Riding in the car with Charlie, Sam understood that she had never been a nervous passenger because she had never before been driven by her little sister. Charlie only gave a cursory glance in her mirrors before she changed lanes. She liberally used her horn. She talked to drivers under her breath, urging them to go faster, go slower, to move out of her way.
Sam sneezed violently. Her eyes were watering. Charlie’s car, a sort of station wagon/SUV hybrid, smelled of damp hay and animals. “Do you have a dog?”
“He’s on temporary loan to the Guggenheim.”
Sam gripped the dashboard as Charlie swerved into another lane. “Shouldn’t you leave your signal on for longer than that?”
“I think your verbal paraphasia is back,” Charlie said. “You said ‘shouldn’t you,’ when you meant, ‘you should.’”
Sam laughed, which seemed inappropriate given their destination was the city jail.
Representing Kelly Wilson was secondary to finding out what was wrong with Charlie both physically because of the bruises and emotionally because of everything else, but Sam did not take lightly the job of representing the school shooter. For the first time in many years, she was nervous about talking to a client, and worse, walking into an unfamiliar courtroom.
She told Charlie, “My Portland cases were in family court. I’ve never sat across from an accused murderer before.”
Charlie gave Sam a careful look, as if something might be wrong with her. “We both have, Sammy.”
Sam waved off the concern. She was unwilling to explain how she had always put her life into categories. The Sam who had sat across from the Culpepper brothers at the kitchen table was not the same Sam who had practiced law in Portland.
She said, “It’s been a long time since I’ve handled a criminal complaint.”
“It’s just an arraignment. It’ll come back to you.”
“I’ve never been on the other side.”
“Well, the first thing you’ll notice is the judge won’t be kissing your ass.”
“They didn’t in Portland. Even the cops had ‘fuck the man’ bumper stickers.”
Charlie shook her head. She had probably never been anywhere like it. “Usually, I have five minutes with my client before we’re in court. There’s not a lot to say. They generally did what they were charged with doing—buying drugs, selling drugs, using drugs, stealing shit or fencing shit so they can get more drugs. I look at their sheet and see if they qualify for rehab or some kind of diversion, and then I tell them what’s going to happen next. That’s what they usually want to know. Even if they’ve been in a courtroom a zillion times before, they want to know the sequence of events. What happens next? And then what happens? And then what? I tell them a hundred times, and each time they ask me again and again.”
Sam thought that sounded a hell of a lot like Charlie’s role during Sam’s early recovery. “Isn’t that tedious?”
“I always remind myself that they’re freaked the hell out, and knowing what comes next gives them some sense of control.” Charlie asked, “Why are you licensed in Georgia?”
Sam had wondered when this question would arise. “My firm has offices in Atlanta.”
“Come on. There’s a guy down here who handles the local stuff. You’re the micromanaging asshole partner who flies down every few months and looks over his shoulder.”
Sam laughed again. Charlie had more or less framed the dynamic. Laurens Van Loon was technically their point man in Atlanta, but Sam liked having the option to take over if needed. And she also liked walking into the bar exam and leaving with the certainty that she had passed without opening a book to study.
Charlie said, “The Georgia Bar Association has an online directory. I’m right above Rusty and he’s right above you.”
Sam thought about the three of their names appearing together. “Does Ben work with Daddy, too?”
“It’s not ‘too,’ because I don’t work with Dad, and no, he’s an ADA under Ken Coin.”
Sam ignored the inimical tone. “Doesn’t that cause conflicts?”
“There are enough criminals to go around.” Charlie pointed out the window. “They have good fish tacos here.”
Sam felt an arch in her eyebrow. There was a taco truck on the side of the road, the same sort of thing she’d see in New York or Los Angeles. The line stretched at least twenty people deep. Other trucks had even longer lines—Korean barbecue, Peri-Peri chicken, and something called the Fusion Obtrusion.
She asked, “Where are we?”
“We passed the line into Pikeville about a minute ago.”
Sam’s hand reflexively went to her heart. She hadn’t noticed the demarcation. She hadn’t felt the expected shift in her body, the dread, the feeling of despondency, that she had assumed would announce her homecoming.
“Ben loves that place, but I can’t stand it.” Charlie pointed to a building with a distinct Alpine design to match the restaurant’s name: the Biergarten.
The chalet was not the only new addition. Downtown was unrecognizable. Two- and three-story brick buildings had loft apartments upstairs and downstairs shops selling clothing, antiques, olive oils and artisanal cheeses.
Sam asked, “Who in Pikeville would pay that much for cheese?”
“Weekenders, at first. Then people started moving up here from Atlanta. Retired baby boomers. Wealthy tech types. A handful of gay people. We’re not a dry county anymore. They passed a liquor ordinance five or six years ago.”
“What did the old guard think about that?”
