The Good Daughter

  But agents Delia Wofford and Louis Avery had no such loyalty to Mr. Huckabee. No wonder they had drilled him for four hours while the bullet wound in his arm slowly seeped. They probably suspected he’d taken the weapon, just like they suspected the local cops were idiots for letting him walk out the door without doing a thorough search.

  Lying to an FBI agent carried up to five years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine. Add on top of that the destruction of evidence, lying to hinder an investigation and the possibility of Huck being charged as an accomplice after the fact to double homicide, and he would never work in a school, or probably anywhere else, ever again.

  All of which made things tricky for Charlie. Unless she wanted to destroy the man’s life, she would need to find a way to tell her father about the gun without implicating Huck. She knew what Rusty would do if he smelled blood. Huck was the kind of handsome, clean-cut do-gooder that juries ate up with a spoon. His war record, his benevolent choice of profession, wouldn’t matter if he testified from the stand in an orange prison jumpsuit.

  She looked at the clock over the couch: 2:16 PM.

  This day was like a fucking never-ending sphere.

  Charlie opened a new Word document on her computer. She should type out everything she remembered and give it to Rusty. He had likely heard Kelly Wilson’s story by now. Charlie could at least tell him what the prosecution had heard.

  Her hands hovered over the keyboard, but she didn’t type. She watched the blinking cursor. She didn’t know where to start. Obviously, from the beginning, but the beginning was the hard part.

  Charlie’s daily routine was normally set in granite. She got up at five. She fed the various animals. She went for a run. She showered. She ate breakfast. She went to work. She went home. With Ben gone, her nights were filled with reading case files, watching mindless TV, and clock-watching for a non-demeaning time to go to bed.

  Today hadn’t been like that, and Rusty would need to know the reason why.

  The least Charlie could do was find out Huck’s first name.

  She opened the browser on her computer. She searched for “Pikeville Middle School faculty.”

  The little rainbow wheel started spinning. Eventually, the screen showed the message: WEBSITE NOT RESPONDING.

  She tried to get around the landing page, typing in different departments, teachers’ names, even the school newspaper. They all brought back the same message. The Pikeville Department of Education servers didn’t have the capacity to handle hundreds of thousands of curiosity-seekers trying to access their website.

  She clicked open a fresh search page. She typed “Huckabee Pikeville.”

  “Crap,” Charlie mumbled. Google had asked, Do you mean huckleberry?

  The first site listed was a wiki entry saying that the huckleberry was the state fruit of Idaho. Then there were several stories about school boards trying to ban Huckleberry Finn. At the bottom of the page was an Urban Dictionary entry that claimed “I’m your huckleberry” was nineteenth-century slang for “I’m your man.”

  Charlie tapped her finger on the mouse. She should look at CNN or MSNBC or even Fox, but she couldn’t bring herself to type in the news sites. An entire hour had passed without the slideshow coming back into her head. She didn’t want to invite the flood of bad memories.

  Besides, this was Rusty’s case. Charlie was likely going to be called as a witness for the prosecution. She would corroborate Huck’s story, but that would only give the jury a small piece of the puzzle.

  If anyone knew more, it was Mrs. Pinkman. Her room was directly across from where Kelly had most likely stood when she began shooting. Judith Pinkman would’ve been first on the scene. She would have found her husband dead. Lucy dying.

  “Please, help us!”

  Charlie could still hear the woman’s screams echoing in her ears. The four shots had already been fired. Huck had dragged Charlie behind the filing cabinet. He was calling the police when she heard two more shots.

  Charlie was astonished by the sudden vividness of the memory.

  Six gunshots. Six bullets in the revolver.

  Otherwise Judith Pinkman would’ve been shot in the face when she opened the door to her classroom.

  Charlie looked up at the ceiling. The thought had teased out an old image that she did not want to see.

  She had to get out of this office.

  She picked up the plastic bowl with the second PB&J and went to find Ava Wilson. Charlie knew that Lenore had already offered Ava food—she had that typically southern impulse to feed everyone she met—just as Charlie was sure Ava was too stressed out to eat, but she didn’t want the woman to be alone for too long.

