Pieces of Her Read online

  “It was a terrible tragedy,” Palazzolo agreed. “Three people are dead.”

  “And my daughter could’ve been the fourth.” Gordon kept a protective arm around Andy’s shoulders. “We’d be happy to make an appointment to come to the station tomorrow.”

  “This is an active murder investigation.”

  “The suspect is dead,” Gordon reminded her. “There’s no clock on this, Detective. One more day won’t make a difference.”

  Wilkes grunted again. “How old are you?”

  Andy realized he was talking to her.

  Gordon said, “She’s thirty-one. Her birthday is today.”

  Andy suddenly remembered Gordon’s voicemail this morning, an off-key version of “Happy Birthday” in his deep baritone.

  Wilkes said, “She’s a little old to let her daddy talk for her.”

  Palazzolo rolled her eyes, but said, “Ms. Oliver, we’d really like it if you helped us get the chain of events down on paper. You’re the only witness who hasn’t given a statement.”

  Andy knew that wasn’t true, because Laura was still coming round from the anesthesia.

  Gordon said, “Detectives, if—”

  “You her daddy or her fucking lawyer?” Wilkes demanded. “Because we can remove you from—”

  Gordon stood up. He was at least a foot taller than Wilkes. “I happen to be a lawyer, Mr. Wilkes, and I can either school you on my daughter’s constitutional right to refuse this interrogation or I can file a formal complaint with your superiors.”

  Andy could see the man’s eyes shifting back and forth, his mouth itching to put Gordon in his place.

  Palazzolo said, “Brant, take a walk.”

  Wilkes didn’t move.

  “Brant, come on. Meet me in the cafeteria. Get something to eat.”

  Wilkes glared at Gordon like an unneutered pitbull before stomping away.

  Palazzolo said, “Mr. Oliver, I understand your daughter’s been through a lot today, but even though Savannah’s not what you’d call a sleepy town, we’re unaccustomed to triple homicides. We really need to get your daughter’s statement down. We need to know what happened.”

  Gordon corrected, “Double homicide.”

  “Right.” There was a moment of hesitation before Palazzolo spoke again. “Can we do this sitting down?” She offered Andy a conciliatory smile. “I work the night shift, too. I’ve been up eighteen hours straight with no end in sight.” She was dragging over a chair before Gordon could stop her. “Look, I’ll tell you what I know, and then if Andrea feels like it, she can tell me what she knows. Or not. Either way, you get to see our side of this thing.” She indicated the other chairs. “That’s a good deal, Mr. Oliver. I hope you’ll consider taking it.”

  Andy looked up at her father. Triple homicide? Two people wounded? Why did it feel like the detective was not counting Laura among the injured?

  “Mr. Oliver?” Palazzolo tapped the back of her chair, but didn’t sit. “What about it?”

  Gordon looked down at Andy.

  She had seen that look a thousand times before: Remember what I told you.

  Andy nodded. She was, if anything, extraordinarily good at keeping her mouth shut.

  “Great.” Palazzolo sat down with a sharp groan.

  Gordon nudged Andy down so that he would be the one who was directly across from Palazzolo.

  “Okay.” Palazzolo took out her notebook, but not her pen. She flipped through the pages. “The shooter’s name is Jonah Lee Helsinger. Eighteen years old. High school senior. Early acceptance into Florida State University. The young girl was Shelly Anne Barnard. She was at the diner with her mother, Elizabeth Leona Bernard; Betsy. Jonah Lee Helsinger is—was—the ex-boyfriend of Shelly. Her father says Shelly broke up with Helsinger two weeks ago. Wanted to do it before going to college next month. Helsinger didn’t take it well.”

  Gordon cleared his throat. “That’s quite an understatement.”

  She nodded, ignoring the sarcasm. “Unfortunately, law enforcement has had a lot of these cases to study over the years. We know that spree killings aren’t usually spur of the moment. They’re well-planned, well-executed operations that tend to get worked over in the back of the killer’s mind until something—an event like a break-up or an impending life change like going off to college—jumpstarts the plan. The first victim is generally a close female, which is why we were relieved to find Helsinger’s mother was out of town this morning. Business in Charleston. But the way Helsinger was dressed—the black hat, the vest and gunbelt he bought on Amazon six months ago—all that tells us that he put a lot of thought into how this was going to go down. The spark came when Shelly broke up with him, but the idea of it, the planning, was in his head for months.”

