Pieces of Her

by Karin Slaughter

  Jane laughed because Clara laughed.

  Clara said, “I’m not a true believer. I mean, yeah, I get what you’re doing and of course it’s important, but I’m a big chicken when it comes to putting myself on the line. I’d rather write some checks and provide safe harbor.”

  “Don’t dismiss what you’re doing. Your contributions are still important.” Jane felt like she was channeling Nick, but they all had to do their part. “More important, actually, because you keep us safe.”

  “Lord, you do sound like him.”

  “Do I?” Jane knew that she did. This was the cost of giving herself to Nick. She was starting to become him.

  “I want lots of babies,” Clara said. “I couldn’t when I was dancing, but now”—she indicated the farm—“I bought this so I can raise my kids here. To let them grow up happy, and safe. Edwin’s learning to take care of the cows. I’m learning to cook. That’s why I’m helping Nick. I want to help make a better place for my children. Our children.”

  Jane studied the woman’s face for a tell-tale grin.

  “I really believe that, Jane. I’m not just blowing smoke up your ass. It’s exciting to be a part of it, even on the periphery. And I’m not taking a big risk, but there’s still a risk. One or all of you could end up in an interrogation room. Imagine the kind of press you could get for pointing the finger at me.” She gave a startled laugh. “Do you know, I’m sort of jealous, because I think you’re more famous than I am, so I’m already hating you for hogging all of the press.”

  Jane didn’t laugh because she had been in the spotlight long enough to know that the woman was not really joking.

  “Edwin thinks we’ll be okay. I set great store by his opinion.”

  “Do you—” Jane stopped herself, because she had been about to say the exact wrong thing.

  Do you know that Quarter got shot? That Maplecroft was killed? What if the buildings aren’t really empty? What if we kill a security guard or a policeman? What if what we’re doing is wrong?

  “Do I what?” Clara asked.

  “Cough medicine,” Jane said, the first thing that came to mind. “Do you have any? My brother—”

  “Poor Andy. He’s really gone downhill, hasn’t it?” Clara frowned in sympathy. “It’s come as quite a shock. But we’ve both seen it happen so many times before, haven’t we? You can’t be in the arts without knowing dozens of extraordinary men who are infected.”

  Infected?

  “Jinx?” Nick was standing at the open front door. “Are you coming in? You need to see this. Both of you.”

  Clara hastened her step.

  Jane could barely find the strength to lift her legs.

  Her mouth had gone dry. Her heart was jerking inside of her chest. She struggled to maintain the forward momentum. Up the front walk. The stairs to the porch. To the front door. Into the house.

  Infected?

  Inside, Jane had to lean against the wall, to lock her knees so that she did not collapse. The numbness was back. Her muscles were liquid.

  We’ve both seen it happen so many times before.

  Jane had known so many young, vigorous men who had coughed like Andrew was coughing. Who had looked sick the same way that Andrew looked sick. Same pale skin tone. Same heavy droop to his eyelids. A jazz saxophonist, a first chair cellist, a tenor, an opera singer, a dancer, another dancer, and another—

  All dead.

  “Come, darling.” Nick waved Jane into the room.

  They were all gathered around the television. Paula was on the couch beside the man who was probably Tucker. The two others, Spinner and Wyman, a woman and man respectively, sat in folding chairs. Clara sat on the floor because dancers always sat on the floor.

  “Andrew’s asleep.” Nick was on his knees, adjusting the volume on the set. “It’s amazing, Jinx. Apparently, they’ve been doing special reports for the last two days.”

  Jane saw his mouth move, but it was as if the sound was traveling through water.

  Nick sat back on his heels, elated by their notoriety.

  Jane watched because everyone else was watching.

  Dan Rather was reporting on the events in San Francisco. The camera cut to a reporter standing outside the Victorian house that fronted the shed.

  The man said, “According to sources from the FBI, listening devices helped them ascertain that Alexandra Maplecroft had already been murdered by the conspirators. The likely culprit is their leader, Nicholas Harp. Andrew Queller was joined by a second woman who helped them escape through an adjacent building.”

