Belle Isle was neither belle nor, technically, an isle. It was basically a man-made peninsula created when the Army Corps of Engineers had dredged the port of Savannah back in the eighties. They had intended the new landmass to be an uninhabited, natural barrier against hurricanes, but the state had seen dollar signs on the new beachfront. Within five years of the dredging, more than half the surface area was covered in concrete: beach villas, townhouses, condos, shopping malls. The rest was tennis courts and golf courses. Retired Northerners played in the sun all day, drank martinis at sunset and called 911 when their neighbors left their trash cans by the street too long.
“Jesus,” somebody whispered, low and mean, but with a tinge of surprise, all at the same time.
The air had changed. That was the only way to describe it. The fine hairs on the back of Andy’s neck stood up. A chill went down her spine. Her nostrils flared. Her mouth went dry. Her eyes watered.
There was a sound like a jar popping open.
Andy turned.
The handle of the coffee cup slipped from her fingers. Her eyes followed its path to the floor. White ceramic shards bounced off the white tiles.
There had been an eerie silence before, but now there was chaos. Screaming. Crying. People running, ducked down, hands covering their heads.
Bullets.
Pop-pop.
Shelly Barnard was lying on the floor. On her back. Arms splayed. Legs twisted. Eyes wide open. Her red T-shirt looked wet, stuck to her chest. Blood dribbled from her nose. Andy watched the thin red line slide down her cheek and into her ear.
She was wearing tiny Bulldog earrings.
“No!” Betsy Barnard wailed. “N—”
Pop.
Andy saw the back of the woman’s throat vomit out in a spray of blood.
Pop.
The side of Betsy’s skull snapped open like a plastic bag.
She fell sideways onto the floor. On top of her daughter. Onto her dead daughter.
Dead.
“Mom,” Andy whispered, but Laura was already there. She was running toward Andy with her arms out, knees bent low. Her mouth was open. Her eyes were wide with fear. Red dots peppered her face like freckles.
The back of Andy’s head slammed into the window as she was tackled to the ground. She felt the rush of air from her mother’s mouth as the wind was knocked out of her. Andy’s vision blurred. She could hear a cracking sound. She looked up. The glass above her had started to spiderweb.
“Please!” Laura screamed. She had rolled over, was on her knees, then her feet. “Please, stop.”
Andy blinked. She rubbed her fists into her eyes. Grit cut into her eyelids. Dirt? Glass? Blood?
“Please!” Laura shouted.
Andy blinked again.
Then again.
A man was pointing a gun at her mother’s chest. Not a cop’s gun, but the kind with a cylinder like in the Old West. He was dressed the part—black jeans, black shirt with pearl buttons, black leather vest and black cowboy hat. Gunbelt hanging low on his hips. One holster for the gun, a long leather sheath for a hunting knife.
Handsome.
His face was young, unlined. He was Shelly’s age, maybe a little older.
But Shelly was dead now. She would not be going to UGA. She would never be mortified by her mother again because her mother was dead, too.
And now the man who had murdered them both was pointing a gun at her mother’s chest.
Andy sat up.
Laura only had one breast, the left one, over her heart. The surgeon had taken the right one and she hadn’t gotten reconstructive surgery yet because she couldn’t stand the thought of going to yet another doctor, having another procedure, and now this murderer standing in front of her was going to put a bullet in it.
“Mm—” The word got caught in Andy’s throat. She could only think it—
Mom.
“It’s all right.” Laura’s voice was calm, controlled. She had her hands out in front of her like they could catch the bullets. She told the man, “You can leave now.”
“Fuck you.” His eyes darted to Andy. “Where’s your gun, you fucking pig?”
Andy’s whole body cringed. She felt herself tightening into a ball.
“She doesn’t have a gun,” Laura said, her voice still composed. “She’s a secretary at the police station. She’s not a cop.”
“Get up!” he screamed at Andy. “I see your badge! Get up, pig! Do your job!”
