Sam carefully negotiated the steep loading ramp outside the courthouse. The stench of rotting food had dissipated, or perhaps she had become accustomed to the smell. She looked up at the sky. The orange sun grazed the distant mountaintops. Dusk was a few hours away. She had no idea where she was going to sleep tonight, but she had to speak to Rusty before she left town.
He needed to know that Kelly Wilson could be carrying the motive for her crimes in her belly.
Morning sickness did not always come in the morning. Sometimes, it came in the afternoon, but the key factor was that it came at roughly the same time every day, commonly during the first trimester. That would explain why Kelly was missing classes at school. It would also explain the round bump of her belly that Sam had felt when she had hugged the girl so tightly.
Kelly Wilson was several weeks pregnant.
Lenore’s red car made a wide circle, stopping a few feet from the bottom of the ramp.
“Sammy!” Charlie jumped out of the front seat. “You were fucking fantastic in there! Oh my God!” She threw her hand around Sam’s waist. “Let me help you.”
“Give me a minute,” Sam said. Her body was at that point where standing was easier than sitting down. “You could’ve warned me about the judge.”
“I said he was a hard-ass,” Charlie said. “But, Jesus, you made him smile. I’ve never seen him smile. And you had Coin sputtering like a broken sprinkler. That stupid asshole laid out his case right in the middle of the arraignment.”
Lenore got out of the car.
Charlie was beaming. “Didn’t my big sister play Ken Coin like a fucking fiddle?”
Lenore said, “‘I was impressed,’ she said begrudgingly.”
“That judge.” Sam took off her glasses to rub her eyes. “I had forgotten—”
“That you look like a Victorian-era Dracula?”
“Dracula was set in Victorian times.” Sam put on her glasses. “Rusty’s top priority should be finding an expert to evaluate Kelly. Either she’s deficient, or she’s clever enough to pretend. She could be fooling us all.”
Charlie huffed a laugh. “Dad maybe, but she can’t fool you.”
“Didn’t you say that I was too smart to know how stupid I am?”
“You’re right. We need an expert,” Charlie said. “We’ll also have to find someone who’s good with false confessions. You know that hospital recording is going to show hope of benefit.”
“Maybe.” Sam was worried that Ken and Keith Coin were too clever to show their work. Hope of benefit, or any false inducement such as the promise of a lesser charge in exchange for a confession, was illegal. “I can find an expert in New York. Someone will need to comb the recordings to make certain they’ve been unedited. Does Rusty have an investigator?”
Lenore said, “Jimmy Jack Little.”
Sam would not dither over the foolish name. “Jimmy Jack needs to locate a young man named Adam Humphrey.”
“What’s he looking for?” Lenore asked.
“Humphrey could be someone in whom Kelly confided.”
“She was screwing him, or was he trying to screw her?”
Sam shrugged, because that was all she could really give without breaking privilege. “I don’t think Kelly goes to school with him. Perhaps he graduated? The only detail I got was that he drives a Camaro.”
“Classy,” Charlie said. “Maybe he’s in the yearbook? Either his photo or he wrote something down. Did Kelly say he was her boyfriend?”
“Undetermined,” Sam said. Kelly Wilson might not fully understand the oath of confidentiality, but Sam did not take the pledge lightly. “Does Rusty know that Lucy Alexander’s father was Kelly’s teacher?” The man could be a second suspect in the paternity hunt. She asked Lenore, “If you could generate for Rusty a list of all of Kelly’s teachers—”
“You know that’s their angle,” Charlie said. “Kelly was mad that Mr. Alexander was going to flunk her, so she took a gun to school and killed his daughter.”
That wouldn’t be their case if a positive pregnancy test came out.
Charlie opened her mouth to speak.
“Shush,” Lenore nodded behind them.
Ben was coming down the ramp, hands in his pockets, hair tousled by the wind. He grinned at Sam. “You should be a lawyer when you grow up.”
She smiled back. “I’ll think about it.”
“You were amazing.” Ben squeezed her shoulder. “Rusty’s going to be really proud of you.”
Sam felt her smile soften. The last thing she had ever wanted was Rusty’s approval. “Thank you.”
“Babe,” Charlie said. “Didn’t my sister kill it?”
He nodded. “She killed it.”
Charlie reached up to neaten his hair with her fingers, but Ben was already stepping back. He stepped forward again, but her hand went down. The uneasiness was back.
