The Good Daughter

  Sam stared, too.

  Charlie said, “Everything in here is Dad’s private property. We have no right to look at it.”

  Sam reached into the drawer with her pen.

  She pushed away the brightly colored mailer.

  CULPEPPER, ZACHARIAH INMATE #4252619

  Charlie said, “It’s probably a death threat. You saw the Culpeppers today. Every time it looks like Zachariah might finally get an execution date—”

  Sam picked up the letter. The weight was nothing, though she felt a heaviness in the bones of her fingers. The flap had already been ripped open.

  Charlie said, “Sam, that’s private.”

  Sam pulled out a single notebook page. Folded twice to fit inside the envelope. Blank on the back. Zachariah Culpepper had taken the time to tear off the tattered edges where the paper had been ripped from the metal spiral.

  He had used those same fingers to shred apart Sam’s eyelids.

  “Sam,” Charlie said. She was looking in the drawer. There were dozens more letters from the murderer. “We don’t have a right to read any of these.”

  “What do you mean, ‘right’?” Sam demanded. Her throat choked around the word. “I have a right to know what the man who murdered my mother is telling my father.”

  Charlie snatched away the letter.

  She threw it back into the drawer and kicked it closed with her foot.

  “That’s perfect.” Sam dropped the empty envelope onto the desk. She pulled at the drawer. It would not budge. Charlie had kicked the front panel past the frame. “Open it.”

  “No,” Charlie said. “We don’t need to read anything he has to say.”

  “‘We’,” Sam repeated, because she was not the lunatic whose idea it was to pick a fight with Danny Culpepper today. “Since when has it ever been ‘we’ where the Culpeppers are concerned?”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Nothing. It’s pointless to discuss.” Sam reached down and pulled on the drawer again. Nothing moved. Her fingers might as well be feathers.

  Charlie said, “I knew you were still pissed at me.”

  “I’m not still pissed at you,” Sam countered. “I am newly pissed at you, because you are acting like a three-year-old.”

  “Sure,” Charlie agreed. “Whatever you say, Sammy. I’m a three-year-old. Fine.”

  “What the hell is going on with you?” Sam could feel her own anger feeding off Charlie’s. “I want to read the letters from the man who murdered our mother.”

  “You know what they say,” Charlie said. “You’ve been in town one day and you already heard it from the bastard’s bastard himself: we lied. He’s innocent. We’re killing him because of some fucking legal bill that Dad would’ve never collected on anyway.”

  Sam knew that she was right, but that did not change her mind. “Charlie, I’m tired. Can you please open the damn drawer?”

  “Not until you tell me why you stayed today. Why you did the arraignment. Why you’re still here now.”

  Sam felt as if she had an anvil on either shoulder. She leaned against the desk. “Okay, you want to know why I stuck around today? Because I cannot believe how much you have screwed up your life.’”

  Charlie snorted so hard that blood dripped from her nose. She wiped it away with her fingers. “Because your life is so fucking perfect?”

  “You have no idea what—”

  “You put a thousand miles between us. You never return Dad’s phone calls, or Ben’s emails, or call any of us, for that matter. You apparently fly down to Atlanta all the time, less than two hours away, and you never—”

  “You told me not to reach out to you. ‘Neither one of us will ever move forward if we are always looking back.’ Those were your exact words.”

  Charlie shook her head, which only served to amplify Sam’s irritation.

  “Charlotte, you’ve been trying to pick this fight all day,” Sam said. “Stop shaking your head as if I’m some kind of madwoman.”

  “You’re not a madwoman, you’re a fucking bitch.” Charlie crossed her arms. “I told you we shouldn’t look back. I didn’t say we shouldn’t look forward, or try to move forward together, like sisters are supposed to.”

  “Excuse me if I could not read between the lines of your poorly constructed invective on the status of our failed relationship.”

  “Well, you were shot in the head, so I’m sure there’s a hole where your invective processing used to be.”

  Sam gripped together her hands. She was not going to explode. “I have the letter. Do you want me to send you a copy?”