Laura said, “It’s not a badge. It’s an emblem. Just stay calm.” She patted her hands down the same way she used to tuck Andy into bed at night. “Andy, listen to me.”
“Listen to me, you fucking bitches!” Saliva flew from the man’s mouth. He shook the gun in the air. “Stand up, pig. You’re next.”
“No.” Laura blocked his way. “I’m next.”
His eyes turreted back to Laura.
“Shoot me.” Laura spoke with unmistakable certainty. “I want you to shoot me.”
Confusion broke the mask of anger that was his face. He hadn’t planned for this. People were supposed to be terrified, not volunteer.
“Shoot me,” she repeated.
He peered over Laura’s shoulder at Andy, then looked back.
“Do it,” Laura said. “You only have one bullet left. You know that. There are only six bullets in the gun.” She held up her hands showing four fingers on her left hand, one on her right. “It’s why you haven’t pulled the trigger yet. There’s only one bullet left.”
“You don’t know—”
“Only one more.” She waved her thumb, indicating the sixth bullet. “When you shoot me, my daughter will run out of here. Right, Andy?”
What?
“Andy,” her mother said. “I need you to run, darling.”
What?
“He can’t reload fast enough to hurt you.”
“Fuck!” the man screamed, trying to get his rage back. “Be still! Both of you.”
“Andy.” Laura took a step toward the gunman. She was limping. A tear in her linen pants was weeping blood. Something white stuck out like bone. “Listen to me, sweetheart.”
“I said don’t move!”
“Go through the kitchen door.” Laura’s voice remained steady. “There’s an exit in the back.”
What?
“Stop there, bitch. Both of you.”
“You need to trust me,” Laura said. “He can’t reload in time.”
Mom.
“Get up.” Laura took another step forward. “I said, get up.”
Mom, no.
“Andrea Eloise.” She was using her Mother voice, not her Mom voice. “Get up. Now.”
Andy’s body worked of its own volition. Left foot flat, right heel up, fingers touching the ground, a runner at the block.
“Stop it!” The man jerked the gun toward Andy, but Laura moved with it. He jerked it back and she followed the path, blocking Andy with her body. Shielding her from the last bullet in the gun.
“Shoot me,” Laura told the man. “Go ahead.”
“Fuck this.”
Andy heard a snap.
The trigger pulling back? The hammer hitting the bullet?
Her eyes had squeezed closed, hands flew to cover her head.
But there was nothing.
No bullet fired. No cry of pain.
No sound of her mother falling dead to the ground.
Floor. Ground. Six feet under.
Andy cringed as she looked back up.
The man had unsnapped the sheath on the hunting knife.
He was slowly drawing it out.
Six inches of steel. Serrated on one side. Sharp on the other.
He holstered the gun, tossed the knife into his dominant hand. He didn’t have the blade pointing up the way you’d hold a steak knife but down, the way you’d stab somebody.
Laura asked, “What are you going to do with that?”
He didn’t answer. He showed her.
Two steps forward.
The knife arced up, then slashed down toward her mother’s heart.
Andy was paralyzed, too terrified to ball herself up, too shocked to do anything but watch her mother die.
Laura stuck out her hand as if she could block the knife. The blade sliced straight into the center of her palm. Instead of collapsing, or screaming, Laura’s fingers wrapped around the hilt of the knife.
There was no struggle. The murderer was too surprised.
Laura wrenched the knife away from his grip even as the long blade was still sticking out of her hand.
He stumbled back.
He looked at the knife jutting out of her hand.
One second.
Two seconds.
Three.
He seemed to remember the gun on his hip. His right hand reached down. His fingers wrapped around the handle. The silver flashed on the muzzle. His left hand swung around to cup the weapon as he prepared to fire the last bullet into her mother’s heart.
Silently, Laura swung her arm, backhanding the blade into the side of his neck.