“The county commissioners wanted the tax base and the good restaurants that come with alcohol sales. The religious nutjobs were furious. You could buy meth on any corner, but you had to drive to Ducktown for a watered-down beer.” Charlie stopped for a red light. “I guess the nutjobs were right, though. Liquor changed everything. That’s when the building boom really took off. Mexicans come up from Atlanta for the work. Tour buses pour into the Apple Shack all day. The marina rents boats and hosts corporate parties. The Ritz Carlton is building a golf resort. Whether you think that’s good or bad depends on why you live here in the first place.”
“Who broke your nose?”
“I’ve been told it’s not really broken.” Charlie took a right without engaging the turn signal.
“Are you not answering because you don’t want me to know or are you not answering because you want to annoy me?”
“That is a complicated question with an equally complicated answer.”
“I’m going to jump out of this car if you start quoting Dad.”
Charlie slowed the car.
“I was teasing.”
“I know.” She pulled over to the side of the road. She put the gear in park. She turned to Sam. “Look, I’m glad you came down here. I know it was for a difficult and awful reason, but it’s good to see you, and I’m happy that we’ve been able to talk.”
“However?”
“Don’t do this for me.”
Sam studied her sister’s bruised eyes, the shift in her nose where the cartilage had surely fractured. “What does Kelly Wilson’s arraignment have to do with you?”
“She’s an excuse,” Charlie said. “I don’t need you to take care of me, Sam.”
“Who broke your nose?”
Charlie rolled her eyes in frustration. She said, “Do you remember when you were trying to help me learn the blind pass?”
“How could I forget?” Sam asked. “You were an awful student. You never listened to me. You kept hesitating, over and over.”
“I kept looking back,” Charlie said. “You thought that was the problem, that I couldn’t run forward because I was looking back.”
Sam heard echoes from the letter that Charlie had sent all those years ago—
Neither one of us will ever move forward if we are always looking back.
Charlie held up her hand. “I’m left-handed.”
“So is Rusty,” Sam said. “Though handedness is believed to be polygenic; there is a less than twenty-five percent chance that you inherited from Dad one of the forty loci that—”
Charlie made a loud snoring sound until Sam stopped speaking. She said, “My point is, you were teaching me to take the pass with my right hand.”
“But you were the second handoff. That’s the rule: the baton moves right hand, left hand, right hand, left hand.”
“But you never thought to ask me what the problem was.”
“You never thought to tell me what the problem was.” Sam didn’t understand the novelty of the excuse. “You would’ve failed in first or third. You’re an inveterate false starter. You’re terrible on bends. You had the speed to be a finisher, but you were always too much of a frontrunner.”
“You mean I only ever ran as hard as I needed to in order to get there first.”
“Yes, that is the definition of ‘frontrunner.’” Sam felt herself becoming exasperated. “The second handoff played to all of your strengths: you’re an explosive sprinter, you were the fastest runner on the team. All you needed was the handoff, and with enough practice, even a chimpanzee could master the twenty-meter takeover. I don’t understand your issue. You wanted to win, didn’t you?”
Charlie gripped the steering wheel. Her nose made that whistling sound again as she breathed. “I think I’m trying to pick a fight with you.”
“It’s working.”
“I’m sorry.” Charlie turned back in her seat. She put the car in gear and pulled onto the road.
Sam asked, “Is this over?”
“Yes.”
“Are we fighting?”
“No.”
Sam tried to silently play back the conversation, picking apart the various points at which she had been provoked. “No one made you join the track team.”
“I know. I shouldn’t have said anything. It was a gazillion years ago.”
Sam was still irked. “This isn’t about the track team, is it?”
“Fuck.” Charlie slowed the car to a stop in the middle of the road. “Culpeppers.”
Sam felt sick even before her brain had time to process exactly what the word meant.
Or who, to be specific.
“That’s Danny Culpepper’s truck,” Charlie said. “Zachariah’s youngest. They named him after Daniel.”
Daniel Culpepper.
The man who had shot her.
The man who had buried her alive.
All of the air left Sam’s lungs.
She could not prevent her eyes from following the line of Charlie’s gaze. A gaudy black pickup truck with gold trim and spinning wheels took up the only two handicapped spaces in front of the police station. The word “Danny” was written in mirror gold script across the tinted back window. The cab was the extended kind that could accommodate four people. Two young women were leaning against the closed doors. They each held cigarettes between their stubby fingers. Red nail polish. Red lipstick. Dark eyeshadow. Heavy eyeliner. Bleach-blonde hair. Tight black pants. Tighter shirts. High heels. Sinister. Hateful. Aggressively ignorant.
Charlie said, “I can drop you behind the building.”
Sam wanted her to. If there was a list of reasons she had left Pikeville, the Culpeppers were at the top. “They still think we lied? That there was some grand conspiracy to frame them both?”