  “I want you to go to the copy store, duplex it for me, and then shove it up your tight Yankee ass.”

  “Why would I duplex a single-page letter?”

  “Jesus Christ!” Charlie punched her fist into the desktop. “You’ve been here less than a day, Sam. Why is my miserable, pathetic little life suddenly such a huge concern for you?”

  “Those are not my adjectives.”

  “You just pick at me.” Charlie jabbed Sam’s shoulder with her fingers. “Pick and pick like a fucking needle.”

  “Really?” Sam ignored the lightning strike of pain every time Charlie poked her shoulder. “I pick at you?”

  “Asking me about Ben.” She jabbed again, harder. “Asking me about Rusty.” She jabbed again. “Asking me about Huck.” She jabbed again. “Asking me about—”

  “Stop it!” Sam yelled, slapping away her hand. “Why are you so fucking antagonistic?”

  “Why are you so fucking annoying?”

  “Because you were supposed to be happy!” Sam yelled, the sound of the truth like a shock to her senses. “My body is useless! My brain is—” She threw her hands into the air. “Gone! Everything I was supposed to be is gone. I can’t see. I can’t run. I can’t move. I can’t process. I have no sense of ease. I get no comfort—ever. And I tell myself every day—every single day, Charlotte—that it doesn’t matter because you were able to get away.”

  “I did get away!”

  “For what?” Sam raged. “So you can antagonize the Culpeppers? So you can turn into Rusty? So you can get punched in the face? So you can destroy your marriage?” Sam swept a pile of magazines onto the floor. She gasped at the pain that sliced up her arm. Her bicep spasmed. Her shoulder seized. She leaned against the desk, breathless.

  Charlie stepped forward.

  “No.” Sam did not want her help. “You were supposed to have children. You were supposed to have friends who love you, and to live in your beautiful house with your wonderful husband, not throw it all away for some feckless asshole like Mason Huckabee.”

  “That’s—”

  “Not fair? Not right? That’s not what happened with Ben? That’s not what happened in college? That’s not what happened whenever the fuck you felt like running away because you blame yourself, Charlie, not me. I don’t blame you for running. Gamma wanted you to run. I begged you to run. What I blame you for is hiding—from your life, from me, from your own happiness. You think I’m closed off? You think I’m cold? You are consumed with self-hatred. You reek of it. And you think that putting everyone and everything in a separate compartment is the only way to pick up the pieces.”

  Charlie said nothing.

  “I’m off in New York. Rusty’s in his tilted windmill. Ben’s over here. Mason’s over there. Lenore’s wherever the hell she is. That’s no way to live, Charlie. You were not built for that kind of life. You’re so clever, and industrious, and you were always so annoyingly, so relentlessly happy.” Sam kneaded her shoulder. The muscle was on fire. She asked her sister, “What happened to that person, Charlie? You ran. You got away.”

  Charlie stared down at the floor. Her jaw was tight. Her breathing was labored.

  So was Sam’s. She could feel the rapid rise and fall of her chest. Her fingers trembled like the stuck second hand on a clock. She felt as if the world was spinning out of control. Why did Charlie keep pushing her? What was she trying
to accomplish?

  Lenore knocked on the open door. “Everything okay in here?”

  Charlie shook her head. Blood dripped from her nose.

  Lenore joked, “Should I call the cops?”

  “Call a taxi.” Charlie gripped the drawer handle. She heaved it open. The wood splintered. Zachariah Culpepper’s letters scattered onto the floor. She said, “Go home, Samantha. You were right. This place makes you too mean.”

  13

  Sam sat across from Lenore at a booth in the otherwise empty diner. She slowly dipped her tea sachet into the hot water the waitress had brought to the table. She could feel Lenore watching her, but she did not know what to say.

  “It’ll be faster if I drive you to the hospital,” Lenore offered.

  Sam shook her head. She would wait for the taxi. “You don’t have to stay with me.”

  Lenore held her coffee cup between her hands. Her nails were neatly trimmed and clear polished. She wore a single ring on her right index finger. She saw Sam looking and said, “Your mother gave me this.”