  Jane flinched when she saw first Nick’s face, then Andrew’s, flash up. Paula was represented by a shadowy outline with a question mark in the center. Jane closed her eyes. She summoned the photo of Andrew that she had just seen. One year ago, at least. His cheeks were ruddy. A jaunty scarf was tied around his neck. A birthday party, or some kind of celebration? He looked happy, vibrant, alive.

  She opened her eyes.

  The television reporter said, “The question now is whether Jinx Queller is another hostage or a willing accomplice. Back to you in New York, Dan.”

  Dan Rather stacked together his papers on the top of his news desk. “William Argenis Johnson, another conspirator, was shot by snipers while trying to escape. A married father of two who worked as a graduate student at Stanford Uni—”

  Nick turned off the volume. He did not look at Jane.

  “William Johnson.” She whispered the words aloud because she did not understand.

  His name was Leonard Brandt. No children. Never married. He lived alone at 1239 Van Duff Street. He worked as a carpenter over in Marin.

  “A fucking question mark?” Paula demanded. “That’s all I rate is a fucking question mark?” She stood up, started to pace. “Meanwhile, poor Jinx Queller gets off scot fucking free. How about I write them a fucking letter and tell them you’re fucking willing and able and ready? Would that make you happy, Dumb Bitch?”

  “Penny,” Nick said. “We don’t have time for this. Troops, listen to me. We have to move everything up. This is bigger than even I had hoped for. Where are we with Chicago?”

  “The bombs are ready,” Spinner said, as if she was telling them that she’d just put dinner on the table. “All we have to do is plant them in the underground parking garage, then be within fifty feet of the building when we press the button on the remote.”

  “Fantastic!” Nick clapped together his hands. He was bouncing on the toes of his feet, amping them all back up again. “It should be the same with the explosives in New York. I’ll rest here a few hours, then start driving. Even without my photo on the news, the FBI will heighten security at the airports. I’m not sure my ID will hold up to that kind of scrutiny.”

  Wyman said, “The forger in Toronto—”

  “Is expensive. We blew our wad on Maplecroft’s credentials because none of this would’ve mattered without Laura getting into that conference.” Nick rubbed his hands together. Jane could almost see his brain working. This was the part he had always loved, not the planning, but holding them all rapt. “Nebecker and Huston are waiting for me at the safe house in Brooklyn. We’ll drive the van into the city after rush hour, plant the devices, then go back the following morning and set them off.”

  Paula asked, “When do you want my team to set up?”

  “Tomorrow morning.” Nick watched their faces as realization set in. “Don’t set up, do it. Plant the explosives first thing in the morning before anyone shows up for work, get as far away as you can, then blow the motherfucker down.”

  “Fuck yeah!” Paula raised her fist into the air. The others joined in.

  “We’re doing this, troops!” Nick shouted to be heard over the din. “We’re going to make them stand up and take notice! We have to tear down the system before we can make it better.”

  “Damn right!” Wyman shouted.

  “Hell yeah!” Paula was still pacing. She was like an animal ready to break out of her cage. “We’r
e gonna show those motherfucking pigs!”

  Jane looked around the room. They were all wound up the same way, clapping their hands, stomping their feet, whooping as if they were watching a football game.

  Tucker said, “Hey! Listen! Just listen!” He’d stood up, hands raised for attention. This was Edwin, Clara’s lover. With his handlebar mustache and wavy hair, he looked more like Friedrich Nietzsche than a lawyer, but Nick trusted him, so they all trusted him.

  He said, “Remember, you have a legal right to refuse to answer any and all questions from law enforcement. Ask the pigs, ‘Am I under arrest?’ If they say no, then walk away. If they say yes, shut your mouth—not just to the pigs, but to everybody, especially on the phone. Make sure you have my number memorized. You have a legal right to call your lawyer. Clara and I will be in the city standing by in case I need to go to the jail.”