Sam tried, “Ben, can we all have dinner together?”
“I’m going to be busy putting my boss together after that shredding you gave him, but thank you for asking.” His eyes darted toward Charlie, then back again. “But, hey, Sam. I didn’t know about the video at the hospital. I was at the station all day yesterday. I found out about the arraignment half an hour before it started.” He shrugged one shoulder, the same way Charlie did. “I don’t play dirty like that.”
Sam said, “I believe you.”
“I’d better get back.” Ben reached for Lenore’s hand. “Make sure they get home safe.”
He headed up the ramp, hands tucked deep into his pockets.
Charlie cleared her throat. She watched him with a longing that pierced Sam’s heart. She had seen her sister cry more today than when they were children. Sam wanted to drag her sister after Ben and make Charlie beg for forgiveness. She was so damn obstinate. She never apologized for anything.
“Get in the car.” Lenore climbed behind the wheel. She slammed the door.
Sam gave Charlie a questioning look, but she shrugged as she crawled across the back seat, leaving space for Sam.
Lenore was pulling away as Sam shut the door.
Charlie asked, “Where are we going?”
“Office.” Lenore turned onto the main road. She sped through a yellow light.
“My car is at the police station,” Charlie said. “Is there a reason we’re going to the office?”
“Yes,” was all Lenore would give.
This seemed to be enough for Charlie. She slumped down in the seat. She looked out the window. Sam guessed that she was thinking about Ben. The urge to grab Charlie, to shake some sense into her, was overwhelming. Why had her sister imperiled her marriage? Ben was the one good thing she had in her life.
Lenore turned down another side street. Sam finally got her bearings. They were on the bad side of town now, the place where the tourist dollars had stopped. Every building looked as derelict as it had thirty years ago.
Lenore held up a miniature Starship Enterprise. “Ben gave me this.”
Sam had no idea why he would give Lenore a toy.
Charlie seemed to know. “He shouldn’t have done that.”
Lenore said, “Well, he did.”
“Throw it away,” Charlie said. “Put it in the blender.”
Sam asked, “Can someone tell me—”
“It’s a thumb drive,” Charlie said. “And I’m guessing that it has something on it that will help our case.”
“Exactly,” Lenore said.
“Throw it the fuck away,” Charlie said, enunciating each word. “He’ll get in trouble. He’ll get fired. Or worse.”
Lenore tucked the thumb drive down the front of her bra.
“I’m not a part of this.” Charlie held up her hands. “If you get Ben disbarred, I will never forgive you.”
“Add it to the list.” Lenore swung the car down another side street. The old stationery supply building had been slightly altered. The plate glass in the front was boarded over. Thick security bars striped the other windows. The gated entrance was new, too. Sam was reminded of the wild animal park at the San Diego Zoo as the gate buzzed open, ushering them into a walled sanctum behind the building.
“You’re going to open the thumb drive?” Charlie asked.
“I’m going to open the thumb drive,” Lenore said.
Charlie looked to Sam for help.
Sam shrugged. “He wanted us to have it.”
“I fucking hate both of you.” Charlie jumped out of the car. She had the security door open, then the regular door, before Sam could speak with her.
Lenore said, “We can open the file in my office.”
Charlie stomped around a corner, turning on lights as she went.
Sam did not know whether to follow her sister or to give Charlie’s anger time to burn itself out. She felt wary of her sister. She was so changeable—celebrating Sam’s courtroom performance one minute, then denigrating her for doing her job the next. There was an undercurrent of misery flowing through Charlie that eventually pulled everything down.
“I’m this way.” Lenore nodded toward the other side of the building.
Sam followed her up another long hallway that was tinged with the odor of Rusty’s cigarettes. Sam tried to recall the last time she had been exposed to second-hand smoke. Probably in Paris before the indoor smoking ban.
They passed a closed door with Rusty’s name on the sign outside. Sam would have guessed this was his office from the smell alone. The rays of nicotine radiating from the door offered a further clue.
Lenore said, “He hasn’t smoked in the building for years. He brings it in on his clothes.”
Sam frowned. She had so many things wrong with her body that she could not imagine why someone would purposefully damage themselves. If two heart attacks did not serve as a wake-up call, nothing would.
Lenore pulled a set of keys from her purse. She held her clutch under her arm as she unlocked the door. She turned on the lights. Sam narrowed her eyes as they protested against the sudden, bright light.
