Andy opened her mouth so she could breathe. She had come face-to-face with this guy. He had almost killed Laura. Almost killed Andy. Murdered people. Tried to blow them up.
He had probably attended Belle Isle High School, the same as Andy.
“Helsinger,” Gordon said. “That name sounds familiar.”
“Yeah, the family’s pretty well known up in Bibb County. Anyway—”
“Well known,” Gordon repeated, but the two words were weighted in a way that Andy could not decipher.
Palazzolo obviously got their meaning. She held Gordon’s gaze for a moment before she continued, “Anyway—Jonah Helsinger left some school notebooks on his bed. Most of them were filled with drawings. Disturbing images, weird stuff. He had four more handguns, an AR-15 and a shotgun, so he chose to take the six-shooter and the knife for a reason. We think we know the reason. There was a file on his laptop called ‘Death Plan’ that contained two documents and a PDF.”
Andy felt a shudder work its way through her body. While she was getting ready for work last night, Jonah Helsinger was probably lying in bed, psyching himself up for his killing spree.
Palazzolo continued, “The PDF was a schematic of the diner, sort of like what you’d see an architect draw. One of the docs was a timeline, like a bullet point: wake up at this time, shower at this time, clean gun here, fill up car with gas there. The other doc was sort of like a diary entry where Helsinger wrote about how and why this was going to go down.” She referred to her notebook again. “His first targets were going to be Shelly and her mother. Apparently, they had a standing lunch date every Monday at the Rise-n-Dine. Shelly wrote about it on Facebook, Snapchatted her food or whatever. Mr. Barnard told us the lunches are something his wife and daughter decided to do together over the summer before college.”
“Were something they decided to do,” Gordon mumbled, because everything in the two women’s lives was past tense now.
“Were. Yeah,” Palazzolo said. “Helsinger planned to kill both of them. He blamed the mother for the break-up. He said in his diary that it was Betsy’s fault, that she was always pushing Shelly, blah blah blah. Crazy talk. It doesn’t matter, because we all know it’s Jonah Helsinger’s fault, right?”
“Right,” Gordon said, his voice firm.
Palazzolo held his gaze in that meaningful way again before she referred back to her notes. “This was his plan: after he killed Betsy and Shelly, Helsinger was going to take hostage whoever was left in the diner. He had a time noted—1:16, not the actual time but a notation of timing.” She looked up at Andy, then Gordon. “See, we think that he did a dry run. Last week, at approximately the same time as the shooting today, somebody threw a rock through the plate glass window that faces the boardwalk. We’re waiting for the security feed. The incident was filed with burglary division. It took the first mall cop about one minute, sixteen seconds, to get to the diner.”
The mall cops weren’t the usual rent-a-cops, but off-duty police officers hired to protect the high-end stores. Andy had seen the guns on their hips and never given it a second thought.
Palazzolo told them, “In Helsinger’s predicted timeline of the shooting, he allowed that he would have to kill at least one other bystander to let the cops know that he was serious. Then he was going to let the cops kill him. Helsinger must have thought his plan was fast-forwarded when he saw your uniform and assumed that you were law enforcement.” Palazzolo was talking directly to Andy now. “We gather from the other witnesses that he wanted you to shoot him. Suicide by cop.”
Except Andy was not a cop.
Get up! Do your job!
That’s what Helsinger had screamed at Andy.
Then Andy’s mother had said, “Shoot me.”
“He’s a really bad guy. Was a bad guy. This Helsinger kid.” Palazzolo was still focused on Andy. “We’ve got it all in his notes. He planned this out meticulously. He knew he was going to murder people. He hoped that he would murder even more people when somebody opened his bedroom door. He packed screws and nails into that pipe bomb. If the wiring hadn’t been switched on the doorknob end, the whole house would be gone, along with whoever happened to be inside. We would’ve found nails two blocks away buried in God knows who or what.”
Andy wanted to nod but she felt immobilized. Screws and nails flying through the air. What did it take to build such a device, to pack in all those projectiles in hopes that they would maim or kill people?
“You’re lucky,” Palazzolo told Andy. “If your mom hadn’t been there, he would’ve killed you. He was just a really bad guy.”
Andy felt the woman looking at her, but she kept her eyes directed toward the floor.
Bad guy.
Palazzolo kept repeating the phrase, like it was okay that Helsinger was dead. Like he had gotten what he deserved. Like whatever Laura had done was completely justified because Jonah Lee Helsinger was a bad guy.
Andy worked at a police station. Most of the people who got murdered would fall into the bad guy category, yet she had never heard any of the detectives harp on the fact that the victim was a bad guy.
“Mr. Oliver,” Palazzolo had turned to Gordon. “Has your wife had any military training?”
Gordon did not answer.
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