Pieces of Her

by Karin Slaughter

  EPILOGUE

  Laura Oliver sat on a wooden bench outside the Federal Corrections Institute in Maryland. The complex resembled a large high school. The adjacent satellite facility was more akin to a boys’ summer camp. Minimum security, mostly white-collar criminals who’d skimmed from hedge funds or forgotten to pay decades of taxes. There were tennis and basketball courts and two running tracks. The perimeter fence felt cursory. The guard towers were sparse. Many of the inmates were allowed to leave during the day to work at the nearby factories.

  Given the seriousness of his crimes, Nick didn’t belong here, but he had always been good at inserting himself into places he did not belong. He’d been convicted of manslaughter for killing Alexandra Maplecroft, and conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction for the New York piece of the plan. The jury had decided not only to spare Nick’s life, but to give him the possibility of parole. Which was likely how he had wrangled his transfer to Club Fed. The worst thing that inmates had to worry about inside the blue-roofed pods spoking out from the main building was boredom.

  Laura knew all about the boredom of incarceration, but not of the rarefied kind that Nick was experiencing. Per her plea deal, her two-year sentence had been spent in solitary confinement. At first, Laura had thought she would go mad. She had wailed and cried and even fashioned a keyboard on the frame of the bed, playing notes that only she could hear. Then, as her pregnancy had progressed, Laura had been overcome with exhaustion. When she wasn’t sleeping, she was reading. When she wasn’t reading, she was waiting for mealtimes or staring up at the ceiling having conversations with Andrew that she would’ve never had with him in person.

  I can be strong. I can change this. I can get away.

  She was mourning the loss of her brothers; Andrew to death, Jasper to his own greed. She was mourning the loss of Nick, because she had loved him for six years and felt the absence of that love as she would the loss of a limb. Then Andrea was born, and she was mourning the loss of her infant daughter.

  Laura had been allowed to hold Andy only once before Edwin and Clara had taken her away. Of all the things that Laura had lost in her life, missing the first eighteen months of Andy’s life was the one wound that would never heal.

  Laura found a tissue in her pocket. She wiped her eyes. She turned her head, and there was Andy walking toward the bench. Her beautiful daughter was holding her shoulders straight, head high. Being on the road had changed Andy in ways that Laura could not quite get used to. She had worried for so long that her daughter had inherited all of her weakness, but now Laura saw that she’d passed on her resilience, too.

  “You were right.” Andy sat down on the bench beside her. “Those toilets were disgusting.”

  Laura wrapped her arm around Andy’s shoulders. She kissed the side of her head even as Andy pulled away.

  “Mom.”

  Laura relished the normalcy of her annoyed tone. Andy had been bristling about the over-protectiveness since she’d been released from the hospital. She had no idea how much Laura was holding back. Given the choice, she would have gladly pulled her grown daughter into her lap and read her a story.

  Now that Andy knew the truth—at least the part of the truth that Laura was willing to share—she was constantly asking Laura for stories.

  Andy said, “I talked to Clara’s daughters yesterday. They’ve found a place for her that specializes in people with Alzheimer’s. A nice place, not, like, a nursing home but more like a community. They say she hasn’t been asking about Edwin as much.”

  Laura rubbed Andy’s shoulder, swallowing back her jealousy. “That’s good. I’m glad.”

  Andy said, “I’m nervous. Are you nervous?”

  Laura shook her head, but she wasn’t sure. “It’s nice to be out of the splint.” She flexed her hand. “My daughter is safe and healthy. My ex-husband is speaking to me again. I think, in the scheme of things, I’ve got more to be happy about than not.”

  “Wow, that’s some class-A misdirection.”

  Laura gave a surprised laugh, startled that the things Andy used to say inside of her head were finally coming out of her mouth. “Maybe I’m a little nervous. He was my first love.”

  “He beat the shit out of you. That’s not love.”

  The Polaroids.

  Andy had been the first person to whom Laura had told the truth about who’d beaten her. “You’re right, sweetheart. It wasn’t love. Not at the end.”