Crunch, like a butcher cutting a side of beef.
The sound had an echo that bounced off the corners of the room.
The man gasped. His mouth fished open. His eyes widened.
The back of Laura’s hand was still pinned to his neck, caught between the handle and the blade.
Andy saw her fingers move.
There was a clicking sound. The gun shaking as he tried to raise it.
Laura spoke, more growl than words.
He kept lifting the gun. Tried to aim.
Laura raked the blade out through the front of his throat.
Blood, sinew, cartilage.
No spray or mist like before. Everything gushed out of his open neck like a dam breaking open.
His black shirt turned blacker. The pearl buttons showed different shades of pink.
The gun dropped first.
Then his knees hit the floor. Then his chest. Then his head.
Andy watched his eyes as he fell.
He was dead before he hit the ground.
When Andy was in the ninth grade, she’d had a crush on a boy named Cletus Laraby, who went by Cleet, but in an ironic way. He had floppy brown hair and he knew how to play the guitar and he was the smartest guy in their chemistry class, so Andy tried to learn how to play the guitar and pretended to be interested in chemistry, too.
This was how she ended up entering the school’s science fair: Cleet signed up, so Andy did, too.
She had never spoken a word to him in her life.
No one questioned the wisdom of giving a drama club kid who barely passed earth sciences access to ammonium nitrate and ignition switches, but in retrospect, Dr. Finney was probably so pleased Andy was interested in something other than mime arts that she had looked the other way.
Andy’s father, too, was elated by the news. Gordon took Andy to the library where they checked out books on engineering and rocket design. He filled out a form for a loyalty card from the local hobby shop. Over the dinner table, he would read aloud from pamphlets from the American Association for Rocketry.
Whenever Andy was staying at her dad’s house, Gordon worked in the garage with his sanding blocks, shaping the fins and nose cone shoulders, while Andy sat at his workbench and sketched out designs for the tube.
Andy knew that Cleet liked the Goo Goo Dolls because he had a sticker on his backpack, so she started out thinking the tube of the rocket would look like a steampunk telescope from the video for “Iris,” then she thought about putting wings on it because “Iris” was from the movie City of Angels, then she decided that she would put Nicolas Cage’s face on the side, in profile, because he was the angel in the movie, then she decided that she should paint Meg Ryan instead because this was for Cleet and he would probably think that Meg Ryan was a lot more interesting than Nicolas Cage.
A week before the fair, Andy had to turn in all of her notes and photographs to Dr. Finney to prove that she had actually done all of the work herself. She was laying out the dubious evidence on the teacher’s desk when Cleet Laraby walked in. Andy had to clasp together her hands to keep them from trembling when Cleet stopped to look at the photos.
“Meg Ryan,” Cleet said. “I dig it. Blow up the bitch, right?”
Andy felt a cold slice of air cut open her lips.
“My girlfriend loves that stupid movie. The one with the angels?” Cleet showed her the sticker on his backpack. “They wrote that shitty song for the soundtrack, man. That’s why I keep this here, to remind me never to sell out my art like those faggots.”
Andy didn’t move. She couldn’t speak.
Girlfriend. Stupid. Shitty. Man. Faggots.
Andy had left Dr. Finney’s classroom without her notes or her books or even her purse. She’d walked through the cafeteria, then out the exit door that was always propped open so the lunch ladies could smoke cigarettes behind the Dumpster.
Gordon lived two miles away from the school. It was June. In Georgia. On the coast. By the time she reached his house, Andy was badly sunburned and soaked in her own sweat and tears. She took the Meg Ryan rocket and the two Nicolas Cage test rockets and threw them in the outdoor trash can. Then she soaked them with lighter fluid. Then she threw a match into the can. Then she woke up on her back in Gordon’s driveway because a neighbor was squirting her down with the garden hose.