  In the reception area, Charlie found a familiar scene: Ava Wilson on the couch in front of the television, the sound up too loud.

  She asked Ava, “Would you like my other sandwich?”

  Ava did not answer. Charlie was about to repeat the question when she realized that Ava’s eyes were closed. Her lips were slightly parted, a soft whistle passing between a gap where one of her teeth was missing.

  Charlie didn’t wake her. Stress had a way of shutting down your body when it couldn’t take any more. If Ava Wilson had a moment’s peace today, this would be it.

  The remote control was on the coffee table. Charlie never asked why it was always sticky. Most of the buttons didn’t work. The others got stuck. The power button was unresponsive. The mute had evaporated—there was an open rectangle where the button had been. She went to the set to see if there was another way to turn it off.

  On screen, the news was in that lull period where there was no real information to report, so they’d brought on a panel of pundits and psychiatrists to speculate what might have happened, what Kelly possibly had been thinking, why she could have done the things that she did.

  “And there is precedent,” a pretty blonde said. “If you remember the Boomtown Rats song from—”

  Charlie was about to yank the cord out of the wall when the main anchor interrupted the shrink. “We’ve got breaking news. I’ll send you live to a press conference going on now in Pikeville, Georgia.”

  The image changed again, this time to a podium set up in a familiar-looking space. The lunchroom at the police station. They had cleared the tables away and stuck a blue flag with a City of Pikeville logo on the wall.

  A chubby man wearing pleated tan Dockers and a white button-down shirt stood behind the podium. He looked to his left, and the camera panned to Ken Coin, who seemed irritated when he waved for the man to go ahead.

  Coin had clearly wanted to take the stage first.

  The man moved the microphone down, then up, then down again. He leaned over, his lips too close, and said, “I’m Rick Fahey. I’m Lucy Alex—” his voice caught. “Lucy Alexander’s uncle.” He used the back of his hand to wipe away tears. His face was red. His lips were too pink. “The family has asked me—oh.” Fahey took a folded piece of notebook paper out of his back pocket. His hands were shaking so hard that the paper fluttered as if from a sudden wind. Finally, Fahey flattened the page down on the podium and said, “The family asked me to read this statement.”

  Charlie looked back at Ava. She continued to sleep.

  Fahey read, “‘Lucy was a beautiful child. She was creative. She loved to sing and play with her dog, Shaggy. She was in Ms. Dillard’s Bible class at Mountain Baptist, where she loved reading the gospels. She spent summers at her grandparents’ farm down in Ellijay, where she helped them pick a-apples …’” He took a handkerchief out of his back pocket and patted the sweat and tears from his round face. “‘The family has put its trust in God to help us through this trying time. We ask for the thoughts and prayers of the community. Also, we would like to express our support for the Pikeville Police Department and the Dickerson County district attorney’s office—Mr. Ken Coin—to do everything they can to quickly bring justice to Lucy’s murd—’” His voice caught again. “‘Murderer.’” He looked up at the reporters. “Th
at’s what Kelly Wilson is. A cold-blooded murderer.”

  Fahey turned to Ken Coin. The two exchanged a solemn nod of a promise that had likely been made.

  Fahey continued, “The family would like to ask in the meantime that the media and others respect our privacy. No funeral arrangements have been made yet.’” His focus moved off into the distance, past the throng of microphones, past the cameras. Was he thinking about Lucy’s funeral, how her parents would have to choose a child-size casket to bury their daughter in?

  She had been so small. Charlie could remember how delicate the girl’s hand had felt when she gripped it inside her own.

  “Mr. Fahey?” one of the reporters asked. “Could you tell us—”

  “Thank you.” Fahey left the podium. Ken Coin gave him a firm pat on the arm as they passed each other.