  Spree killings.

  The two words bounced around inside Andy’s head.

  Gordon asked, “His victims were all women?”

  “There was a man sitting in the restaurant. He was struck in the eye by shrapnel. Not sure if he’ll lose it or not. The eye.” She went back to Jonah Helsinger. “What we also know about spree killers is, they tend to plant explosive devices in their homes for maximum casualties. That’s why we got the state bomb squad to clear Helsinger’s bedroom before we went in. He had a pipe bomb wired to the doorknob. Faulty set-up. Probably got it off the internet. Nothing went boom, thank God.”

  Andy opened her mouth so she could breathe. She had come face-to-face with this guy. He had almost killed Laura. Almost killed Andy. Murdered people. Tried to blow them up.

  He had probably attended Belle Isle High School, the same as Andy.

  “Helsinger,” Gordon said. “That name sounds familiar.”

  “Yeah, the family’s pretty well known up in Bibb County. Anyway—”

  “Well known,” Gordon repeated, but the two words were weighted in a way that Andy could not decipher.

  Palazzolo obviously got their meaning. She held Gordon’s gaze for a moment before she continued, “Anyway—Jonah Helsinger left some school notebooks on his bed. Most of them were filled with drawings. Disturbing images, weird stuff. He had four more handguns, an AR-15 and a shotgun, so he chose to take the six-shooter and the knife for a reason. We think we know the reason. There was a file on his laptop called ‘Death Plan’ that contained two documents and a PDF.”

  Andy felt a shudder work its way through her body. While she was getting ready for work last night, Jonah Helsinger was probably lying in bed, psyching himself up for his killing spree.

  Palazzolo continued, “The PDF was a schematic of the diner, sort of like what you’d see an architect draw. One of the docs was a timeline, like a bullet point: wake up at this time, shower at this time, clean gun here, fill up car with gas there. The other doc was sort of like a diary entry where Helsinger wrote about how and why this was going to go down.” She referred to her notebook again. “His first targets were going to be Shelly and her mother. Apparently, they had a standing lunch date every Monday at the Rise-n-Dine. Shelly wrote about it on Facebook, Snapchatted her food or whatever. Mr. Barnard told us the lunches are something his wife and daughter decided to do together over the summer before college.”

  “Were something they decided to do,” Gordon mumbled, because everything in the two women’s lives was past tense now.

  “Were. Yeah,” Palazzolo said. “Helsinger planned to kill both of them. He blamed the mother for the break-up. He said in his diary that it was Betsy’s fault, that she was always pushing Shelly, blah blah blah. Crazy talk. It doesn’t matter, because we all know it’s Jonah Helsinger’s fault, right?”

  “Right,” Gordon said, his voice firm.

  Palazzolo held his gaze in that meaningful way again before she referred back to her notes. “This was his plan: after he killed Betsy and Shelly, Helsinger was going to take hostage whoever was left in the diner. He had a time noted—1:16, not the actual time but a notation of timing.” She looked up at Andy, then Gordon. “See, we think that he did a dry run. La
st week, at approximately the same time as the shooting today, somebody threw a rock through the plate glass window that faces the boardwalk. We’re waiting for the security feed. The incident was filed with burglary division. It took the first mall cop about one minute, sixteen seconds, to get to the diner.”

  The mall cops weren’t the usual rent-a-cops, but off-duty police officers hired to protect the high-end stores. Andy had seen the guns on their hips and never given it a second thought.

  Palazzolo told them, “In Helsinger’s predicted timeline of the shooting, he allowed that he would have to kill at least one other bystander to let the cops know that he was serious. Then he was going to let the cops kill him. Helsinger must have thought his plan was fast-forwarded when he saw your uniform and assumed that you were law enforcement.” Palazzolo was talking directly to Andy now. “We gather from the other witnesses that he wanted you to shoot him. Suicide by cop.”

