“They can say what they want.”
“That’s the first thing you’ve said that makes any fucking sense,” Gordon snapped. “The Helsingers are going to say exactly what they want—that yeah, this poor, heart-broken, dead cop’s son deserved to go to prison for what he did, but he didn’t deserve to be viciously murdered.”
“That’s not—”
“They’re going to take you down harder than him, Laura. You did that kid a favor. This is all going to be about what you did, not what he did.”
Laura kept silent.
Andy stopped breathing.
Gordon asked, “Do you know there’s a video?”
Laura did not answer, though she must have seen the TV when the orderly wheeled her through the waiting room.
“That detective showed—” Gordon had to stop to swallow. “The look on your face when you killed him, Laura. The serenity. The everyday-ness. How do you think that’s going to stack up against a mentally troubled, fatherless teenage boy?”
Laura turned her head and looked out the window.
“Do you know what that detective kept asking? Over and over again?”
“The pigs always ask a lot of questions.”
“Stop fucking around, Laura. What did you say before you killed him?” Gordon waited, but she did not respond. “What did you say to Helsinger?”
Laura continued to stare out the window.
“Whatever you said—that’s motivation. That’s the difference between maybe—just maybe—being able to argue justifiable homicide and the death penalty.”
Andy felt her heart stop.
“Laura?” He banged his hand on the steering wheel. “God dammit! Answer me. Answer me or—”
“I am not a fool, Gordon.” Laura’s tone was cold enough to burn. “Why do you think I refused to be interviewed? Why do you think I told Andrea to keep her mouth shut?”
“You want our daughter to lie to a police detective? To perjure herself in court?”
“I want her to do what she always does and keep her mouth shut.” Her tone was quiet but her anger was so palpable that Andy felt like the air was vibrating with rage.
Why wasn’t her mother arguing that Gordon was wrong? Why wasn’t she saying that she didn’t have a choice? That she was saving Andy? That it was self-defense? That she was horrified by what she had done? That she had panicked or just reacted or was terrified and she was sorry—so sorry—that she had killed that troubled kid?
Andy slid her hand into her pocket. The detective’s card was still wet from the bathroom counter.
Palazzolo tried to talk to me again. She wanted me to turn on you. She gave me her card.
Gordon said, “Laura, this is deadly serious.”
She fake-laughed. “That’s an interesting choice of words.”
“Cops protect their own. Don’t you know that? They stick together no matter what. That brotherhood bullshit is not just some urban legend you hear on TV.” Gordon was so angry that his voice broke. “This whole thing will turn into a crusade just by virtue of the kid’s last name.”
Laura inhaled, then slowly shushed it out. “I just—I need a moment, Gordon. All right? I need time alone to think this through.”
“You need a criminal litigator to do the thinking for you.”
“And you need to stop telling me what to do!” She was so furious that she screeched out the words. Laura covered her eyes with her hand. “Has hectoring me ever worked? Has it?” She wasn’t looking for an answer. She turned to Gordon, roaring at him, “This is why I left you! I had to get away from you, to get you out of my life, because you have no idea who I am. You never have and you never will.”
Each word was like a slap across her father’s face.
“Jesus.” Laura grabbed the handle above the door, tried to shift her weight off her injured leg. “Will you drive the fucking car?”
Andy waited for her father to say Laura was welcome to walk home, but he didn’t. He faced forward. He pushed the gear into drive. He glanced over his shoulder before hitting the gas.
The car lurched toward the main road.
Andy didn’t know why, but she found herself turning to look out the back window.
Alabama was still standing under the portico. He tipped his hat one last time.
The look on her mother’s face—panic? Fear? Disgust?
Is something wrong, Officer?
Alabama stood rooted in place as Gordon took a left out of the hospital drive. He was still standing there, head turning to follow their progress, when they drove down the street.
Andy watched him watching the car until he was just a speck in the distance.
I’m sorry for the situation your wife and daughter are in.
How had he known that Gordon was her father?
Andy stood under the shower until the hot water ran out. Manic thoughts kept flitting around inside of her head like a swarm of mosquitos. She could not blink without remembering a stray detail from the diner, from the video, from the police interview, the car.
None of it made sense. Her mother was a fifty-five-year-old speech therapist. She played bridge, for chrissakes. She didn’t kill people and smoke cigarettes and rail against the pigs.
Andy avoided her reflection in the bathroom mirror as she dried her hair. Her skin felt like sandpaper. There were tiny shards of glass embedded in her scalp. Her chapped lips had started bleeding at the corner. Her nerves were still shaky. At least she thought it was her nerves. Maybe it was lack of sleep that was making her feel so jumpy, or the absence of adrenaline, or the desperation she felt every time she replayed the last thing that Laura had said to Andy before she went into the house—
I’m not going to change my mind. You need to leave tonight.
Andy’s heart felt so raw that a feather could’ve splayed it open.
She rummaged through the clean clothes pile and found a pair of lined running shorts and a navy-blue work shirt. She dressed quickly, walking to the window as she did up the buttons. The garage was detached from the house. The apartment was her cave. Gray walls. Gray carpet. Light-blocking shades. The ceiling sloped with the roofline, only made livable by two tiny dormers.
Andy stood at the narrow window and looked down at her mother’s house. She could not hear her parents arguing, but she knew what was happening the same way that you knew you had managed to give yourself food poisoning. She was seized by that awful, clammy feeling that something just wasn’t right.
The death penalty.
Where had her mother even learned to catch a knife like that? Laura had never been in the military. As far as Andy knew, she hadn’t taken any self-defense classes.
Almost every day of her mother’s life for the last three years had been spent either trying not to die from cancer or enduring all the horrible indignities that cancer treatment brought with it. There had not been a hell of a lot of free time to train for hand-to-hand combat. Andy was surprised her mother had been able to raise her arm so quickly. Laura struggled to lift a grocery bag, even with her good hand. The breast cancer had invaded her chest wall. The surgeon had removed part of her pectoral muscle.
Adrenaline.
Maybe