“Of course they do. They even set up a Facebook page.”
Sam had yet to disengage from life in Pikeville when Charlie was finishing high school. She had been provided with monthly updates about the treacherous Culpepper girls, their family’s firmly held belief that Daniel had been home the night of the attacks, that Zachariah was working in Alabama, and that the Quinn girls, one of them a liar, the other mentally incapacitated, had framed them because Zachariah owed Rusty twenty thousand dollars in legal bills.
Sam asked, “Are those the same girls from high school? They look too young.”
“Daughters or nieces, but they’re all the same.”
Sam shuddered just to be this near to them. “How can you stand to see them every day?”
“I don’t have to if it’s a good day.” Charlie offered again, “I’ll drop you around back.”
“No, I’m not going to let them intimidate me.” Sam folded her collapsible cane and shoved it into her purse. “They’re not going to see me with this damn thing, either.”
Charlie slowly drove the car into the parking lot. There were sheriff’s cruisers and crime scene vans and black unmarked Town Cars in most of the spaces. She had to drive to the back, which put them over a dozen yards from the building.
Charlie turned off the engine. She asked, “Can you make the walk?”
“Yes.”
Charlie didn’t move. “I don’t want to be a jerk—”
“Be a jerk.”
“If you fall in front of those bitches, they’ll laugh at you. They might try to do something worse, and I’ll have to kill them.”
“Use my cane if it comes to that. It’s metal.” Sam opened the door. She grabbed the armrest and heaved herself out.
Charlie walked around the car, but not to help. To join Sam. To walk shoulder to shoulder toward the Culpepper girls.
The wind picked up as they crossed the parking lot. Sam experienced a self-reflective moment of her own ludicrousness. She could almost hear spurs jangling as they crossed the asphalt. The Culpepper girls narrowed their eyes. Charlie lifted her chin. They could be in a western, or a John Hughes movie if John Hughes had ever written about aggrieved, almost middle-aged women.
The police station was housed in a squat, sixties-style government complex with narrow windows and a Jetsons-like roof that pointed to the mountains. Charlie had taken the last parking spot, which was the farthest away. To reach the sidewalk they would have to traverse a roughly forty-feet walk up a slight incline. There was no ramp to the elevated building, only three wide concrete stairs that led to another fifteen feet of boxwood-lined walkway, and then, eventually, the glass front doors.
Sam could handle the distance. She would need Charlie’s help to ascend the stairs. Or the metal railing might be enough. The trick would be to lean on it while appearing to rest her hand. She would have to swing her left leg first, then pull her right, and then hope that the right could hold her unassisted weight as she somehow managed to swing her leg again.
She ran her fingers through her hair.
She felt the ridge of hard skin above her ear.
Her pace quickened.
The wind shifted back. Sam could hear the Culpepper girls’ voices. The taller of the two flicked her cigarette in Charlie and Sam’s direction. She raised her voice as she told her companion, “Looks like the bitch finally got the shit beat outta her.”
“Both eyes. Means she had to be tole twice,” the other cackled. “Next time you’uns go out, maybe you can fetch Precious over there a bowl of ice cream.”
Sam felt the muscles in her right leg start to quiver. She looped her hand through Charlie’s arm as if they were taking a walk in the park. “I had forgotten the sociolect of the native Appalachians.”
Charlie laughed. She placed her hand over Sam’s.
“What’s that?” the tall girl said. “What’d she call you?”
The glass doors banged open.
They all recoiled from the loud sound.
A menacing-looking young man stomped down the walkway. Not tall, but thickly muscled. Here was the jangling sound: the chain linking his wallet to his belt swung at his side. His wardrobe ticked all the stereotypical redneck boxes, from his sweat-stained ball cap to the ripped-off sleeves of his red-and-black flannel shirt to his torn, filthy blue jeans.
Danny Culpepper, Zachariah’s youngest son.
The spitting image of his father.
His boots made a heavy stomping sound as he jumped down the three stairs. His beady eyes homed in on Charlie. He made a gun sign with his hand and pretended to line her up in his sights.
Sam clenched her teeth. She tried not to relate the young man’s stocky build to Zachariah Culpepper’s. The hedonistic swagger. The way his thick lips smacked as he took a toothpick out of his mouth.
“Who we got here?” He stood in front of them, arms out to his sides, effectively blocking their way. “You got a familiar look about you, lady.”
Sam tightened her grip on Charlie’s arm. She would not show fear to this animal.
“I gotcha.” He snapped his fingers. “Seen your picture from my daddy’s trial, but your head was all swoll up with the bullet still in it.”
Sam dug her fingernails into Charlie’s arm. She begged her leg not to collapse out from under her, for her body not to shake, for her temper not to annihilate this disgusting man outside of the police station.
She said, “Get out of our way.”
