The Good Daughter

  “Yes, ma’am, that’s what I was told. On account of being shocked.”

  “In shock?” Sam clarified.

  The girl nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You’re not currently on or have not taken any illegal drugs?”

  “Illegal drugs?” the girl asked. “No, ma’am. That wouldn’t be right.”

  Again, Sam copied her words. “And how are you feeling now?”

  “Okay, I guess. Not so poorly as before.”

  Sam looked at Kelly Wilson over the top of her reading glasses. The girl’s hands were still clasped under the table, shoulders rolled in, making her look even smaller. Sam could see the red of the plastic chair peeking out on either side of the girl’s back. “Are you okay, or are you okay, you guess?”

  Kelly said, “I’m pretty scared. There’s some mean people here.”

  “Your best strategy is to ignore them.” Sam jotted down some general notes about Kelly’s appearance, that she looked unwashed, unkempt. Her fingernails were chewed down. Her cuticles showed dried blood. “How’s your stomach now?”

  “It’s just a little upset this time of day.”

  “‘This time of day.’” Sam made a notation and wrote down the time. “Were you sick yesterday?”

  “Yes, ma’am, but I didn’t tell nobody. When I get like that, it usually calms down on its own, but that lady out there was nice and give me some crackers.”

  Sam kept her gaze on her notepad. She did not want to look at Kelly because she felt an unwelcoming softening each time she did. The girl did not fit the image of a murderer, let alone a school shooter. Then again, perhaps Sam’s past experiences with Zachariah and Daniel Culpepper had framed the wrong image in her mind. The fact was that anybody could kill.

  She told Kelly, “I’m working with my father, Rusty Quinn, until he’s feeling better. Did someone tell you that he’s in the hospital?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Them guards back at the jail were talking about it. How Mr. Rusty got stabbed.”

  Sam doubted the guards had anything good to say about Rusty. “So, did Mr. Rusty tell you that he works for you, not your parents? And that anything you say to him is private?”

  “It’s the law,” she said. “Mr. Rusty can’t tell nobody what I say.”

  “That’s correct,” Sam said. “And it’s the same with me. We both took an oath of confidentiality. You can talk to me, and I can talk to Mr. Rusty about the things you tell me, but we can’t tell anyone else your secrets.”

  “Is that hard, knowing everybody’s secrets like that?”

  Sam felt disarmed by the question. “It can be, but that’s part of my job requirement, and I knew that I would have to keep secrets when I decided to become a lawyer.”

  “You gotta go to school for a lotta years to do that.”

  “I did.” Sam looked at her phone. She normally charged by the hour; she was not accustomed to abbreviating her time. “Did Mr. Rusty explain to you what an arraignment is?”

  “It ain’t a trial.”

  “That’s right.” Sam realized that she was modulating her voice as if she was addressing a child. This girl was eighteen, not eight.

  Lucy Alexander had been eight years old.

  Sam cleared her throat.

  She explained, “In most cases, the law requires an arraignment to take place within forty-eight hours of an arrest. Basically, this is when a case goes from being an investigation to a criminal case in court. There is a formal reading of a criminal charge or indictment in the presence of the defendant to inform the defendant, you, of the pending charges that have been filed against you, and afford you the opportunity to enter an initial plea into the record. I know that sounds like a lot, but soup-to-nuts, the entire process should take less than ten minutes.”

  Kelly blinked.

  “Do you understand what I just told you?”

  “You talk really fast.”

  Sam had worked hundreds of hours to normalize her speech, and now she had to concentrate in order to slow it down. She tried, “During the arraignment, there won’t be any police officers or witnesses called. Okay?”

  Kelly nodded.

  “No evidence will be presented. Your guilt or innocence will not be assessed or determined.”

  Kelly waited.

  “The judge will ask for your plea to be entered into the record. I will tell him your plea, which is not guilty. You can amend that later if you so desire.” Sam paused. She had started to rev up again. “Then the judge, the prosecutor and I will discuss dates and motions and other business of the court. I will request those matters be taken up when my father, Mr. Rusty, has recovered, which will likely be within the next week. You need not speak during any part of this process. I will speak for you. Do you understand?”