  Andy smoothed together her lips. She seemed to vacillate between wanting to know everything about her birth father and not wanting to know anything at all. “What was it like? The last time you saw him?”

  Laura didn’t have to think very hard to summon her memories of being on the witness stand. “I was terrified. He acted as his own lawyer, so he had a right to question me in open court.” Nick had always thought he was so much smarter than everyone else. “It went on for six days. The judge kept asking me to speak up because I could hardly do more than whisper. I felt so powerless. And then I looked at the jury, and I realized that they weren’t buying his act. That’s the thing with con men—it takes time. They study you and figure out what’s missing inside of you, then they make you feel like they’re the only one who can fill the hole.”

  Andy asked, “What was missing inside of you?”

  Laura pursed her lips. She had decided to spare Andy the details of Martin’s sexual abuse. On good days, she was even able to persuade herself that she was holding back for Andy’s sake rather than her own. “I had just turned seventeen when Andrew brought Nick home. I’d spent most of my life alone in front of a piano. I only got a few hours at school and then I was with a tutor and then . . .” Her voice trailed off. “I was so desperate to be noticed.” She shrugged. “It sounds ludicrous, looking back on it now, but that’s all it took for me to get hooked. He noticed me.”

  “Is that where you went when you disappeared on weekends?” Andy had moved away from Nick again. “Like when you went to the Tubman Museum and brought me back the snowglobe?”

  “I was meeting with my WitSec handler. Witness security.”

  “I know what WitSec means.” Andy rolled her eyes. She considered herself an expert on the criminal justice system since she’d been on the lam.

  Laura smiled as she stroked back her hair. “I was on parole for fifteen years. My original handler was much more laid-back about the whole thing than Mike, but I still had to check in.”

  “I guess you don’t like Mike?”

  “He doesn’t trust me because I’m a criminal and I don’t trust him because he’s a cop.”

  Andy kicked at the ground with the toe of her shoe. She was clearly still trying to reconcile Laura’s sordid past with the woman she had always known as her mother. Or maybe she was trying to make peace with her own crimes.

  “You can’t tell Mike what happened,” Laura reminded her. “We’re damn lucky he hasn’t figured it out.”

  Andy nodded, but still said nothing. She no longer seemed to feel guilty about killing the man they had all started calling Hoodie, but like Laura, she struggled to forgive herself for her part in jeopardizing Gordon’s safety.

  The night Andy had fled the house, Laura had sat on the floor of her office, Hoodie’s dead body a few feet away, and waited for the police to bust down the door and arrest her.

  Instead, she’d heard men screaming on her front lawn.

  Laura had opened the door to find Mike lying flat on the ground. Half a dozen cops were pointing their guns at his prone body. He’d been knocked out, likely by Hoodie. Which served him right for lurking around her front yard. If Laura had wanted the US Marshals Service involved in the Jonah Helsinger affair, she would’ve called Mike herself.

  Then again, she shouldn’t be too hard on him, considering Mike was the only reason that Laura had not been arrested that night.

  Andy’s text had been fairly nondescript:

  419 Seaborne Ave armed man imminent danger pls hurry

  If Laura
was adept at anything, it was subterfuge. She’d told the cops she’d panicked when she saw a man outside her window, that she’d had no idea it was Mike, that she had no idea who’d hit him, and she had no idea why they wanted to come into the house but she knew she had the legal right to refuse them entry.

  The only reason they had believed her was because Mike was too dazed to call bullshit. The ambulance had taken him to the hospital. Laura had waited until sun-up to call Gordon. They had waited until sundown to take the body from the house and put it in the river.

  This was the transgression Andy could not get past. Killing Hoodie had been self-defense. Gordon’s involvement in covering up her crime was more complicated.

  Laura tried to assuage her guilt. “Darling, your father has no regrets. He’s told you that over and over again. What he did was wrong, but it was for the right reason.”

  “He could get into trouble.”