He did not get out of their way. Instead, he started clapping his hands, stomping his foot. He sang, “Two Quinn gals standing in the lot. One got fucked, t’other got shot.”
The girls yapped with laughter.
Sam tried to walk around him, but Charlie grabbed onto her hand, effectively nailing them both in place. Charlie told him, “It’s hard to fuck a thirteen-year-old girl when your dick doesn’t work.”
The boy snorted. “Shit.”
“I’m sure your dad can get it up for his buddies in prison.”
The insult was obvious, but effective. Danny jammed his finger in Charlie’s face. “You think I won’t get my rifle and shoot off your ugly fucking head right here in front of this police station?”
“Make sure you get close,” Sam said. “Culpeppers aren’t known for their aim.”
Silence cut a rift through the air.
Sam tapped her finger to the side of her head. “Lucky for me.”
Charlie gave a startled laugh. She kept laughing until Danny Culpepper brushed past her, his shoulder bumping Charlie’s.
“Fucking bitches.” He told the two girls, “Get the fuck in, you wanna ride home.”
Sam pulled at Charlie’s arm to get her moving. She was afraid that Charlie would not take the win, that she would say something vitriolic that brought Danny Culpepper back.
“Come on,” Sam whispered, tugging harder. “Enough.”
Only when Danny was behind the wheel of his truck did Charlie allow herself to be led away.
They walked arm-in-arm toward the stairs.
Sam had forgotten about the stairs.
She heard the rumble of Danny Culpepper’s diesel truck behind her. He kept racing the engine. Being run over would take less effort than mounting the stairs.
She told Charlie, “I don’t—”
“I’ve got you.” Charlie would not allow her to stop the forward motion. She slipped her arm under Sam’s bent elbow, offering a sort of shelf to lean on. “One, two—”
Sam swung her left leg, leaned into Charlie to move her right, then her left took over and she was up the stairs.
The show was wasted.
Tires screeched behind them. Smoke filled the air. The truck peeled off in a cacophonous blend of engine grumble and rap music.
Sam stopped to rest. The front door was another five feet away. She was almost breathless. “Why would they be here? Because of Dad?”
“If I were in charge of the investigation into who stabbed Dad, the first suspect I would pick up is Danny Culpepper.”
“But you don’t think the police brought him in for questioning?”
“I don’t think they’re seriously looking into it, either because they’ve got bigger fish to fry with this school shooting or they don’t care that somebody tried to kill Dad.” Charlie explained, “Generally, the police don’t let you drive yourself and your cousins to the station when you’re being questioned for attempted murder. They bust down your door and drag you in by your collar and do everything they can to scare the shit out of you so that you know you’re in trouble.”
“So, Danny just happened to be here?”
Charlie shrugged. “He’s a drug dealer. He’s at the station a lot.”
Sam searched her purse for a tissue. “Is that how he purchased that gauche truck?”
“He’s not that good at selling drugs.” Charlie watched as the truck squealed the wrong way up the one-way street. “Prices at the Gauche Truck Emporium are through the roof.”
“I read that in the Times.” Sam used the tissue to pat sweat from her face. She had no idea why she’d even spoken to Danny Culpepper, and there was not enough time left on earth to explain her words to him. In New York, Sam did everything possible to diminish her disability. Here, she seemed inclined to wield it as a weapon.
She returned the tissue to her purse. “I’m ready.”
“Kelly had a yearbook,” Charlie said, her voice low. “You know the thing where—”
“I know what a yearbook is.”
Charlie nodded back toward the stairs.
Sam needed her cane, but she walked the ten feet back unaided. This was when she saw the sheet of bowed plywood laid across the sloped grass on the other side of the stairs. The handicapped ramp, she supposed.
“This godforsaken place,” Sam muttered. She leaned against the metal railing. She asked Charlie, “What are we doing?”
Charlie glanced back at the doors as if she was afraid they would be overheard. She kept her voice to barely more than a whisper. “A yearbook was in Kelly’s room, hidden on the top shelf of her closet.”
Sam was confused. The crime had only happened yesterday morning. “Has Dad already received some of the discovery?”
Charlie’s raised eyebrow explained the provenance.
Sam heaved out something between a sigh and a groan. She knew the kinds of shortcuts her father took. “What was in the yearbook?”
“A lot of nasty stuff about Kelly being a whore, having sex with football players.”
“That’s hardly anomalous to high school. Girls can be cruel.”
“Middle school,” Charlie said. “This was five years ago, when Kelly was fourteen. But it was more than cruel. The pages were filled. Hundreds of people signed on. Most of them probably didn’t even know her.”
“A Pikeville version of Carrie without the pig’s blood.” Sam realized the obvious. “Well, someone’s blood was shed.”
“Right.”
“It’s a mitigating factor. She was bullied, probably isolated. It could keep her off death row. That’s good.” Sam equivocated, “For Dad’s case, I mean.”