  Kelly said, “Your daddy told me not to talk to nobody, and I ain’t. Not unless it was the guards and telling them I was feeling sick.” Her shoulders rolled farther inward. “They was nice though, like I said. Everybody’s been treating me real nice here.”

  “Except for some of the mean ones?”

  “Yes, ma’am, there’s been some mean ones.”

  Sam looked down at her notes. Rusty had been right. Kelly was too agreeable. She did not seem to understand the depth of trouble that she was in. The girl would have to be evaluated for mental competency. Sam was certain she could locate someone in New York who was willing to work pro bono.

  “Miss Quinn?” Kelly asked. “Can I ask, do my mama and daddy know I’m in here?”

  “Yes.” Sam realized Kelly had been left in the dark for the last twenty-four hours. “Your parents weren’t allowed to visit you in the jail until after the arraignment, but they are both very eager to see you.”

  “Are they mad about what happened?”

  “They’re worried about you.” Sam could only go on assumptions. “They love you very much, though. You’ll all get through this together. No matter what.”

  Kelly’s lip quivered. Tears fell from her eyes. “I love them, too.”

  Sam sat back in her chair. She reminded herself of Douglas Pinkman, the way he had cheered for her at every track meet, even after she had moved up to high school. The man had been to more of Sam’s events than her own father.

  And now Sam was sitting across from the girl who had murdered him.

  She told Kelly, “Your parents will be in the courtroom upstairs, but you aren’t going to be able to touch them or talk to them other than to say hello.” Sam hoped there were no cameras in the courtroom. She would have to make sure Kelly’s parents were forewarned. “Once you’re transferred back to the jail, you’ll be able to visit with them, but remember anything you say to your parents, or anyone else, while you are in jail will be recorded. Whether it’s in the visitation room or on the telephone, someone is always listening. Don’t talk to them about what happened yesterday. Okay?”

  “Yes, ma’am, but can I ask, am I in trouble?”

  Sam studied her face for signs of guile. “Kelly, do you remember what happened yesterday morning?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I killed them two people. The gun was in my hand.”

  Sam considered her affect, looking for signs of remorse.

  There was none.

  Kelly might as well have been describing events that had happened to someone else.

  “Why did …” Sam thought about how to pose the question. “Did you know Lucy Alexander?”

  “No, ma’am. I think she must’a been at the elementary school, ’cause she looked real little.”

  Sam opened her mouth and drew in some air. “How about Mr. Pinkman?”

  “Well, I heard people say he wasn’t a bad man, but I never got sent to the principal’s office.”

  The randomness of the victims somehow made it worse. “So they both, Mr. Pinkman and Lucy Alexander, just happened to be in the hallway at the wrong time?”

  “I guess,” Kelly answered. “Like I said, the gun was in my hand, and then Mr. Huckabee put it down his pants.??
?

  Sam felt her heart shake inside of her chest. She looked at the timer on her phone. She made sure there was no shadow lingering at the door. She asked Kelly, “Did you tell my father what you just told me?”

  “No, ma’am. I didn’t say much to your daddy yesterday. I was upset ’cause they had me at the hospital, and plus my tummy was hurting like it does, and they were talking about keeping me overnight and I know that costs a lot of money to be there.”

  Sam closed her notepad. She capped her pen. She exchanged her readers for her regular glasses.

  She was in a somewhat unique situation. A defense lawyer was not allowed to put a witness on the stand knowing that the witness was going to lie. This rule explained why attorneys never wanted their clients to tell them the whole truth. The whole truth seldom made for a good defense. Everything Kelly told Sam would be held in confidence, but Sam would never call or cross-examine a witness, so she would not have her hands tied. She could simply edit out the damaging facts when she relayed this conversation to Rusty and let him take care of the rest.