When her pupils finally adjusted, she was met with a welcoming, tidy space. Lenore’s office was very blue. Light blue walls. Dark blue carpet. Pastel blue couch with throw pillows in various shades of blue. She said, “I like blue.”
Sam stood by the couch. “It’s very nice.”
“You can sit down.”
“I think it’s better if I stand.”
“Suit yourself.” Lenore sat at her desk.
“My leg is—”
“No explanation needed.” She leaned down and inserted the USB drive into her computer. She turned the monitor around so that Sam could see. “You want me to leave?”
Sam did not want to be perceived as any ruder than before. “I’ll let you decide.”
“I’ll stay.” Lenore clicked open the thumb drive. “One file. Just a series of numbers. Can you see?”
Sam nodded. The extension read .mov, which meant the file was video. “Go ahead.”
Lenore clicked the file name.
The video opened.
She clicked the button to make it fill the screen.
The image could have been a photograph but for the numbers ticking in the corner: 07:58:47. A typical school hallway. Blue lockers. Tan tiled floor. The camera was tilted too far down. Only half of the hall was visible to the lens, about fifty feet of open space. The most distant point showed a thin slice of light that must have come from an open doorway. Posters were on the walls. Graffiti peppered the lockers. The entirety of the space was empty. The footage was grainy. The color was washed, more of a sepia tone.
Lenore turned up the volume on the speakers. “No sound.”
“Look,” Sam pointed to the monitor. As she’d watched, a piece of cinder block had spontaneously chipped away from the wall.
“Gunshot,” Lenore said.
Sam looked at the round bullet hole.
A man ran into the hallway.
He had entered the scene from behind the camera. His back was to them. White dress shirt. Dark pants. His hair was gray, styled in a typical man’s cut, short in the back, parted on the side.
He stopped, abruptly, hands out in front of him.
No, don’t.
Lenore sucked air through her teeth as the man jerked violently once, then again, then again.
Blood misted into the air.
He collapsed to the floor. Sam saw his face.
Douglas Pinkman.
Shot once in the chest. Twice in the head. A black hole replaced his right eye.
A river of blood began to flow around his body.
Sam felt her hand cover her mouth.
Lenore said, “Oh, God.”
A small figure had rounded the corner. Her back was to the lens.
Pigtails flopping on either side of her head.
Princess backpack, shoes that lighted up, arms swinging.
She came to an abrupt stop.
Mr. Pinkman. Dead on the floor.
Lucy Alexander fell quickly, landing on the incline of her backpack.
Her head lolled back. Her legs splayed. Her shoes pointed up at the ceiling.
The little girl tried in vain to raise her head. She touched her fingers to the open wound at her neck.
Her mouth was moving.
Judith Pinkman ran toward the camera. Her red shirt was a dull rust on the screen. She had her arms back, out to her sides, like a winged creature preparing to take flight. She passed her husband, then dropped to her knees beside Lucy.
“Look,” Lenore said.
Kelly Wilson finally came into the frame.
Distant. Slightly out of focus. The girl was at the most remote reaches of the camera’s lens. She was dressed in all black. Her greasy hair hung around her shoulders. Her eyes were wide. Her mouth hung open. She held the revolver in her right hand.
Like I said, the gun was in my hand.
Kelly sat down on the floor. The left half of her body was out of the camera’s reach. Her back was to the lockers. The revolver stayed at her side, resting on the ground. She stared straight ahead.
Lenore said, “A hair shy of eleven seconds from the moment the bullet went into the wall.” She pointed to the time in the corner. “I counted five shots total. One in the wall. Three in Pinkman. One in Lucy. That’s not what the simulation had on the news. They said Judith Pinkman was shot at twice, missed both times.”
Sam let herself look at Lucy again.
Judith Pinkman’s mouth was open as she screamed up at the ceiling.
Sam read the grieving woman’s lips.
Help me.
Somewhere in the school, Charlie was hearing the woman’s pleas.
Lenore held up the box of Kleenex on her desk.
Sam took some tissues. She wiped her eyes. She blew her nose. She watched Judith Pinkman cradle her hand behind Lucy’s head. She tried in vain to staunch the wound that had opened the little girl’s neck. Blood seeped through her fingers as if she had squeezed a sponge. The woman was clearly sobbing, wailing from grief.