Charlie had more. “Kelly said something in the hallway before she gave Huck the gun.”
“What?” Sam’s throat hurt from trying to keep her voice down. “Why are you telling me this when we are standing outside of a police station instead of when we were inside the car?”
Charlie threw out her hand toward the doors. “There’s only a fat guy behind a bulletproof window in there.”
“Answer me, Charlotte.”
“Because I was pissed off at you in the car.”
“I knew it.” Sam grabbed onto the railing. “Why?”
“Because you’re here for me even though I told you that I don’t need you, and you’re lying like you always do out of this misplaced sense of duty to Gamma, and pretending that it’s about this arraignment, and it just occurred to me when we walked up the steps that this isn’t the bullshit tug-of-war between us. This is Kelly’s life. She needs you to be on point.”
Sam stiffened her spine. “I am always on point with clients. I take my fiduciary responsibilities very seriously.”
“This is a lot more complicated than you think it is.”
“Then give me the facts. Don’t send me into that building where I’m going to get blindsided.” She indicated her eye. “More than I already am.”
“You’ve got to stop using that as a punchline.”
She was probably right. “Tell me what Kelly said in the hallway.”
“This was after the shooting when she was sitting there. They were trying to get her to hand over the gun. I saw Kelly’s lips move, and Huck heard it, but he didn’t tell the GBI, but there was a cop standing there who heard her say it, too, and like I said, I saw it happen, but I didn’t hear it, but whatever she said really upset him.”
“Do you have a sudden aversion to proper pronouns?” Sam felt inundated by data fragments. Charlie was acting like she was thirteen again, flush with the excitement of telling a story. “This information was less important than complaining about being second position in the relay thirty years ago?”
Charlie said, “There’s more about Huck.”
“Okay.”
Charlie looked away. Inexplicably, tears rimmed her eyes.
“Charlie?” Sam felt her own tears start to well. She could never abide seeing her sister in distress. “What is it?”
Charlie looked down at her hands. She cleared her throat. “I think Huck took the murder weapon from the scene.”
“What?” Sam’s voice went up in alarm. “How?”
“It’s just a feeling. The GBI asked me about—”
“Wait, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation interviewed you?”
“I’m a witness.”
“Did you have a lawyer?”
“I’m a lawyer.”
“Charlie—”
“I know, I have a fool for a client. Don’t worry. I didn’t say anything stupid.”
Sam did not argue the antithetical. “The GBI asked you if you knew where the murder weapon was?”
“In a roundabout way. The agent was good at playing her cards close to her chest. The weapon was a revolver, probably a six-shot. And then later, when I talked to Huck on the phone, he said they had asked him the same thing, only this time, it was the FBI asking, too: ‘When did you last see the gun? Who had it? What happened to it?’ Except I got the feeling that Huck had taken the gun. Just a feeling. Which I couldn’t tell Dad, because if Dad found out, he would have Huck arrested. And I know he should be arrested, but he was trying to do the right thing, and with the FBI involved we’re talking felony and …” She let out a heavy sigh. “That’s it.”
There were so many red flags that Sam couldn’t keep up with all of them. “Charlotte, you cannot ever again speak with Mason Huckabee, on the phone or otherwise.”
“I know that.” Charlie hung her heels over the stair, stretching her calves, balancing herself on her two good legs. “Before you say it, I told Huck not to try to see me or call me, and to get a good lawyer.”
Sam stared out at the parking lot. The sheriff’s cruisers. The police cars. The crime scene vans. The Town Cars. This was what Rusty was up against, and now Charlie had managed to drag herself along for the ride.
Charlie asked, “Ready?”
“Can you give me a moment to compose myself?”
Rather than verbalizing her answer, Charlie nodded.
Charlie seldom just nodded. Like Rusty, she could never resist the urge to speak, to explain the nod, to expound upon the up and down movement of her head.
Sam was about to ask her what the hell else she was hiding when Charlie said, “What’s Lenore doing here?”
Sam watched a red sedan make a quick turn into the parking lot. The sun glinted off the windshield as the car raced towards them. There was another sharp turn, then the tires skidded to a stop.
The window rolled down. Lenore waved for them to hurry. “The arraignment is scheduled to start at three.”
“Motherfuck, that gives us an hour and a half, tops.” Charlie quickly helped Sam down the stairs. “Who’s the judge?”
“Lyman. He said he moved it up to avoid the press, but half of them are already lining up for seats.” She motioned for them to get in the car. “He also appointed Carter Grail to stand in for Rusty.”
“Shit, he’ll hang Kelly himself.” Charlie pulled open the rear door. She told Lenore, “Take Sam. I’ll try to keep Grail away from Kelly and find out what the hell is going on. It’s faster if I run.”
Sam said, “Faster for—”
Charlie was gone.