  Charlie watched her husband’s boss grip the sides of the podium like he was about to sodomize it. “I’m Ken Coin, the district attorney for the county,” he told the crowd. “I’m here to answer your questions about the prosecution of this vile murder. Make no mistake, ladies and gentlemen. We will claim an eye for an eye in this egregious—”

  Charlie unplugged the television. She turned to make sure that Ava hadn’t woken up. The woman was in the same position, still wearing her pajamas. The bag of clothes was on the floor at her feet. Charlie was trying to remember if they had a blanket somewhere when the back door banged open and slammed closed.

  Only Rusty entered the building making that much racket.

  Fortunately, the sounds had not awakened Ava. She only shifted on the couch, her head lolling to the side.

  Charlie left the sandwich on the coffee table before she went back to find her father.

  “Charlotte?” Rusty boomed. She heard his office door pop open. The knob had already dug a hole in the wall. He never passed up an opportunity to make noise. “Charlotte?”

  “I’m here, Daddy.” She stopped outside the doorway. His office was so cluttered there was nowhere inside to stand. “Ava Wilson’s in reception.”

  “Good girl.” He didn’t look up from the papers in his hands. Rusty was a jittery half-tasker, never fully concentrating on one thing at a time. Even now, he was tapping his foot, reading, spontaneously humming, and carrying on something like a conversation. “How’s she doing?”

  “Not great. She dozed off a little while ago.” Charlie talked to the top of his head. He was seventy-four years old and his hair was still a thick salt and pepper that he kept too long on the sides. “You need to go slow with her. I’m not sure how much she’s following.”

  “Noted.” He made a note on the papers. Rusty’s bony fingers held a pen the same way he held a cigarette. Anyone who talked to him on the phone expected him to look like a cross between Colonel Sanders and Foghorn Leghorn. He was not. Rusty Quinn was a tall, rangy beanpole of a man, but not in the same way as Ben, because Charlie would’ve thrown herself off the mountain before she married someone like her father.

  Other than their height and an inability to throw out old underwear, the two men in her life were nothing alike. Ben was a dependable but sporty minivan. Rusty was an industrial-sized bulldozer. Despite two heart attacks and a double bypass, he gladly continued to indulge his vices: Bourbon. Fried chicken. Unfiltered Camels. Screaming arguments. Ben was drawn to thoughtful discussions, IPA and artisanal cheeses.

  Actually, Charlie realized that there was a new similarity between the two: today, both men were having a hard time looking at Charlie.

  She asked, “What’s she like?”

  “The girl?” Rusty dashed off another note, humming as if the pen had some sort of rhythm. “Slip of a thing. Coin must be shittin’ his pants. Jury’s gonna fall in love with her.”

  “Lucy Alexander’s family might have something to say about that.”

  “I am girded for battle.”

  Charlie stubbed her toe on the carpet. There was nothing he couldn’t turn into a contest. “You could try to do a deal with Ken, take the death penalty off the table.”

  “Bah,” he answered, because they both knew Ken wouldn’t deal. “I think we got a unicorn here.”

  Charlie’s head snapped up. A unicorn was their word for an innocent client; a rare, mythical creature few had ever seen. She said, “You can’t be serious.”

  “’Course I’m serious. Why wouldn’t I be serious?”

  “I was there, Daddy.” She wanted to shake him. “I was right in the middle of it.”

  “Ben caught me up to speed on what happened.” He coughed into the crook of his arm. “Sounds like you had a real rough time of it.”

  “That is a magnificent understatement.”

  “I am renowned for my subtlety.” Charlie watched him shuffle the papers. The humming resumed. She counted to thirty before he finally looked at her over his reading glasses. He was blissfully silent for almost another ten seconds, then a smile cracked open his mouth. “Those are some real shiners, tough girl. You look like a bandito.”

  “I was elbowed in the face.”

  “I already told Coin to get his checkbook at the ready.”

  “I didn’t file a complaint.”

  He kept smiling. “Good idea, baby. Hold your fire till this settles down. Never kick a fresh turd on a hot day.”

  Charlie put her hand to her eyes. She was too tired for the merry-go-round. “Dad, I need to tell you something.”

  Her words went unanswered. She dropped her hand.