  Kelly said, “My Uncle Shane passed in the hospital and his wife and them had to move out of their house ’cause the bills were too much.”

  “They won’t charge you for the hospital stay.”

  She smiled. Her teeth were tiny white beads. “Do my parents know that? Because I think that’ll come as a relief.”

  “I’ll make sure they know.”

  “Thank you, Miss Quinn. I sure do appreciate all you and your daddy done for me.”

  Sam rolled the pen between her fingers. She remembered something from the news last night. “Do you know if the middle school has security cameras?”

  “Yes, ma’am. They got one in each of the halls, except the one by the front office got hit and it don’t get hardly anything past a certain point.”

  “It has a blind spot?”

  “I don’t know that it’s got that, but it can’t see everything past somewhere about the middle of the hall.”

  “How do you know it can’t?”

  She raised her thin shoulders up, then held them for a second before letting them drop back down. “It’s just something everybody knows.”

  Sam asked, “Kelly, do you have many friends at school?”

  “Acquaintances, you mean?”

  Sam nodded. “Sure.”

  “I guess I know almost about everybody. I been at the school a real long time.” She smiled again. “Not long enough to be a lawyer, though.”

  Sam felt herself smile back. “Do you have anyone you’re particularly close to?”

  Kelly’s cheeks turned bright red.

  Sam recognized that type of blush. She opened her notepad. “You can tell me his name. I won’t repeat it to anyone.”

  “Adam Humphrey.” Kelly was obviously eager to talk about the boy. “He’s got brown hair and eyes and he’s not real tall but he drives a Camaro. But we don’t go together. Not like official or anything.”

  “Okay, how about friends who are girls? Do you have any of those?”

  “No, ma’am. Not close like I’d bring ’em home with me.” She remembered, “Except there was Lydia Phillips when I was in elementary school, only she moved away when her daddy got transferred on account of the economy.”

  Sam recorded the details in her pad. “Are there teachers you’re close to?”

  “Well, Mr. Huckabee used to help me with my history lessons, but he ain’t done that in a while. Dr. Jodie said he’d let me do some extra work to make up for missing some classes last week, but he ain’t give me that work yet. And Mrs. Pinkman’s—”

  Kelly quickly bowed her head.

  Sam finished a line in her notes. She put down her pen. She studied the girl.

  Kelly had gone still.

  Sam asked, “Was Mrs. Pinkman helping you with English?”

  Kelly did not answer. She kept her head down. Her hair covered her face. Sam could hear her sniff. Her shoulders began to shake. She was crying.

  “Kelly,” Sam said. “Why are you upset?”

  “’Cause Mr. Pinkman wasn’t a bad man.” She sniffed again. “And that girl was just a baby.”

  Sam clasped her hands together. She leaned her elbows on the table. “Why were you at the middle school yesterday morning?”

  “’Cause,” she mumbled.

  “Because why?”

  “’Cause I brung the gun from my daddy’s glove box.” She sniffed. “And I had it in my hand when I killed them two people.”

  The prosecutor in Sam wanted to press, but she wasn’t here to break the girl. “Kelly, I know you’re probably tired of hearing me say this, but it’s important. You are never to tell anyone what you just told me. Okay? Not your parents, not friends, not strangers, especially not anyone you meet in jail.”

  “They ain’t my friends, is what Mr. Rusty said.” Kelly’s voice was muffled behind the cascade of thick hair. “They might try to get me in trouble so they can get out of trouble theirselves.”

  “That’s right. No one you meet in here is your friend. Not the guards, or your fellow inmates, or the janitor, or anyone else.”

  The girl sniffed. The handcuff chain was clinking under the table again. “I ain’t talked to none of them. I just kept to myself, like I do.”

  Sam pulled the rest of the tissues from her purse and passed them to Kelly. “I’ll speak with your parents before you see them and make sure they know not to ask you about what happened.” Sam assumed that Rusty had given the Wilsons that speech already, but they were going to hear it from Sam before she left town. “Everything you told me about yesterday is between you and me. Okay?”

