Karin Slaughter: Pieces of Her

Andy let Laura do the thinking for her. Her mother had said to take the dead man’s truck so she was going to take the dead man’s truck.

Andy approached the Ford cautiously. The dark windows were rolled tight. The doors were locked. She found Hoodie’s keys in the make-up bag. The ring had a can opener and the Ford key. No house keys, but maybe they were inside the truck.

Instead of pressing the remote, Andy used the actual key to unlock the door. Inside, she smelled a musky cologne mingled with leather. She tossed the make-up bag onto the passenger’s seat. She had to brace her hands on the sides of the cab to pull herself up into the driver’s seat.

The door gave a solid thunk when she closed it.

Andy stuck the key into the ignition. She turned it slowly, like the truck would blow up or self-destruct with the wrong move. The engine gave a deep purr. She put her hand on the gear. She stopped, because something was wrong.

There should have been light coming from the dash, but there was nothing. Andy pressed her fingers to the console. Construction paper, or something that felt like it, was taped over the display. She turned her head. The dome light had not come on, either.

Andy thought about Hoodie sitting in the truck blacking out all the light then parking it at the Hazeltons.

And then she thought about the light in her mother’s office. The only light Laura had left on in the house. Andy had assumed her mother had forgotten to turn it off, but maybe Laura had not been sleeping in the recliner. Maybe she had been sitting on the couch in her office waiting for someone like Hoodie to break in.

He has my gun in the waistband of his jeans.

Not a gun, but my gun.

Andy felt her mouth go dry.

When had her mother bought a gun?

A siren whooped behind her. Andy cringed, but the cruiser rolled past rather than turning down the driveway. She moved the gear around, slowly letting her foot off the brake, testing each notch until she found reverse.

There was no seeing out the dark windows as she backed out of the driveway. Tree limbs and thorny bushes scraped at the truck. She hit Beachview Drive sideways, the truck wheels bumping off the hard edge of the curb.

Andy performed the same trick with the gear until she found drive. The headlights were off. In the pre-dawn darkness, she had no way of finding the dial to turn them on. She kept both hands tight on the wheel. Her shoulders were up around her ears. She felt like she was about to roll off a cliff.

She drove past the road to Gordon’s house. The flashing lights of a police cruiser were at the end of his street. Andy accelerated before she could be seen. And then she realized that she could not be seen because all of the lights were off, not just the interior lights and the headlights. She glanced into the rearview mirror as she tapped the brakes. The taillights did not come on, either.

This was not good.

It was one thing to cover all of your lights when you were on the way to doing something bad, but when you were leaving the bad thing, when the road was crawling with police officers, driving without your lights was tantamount to writing the word GUILTY on your forehead.

There was one bridge in and out of Belle Isle. The Savannah police would be streaking down one side while Andy, illuminated by the sun reflecting off the water, would be trying to sneak out of town on the other.

She pulled into the parking lot of what happened to be the Mall of Belle Isle. She jumped out of the truck and walked around to the back. Some kind of thick black tape covered the taillights. She picked at the edge and found that it wasn’t tape, but a large magnetic sheet. The other light had the same.

The corners were rounded off. The sheets were the exact size needed to cover both the brake lights and the back-up lights.

Andy’s brain lacked the ability to process why this mattered. She tossed the magnets into the back of the truck and got behind the wheel. She peeled away the construction paper on the console. Like the magnets, the paper was cut to the exact size. More black paper covered the radio and lighted buttons on the console.

She found the knob for the headlights. She drove away from the mall. Her heart was thumping against the side of her neck as she approached the bridge. She held her breath. She crossed the bridge. No other cars were on the road. No other cars were on the turn-off.

As she accelerated toward the highway, she caught a glimpse of three Savannah cruisers rushing toward the bridge, lights rolling, sirens off.

Andy let out the breath she’d been holding.

There was a sign by the road:

MACON 170

ATLANTA 248

Andy checked the gas gauge. The tank was full. She would try to make the over four-hour trip to Atlanta without stopping, then buy a map at the first gas station she found. Andy had no idea how far Carrollton was from there, or how she’d find the Get-Em-Go storage facility near the Walmart.

The unit number is your birthday. One-twenty. Say it.

“One-twenty,” Andy spoke the numbers aloud, suddenly confused.

Her birthday was yesterday, August twentieth.

Why had Laura said that she was born in January?

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