  Except Andy was not a cop.

  Get up! Do your job!

  That’s what Helsinger had screamed at Andy.

  Then Andy’s mother had said, “Shoot me.”

  “He’s a really bad guy. Was a bad guy. This Helsinger kid.” Palazzolo was still focused on Andy. “We’ve got it all in his notes. He planned this out meticulously. He knew he was going to murder people. He hoped that he would murder even more people when somebody opened his bedroom door. He packed screws and nails into that pipe bomb. If the wiring hadn’t been switched on the doorknob end, the whole house would be gone, along with whoever happened to be inside. We would’ve found nails two blocks away buried in God knows who or what.”

  Andy wanted to nod but she felt immobilized. Screws and nails flying through the air. What did it take to build such a device, to pack in all those projectiles in hopes that they would maim or kill people?

  “You’re lucky,” Palazzolo told Andy. “If your mom hadn’t been there, he would’ve killed you. He was just a really bad guy.”

  Andy felt the woman looking at her, but she kept her eyes directed toward the floor.

  Bad guy.

  Palazzolo kept repeating the phrase, like it was okay that Helsinger was dead. Like he had gotten what he deserved. Like whatever Laura had done was completely justified because Jonah Lee Helsinger was a bad guy.

  Andy worked at a police station. Most of the people who got murdered would fall into the bad guy category, yet she had never heard any of the detectives harp on the fact that the victim was a bad guy.

  “Mr. Oliver,” Palazzolo had turned to Gordon. “Has your wife had any military training?”

  Gordon did not answer.

  Palazzolo said, “Her background is pretty bland.” Again, she flipped through the pages in her notebook. “Born in Providence, Rhode Island. Attended the University of Rhode Island. Master’s and PhD from UGA. She’s lived in Belle Isle for twenty-eight years. House is paid off, which, congratulations. She could sell it for a bag of money—but, I get it, where would she go? One marriage, one divorce. No large outstanding debts. Pays her bills on time. Never left the country. Got a parking ticket three years ago that she paid online. She must’ve been one of the first people to buy here.” Palazzolo turned back toward Andy. “You were raised here, right?”

  Andy stared at the woman. She had a mole near her ear, just under her jawline.

  “You went to school on the Isle, then SCAD for college?”

  Andy had spent the first two years of her life in Athens while Laura was finishing her doctorate, but the only thing she remembered about UGA was being scared of the neighbor’s parakeet.

  “Ms. Oliver.” Palazzolo’s voice sounded strained. She was apparently used to having her questions answered. “Did your mother ever take any self-defense classes?”

  Andy studied the mole. There were some short hairs sticking out of it.

  “Yoga? Pilates? Tai chi?” Palazzolo waited. And waited. Then she closed her notebook. She put it back into her pocket. She reached into her other pocket. She pulled out her phone. She tapped at the screen. “I’m showing you this because it’s already on the news.” She swiped at the screen. “One of the patrons in the diner decided that it was more important to record what was happening on his cell phone than to call 911 or run for his life.”

  She turned the phone around. The image was paused. Jonah Helsinger stood at the entrance to the restaurant. The lower half of his body was obscured by a trash can. The mall was empty behind him. From the angle, Andy knew the waitress standing in the back had not taken the video. She wondered if it was the man with the newspaper. The phone had been tilted just over the salt and pepper shakers, like he was trying to hide the fact that he was recording the weird kid who was dressed like the villain from a John Wayne movie.

  Objectively, the hat was ridiculous; too large for Helsinger’s head, stiff on the top and curled up almost comically.

  Andy might have filmed him, too.

  Palazzolo said, “This is pretty graphic. They’re blurring the images on the news. Are you okay to see this?” She was talking to Gordon because, obviously, Andy had already seen it.

  Gordon smoothed down his mustache with his finger and thumb as he considered the question. Andy knew he could handle it. He was asking himself if he really wanted to see it.

  He finally decided. “Yes.”

  Palazzolo snaked her finger around the edge of the phone and tapped the screen.