“Grail’s got a big mouth,” Lenore said. “If Kelly talks to him, he’ll spill to whoever listens.”
“I’m sure that has nothing to do with why the judge appointed him.” Sam had no choice but to get into Lenore’s car. The courthouse, a large, domed building, was directly across from the police station, but the one-way street made the driving route more circuitous. Because of Sam’s limited mobility, they would have to go up to the red light, then drive around the courthouse, then turn onto the street again.
Sam watched Charlie dart past a truck and leap over a concrete curb. She ran beautifully; arms tucked, head straight, shoulders back.
Sam had to look away.
She told Lenore, “This is a dirty trick. The hearing was scheduled for tomorrow morning.”
“Lyman does whatever he wants.” Lenore caught her eye in the mirror. “Cons call Carter ‘the Holy Grail.’ If he drinks before your trial, you’re likely to get life.”
“It’s a chalice, actually. In Christian tradition.”
“I’ll send Indiana Jones a telegram.” Lenore turned out of the parking lot.
Sam watched Charlie running across the courthouse lawn. She hurdled over a row of shrubs. There was a line out the door, but Charlie rushed past it, taking the steep stairs two at a time. “Can I ask you something?”
“Why not.”
“How long has my sister been sleeping with Mason Huckabee?”
Lenore pursed her lips. “That wasn’t the question I thought you would ask.”
That wasn’t a question that Sam thought she would ask, either, but it made a horrible kind of sense. The distance between Charlie and Ben. The way Charlie had teared up when she talked about Mason Huckabee.
Lenore asked, “You told Charlie who he is?”
Sam nodded.
“That oughtta make her feel like shit,” Lenore added. “Even more than she already does.”
“Not for want of defenders.”
“You know a lot for somebody who’s only been here five minutes.”
Lenore looped around the courthouse and drove to the back of the building. She stopped in front of an area that was clearly the loading zone for deliveries.
She told Sam, “Go up the ramp. Elevator’s on the right. Go down one floor to the sub-basement. That’s the holding area. And listen,” Lenore turned around to face her. “Rusty couldn’t get a peep out of Kelly yesterday. Maybe she’ll open up to a woman. Anything you can get would be better than what we’ve got now, which is zilch.”
“Understood.” Sam unfolded her cane. She felt sturdier on her feet as she got out of the car. Adrenaline had always been her ally. Anger ran a close second as she marched up a ramp intended for bulk toilet-paper deliveries and trash bins. The smell of rotting food from the dumpsters was noxious.
Inside, the courthouse was like every other courthouse Sam had entered, except there was an oversampling of good-looking men and women in camera-ready suits. Sam’s cane got her to the front of the line. Two sheriff’s deputies were stationed by the metal detector. Sam had to show her ID, sign in, put her purse and cane on the X-ray, show her legal credentials so that she could keep her phone, then wait for a female deputy to pat her down because the plate in her head set off the alarm when she walked through the metal detector.
The elevator was on the right. There were two sub-basement floors, but Lenore had told her to go down one floor, so Sam pressed the appropriate button and waited. The car was full of men in suits. She stood at the back. She leaned against the wall to take weight off her leg. When the doors opened, all of the men stepped aside so that she could leave the elevator first.
There were some things that Sam missed about the South.
“Hey.” Charlie was waiting by the door. She held a tissue to her nose, which had started bleeding, likely from the run. She took a breath and words rushed out of her mouth. “I told Coin you’re co-counsel. He’s super-happy—not. So is Lyman, so try not to piss him off even more. I heard Grail didn’t have a chance to talk to Kelly, but maybe check-see to make sure. She’s been sick since they brought her over. Clogged the toilet. I hear it’s a mess.”
“What kind of sick?”
“Throwing up. I called over to the jail. She ate breakfast and lunch no problem. No one else is sick, so it’s not food poisoning. She was horking when they brought her over about thirty minutes ago. She’s not detoxing. It must be nerves. This is Mo.” She indicated an older woman sitting behind the desk. “Mo, this is my sister, Samantha.”
“Don’t bleed on my desk, Quinn.” Mo did not look up from her keyboard. She snapped her fingers for Sam’s ID and credentials. She tapped some of the keys on her computer. She picked up the phone. She indicated a sign-in log.
The log was almost full. Sam signed her name on the last line below Carter Grail’s. The time stamp said he’d spent less than three minutes with Kelly.
Charlie said, “Lyman’s been here about twelve years. He retired up from Marietta. He’s a super hard-ass about procedure. Do you have a dress or a skirt in your suitcase?”
“Whatever for?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Sure it doesn’t.” Mo put down the phone. She told Sam, “You’ve got seventeen minutes left. Grail drank away three. You’ll have to talk to her in the cell.”
Charlie slammed her fist on the counter. “What the fuck, Mo?”