  “Good man, Tuck, but it’s not going to come to that. And fuck taking a rest. I’m leaving now!”

  There was another round of whooping and cheering.

  Nick was grinning like a fool. He told Clara, “Go wake up Dime. I’ll need someone to help swap out the driving. It’s only twelve hours, but I think—”

  “No,” Jane said. But she hadn’t said it. She had shouted it.

  The ensuing silence felt like a needle scratching off a record.

  Jane had ruined the game. No one was smiling anymore.

  “Christ,” Paula said. “Are you going to start whining again?”

  Jane ignored her.

  Nick was all that mattered. He looked confused, probably because he’d never heard Jane say no before.

  “No,” she repeated. “Andrew can’t. You can’t ask him to do anything more. He did his part. Oslo was our part, and it’s over and—” She was crying again, but this was different from the last week of crying. She wasn’t grieving over something that had already happened. She was grieving over something that was going to happen very soon.

  Jane saw it so clearly now—every sign she had missed in the months, the days, before. Andrew’s sudden chills. The exhaustion. The weakness. The sores in his mouth that he’d mentioned in passing. The stomach aches. The weird rash on his wrist.

  Infection.

  “Jinx?” Nick was waiting. They were all waiting.

  Jane walked down the hallway. She’d never been in the house before, so she had to open and close several doors before she finally found the bedroom where Andrew was sleeping.

  Her brother was lying face-down in bed, fully clothed. He hadn’t bothered to undress or get under the covers or even take off his shoes. Jane put her hand to his back. She waited for the up and down of his breathing before she allowed herself to take in her own breath.

  She gently slid off his shoes. Carefully rolled him onto his back.

  Andrew groaned, but didn’t wake. His breath was raspy through his chapped lips. His skin was the color of paper. She could see the blue and red of his veins and arteries as easily as if she had been looking at a diagram. She unbuttoned his shirt partway down and saw the deep purple lesions on his skin. Kaposi’s sarcoma. There were probably more lesions in his lungs, his throat, maybe even his brain.

  Jane sat down on the bed.

  She had lasted no more than six months volunteering at UCSF’s AIDS ward. Watching so many men walk through the doors knowing that they would never walk out had proven to be too overwhelming. Jane had thought that the rattle in their chests as they gasped for their last breaths would be the worst sound that she would ever hear.

  Until now, when she heard the same sounds coming from her brother.

  Jane carefully buttoned his shirt back up.

  There was a blue afghan on the back of a rocking chair. She draped it over her brother. She kissed his forehead. He felt so cold. His hands. His feet. She tucked the afghan around his body. She stroked the side of his pale face.

  Jane had been seventeen years old when she’d found the old cigar box in the glove box of Andrew’s car. She’d thought she’d caught him stealing Martin’s cigars, but then she had opened the lid and gasped out loud. A plastic cigarette lighter. A bent silver teaspoon from one of her mother’s precious sets. Stained cotton balls. The bottom of a Coke can. A handful of filthy Q-tips. A tube of skin cream squeezed in the middle. A length of rubber tubing for a tourniquet. Insulin syringes with black dots of blood staining the tips of the sharp needles. Tiny rocks of debris that she recognized from her years backstage as tar heroin.

  Andrew had given it up eighteen months ago. After meeting Laura. After Nick had developed a plan.

  But it was too late.

  “Jinx?” Nick was standing in the doorway. He nodded for her to come into the hall.

  Jane walked past Nick and went into the bathroom. She wrapped her arms around her waist, shivering. The room was large and cold. A cast iron tub was underneath the leaky window. The toilet was the old-fashioned type with the tank mounted high above the bowl.

  Just like the one in Oslo.

  “All right.” Nick closed the door behind him. “What’s got you so worked up, Ms. Queller?”

  Jane looked at her reflection in the mirror. She saw her face, but it wasn’t her face. The bridge of her nose was almost black. Dried blood caked the nostrils. What was she feeling? She couldn’t tell anymore.

  Uncomfortably numb.

