Pieces of Her

by Karin Slaughter

  They’ll catch you.

  Jane breathed in the cool night air. No one rushed out of the hospital with a gun, telling her to get down on the ground. None of the nurses were on the phone behind the desk.

  She was safe. Andrew was being taken care of. She could leave now. No one knew where she was. No one could find her unless she wanted to be found.

  Jane walked back to the van. She closed the passenger’s side door. She climbed back behind the wheel. The engine was still running. She tried to remember everything Andrew had said. Moments before, she had been talking to her brother, and now Jane knew that she would never hear Andrew’s voice ever again.

  She put the car in gear.

  Jane drove aimlessly, passing the marked parking spaces for the emergency room. Passing the parking deck for the hospital, for the university, for the shopping center at the end of the street.

  Canada. The forger.

  Jane could create a new life for herself and her child. The two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in cash was probably still in the back of the van. The small cooler. The Thermos of water. The box of Slim Jims. The blanket. The futon. Toronto was just over eight hours away. Skirt around the top of Indiana, through Michigan, then into Canada. That had been the plan after Nick’s triumphant return from New York. They would stay in the farmhouse for a few weeks during the fallout from the bombings, then drive into Canada, buy more documents from the forger on East Kelly Street, and fly to Switzerland.

  Nick had thought of everything.

  A horn beeped behind Jane. She startled at the noise. She’d stopped in the middle of the road. Jane looked in the rearview mirror. The man behind her was waving his fist. She waved back an apology, pressing the gas pedal.

  The angry driver passed her for no reason other than to prove that he could. Jane drove another few yards, but then she slowed the van and followed a sign toward a long-term parking garage. The temperature inside the van cooled as she spiraled down the ramp. She located a spot between two sedans on the lowest basement level. She backed into the space. She checked to make sure she wasn’t being watched. No cameras on the walls. No two-way mirrors.

  Nick’s precious metal box was on the floor between the seats. Jane tucked it under her arm just as her brother always had. She crouched as she made her way into the back of the van. The padlock hung from the box that was bolted to the floor.

  6-12-32.

  They all knew the combination.

  The cash was still there. The Thermos. The cooler. The box of Slim Jims.

  Jane added Nick’s box to the stash. She peeled off three hundred dollars, then closed the lid. She spun the lock. She got out of the van. She walked around to the back.

  The steel bumper was hollow inside. Jane balanced the key on the rim. Then she walked back up the winding ramp. There was no after-hours parking attendant, just a stack of envelopes and a mail drop. Jane wrote down the space number for the van, then put the three hundred dollars in the envelope, enough for the van to park for one month.

  Outside, she followed the cold breeze to Lake Michigan. Her thin blouse whipped in the wind. Jane could remember the first time she’d flown into Milwaukee to play at the Performing Arts Center. She had thought the plane had overshot its mark and ended up at the Atlantic because, even from twenty thousand feet, she could not see the edge of the massive lake. Pechenikov had told her that you could take the entire island of Great Britain and put it in the lake without the edges touching the sides.

  Jane was shaken by a deep and unwelcome sadness. Part of her had thought—had hoped—that one day, she would be able to go back. To performing. To Pechenikov. Not anymore. Her touring days were over. She would probably never fly in an airplane again. She would never tour again. Perform again.

  She laughed at a sudden revelation.

  The last notes she had played on the piano were the jumpy, glib opening bars to A-ha’s “Take On Me.”

  The hospital’s waiting room was packed. Jane became aware of how she must look. Her hair had not been washed in days. She had blood on her clothes. Her nose felt broken. Black bruises had come up around her neck. Probably the familiar pinprick dots of broken blood vessels riddled the whites of her eyes. She could see the questions in the nurses’ eyes.

  Battered woman? Junkie? Call girl?

  Sister was the only title left to her. She found Andrew behind a curtain in the back of the emergency room. They had finally intubated him. Jane was glad that he could breathe, but she understood that she would never, ever hear his voice again. He would never tease her or make a joke about her weight or meet the baby that was growing inside of her.