“Charlie, I’ve got this.” Sam addressed Mo. “If the room isn’t available now, then you should inform the judge that we need to postpone the hearing until I have the necessary time to confer privately with my client.”
Mo grunted. She glared at Sam, waiting for her to back down. When she did not, the woman said, “I thought you were supposed to be the smart one.” She reached under her desk and pressed a buzzer. She winked at Sam. “Room’s on the right. Sixteen minutes.”
Charlie pumped her fist in the air, then sprinted toward the stairs. She was so light on her feet that she barely made a sound.
Sam moved her purse to her other shoulder. She leaned on her cane as she dragged through the door. She stopped in front of another door, effectively boxed in as the first door behind her closed. Another buzz, and the second door swung open in front of her.
Sam was besieged by the long-forgotten odors of a holding cell: putrid vomit mixed with an alkaline sweat, the ammonia of urine, the sewage stench from the one toilet that serviced roughly one hundred inmates a day.
Sam pushed herself off with her cane. Her shoes slapped brown puddles of water. No one had cleaned up the flooded toilet. There was only one inmate left in the holding cell, an older, toothless woman who was squatting on a long concrete bench. Her orange jumper bulked around her like a blanket. She moved slowly back and forth between her feet. Her rheumy eyes followed Sam as she walked toward the closed door on the right.
The knob turned before Sam could knock. The female deputy who came out looked burly and brusque. She closed the door, her back pressed to the opaque glass. “You the second lawyer?”
“Third, technically. Samantha Quinn.”
“Rusty’s oldest.”
Sam nodded, though she hadn’t been asked a question.
“The inmate has puked approximately four times over the last half hour. I gave her a pack of orange crackers and one can of Coke served in a Styrofoam cup. I asked if she wanted medical attention. She declined. You’ve got fifteen minutes before I come back in.” She tapped the watch on her wrist. “Whatever I hear when I come in is what I hear. You got me?”
Sam took out her phone. She set the timer for fourteen minutes.
“I’m glad we understand each other.”
The woman opened the door.
The room was so dark that Sam’s eyes could only slowly adjust. Two chairs. A metal table bolted to the floor. A flickering fluorescent light hanging crookedly from two furred lengths of chain.
Kelly Rene Wilson was slumped over the table. Her head was wrapped in the cocoon of her folded arms. When the door opened, she jumped up to standing, arms at her sides, shoulders straight, as if Sam had called a soldier to attention.
Sam said, “You can sit down.”
Kelly waited for Sam to sit first.
Sam took the empty chair by the door. She rested her cane against the table. She reached into her purse for her notepad and pen. She changed out her glasses for her readers. “My name is Samantha Quinn. I’m your lawyer for the arraignment. You met my father, Rusty, yesterday.”
Kelly said, “You talk funny.”
Sam smiled. She sounded southern to New Yorkers and she sounded like a Yankee to southerners. “I live in New York City.”
“Because you’re cripple?”
Sam almost laughed. “No. I live in New York because I like it. I use a cane when my leg gets tired.”
“My granddaddy had a cane but it was wood.” The girl seemed matter-of-fact, but the clink-clink sound from her handcuffs indicated she was nervously bouncing her leg.
Sam said, “You don’t have to be afraid, Kelly. I’m your ally. I’m not here to trip you up.” She wrote Kelly’s name and the date at the top of her notepad. She underlined the words twice. She felt the odd sensation of butterflies in her stomach. “Did you speak with Mr. Grail, the attorney who came to see you earlier?”
“No, ma’am, on account of I was sick.”
Sam studied the girl. She spoke slowly, almost as if she was drugged. Judging by the S on the front of her orange jumper, they had given her an adult small, but the uniform was voluminous on her petite frame. Kelly looked wan. Her hair was greasy, speckled with pieces of vomit. As thin as she was, her face was round, angelic.
Sam reminded herself that Lucy Alexander’s face had been angelic, too.
She asked Kelly, “Are you on any medication?”
“They give me liquids at the hospital yesterday.” She showed Sam the bruised red dot near the crook of her right arm. “Through here.”
Sam transcribed the exact words. Rusty would need to get the girl’s hospital records. “You think they gave you fluids, but no medication?”
“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.”
Sam could still remember packing Charlie’s things after her disastrous New York visit. Every T-shirt Charlie owned had some variation of the Duke Blue Devils logo.
Sam asked Kelly, “The woman in the Devils shirt. Did she hurt anybody?”
“No, ma’am. She was sitting there across from Mrs. Pinkman looking at her hands.”
“Are you sure she didn’t hurt anybody?” Sam made her voice firm. “This is very important, Kelly. You need to tell me if the woman in the Devils shirt hurt anyone.”
“Well.” Kelly studied Sam’s face, looking for cues. “I don’t know if she did, on account of I was sitting.”
