted the metallic tang of blood. The wet sand had turned into concrete inside her shoe. There was a tiny bit of karmic retribution about the pain.

  Hoodie was dead. She had killed him. She had murdered a man. Andy was a murderer.

  She shook her head so hard that her neck popped. She tried to get her bearings. Seaborne extended three tenths of a mile before it dead-ended into Beachview. If she missed the turn-off, she would find herself in a more inhabited area of the Isle where someone might glance out the window and call the police.

  Andy tried to count her footsteps, pacing off two hundred yards, then three hundred, then finally veering left away from the ocean. All of the McMansions had security gates to keep strangers from wandering in off the beach. City code forbade any permanent fences in front of the sand dunes, so people had erected flimsy wooden slats hanging from barbed wire to serve as a deterrent. Only some of the gates were alarmed, but all of them were marked with warnings that a siren would go off if they were opened.

  Andy stopped at the first gate she came to. She ran her hand along the sides. Her fingers brushed against a plastic box with a wire coming out of it.

  Alarmed.

  She ran to the next gate and went through the same check.

  Alarmed.

  Andy cursed, knowing the fastest way to the street would be to climb over the dunes. She gingerly pushed the wooden slats with her foot. The wire bowed. Some unseen anchor slipped from the sand so that the fence fell low enough to step over. She lifted her leg, careful not to snag her shorts on the barbed wire. Sea oats crushed under her feet as she traversed the steep slope. She cringed at the destruction she was causing. By the time she made it to a stone path, she was limping.

  Andy leaned her hand against the wall, stopped to take a breath. Her throat was so dry that she went into a coughing attack. She covered her mouth, waiting it out. Her eyes watered. Her lungs ached. When the coughing had finally passed, she let her hand drop. She took a step that might as well have been on glass. The sand in her sneakers had the consistency of clumping cat litter. Andy took them off, tried to shake them out. The synthetic mesh had turned into a cheese grater. Still, she tried to cram her feet back into the sneakers. The pain was too much. She was already bleeding.

  Andy walked barefoot up the path. She thought about all of the clues that Detective Palazzolo would find when she arrived at the bungalow: Laura’s face, especially her bloodshot eyes, still showing signs of suffocation. The plastic bag around her neck with the dead man’s fingerprints on it. The dead man lying in the office by the overturned coffee table. The side of his head caved in. Urine soaking his pants. Foam drying on his lips. His eyes pointing in two different directions. Blood from Laura’s leg streaked across the carpet. Andy’s fingerprints on the handle of the frying pan.

  In the driveway: broken glass from the floodlights. The lock on the kitchen door probably jimmied. The puddles on the kitchen tiles showing the path Hoodie had taken. More water showing Andy’s route from the bedroom to the hall to the guest room to the living room and back again.

  On the beach: Andy’s footprints carved into the wet sand. Her destructive path up the dunes. Her blood, her DNA, on the stone path where she now stood.

  Andy clamped her teeth closed and groaned
into the sky. Her neck strained from the effort. She leaned over, elbows on her knees, bowed over by the impact of her horrible actions. None of this was right. Nothing made sense.

  What was she supposed to do?

  What could she do?

  She needed to talk to her father.

  Andy started to walk toward the road. She would go to Gordon’s house. She would ask him what to do. He would help her do the right thing.

  Andy stopped walking.

  She knew what her father would do. Gordon would let Laura take the blame. He would not allow Andy to turn herself in. He would not risk the possibility that she could go to prison for the rest of her life.

  But then Palazzolo would find Andy’s wet footprints inside Laura’s house, more footprints in the sand, her DNA between the McMansions, and she would charge Gordon with lying to a police officer and accomplice to murder after the fact.

  Her father could go to prison. He could lose his license to practice.

  Don’t make him lie for you.

  Andy remembered the tears in her mother’s eyes, her insistence that everything she’d done was for Andy. At a basic level, Andy had to trust that Laura was telling her to do the right thing. She continued up the driveway. Laura had guessed that the man’s Ford would be in the Beachview Drive cul-de-sac. She had also said to run, so Andy started to run again, holding her sneakers in one hand and the make-up bag in the other.

  She was rounding the corner when a bright light hit her face. Andy ducked back onto the stone path. Her first thought was that a police cruiser had hit her with the spotlight. Then she chanced a look up and realized she had triggered the motion detector on the floodlights.

  Andy ran up the driveway. She kept to the middle of the street away from the motion detectors on the houses. She did not look back, but her peripheral vision had caught the distant rolling of the red and blue lights. It looked like every Belle Isle police cruiser had responded to the emergency text. Andy probably had minutes, possibly seconds, before someone in charge told them to fan out and search the area.

  She got to the end of the one-way street. Beachview Drive dead-ended into Seaborne Avenue. There was a little dog-leg at the other end that served as beach access for emergency vehicles. Laura had guessed that the dead man’s car would be there.