  Sam thought the ring looked like something her mother would wear—unusual, not particularly pretty, but striking in its own way. Sam asked, “Tell me about her.”

  Lenore held up her hand and studied the ring. “Lana, my sister, worked at Fermilab with her. They weren’t in the same department, or even on the same level, but single gals weren’t allowed to live on their own back then, so they were assigned housing together at the university. That was the only way my mother would let Lana work there, so long as she was kept away from the sex-mad male scientists.”

  Sam waited for her to continue.

  “Lana brought Harriet home over Christmas break, and I ignored her at first, but then there was a night when I couldn’t sleep, and I walked out into the backyard for some air, and there she was.” Lenore raised her eyebrows. “She was looking up at the stars. Physics was her calling, but astronomy was her passion.”

  Sam felt sad that she had never known this about her mother.

  “We talked all night. It was very rare for me to find someone who was that interesting. We sort of fell into dating, but there was never anything …” She shrugged off the details. “We were together for a little over a year, though it was a long-distance relationship. I was in law school with Rusty. Why that didn’t work out is another story. But one summer, I took your father up to Chicago with me, and he swept her off her feet.” She shrugged. “I bowed out. We were always more friends than lovers.”

  “But she was constantly mad at you,” Sam said. “I could hear it in her voice.”

  “I kept her husband out late drinking and smoking instead of spending time with his family.” Lenore shrugged again. “She always wanted a conventional life.”

  Sam could not imagine her mother wanting any such thing. “She was far from conventional.”

  “People always want what they can’t have,” Lenore said. “Harry never quite fit in, even at Fermi. She was too peculiar. She lacked the social graces. I suppose now they’d say she was somewhere on the spectrum, but back then, she was just considered too smart, too accomplished, too odd. Especially for a woman.”

  “So what was a normal life for her?”

  “Marriage. A social construct. You girls. She was never so happy as when she had you. Watching your brain develop. Studying your reactions to new stimuli. She kept pages and pages of journals.”

  “You make me sound like a science project.”

  “Your mother loved projects,” Lenore said. “Charlie was so different, though. So creative. So spontaneous. Harriet adored her; she adored you both, but she never understood anything about Charlie.”

  “Something we share.” Sam drank her tea. The milk tasted off. She put down the mug. “Why don’t you like me?”

  “You hurt Charlie.”

  “Charlie seems quite capable of hurting herself.”

  Lenore reached into her purse and found the USB drive that Ben had given her. “I want you to take this.”

  Sam backed away, as if the thing posed a physical threat.

  “Toss it somewhere in Atlanta.” Lenore slid the Starship across the table. “Do it for Ben. You know what kind of trouble he could get into.”

  Sam did not know what to do but throw the thing into her own purse. She could not take the drive on the plane back to New York. She would have to find someone in the Atlanta office to destroy it.

  Lenore said, “You can talk to me about the case, you know. Coin will never call me to the stand. I’d blow up any jury dressed like this.”

  Sam knew that she was right, just as she knew that the truth was wrong.

  Lenore said, “The bullets are bothering me. The wild shot in the wall doesn’t make sense. Kelly was able to hit Pinkman three times: once in the chest, twice in the head. That’s either a lucky break or a damn good shot.”

  “Lucy.” Sam touched the side of her neck. “That wasn’t square on.”

  “No, but listen. You don’t get to be a woman like me in Pikeville without making sure you know how to handle a gun. I couldn’t hit those targets at the range, and that’s with no pressure, no lives on the line. We’re talking an eighteen-year-old girl standing in the hallway waiting for the bell to ring. Her adrenaline must have been through the roof. Either she’s the coldest killer this town has ever run across or something else is going on.”

  “What could be the something else?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Sam thought about Kelly’s pregnancy. Adam Humphrey. The yearbook. These were pieces to a puzzle that she would likely never see come together.

  She told Lenore, “I’ve never broken confidence before.”

  Lenore shrugged, as if it was nothing.