Charlie came out of nowhere, leaping into the frame.
She was running up the hallway, toward the camera, toward Lucy and Mrs. Pinkman. The expression on her face was one of complete panic. She barely gave Douglas Pinkman more than a glance. Her knees hit the floor. She was sideways to the camera, her face clearly visible. She clutched Lucy Alexander’s hand. She spoke to the girl. She rocked back and forth as she tried to soothe both of them.
Sam had seen Charlie rock this way only once before.
“That’s Mason,” Lenore said. She blew her nose loudly.
Mason Huckabee had his back to the camera. He was clearly talking to Kelly, trying to coax away the gun. The girl was still seated, but she had slid farther down the hallway. Sam could no longer see her face. The only visible parts of Kelly’s body were her right leg and the hand that held the revolver.
The butt of the weapon rested on the floor.
Mason went down to his knees. He leaned forward. His arm went out, palm open. He inched toward Kelly. Slowly, slowly. Sam could only imagine what he was saying. Give me the gun. Just hand it to me. You don’t have to do this.
Mason knew Kelly Wilson, had been her teacher, her tutor. He would know that she could be talked down.
On screen, he kept moving closer, and closer until, without warning, Kelly raised the gun out of the frame.
Sam’s stomach lurched.
Mason backed up quickly, putting distance between himself and Kelly.
“She turned the gun on herself,” Lenore said. “That’s why his hands are down instead of up.”
Sam’s gaze found Charlie again. She was beside Lucy, opposite Mrs. Pinkman. The older woman was looking up at the ceiling, eyes closed, clearly praying. Charlie sat cross-legged on the floor. Her hands were in her lap. She was rubbing together her fingers, staring at the blood as if she had never seen anything like it before.
Or perhaps she was thinking that she had seen something exactly like it before.
Charlie’s head slowly turned. She looked off camera. A shotgun slid across the floor, stopping a few feet away. Charlie did not move. Another second passed. The shotgun was scooped up by a policeman. He ran down the hall. His bulletproof vest flapped at his waist. He dropped to one knee and jammed the butt of the shotgun into his shoulder.
The weapon was pointed at Mason Huckabee, not Kelly Wilson.
Mason was on his knees, his back to Kelly, blocking the man’s shot.
All of this seemed lost on Charlie. She was looking back down at her hands, seemingly mesmerized by the blood. Her rocking had become less pronounced, more of a vibration moving through the body.
Lenore whispered, “My poor baby.”
Sam had to look away from Charlie. She found Mason still on his knees. Now, his back was to Kelly Wilson. The shotgun was pointed at his chest.
The shotgun was pointed at his chest.
Sam’s eyes skipped back to Charlie. She had not moved. She was still rocking. She looked to be in some type of fugue state. She did not seem to notice when a second police officer ran past her.
Sam followed the cop’s quick progress down the hall. As with the other officer, his back was to the camera, but Sam could see the gun in his hand. He came to a stop a few feet away from the other cop with a shotgun.
Shotgun and revolver.
Revolver and shotgun.
Mason Huckabee had extended his hand toward Kelly, reaching over his left shoulder, offering his palm. He was talking to her, most likely still trying to coax the gun away.
The cops shook their weapons. Their stances were aggressive. Sam did not need to see their faces to know that they were shouting orders.
In contrast, Mason was calm, collected. His mouth moved slowly. His movements were almost cat-like.
Sam’s gaze returned to Charlie just as she looked up. The expression on her face was heartbreaking. Sam wanted to climb into the film and hold her.
“She moved back,” Lenore said.
She meant Kelly. The girl was almost out of frame now. Only a patch of black from her jeans indicated Kelly was still there. Mason had moved back with her. His head, his left shoulder and left hand were completely gone. The angle of the camera had cut a diagonal line across his torso.
The cops did not move.
Mason did not move.
There was a puff of smoke from the cop’s gun.
Mason’s right arm recoiled.
The cop had shot him.
“Oh my God,” Sam said. She could not see Mason’s face, but his torso had only slightly twisted.
The cops appeared to be as surprised as Sam. They did not move, not for several more seconds, before slowly, they both lowered their weapons. They spoke to one another. The man with the shotgun unclipped the radio mic from his shoulder. The other turned around in the hall, looked at Charlie, then turned back.
He extended his hand to Mason.
Mason stood up. The second cop walked in the direction of Kelly Wilson.