  “He won’t if we all keep our mouths shut. You have to remember that Mike wasn’t following you around to keep you safe. He was trying to see what you were up to because he thought that I was breaking the law.” Laura held onto Andy’s hand. “We’ll be fine if we all stick together. Trust me on this. I know how to get away with a crime.”

  Andy glanced up at her, then looked away. Her silences had meaning now. They were no longer a symptom of her indecision. They were usually followed by a difficult question.

  Laura held her breath and waited.

  This was the moment when Andy would finally ask about Paula. Why Laura had killed her instead of grabbing the empty gun. What she’d whispered in Paula’s ear as she was dying. Why she had told Andy to tell the police that she was unconscious when Paula had died.

  Andy said, “There was only one suitcase in the storage unit.”

  Laura let out the breath. Her brain took a moment to dial back the anxiety and find the correct response. “Do you think that’s the only storage unit?”

  Andy raised her eyebrows. “Is the money from your family?”

  “It’s from the safe houses, the vans. I wouldn’t take Queller money.”

  “Paula said the same thing.”

  Laura held her breath again.

  Andy said, “Isn’t it all blood money?”

  “Yes.” Laura had told herself that the stash money was different; she had justified keeping it because she was terrified Jasper would come after her. The make-up bag hidden inside the couch. The storage units. The fake IDs she had bought off the same forger in Toronto who had worked on Alexandra Maplecroft’s credentials. All of her machinations had been done in case Jasper figured out where she was.

  And all of her fears had been misplaced, because Andy was right.

  Jasper clearly did not give a shit about the fraudulent paperwork. The statute of limitations on the fraud had run out years ago, and his public apology tour had actually raised his numbers in the early presidential polls.

  Andy kept stubbing the toe of her shoe into the ground. “Why did you give it up?”

  Laura almost laughed, because she had not been asked the question in such a long time that her first thought was, Give up what?

  She said, “The short answer is Nick, but it’s more complicated than that.”

  “We’ve got time for the long answer.”

  Laura didn’t think there were that many hours left in her lifetime, but she tried, “When you play classical, you’re playing the exact notes as written. You have to practice incessantly because you’ll lose your dynamics—that’s basically how you express the notes. Even a few days away, you can feel the dexterity leaving your fingers. Keeping it takes a lot of time. Time away from other things.”

  “Like Nick.”

  “Like Nick,” Laura confirmed. “He never came out and told me to quit, but he kept making comments about the other things we could be doing together. So, when I gave up the classical part of my career, I thought I was making the decision for myself, but really, he was the one who put it into my head.”

  “And then you played jazz?”

  Laura felt herself smiling. She had adored jazz. Even now she couldn’t listen to it because the loss was too painful. “Jazz isn’t about the notes, it’s about the melodic expression. Less practice, more emotion. With classical, there’s a wall between you and the audience. With jazz, it’s a shared journey. Afterward, you don’t want to leave the stage. And from a technical perspective, it’s a completely different touch.”

  “Touch?”

  “The way you press the keys; the velocity, the depth; it’s hard to put into words, but it’s really your essence as a performer. I loved being part of something so vibrant. If I had known what it was like to play jazz, I never would’ve gone the classical route. And Nick saw that, even before I did.”

  “So he talked you into giving that up, too?”

  “It was my choice,” Laura said, because that was the truth. Everything had been her choice. “Then I was in the studio, and I found a way to love that, and Nick started making noises again and—” She shrugged. “He narrows your life. That’s what men like Nick do. They pull you away from everything you love so that they are the only thing you focus on.” Laura felt the need to add, “If you let them.”

  Andy’s attention had strayed. Mike Falcone was getting out of his car. He was wearing a suit and tie. A grin split his handsome face as he approached them. Laura tried to ignore the way Andy perked up. Mike was charming and self-deprecating and everything about him set Laura’s teeth on edge.

  Charisma.

  When he got close enough, Andy said, “What a coincidence.”

  He pointed to his ear. “Sorry, can’t hear you. One of my testicles is still lodged in my ear canal.”