  The only thing that Jane could do for her brother now was hold his hand and listen to the monitor announce the ever-slowing beats of his heart. She held onto him while they wheeled him to the elevator, when they took him to his room in the ICU. She refused to leave his side even after the nurses told her that visitors were not allowed to stay more than twenty minutes at a time.

  There were no windows in Andrew’s room. The only glass was the window and sliding door that looked onto the nurses’ station. Jane had never had track of the time, so she didn’t know how long it took for someone—a doctor, an orderly, a nurse—to recognize their faces. The tone of their voices changed. Then a lone policeman appeared outside the closed glass door. He didn’t come inside. No one came into Andrew’s small room but the ICU nurse, whose previously chatty demeanor was gone. Jane waited for an hour, then another hour, then she lost count. There were no agents from the CIA, NSA, Secret Service, FBI, Interpol. There was no one to stop Jane when she put her head beside Andrew’s on the bed.

  She put her lips to his ear. How many times had Nick done the same thing to her, put his mouth close, confided in Jane in such a way that made her believe they were the only two people who mattered in the world?

  “I’m pregnant,” she told her brother, the first time she had said the words aloud to anyone. “And I’m happy. I’m so happy, Andy, that I’m going to have a baby.”

  Andrew’s eyes moved beneath his eyelids, but the nurse had told Jane not to read too much into it. He was in a coma. He would not wake up again. There was no way for Jane to know whether or not her brother knew she was there. But Jane knew she was there, and that was all that mattered.

  I will never let anyone hurt you ever again.

  “Jinx?”

  Her older brother was standing in the doorway. Jane should have guessed that Jasper would eventually find his way here. Her big brother always swooped in to save her. She wanted to stand up and hug him, but she didn’t have the strength to do more than slump into the chair. Jasper looked equally incapacitated as he closed the sliding glass door. The cop gave him a nod before walking across the hall to the nurses’ station. It was the Air Force uniform, wrinkled but still impressive. Jasper obviously hadn’t changed since she’d last seen him in the parlor of the Presidio Heights house.

  He turned around, his mouth a clenched straight line. Jane felt sick with guilt. Jasper’s skin was ashen. His hair was cowlicked in the back. His tie was askew. He must have come straight from the airport after the four-hour flight from San Francisco.

  Four hours in the air. Thirty hours in the van. Twelve hours to New York.

  Nick had to be in Brooklyn by now.

  Jasper asked, “Are you all right?”

  Jane would have wept if she’d had any tears left. She held onto Andrew’s hand and reached out to Jasper with the other. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  He held her fingers for a moment before letting them go. He walked back a few steps. He leaned against the wall. She expected him to ask about her part in Martin’s murder, but instead, he told Jane, “A bomb went off at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.”

  The information sounded strange coming out of his mouth. They had planned it for so long, and now it had actually happened.

  Jasper said, “At least one person’s dead. Another was critically injured. The cops think they were tryin
g to set the detonator when the bomb went off.”

  Spinner and Wyman.

  He said, “That’s the only reason the police aren’t swarming all over you right now. Every guy with a badge or a uniform is over there trying to pick through the pieces in case there are more casualties.”

  Jane held tight to Andrew’s hand. His face was slack, his skin the same color as the sheets. She said, “Jasper, Andy is—”

  “I know about Andrew.” Jasper’s tone was flat, indecipherable. He had not once looked at Andrew since he’d walked into the room. “We have to talk. You and I.”

  Jane knew he was going to ask her about Martin. She looked at Andrew because she did not want to see the hope, then disappointment, then disgust, in Jasper’s face.

  He said, “Nick is a fraud. His name isn’t even Nick.”

  Jane’s head swiveled around.

  “That FBI agent—Danberry—he told me that Nick’s real name is Clayton Morrow. They identified him through the fingerprints in your bedroom.”

  Jane was without words.