Suddenly, the girl appeared on screen, face down, the cop’s knee in her back. She had been tossed over like a sack.
Sam looked for the murder weapon.
Not in Kelly’s hands or on her person.
Not on the floor near Kelly.
Not in the hands of the cop who had his knee in her back.
Mason Huckabee was standing, empty hands at his sides, talking to the cop with the shotgun. Blood had turned his shirtsleeve almost black. He was talking to the cop as if they were discussing a bad call at a sporting event.
Sam scanned the ground at their feet.
Nothing.
No lockers had been cracked open.
None of the cops appeared to have tucked the revolver into the waistband of their pants.
No one had kicked the weapon across the floor.
No one had reached up to secrete it behind a ceiling tile.
Sam returned to Charlie. Her hands were empty. She still sat cross-legged on the floor, still looked dazed. Her head was turned away from the men. Sam noticed that a patch of blood swiped her cheek. She must have touched her face.
Her nose was not yet broken. Bruises did not encircle her eyes.
Charlie didn’t seem to register the group of cops rushing down the hall. Their weapons were drawn. Their vests flapped open.
The monitor went black.
Sam stared at the blank screen for a few seconds more, even though there was nothing to see.
Lenore let out a long stream of breath.
Sam asked the only question that mattered. “Is Charlie okay?”
Lenore’s lips pursed. “There was a time when I could tell you everything about her.”
“But now?”
“A lot has changed in the last few years.”
Rusty’s heart attacks. Had Charlie been shaken by the sudden prospect of Rusty’s death? It would be just like her to hide her fear, or to find self-destructive ways to take her mind off of it. Like sleeping with Mason Huckabee. Like alienating herself from Ben.
“You should eat,” Lenore said. “I’ll make you a sandwich.”
“Thank you, but I’m not hungry,” Sam said. “I need a place to make some notes for Dad.”
“Use his office.” Lenore took a key from her purse. She slid it over to Sam. “I’m going to transcribe this video, make sure we haven’t missed anything. I want to pull that so-called re-enactment from the news, too. I’m not sure where they’re getting their information about the sequence, especially the gunshots, but they’re wrong, based on this video.”
Sam said, “In court, Coin indicated there was audio.”
“He didn’t correct Lyman,” Lenore said. “My guess is there’s an alternate source. The school can barely afford its electric bill. The cameras are probably decades old. They wouldn’t pay to wire them for sound.”
“A useless endeavor, considering the number of children who are typically in the hallway. Isolating one voice from the din would be challenging.” She guessed, “A cell phone, maybe?”
“Maybe.” Lenore shrugged as she returned to her computer. “Rusty will figure it out.”
Sam looked down at the key on Lenore’s desk. The last thing she wanted to do was sit in Rusty’s office. Her father had been a hoarder before television popularized the disorder. She imagined there were boxes at the farmhouse that had not been unpacked since Gamma had brought them home from the thrift store.
Gamma.
Charlie had said that the photo—the photo of Gamma—was on Rusty’s desk.
Sam walked back to her father’s office. She could only get the door partway open before it caught against a pile of debris. The room was large, but the clutter brought down the scale. Boxes, papers and files overflowed from almost every surface. Only a narrow path to the desk indicated anyone ever used the space. The stagnant air inside made Sam cough. She reached for the lights, then thought better of it. Her headache had only slightly receded since taking off her glasses in court.
Sam left her cane by the door. She carefully picked her way toward Rusty’s desk, imagining that a virtual stroll through her father’s convoluted brain would not be dissimilar. How on earth he managed to work in here was a mystery. She turned on the desk lamp. She opened the blinds to the filthy, barred window. Sam supposed the flat surface provided by a stack of depositions served as his writing table. There was no computer. A clock radio Gamma had given him when Sam was a child was the only acknowledgment of modernity.
The desk was walnut, a large expanse that Sam recalled had a green leather blotter. It was probably as pristine as the day it was made, preserved under piles of rubbish. She tested the sturdiness of Rusty’s chair. The thing listed to the side because he was an inveterate leaner. When Sam thought of her father seated, he was always propped on his right elbow, cigarette in his hand.
Sam sat in Rusty’s unsteady chair. The squeal from the height actuator assembly was loud and completely unnecessary. A simple can of spray lubricant could eradicate the noise. The arms could be tightened down with some Loctite on the bolts. Replacing the friction rings on the casters would probably improve the stability.