  Sam felt guilty for even contemplating the breach, even more so because she was not confiding in her sister. Still, she finally admitted, “Kelly might be pregnant.”

  Lenore drank her coffee and said nothing.

  “She mentioned Adam Humphrey when we spoke. I think he might be the father. Or Frank Alexander.” Sam added, “Apparently, this is Kelly’s second pregnancy. There was an earlier one in middle school that, according to gossip, was terminated. Charlie knows about that one. She doesn’t know that Kelly might be pregnant now.”

  Lenore put down her cup. “Coin will say that it’s Frank Alexander’s, and Kelly murdered Lucy out of spite or jealousy.”

  “There’s a simple test that will prove paternity.”

  “Rusty can make them wait until the kid is born. Undue burden. Those tests don’t come without risk.” She asked, “Do you think that Adam Humphrey or Frank Alexander talked Kelly into bringing a gun to school for some unknown reason? Or do you think she did it on her own?”

  “The only thing I’m certain of is that Kelly Wilson is the last person we can rely on for the truth.” Sam pressed her fingers into her temple, trying to smooth away some of the tension. “I’ve seen videos of false confessions before—in law school, on television, in documentaries. The West Memphis Three, Brendan Dassey, Chuck Erickson. We’ve all seen them, or read about them, but when you’re sitting across from a person who is so suggestible, so eager to please, that they will literally follow you down any road—not even a winding road—it’s quite unbelievable.”

  Sam tried to think back on her conversation with Kelly, to analyze it, to understand exactly what had happened. “I suppose it’s some sort of confirmation bias that comes into play. You keep telling yourself that it’s not possible for someone to be so slow, that they must be playing a trick on you, but the fact is, they don’t have the mental acuity to fool you. They’re too low functioning for that level of subterfuge, and if they were so high functioning that they were capable of deceiving you, then they wouldn’t be stupid enough to implicate themselves in the first place.” Sam realized that she was nattering on like Charlie. She tried to be more succinct. “I talked Kelly Wilson into saying that she witnessed Charlie slapping Judith Pinkman across the face.”

&n
bsp; “Good Christ.” Lenore’s hand covered her heart. She was likely offering up a prayer of thanks that a video proving otherwise was in their possession.

  “It was so easy to get her to say it,” Sam admitted. “I knew that she was tired, she was feeling sick, she was confused and scared and lonely. And in less than five minutes, I talked her into not only repeating what I’d said, but validating it, even making up fresh details, like that the slap was so loud that she could hear it down the hall; all in support of the lie I’d fed her.” Sam shook her head, because she still could not believe it. “I’ve always known that I live in a different type of world from most people, but Kelly is at the bottom of the pile. I don’t mean that to be cruel, or arrogant. It’s simply a matter of fact. There’s a reason girls like that get lost.”

  “You mean led astray?” Lenore suggested.

  Sam shook her head again, unwilling to attach herself to any one theory.

  “I already put Jimmy Jack on the Humphrey boy. He’s probably got him tracked down by now.”

  “Lucy Alexander’s father can’t be entirely ruled out,” Sam reminded her. “Just because we don’t want Ken Coin to be right, that doesn’t make it so.”

  “If anybody can get to the bottom of why this happened, it’s Jimmy Jack.”

  Sam wondered if the net would be cast wide enough to include Mason Huckabee, but she knew better than to bring up her sister’s lover to Lenore. Instead, she said, “Figuring out Kelly’s motive won’t bring back the victims.”

  “No, but it could keep a third victim off death row.”

  Sam pursed her lips. She was not wholly convinced that Kelly Wilson had been a victim. Low functioning or not, she had taken a gun to school and pulled the trigger enough times to brutally murder two innocent people. Sam felt fortunate that the girl’s fate did not rest on her shoulders. There was a reason that juries were supposed to be impartial. Then again, the likelihood that an impartial jury would be found within one hundred miles of Pikeville was so remote as to be absurd.

  “Your taxi will be here soon.” Lenore looked for the waitress, holding up her hand for attention.