  Rusty said, “This about why you were at the school this morning?” He had no problem looking at Charlie now. Their eyes locked for a very brief but uncomfortable moment before she looked away.

  He said, “So now you know I know.”

  “Did Ben tell you?”

  He shook his head. “Ol’ Kenny Coin had the pleasure.”

  Charlie wasn’t going to apologize to her father. “I’ll write down everything I can remember from today, what I told the GBI agent who took my statement. She’s a SAC, Delia Wofford. I’ve got her card. She interviewed the other witness along with an agent named Avery or Atkins. Ben was in the room with me. I think Coin was behind the mirror or in the other room most of the time.”

  Rusty made sure she was finished before saying, “Charlotte, I am assuming if you were not okay, you would tell me.”

  “Russell, I am assuming that you are smart enough to extrapolate that information from the raw data.”

  “Hello, familiar impasse.” He dropped the papers on his desk. “The last time I tried to guess your mood, a first-class stamp was twenty-nine cents and you stopped talking to me for sixteen and three-quarter days.”

  Charlie had long lost the will to negotiate his sympathy. “I heard there’s a hole in the school’s security footage.”

  “Where’d you get that?”

  “The gettin’ place.”

  “Pick up anything else while you were there?”

  “They’re worried about the murder weapon. Like, maybe they don’t know exactly where it ended up.”

  His eyebrows jumped. “That’s a pickle.”

  “That’s a guess,” Charlie said, not wanting to throw scent onto Huck. “The GBI agent was asking me a lot of questions about where it was, when did I see it last, who had it when/what/where. Revolver. I’m not one hundred percent, but I think it was a six-shot.”

  Rusty’s eyes narrowed. “There’s something else, right? If I am allowed the extrapolation?”

  Charlie turned around, knowing he would follow. She was halfway across the building when she heard his heavy footsteps behind her. He had a long, quick stride because he thought walking fast passed for cardio. She heard his fingers tap the wall. He hummed what sounded like “Happy Birthday.” The only time Charlie ever saw her father completely still was inside a courtroom.

  Charlie found her bag on the couch in her office. She pulled out the yearbook.

  Rusty came to a breathless standstill. “What’s that?”

  “It’s a yearbook. Sometimes i
t’s called an annual.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “You need to be more specific with your old pappy.”

  “You buy it at school at the end of the year. It has class pictures and club photos and people write things in the pages, like ‘I’ll never forget you’ or ‘Thanks for helping me in biology.’” She shrugged. “It’s a stupid thing. The more signatures you get, the more popular you are.”

  “That explains why you never brought one home.”

  “Ha ha.”

  He asked, “So, was our gal popular? Not popular?”

  “I didn’t open it.” Charlie waved the book in Rusty’s face, indicating he should take it.

  He kept his arms crossed, but she saw that switch flick inside him, the same one that came on inside the courtroom.

  He asked, “Where was this found?”

  “In Kelly Wilson’s closet in her home.”

  “Before the execution of the search warrant?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did anyone from law enforcement tell you there was going to be a search warrant filed?”

  “No.”

  “Did the mother—”

  “Ava Wilson.”

  “Did Ava Wilson give this to you to hold on to?”

  “No.”

  “Is she your client?”

  “No, and thanks for trying to help me lose my license.”

  “You’d have the best attorney in the country making sure you kept it.” Rusty nodded toward the yearbook. “Open it for me.”

  “Take it or I’ll drop it on the floor.”

  “God damn, you make me miss your mama.” Rusty’s voice had a funny quiver. He rarely mentioned Gamma, and if he did, it was only to make a not-always-favorable comparison to Charlie. He took the yearbook and gave her a salute. “Many thanks.”

  She watched his exaggerated march up the hallway.

  Charlie called, “Hey, asshole.”

  Rusty turned around, grinning as he marched back the same way he’d left. He opened the yearbook with a flourish. The inside flap was filled with written messages, some in black ink, some in blue, a few in pink. Different handwriting. Different signatures. Rusty turned the page. More ink colors. More hastily scratched missives.