  “The real Nicholas Harp died of an overdose six years ago, his first day at Stanford. I’ve seen the death certificate. It was heroin.”

  The real Nicholas Harp?

  “The real Nick’s drug dealer, Clayton Morrow, assumed his identity. Do you understand what I’m saying, Jinx? Nick isn’t really Nick. His real name is Clayton Morrow. He stole a dead man’s identity. Maybe he even gave Harp the fatal overdose. Who knows what he’s capable of?”

  Stole a dead man’s identity?

  “Clayton Morrow grew up in Maryland. His father’s a pilot with Eastern. His mother is the president of the PTA. He’s got four younger brothers and a sister. The state police believe he murdered his girlfriend. Her neck was broken. She was beaten so badly they had to use dental films to identify her body.”

  Her neck was broken.

  “Jinx, I need you to tell me you understand what I’m saying.” Jasper had slid down the wall, rested his elbows on his knees, so he could be at her level. “The man you know as Nick lied to us. He lied to us all.”

  “But—” Jane struggled to make sense of what he’d said. “Agent Barlow told us all in the parlor that Nick’s mother had sent him to California to live with his grandmother. That’s the same story Nick told us.”

  “The real Nick’s mother sent him out west.” Jasper worked to keep the frustration out of his voice. “He knocked up a girl back home. They didn’t want his life to be over. They sent him out here to live with his grandmother. That part was true, about the move, but the rest was just bullshit to make us feel sorry for him.”

  Jane had no more questions because none of this felt real. The prostitute mother. The abusive grandmother. The year of homelessness. The triumphant acceptance to Stanford.

  Jasper said, “Don’t you see that Clayton Morrow used just enough of the real Nick’s story to make the lies he told us believable?” He waited, but Jane still had no words. “Do you hear what I’m saying, Jinx? Nick, or Clayton Morrow, or whoever he is, was a fraud. He lied to all of us. He was nothing but a drug dealer and a con man.”

  . . . just another con man running another cult so he could bed the pretty girls and play God with all the boys.

  Jane felt a noise force its way out of her throat. Not grief, but laughter. She heard the sound bounce around the tiny room, so incongruous with the machines and pumps. She put her hand to her mouth. Tears streamed down her cheeks. Her stomach muscles cramped, she laughed so hard.

  “Christ.” Jasper stood back up. He was looking at her as if she had lost her mind. “Jinx, this is serious. You’re going to go to prison if you don’t make a deal.”

  Jane wiped her eyes. She looked at Andrew, so close to death that his flesh was nearly translucent. This was what he’d been trying to tell Jane in the van. The real Nick had been his assigned roommate at Stanford. She could easily see Nick persuading Andrew to play along, just as she could see Andrew doing whatever it took to befriend the dead man’s drug dealer.

  She wiped her eyes again. She held tight to Andrew’s hand. None of it mattered. She forgave him everything, just as he had forgiven her.

  “What is wrong with you?” Jasper asked. “You’re laughing about the asshole who murdered our father.”

  Now he was finally getting to the point. She said, “Laura Juneau murdered our father.”

  “You think anybody in that fucking cult makes a move without his orders?” Jasper hissed out the words between clenched teeth. “This is serious, Jinx. Get yourself together. If you want to have anything like a normal life, you’re going to have to turn your back on the troops.”

  Troops?

  “They’ve already captured that idiot woman from San Francisco. She stole a car and shot at a police officer.” He loosened his tie as he paced the tiny room. “You have to talk before she does. They’ll give a deal to the first person who squeals. If we’re going to save your life, we have to act fast.”

  Jane watched her brother’s nervous pacing. Sweat was pouring off of him. He looked agitated, which for anyone else would be a typical response. But Jasper’s greatest gift was his ability to always keep his cool. Jane could count on one hand the number of times Jasper had really lost it.

  For the first time in hours, she let go of Andrew’s hand. She stood to tuck the blanket around him. She pressed her lips to his cool forehead. She wished for a moment that she could see into his mind, because he had clearly known so much more than her.

