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 glass 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.
Thunk.
Helsinger’s eyes went wide.
Laura’s left hand was pinned to the left side of his neck like a message tacked to a bulletin board.
There was a slight pause, no more than a few milliseconds.
Laura’s mouth moved. One or two words, her lips barely parting.
Then she crossed her right arm underneath her trapped left.
She braced the heel of her right hand near Helsinger’s right shoulder.
Her right hand pushed his shoulder.
Her left hand jerked the knife blade straight out of the front of his throat.
Blood.
Everywhere.
Gordon’s mouth gaped open.
Andy’s tongue turned into cotton.
Right hand pushing, left hand pulling.
From the video, it looked like Laura had willfully pulled the knife out of Helsinger’s throat.
Not just killing him.
Murdering him.
“She just—” Gordon saw it, too. “She—”
His hand went to his mouth.
On the video, Helsinger’s knees hit the floor. His chest. His face.