  At first, Andy wondered if the touch had registered because Jonah Helsinger was not moving. For several seconds, he just stood there behind the trash can, staring blankly into the restaurant, his ten-gallon hat high on his shiny-looking forehead.

  Two older women, mall walkers, strutted behind him. One of them clocked the western attire, elbowed the other, and they both laughed.

  Muzak played in the background. Madonna’s ‘Dress You Up’.

  Someone coughed. The tinny sound vibrated into Andy’s ears, and she wondered if she had registered any of these noises when they happened, when she was in the restaurant telling the waitress she was a theater major, when she was staring out the window at the waves cresting in the distance.

  On the screen, Helsinger’s head moved to the right, then the left, as if he was scanning the restaurant. Andy knew there was not much to see. The place was half-empty, a handful of patrons enjoying a last cup of coffee or glass of tea before they did errands or played golf or, in Andy’s case, went to sleep.

  Helsinger stepped away from the garbage can.

  A man’s voice said, “Jesus.”

  Andy remembered that word, the lowness and meanness to it, the hint of surprise.

  The gun went up. A puff of smoke from the muzzle. A loud pop.

  Shelly was shot in the back of the head. She sank to the floor like a paper doll.

  Betsy Barnard started screaming.

  The second bullet missed Betsy, but a loud cry said that it had hit someone else.

  The third bullet came sharp on the heels of the second.

  A cup on the table exploded into a million pieces. Shards flew through the air.

  Laura was turning away from the shooter when one of the pieces lodged into her leg. The wound did not register in her mother’s expression. She started to run, but not away. She was closer to the mall entrance than to the back of the restaurant. She could’ve ducked under a table. She could’ve escaped.

  Instead, she ran toward Andy.

  Andy saw herself standing with her back now turned toward the window. Video-Andy dropped her coffee mug. The ceramic splintered. In the foreground, Betsy Barnard was being murdered. Bullet four was fired into her mouth, the fifth into her head. She fell on top of her daughter.

  Then Laura tackled Andy to the ground.

  There was a blink of stillness before Laura jumped up.

  She patted her hands down the same way she used to tuck Andy into bed at night. The man in black, Jonah Lee Helsinger, had a gun pointed at Laura’s chest. In the distance, Andy could see herself. She was curled into a ball. The glas
s behind her was spiderwebbing. Chunks were falling down.

  Sitting in the chair beside Gordon, Andy reached up and touched her hair. She pulled out a piece of glass from the tangles.

  When she looked back down at Detective Palazzolo’s phone, the angle of the video had changed. The image was shaky, taken from behind the shooter. Whoever had made the recording was lying on the ground, just beyond an overturned table. The position afforded Andy a completely different perspective. Instead of facing the shooter, she was behind him now. Instead of watching her mother’s back, she could see Laura’s face. Her hands holding up six digits to indicate the total number of bullets. Her thumb wagging to show the one live round left in the chamber.

  Shoot me.

  That’s what Laura had told the kid who had already murdered two people—shoot me. She had said it repeatedly. Andy’s brain echoed the words each time Laura said them on the video.

  Shoot me, I want you to shoot me, shoot me, when you shoot me, my daughter will run—

  When the killing spree had first started, every living person in the restaurant had screamed or ducked or run away or all three.

  Laura had started counting the number of bullets.

  “What?” Gordon mumbled. “What’s he doing?”

  Snap.

  On the screen, Helsinger was unsnapping the sheath hanging from his gunbelt.

  “That’s a knife,” Gordon said. “I thought he used a gun.”

  The gun was holstered. The knife was gripped in Helsinger’s fist, blade angled down for maximum carnage.

  Andy wanted to close her eyes, but just as badly, she wanted to see it again, to watch her mother’s face, because right now, at this moment on the video when Helsinger was holding the menacing-looking hunting knife, Laura’s expression was almost placid, like a switch inside of her had been turned off.

  The knife arced up.

  Gordon sucked in air between his teeth.

  The knife arced down.

  Laura lifted her left hand. The blade sliced straight through the center of her palm. Her fingers wrapped around the handle. She wrenched it from his grasp, then, the knife still embedded in her hand, backhanded the blade into the side of his neck.