The whoosh of fire had singed off Andy’s eyebrows, eyelashes, bangs and nose hairs. The sound of the explosion was so intense that Andy’s ears had started to bleed. The neighbor started screaming in her face. His wife, a nurse, came over and was clearly trying to tell Andy something, but the only thing she could hear was a sharp tone, like when her chorus teacher blew a single note on her pitch pipe—
Eeeeeeeeeeee …
Andy heard The Sound, and nothing but The Sound, for four whole days.
Waking. Trying to sleep. Bathing. Walking to the kitchen. Sitting in front of the television. Reading notes her mother and father furiously scratched out on a dry erase board.
We don’t know what’s wrong.
Probably temporary.
Don’t cry.
Eeeeeeeeeeee …
That had been almost twenty years ago. Andy hadn’t thought much about the explosion until now, and that was only because The Sound was back. When it returned, or when she became aware of the return, she was standing in the diner by her mother, who was seated in a chair. There were three dead people on the floor. On the ground. The murderer, his black shirt even blacker. Shelly Barnard, her red shirt even redder. Betsy Barnard, the bottom part of her face hanging by strands of muscle and sinew.
Andy had looked up from the bodies. People were standing outside the restaurant. Mall shoppers with Abercrombie and Juicy bags and Starbucks coffees and Icees. Some of them had been crying. Some of them had been taking pictures.
Andy had felt pressure on her arm. Laura was struggling to turn the chair away from the gawkers. Every movement had a stuttering motion to Andy’s eye, like she was watching a stop-action movie. Laura’s hand shook as she tried to wrap a tablecloth around her bleeding leg. The white thing sticking out was not a bone but a shard of broken china. Laura was right-handed, but the knife jutting from her left hand made wrapping her leg impossible. She was talking to Andy, likely asking for help, but all Andy could hear was The Sound.
“Andy,” Laura had said.
Eeeeeeeeeeee …
“Andrea.”
Andy stared at her mother’s mouth, wondering if she was hearing the word or reading the word on her lips—so familiar that her brain processed it as heard rather than seen.
“Andy,” Laura repeated. “Help me.”
That had come through, a muffled request like her mother was speaking through a long tube.
“Andy,” Laura had grabbed both of Andy’s hands in her own. Her mother was bent over in the chair, obviously in pain. Andy had knelt down. She’d started knotting the tablecloth.
Tie it tight—
That’s what Andy would have said to a panicked caller on the dispatch line: Don’t worry about hurting her. Tie the cloth as tight as you can to stop the bleeding.
It was different when your hands were the ones tying the cloth. Different when the pain you saw was registered on your own mother’s face.
“Andy.” Laura had waited for her to look up.
Andy’s eyes had trouble focusing. She wanted to pay attention. She needed to pay attention.
Her mother had grabbed Andy by the chin, given her a hard shake to knock her out of her stupor.
She had said, “Don’t talk to the police. Don’t sign a statement. Tell them you can’t remember anything.”
What?
“Promise me,” Laura had insisted. “Don’t talk to the police.”
Four hours later, Andy still hadn’t talked to the police, but that was more because the police had not talked to her. Not at the diner, not in the ambulance and not now.
Andy was waiting outside the closed doors to the surgical suite while the doctors operated on Laura. She was slumped in a hard plastic chair. She had refused to lie down, refused to take the nurse up on the offer of a bed, because nothing was wrong with her. Laura needed the help. And Shelly. And Shelly’s mother, whose name Andy could not now remember.
Who was Mrs. Barnard, really, if not a mother to her child?
Andy sat back in the chair. She had to turn a certain way to keep the bruise on her head from throbbing. The plate glass window overlooking the boardwalk. Andy remembered her mother tackling her to the ground. The pounding at the back of her head as her skull cracked against the window. The spiderwebbing glass. The way Laura quickly scrambled to stand. The way she had looked and sounded so calm.
The way she had held up her fingers—four on the left hand, one on the right—as she explained to the shooter that he only had one bullet left out of the six he had started with.