Very slowly, Sam began to nod again. “I think you saw the Devils woman hurt someone, even though you were sitting down. The evidence shows that you saw her, Kelly. There’s no point in lying.”
Kelly’s uncertainty returned. “I don’t mean to lie to you. I know you’re trying to help me.”
Sam made her voice firm. “Then admit the truth. You saw the woman in the Devils shirt hurt someone.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Kelly nodded, too. “Now that I think on it, maybe she hurt somebody.”
“Did she hurt you?”
Kelly hesitated. She searched Sam’s expression for guidance. “Maybe?”
“I can’t use ‘maybe’ to help you, Kelly.” Sam tried again, declaring, “You saw the woman in the blue Devils shirt hurt someone else who was in the hallway.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Kelly seemed more sure of herself now. She kept nodding her head, as if the motion informed her thinking. “That’s what I saw.”
Sam asked, “Did the Devils woman hurt Mrs. Pinkman?” She leaned forward. “Because Mrs. Pinkman was right there, Kelly. You told me as much not a few seconds ago. Do you think the Devils woman could have hurt Mrs. Pinkman?”
“I think so.” Kelly continued to nod, because that was part of the pattern. She denied the statement, then she allowed that the statement might be true, then she accepted the statement as fact. All that Sam had to do was speak authoritatively, tell the girl the answer, nod a few times, then wait for the lie to be regurgitated back to her.
Sam said, “According to eye witnesses, Kelly, you saw exactly what the Devils woman did.”
“Okay,” Kelly said. “That’s what I seen happen. That she hurt her.”
“How did the Devils woman hurt Mrs. Pinkman?” Sam waved her hands in the air, trying to think of examples. “Did she kick her? Did she punch her?”
“She slapped her with her hand.”
Sam looked at the hand she had waved in the air, certain the motion had put the idea in Kelly’s head. “You’re sure you saw the Devils woman slap Mrs. Pinkman?”
“Yes, ma’am, it happened like you said. She slapped her across the face, and I could hear the noise all the way to where I was sitting in the hall.”
Sam realized the enormity of the lie. Without thinking, she had implicated her own sister in assault. “So, what you’re saying is that you saw with your own eyes when the Devils woman slapped Mrs. Pinkman across the face?”
Kelly continued to nod. There were tears in her eyes. She clearly wanted to please Sam, as if pleasing her would somehow unlock the secret to getting her out of this living night-mare.
Kelly whispered, “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right.” Sam didn’t push her further, because the exercise had proven her point. Given the right kind of leading question, the right tone, Kelly Wilson probably would have said Charlie murdered Judith Pinkman with her own hands.
The girl was so suggestible, she could have been hypnotized.
Sam checked her phone. Ninety seconds remained, plus the one-minute buffer. “Did the police talk to you yesterday before Mr. Rusty did?”
“Yes, ma’am. They talked to me at the hospital.”
“Did they read you your Miranda rights before they spoke with you?” Sam could tell she did not understand. “Did they say, ‘You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to counsel’. Did they say any of that to you?”
“No, ma’am, not in the hospital, because I would’a remembered that from the TV.”
Sam leaned across the table again. “Kelly, this is very important. Did you say anything to the police before you talked to my father?”
“This one older fella, he kept talking to me. He rode with me in the ambulance to the hospital, and then he stayed in my room to make sure I was okay.”
Sam doubted the man was concerned about her well-being. “Did you answer any of his questions? Did he interrogate you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Were you handcuffed when he talked to you?”
“I ain’t sure. In the ambulance, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Well, no, not then. Not that I remember.”
“Do you remember exactly when you were handcuffed?”
“It was at some point.”
Sam wanted to throw her pen across the room. “Kelly, it’s very important that you try to remember. Did they interrogate you at the hospital before my father told you not to answer any questions?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I don’t remember much from yesterday.”
“But the older fella was always with you?”
“Yes, ma’am, except when he had to go to the bathroom, and then a police officer came and sat with me.”
“Was the older fella in a police uniform?”
“No, ma’am. He was in a suit and a tie.”
“Did he tell you his name?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Do you remember when you were told your Miranda— When they said, ‘You have a right to remain silent. You have a right to counsel?’” She waited. “Kelly, do you remember when you were told those words?”
Kelly could clearly see this was important. “Maybe in the police car on the way to the jail this morning?”
“But it wasn’t at the hospital?”
“No, ma’am. It was sometime this morning, but I don’t know what time exactly.”
Sam sat back in the chair. She tried to think this through. If Kelly had not been read her Miranda rights until this morning, then anything she said before that time could technically be inadmissible in court. “Are you sure this morning was the first time they told you your rights?”
“Well, I know this morning it was the older fella that done it.” She shrugged her thin shoulders. “Maybe if he did it before, you can see it on the videotape.”
“What videotape?”
“The one they made of me at the hospital.”