  She sniffed again. “Okay.”

  “Blow your nose.” She waited for Kelly to do as she was told, then said, “Tell me about Adam Humphrey. Did you meet him in school?”

  Kelly shook her head. Sam could still not see her face. All she saw was the top of her head.

  Sam asked, “Did you meet Adam when you were out? For instance, at a movie or at church?”

  Kelly shook her head again.

  “Tell me about the yearbook in your closet.”

  Kelly quickly looked up. Sam expected to see anger, but she saw fear. “Please don’t tell nobody.”

  “I won’t,” Sam promised. “Remember, everything here is confidential.”

  Kelly kept the tissue in her hand as she wiped her nose with her sleeve.

  Sam asked, “Can you tell me why people wrote those things about you?”

  “They were bad things.”

  “I don’t think the acts they were describing were bad. I think that the people who wrote those things were being unkind.”

  Kelly appeared baffled. Sam couldn’t fault her. This was no time to lecture an eighteen-year-old spree killer on feminism.

  She asked Kelly, “Why did they write those things about you?”

  “I don’t know, ma’am. You’d have to ask them.”

  “Were some of the things they said true?”

  Kelly looked back down at the table. “Not like how they said, but maybe something similar.”

  Sam wondered at the turn of phrase. The girl was not so slow that she couldn’t obfuscate. “Were you angry because they were picking on you?”

  “No,” she said. “I was hurt mostly, because them’s private things and I didn’t know most of them people. But I guess it was a long time ago. A lot of ’em could of graduated already.”

  “Has your mother seen the yearbook?”

  Kelly’s eyes went wide. This time, she looked scared. “Please don’t show my mama.”

  “I won’t,” Sam promised. “Remember how I told you that anything you tell me will remain confidential?”

  “No.”

  Sam felt a prick in her left eyebrow. “When I first walked into the room, I explained to you who I am, and that I work with my father, and that we have both taken an oath of confidentiality.”

  “No, ma’am, I don’t remember that last part.”


  “Confidentiality means that I have to keep your secrets.”

  “Oh, well, okay, that’s what your daddy said, too, about secrets.”

  Sam looked at the time. She had less than four minutes. “Kelly, I was told that yesterday morning, right after the shooting took place, when Mr. Huckabee was asking you to relinquish the revolver, you said something that Mr. Huckabee and perhaps a police officer heard. Do you remember what you said?”

  “No, ma’am. I didn’t much feel like talking after all that.”

  “You said something.” Sam tried again, “The officer heard you. Mr. Huckabee heard you.”

  “Okay.” Kelly nodded slowly. “I did say something.”

  Sam was surprised by how quickly the girl had changed her story. “Do you remember what you said?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t remember saying it.”

  Sam felt Kelly’s eagerness to please pushing out into the space between them. She tried approaching the question from a different angle, asking, “Kelly, in the hallway yesterday morning, did you tell Mr. Huckabee and the police officer that the lockers are blue?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Kelly latched onto the suggestion. “They are blue.”

  Sam started nodding her head. “I know they’re blue. But is that what you said at that point? Did you actually say that to them, that the lockers are blue? Is that what you told Mr. Huckabee and the policeman? That the lockers are blue?”

  Kelly began nodding along. “Yes, I said that.”

  Sam knew the girl was lying. At that moment in time yesterday morning, Kelly Wilson had just shot and killed two people. Her former teacher was asking her to hand over the murder weapon. A policeman was undoubtedly pointing a gun at her head. Kelly had not stopped to note the school décor.

  Sam asked, “You remember telling both of them that the lockers are blue?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Kelly seemed so certain of the answer that she likely would have passed a lie-detector exam.

  “Okay, so Mr. Huckabee was there,” Sam said, wondering how far she could push the girl. “Mrs. Pinkman was there, too. Was anyone else there? Someone you didn’t recognize?”

  “There was a woman in a devil shirt.” She indicated her chest. “The devil was wearing a blue mask, and it said the word ‘Devils’ on it.”