Andy rubbed her face with her hands. She did not look at the clock, because looking up at the clock every time she wanted to would make the hours stretch out interminably. She ran her tongue along her fillings. The metal ones had been drilled out and replaced with composite, but she could still remember how The Sound had made them almost vibrate inside her molars. Into her jaw. Up into her skull. A vise-like noise that made her brain feel as if it was going to implode.
Eeeeeeeeeeee …
Andy squeezed her eyes shut. Immediately, the images started scrolling like one of Gordon’s vacation slide shows.
Laura holding up her hand.
The long blade slicing into her palm.
Wrenching the knife away.
Backhanding the blade into the man’s neck.
Blood.
So much blood.
Jonah Helsinger. That was the murderer’s name. Andy knew it—she wasn’t sure how. Was it on the dispatch radio when she rode in the ambulance with her mother? Was it on the news blaring from the TV when Andy was led into the triage waiting room? Was it on the nurses’ lips as they led her up to the surgical wing?
“Jonah Helsinger,” someone had whispered, the way you’d whisper that someone had cancer. “The killer’s name is Jonah Helsinger.”
“Ma’am?” A Savannah police officer was standing in front of Andy.
“I don’t—” Andy tried to recall what her mother had told her to say. “I can’t remember.”
“Ma’am,” the officer repeated, which was weird because she was older than Andy. “I’m sorry to bother you, but there’s a man. He says he’s your father, but—”
Andy looked up the hall.
Gordon was standing by the elevators.
She was up and running before she could think about it. Gordon met her halfway, grabbing her in a bear hug, holding her so close that she could feel his heart pounding in his chest. She pressed her face into his starched white shirt. He had been at work, dressed in his usual three-piece suit. His reading glasses were still on top of his head. His Montblanc pen was tucked into his shirt pocket. The metal was cold against the tip of her ear.
Andy had been losing her shit in little pieces since the shooting began, but in her father’s arms, finally safe, she completely lost it. She started to cry so hard that she couldn’t support her own weight. Gordon half lifted, half dragged her to a set of chairs against the wall. He held onto her so tightly that she had to take shallow breaths to breathe.
“I’m here,” he told her, again and again. “I’m here, baby. I’m here.”
“Daddy,” she said, the word coming out around a sob.
“It’s okay.” Gordon stroked back her hair. “You’re safe now. Everybody’s safe.”
Andy kept crying. She cried so long that she began to feel self-conscious, like it was too much. Laura was alive. Bad things had happened, but Laura was going to be okay. Andy was going to be okay. She had to be okay.
“It’s okay,” Gordon murmured. “Just let it all out.”
Andy sniffed back her tears. She tried to regain her composure. And tried. Every time she thought she might be all right, she remembered another detail—the sound of the first gunshot, like a jar popping open, the thwack as her mother lodged the knife into flesh and bone—and the tears started to fall again.
“It’s all right,” Gordon said, patiently stroking her head. “Everybody’s okay, sweetheart.”
Andy wiped her nose. She took a shaky breath. Gordon leaned up in the chair, still holding onto her, and pulled out his handkerchief.
Andy blotted away her tears, blew her nose. “I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to apologize for.” Gordon pushed her hair back out of her eyes. “Were you hurt?”
She shook her head. Blew her nose again until her ears popped.
The Sound was gone.
She closed her eyes, relief taking hold.
“All right?” Gordon asked. His hand was warm against her back. She felt anchored again. “You okay?”
Andy opened her eyes. Her nerves still felt raw, but she had to tell her father what had happened. “Mom—she had a knife, and this guy, she mur—”
“Shhh,” he hushed, pressing his fingers to her lips. “Mom’s okay. We’re all okay.”
“But—”
He put his finger back to her lips to keep her quiet. “I talked to the doctor. Mom’s in recovery. Her hand is going to be fine. Her leg is fine. It’s all fine.” He raised an eyebrow, tilted his head slightly to the right where the cop was standing. The woman was on the phone, but she was clearly listening.