  She told Jasper, “You called them troops.”

  Jasper stopped pacing. “What?”

  “You were in the Air Force for fifteen years. You’re still in the Reserves. You wouldn’t dishonor that word by using it to describe the members of a cult.” In her mind, Jane could see Nick clapping together his hands, preparing to deliver one of his rallying speeches. “That’s what Nick calls us. His troops.”

  Jasper might have called her bluff, but he couldn’t stop himself from nervously glancing at the cop across the hallway.

  Jane said, “You knew about it. Oslo, at least.”

  He shook his head, but it made sense that Nick had found a way to pull him into their folly. Jasper had left the Air Force to run the company. Martin kept promising to step aside, but then the deadline would come and he would find another excuse to stay.

  She said, “Tell me the truth, Jasper. I need to hear you say it.”

  “Stop talking.” His voice was barely more than a whisper. He closed the space between them, his face inches from hers. “I’m trying to help you out of this.”

  “Did you give money?” Jane asked, because a lot of people had given money to the cause. Of all of them, only Jasper would personally benefit from Martin’s public humiliation.

  He said, “Why would I give that asshole money?”

  Jasper’s haughtiness gave him away. She had watched him use it as a weapon her entire life, but he had never, ever directed it toward Jane.

  She told him, “Taking the company public would’ve been a lot more lucrative if Father was forced to resign. All of his essays and speeches about the Queller Correction made him too controversial.”

  Jasper’s jaw worked. She could tell from his face that she was right.

  “Nick was bribing you,” Jane guessed. The stupid metal box with Nick’s trophies. How smug he must have been when he told Jasper he’d stolen the forms right under his nose. “Tell me the truth, Jasper.”

  His eyes went back to the cop. The man was still across the hall talking to a nurse.

  Jane said, “I’m on your side, whether you believe me or not. I never wanted you to get hurt. I only found out about the papers before everything went to hell.”

  Jasper cleared his throat. “What papers?”

  She wanted to roll her eyes. There was no point to this game. “Nick stole the intervening reports with your signature on them. You verified billing for patients who were dead, like Robert Juneau, or ones who had already left the program. That�
�s fraud. Nick had you dead to rights, and I know he used it to—”

  Jasper’s expression was almost comical in its astonishment. His eyebrows shot up. The whites of his eyes were completely visible. His mouth opened in a perfect circle.

  “You didn’t know?” Even as she asked the question, Jane knew the answer. Nick had double-crossed her brother. He hadn’t been content to take his money. Jasper had to pay for snubbing Nick at the dinner table, looking down his nose, asking pointed questions about Nick’s background, making it clear that he was not one of us.

  “Christ.” Jasper pressed his hands to the wall. His face had gone completely white. “I think I’m gonna be sick.”

  “I’m sorry, Jasper, but it’s all right.”

  “I’ll go to prison. I’ll—”

  “You won’t go anywhere.” Jane rubbed his back, tried to assuage his fears. “Jasper, I have the—”

  “Please.” He grabbed her arms, suddenly desperate. “You have to support me. Whatever Nick says, you have to—”

  “Jasper I have—”

  “Shut up, Jinx. Listen to me. We can say—we can—It was Andrew, all right?” He finally looked at their brother, dying only a few feet away. “We’ll tell them it was all Andrew.”

  Jane concentrated on the pain from his fingers gouging into her skin.

  “He forged my signature on the reports,” Jasper decided. “He’s done it before. He forged Father’s signature on school forms, checks, credit card slips. There’s a long history we can document. I know Father kept everything in his safe. I’m sure they—”

  “No,” Jane said, firmly enough to be heard. “I’m not going to let you do that to Andrew.”

  “He’s dying, Jinx. What does it matter?”

  “His legacy matters. His reputation.”

  “Are you fucking nuts?” Jasper shook her so hard her teeth clicked together. “Andrew’s legacy is just like the rest of them—he was a faggot, and he’s dying a faggot’s death.”