  “Jinx?”

  She turned away from the mirror. She looked at Nick. His face, but not his face. Their connection, but not really a connection. He had lied about knowing Quarter’s name. He had lied about their future. He had lied every time that he had pretended that her brother was not dying.

  And now, he had the audacity to look at his watch. “What is it, Jinx? We haven’t much time.”

  “Time?” she had to repeat the word to truly understand the cruelty. “You’re worried about time?”

  “Jane—”

  “You robbed me.” Her throat felt so tight that she could barely speak. “You stole from me.”

  “Love, what are you—”

  “I could’ve been here with my brother, but you sent me away. Thousands of miles away.” Jane clenched her hands. She knew what she was feeling now: rage. “You’re a liar. Everything that comes out of your mouth is a lie.”

  “Andy was—”

  She slapped him hard across the face. “He’s sick!” She screamed the words so loud that her throat ached. “My brother has AIDS, and you sent me to fucking Germany.”

  Nick touched his fingers to his cheek. He looked down at his open hand.

  He’d been slapped before. Over the years, he’d told Jane about the abuse he’d suffered as a child. The prostitute mother. The absent father. The violent grandmother. The year of homelessness. The disgusting things people had wanted him to do. The self-loathing and hate and the fear that it would happen no matter how hard he tried to run away.

  Jane understood the emotions all too well. From the age of eight, she had known what it was like to desperately want to run away. From Martin’s hand clamping over her mouth in the middle of the night. From all the times he grabbed the back of her head and pressed her face into the pillow.

  Which Nick had known about.

  Which is why his stories were so effective. Jane saw it happen over and over again with every person he met. He mirrored your darkest fear with stories of his own.

  That’s how Nick got you: he inserted himself into the common ground.

  Now, he simply asked, “What do you want me to say, Jinx? Yes, Andy has AIDS. Yes, I knew about it when you left for Berlin.”

  “Is Ellis-Anne . . .” Jane’s voice trailed off. Andrew’s girlfriend of two years. So sweet and devoted. She had called every day since Oslo. “Is she positive, too?”

  “She’s fine. She took the ELISA test last month.” Nick’s tone was filled with authority and reason, the same as it had been when he’d lied about Quarter’s real name.

  He told Jane, “Listen, you’re right about all of this. And it’s horrible. I know
Andrew is close to the end. I know that having him out here is likely causing him to spiral down faster. And I’ve been so worried about him, but I have the whole group depending on me, expecting me to lead them and—I can’t let myself think about it. I have to look ahead, otherwise I’d just curl into a useless ball of grief. I can’t do that, and neither can you, because I need you, darling. Everyone thinks I’m so strong, but I’m only strong when you’re standing beside me.”

  Jane could not believe he was giving her one of his rallying speeches. “You know how they die, Nick. You’ve heard the stories. Ben Mitchell—do you remember him?” Jane’s voice lowered as if she was saying a sacrament. “I took care of him on the ward, but then his parents finally said it was okay for him to come home to die. They took him to the hospital and none of the nurses would touch him because they were afraid of getting infected. Do you remember me telling you about it? They wouldn’t even give him morphine. Do you remember?”

  Nick’s face was impassive. “I remember.”

  “He suffocated on the fluid inside his lungs. It took almost eight agonizing minutes for him to die, and Ben was awake for every single second of it.” She waited, but Nick said nothing. “He was terrified. He kept trying to scream, clawing at his neck, begging people to help. No one would help him. His own mother had to leave the room. Do you remember that story, Nick? Do you?”

  He only said, “I remember.”

  “Is that what you want for Andrew?” She waited, but again, he said nothing. “He’s coughing the same way Ben did. The same way Charlie Bray did. The same thing happened to him. Charlie went home to Florida and—”

  “You don’t have to give me a play-by-play, Jinx. I told you: I remember the stories. Yes, how they died was horrible. All of it was horrible. But we don’t have a choice.”

  She wanted to shake him. “Of course we have a choice.”