  Andy laughed, and Laura felt her stomach tense.

  He said, “Beautiful day to visit a whackjob.”

  “You’re selling yourself short,” Andy teased. There was an easy grin on her face that Laura had never seen. “How are your three older sisters?”

  “That part was true.”

  “And that thing about your dad?”

  “Also true,” he said. “You wanna explain how you ended up at Paula Kunde’s house? She’s at the top of your mom’s no-fly list.”

  Laura felt Andy stiffen beside her. Her own nerves were rattled every time she thought about Andy eavesdropping on her conversation with Hoodie. Laura would never forgive herself for inadvertently sending her daughter into the lions’ den.

  Still, Andy held her own, just shrugging at Mike’s question.

  He tried, “What about those bricks of cash in your back pockets? Put quite a damper on the mood.”

  Andy smiled, shrugging again.

  Laura waited, but there was nothing more except the weight of sexual tension.

  Mike asked Laura, “Nervous?”

  “Why would I be?”

  He shrugged. “Just an average day where you meet a guy you sent to prison for the rest of his life.”

  “He sent himself to prison. You people are the jackasses who keep letting him go in front of the parole board.”

  “It takes a village.” Mike pointed to the pink scar on his temple where he’d been hit in the head. “You ever figure out who knocked me out in your front yard?”

  “How do you know it wasn’t me?”

  Laura smiled because he smiled.

  He gave a slight bow of surrender, indicating the prison. “After you, ladies.”

  They walked ahead of Mike toward the visitors’ entrance. Laura looked up at the tall building with bars over reinforced glass in the windows. Nick was inside. He was waiting for her. Laura felt a sudden shakiness after days of certainty. Could she do this?

  Did she have a choice?

  Her shoulders tensed as they were buzzed through the front doors. The guard who met them was massive, taller than Mike, his belly jutting past his black leather belt. His shoes squeaked as he led them through security. They stored their purses and phones in metal lockers, then he led them down a long corridor.


  Laura fought a shudder. The walls felt like they were closing in. Every time a door or gate slammed shut, her stomach clenched. She had only been confined for two years, but the thought of being trapped alone in a cell again brought on a cold sweat.

  Or was she thinking about Nick?

  Andy slipped her hand into Laura’s as they reached the end of the corridor. They followed the guard into a small, airless room. Monitors showed feeds from all of the cameras. Six guards sat with headphones on, eavesdropping on inmate conversations inside the visitors’ room.

  “Marshal?” There was a man standing with his back to the wall. Unlike the others, he was wearing a suit and tie. He shook Mike’s hand. “Marshal Rosenfeld.”

  “Marshal Falcone,” Mike said. “This is my witness. Her daughter.”

  Rosenfeld nodded to each of them as he pulled a small plastic case out of his pocket. “These go in your ears. They’ll transmit back to the station over there where we will record everything that’s said between you and the inmate.”

  Laura frowned at the plastic earbuds in the case. “They look like hearing aids.”

  “That’s by design.” Rosenfeld took the listening devices and placed them in her open hand. “Your words will be picked up through the vibrations in your jawbone. In order for us to pick up Clayton Morrow, he needs to be close. There’s a lot of ambient noise in the visitation room. All the inmates know how to work the dead zones. If you want to get him on tape, you need to be no more than three feet away.”

  “That won’t be a problem.” Laura was more concerned with vanity. She did not want Nick to think she was an old woman who needed hearing aids.

  Rosenfeld said, “If you feel threatened, or like you can’t do it, just say the phrase, ‘I would like a Coke.’ There’s a machine in there. He won’t notice anything’s off. We’ll tell the closest guard to step in, but if Morrow somehow has a shiv or a weapon—”

  “I’m not worried about that. He would only use his hands.”

  Andy gave an audible gulp.

  “I’ll be fine, sweetheart. It’s just a conversation.” Laura pushed the plastic buds into her ears. They felt like pebbles. She asked Rosenfeld, “What does he need to say, exactly? What’s incriminating?”