Gordon asked Andy, “You sure you’re okay? Did they check you out?”
She nodded.
“You’re just tired, baby. You were up all night working. You saw something horrible happen. Your life was in danger. Your mother’s life was in danger. It’s understandable you’re in shock. You need some rest, give your memories some time to piece themselves together.” His tone was measured. Andy realized that Gordon was coaching her. “All right?”
She nodded because he was nodding. Why was he telling her what to say? Had he talked to Laura? Was her mother in trouble?
She had killed a man. Of course she was in trouble.
The police officer said, “Ma’am, do you mind giving me some basic information? Full name, address, birthdate, that kind of thing.”
“I’ll provide that, Officer.” Gordon waited for the woman to pull out her pen and notebook before he complied.
Andy tucked herself back underneath his protective arm. She swallowed so hard that her throat clicked.
And then she made herself look at the situation as a human being out in the world rather than a terrified spectator.
This wasn’t one drug dealer shooting another drug dealer in the streets, or an abusive spouse finally crossing the last line. A white kid had shot two white women, then was killed by another white woman, in one of the most affluent malls in the state.
News trucks would probably come down from Atlanta and Charleston. Lawyers would intervene for the families, the victims, the mall management, the city, the county, maybe even the feds. An array of police forces would descend: Belle Isle, Savannah, Chatham County, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Witness statements. Forensics. Photographs. Autopsies. Evidence collection.
Part of Andy’s job in radio dispatch was to assign case numbers for crimes on a far smaller scale, and she often tracked their progress over the months, sometimes years, it took for a case to go to trial. She of all people should have known that her mother’s actions would be scrutinized at every single level of the criminal justice system.
As if on cue, there was a loud ding from the elevator. The cop’s leather gunbelt made a squeaking noise as she adjusted it on her hips. The doors slid open. A man and a woman walked into the hallway. Both in wrinkled suits. Both with tired looks on their faces. The guy was bald and bloated with patches of peeling sunburn on his nose. The woman was around Andy’s height, at least ten years older, with olive skin and dark hair.
Andy started to stand, but Gordon kept her in the chair.
“Ms. Oliver.” The woman took out her badge and showed it to Andy. “I’m Detective Sergeant Lisa Palazzolo. This is Detective Brant Wilkes. We’re with the Savannah Police Department. We’re assisting Belle Isle with the investigation.” She tucked her badge back into her jacket pocket. “We need to talk to you about what happened this morning.”
Andy’s mouth opened, but again, she couldn’t remember what her mother had told her to say, or what Gordon had coached her to say, so she reverted to her default response which was to close her mouth and stare blankly at the person who had asked the question.
Gordon said, “This isn’t a good time, Detectives. My daughter is in shock. She’s not yet ready to give her statement.”
Wilkes huffed a disapproving grunt. “You’re her father?”
Andy always forgot Gordon was black and she was white until someone else pointed it out to her.
“Yes, Detective. I’m her father.” Gordon’s tone was patient. He was used to this. Over the years, he’d smoothed the nerves of anxious teachers, concerned store clerks, and aggressively racist store security. “I’m Gordon Oliver, Laura’s ex-husband. Andrea’s adoptive father.”
Wilkes twisted his mouth to the side as he silently scrutinized the story.
Palazzolo said, “We’re real sorry about what happened, Mr. Oliver, but we need to ask Andrea some questions.”
Gordon repeated, “As I said, she isn’t prepared at the moment to discuss the incident.” He crossed his legs, casual, as if this was all a formality. “Andrea is a dispatch operator, which I’m sure you can tell from her uniform. She worked a night shift. She’s bone-tired. She witnessed a terrible tragedy. She’s not in any shape to give a statement.”
“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.”
Pulsuz fraqment bitdi.