Or the fool could go online and order a new chair from Amazon.
Sam moved around papers and stacks of transcripts as she searched for the photo of Gamma. She wanted to slide the flotsam off the desktop, but she was sure that Rusty had a system to his madness. Not that Sam would ever let her desk get like this, but if anyone moved around her things, she would kill them.
Sam checked the top of the cluttered credenza, which held, among many other things, a pack of unopened yellow legal pads. She broke open the pack. She found her notes in her purse. She changed out her glasses. She wrote Kelly Wilson’s name at the top of the yellow pad. She added the date. She made a list of items for Rusty to follow up on.
- Pregnancy test
- Paternity: Adam Humphrey? Frank Alexander?
- Hospital video; security footage (audio?)
- Why was Kelly at middle school? (victims were random)
- List of tutors/teachers/class schedules
- Judith Pinkman–?
Sam traced the letters of the woman’s name.
During Sam’s tenure at the middle school, the main floor outside the front office had been designated for the English department. Judith Pinkman was an English teacher, so that would explain why she was there when the shooting began.
Sam considered the security footage.
Mrs. Pinkman had appeared in the hallway after Lucy was shot in the neck. Sam believed less than three seconds passed from the time that the little girl was on her back, on the floor, and the time Judith Pinkman appeared at the end of the hallway.
Five gunshots. One in the wall. Three in Douglas Pinkman. One in Lucy.
If the revolver held six bullets, then why didn’t Kelly use the last shot on Judith Pinkman?
“I think she was pregnant.” Charlie was standing in the doorway, a plate with a sandwich in one hand, a bottle of Coke in the other.
Sam turned over her notes. She tried to keep her expression composed lest she give herself away. “What?”
“Back in middle school when all of that shit talk was going on. I think Kelly was pregnant.”
Sam had a momentary sense of relief, but then she realized what her sister was saying. “Why do you think that?”
“I got it off Facebook. I’ve friended one of the girls from the school.”
“Charlie.”
“It’s a fake account.” Charlie put the plate on the desk in front of Sam. “This girl, Mindy Zowada, she’s one of the bitches who was nasty in the yearbook. I prodded her a little, said that I’d heard some rumors that Kelly was loose in middle school. It took her about two seconds to spill that Kelly had an abortion when she was thirteen. Or, ‘a abortion’ as Mindy said.”
Sam leaned her head against her hand. This information shed new light on Kelly Wilson. If the girl had been pregnant before, then surely she recognized the symptoms now. So why hadn’t she told Sam? Was she playing dumb to gain Sam’s sympathy? Could anything she’d said be trusted?
“Hey,” Charlie said. “I tell you Kelly Wilson’s deep, dark secret and all I get is a blank stare?”
“Sorry.” Sam sat up in the chair. “Did you watch the video?”
Charlie didn’t answer, but she knew about the audio problem. “I’m not sure about the cell phone theory. The sound would have to come from somewhere else. There’s a lockdown procedure in case of an active shooter. The teachers do practice drills once a year. Everyone would’ve been in their rooms, doors shut. If someone made a call to 9-1-1, they wouldn’t pick up the conversation in the hallway.”
“Judith Pinkman didn’t follow procedure,” Sam said. “She ran into the hall after Lucy was shot.” Sam turned over her pad and kept it angled away from Charlie as she added this to her notes. “She didn’t run to her husband, either. She ran straight to Lucy.”
“It was clear that he was gone.” Charlie indicated the side of her face. Douglas Pinkman’s jaw had been shot off almost completely. There had been a bullet hole in his eye cavity.
Sam asked, “So, was Coin lying when he let us believe there was audio of Kelly asking about ‘the Baby’?”
“He’s a liar, and I’m given to believe that liars always lie.” Charlie seemed to think about it for a bit longer. “The cop could’ve told Coin. He was standing right there in the hallway when Kelly said whatever she said. It really affected him. He got angrier than before, and he was pretty fucking angry before.”
Sam finished her notes. “Makes sense.”
Charlie asked, “What about the murder weapon?”
“What about it?”
Charlie leaned back against a chair-shaped pile of junk. She picked at a string on her blue jeans, the same one she had picked at this morning.
Sam took a bite of the sandwich. She glanced out the dirty window. This day had been an exhaustively drawn-out one, and the sun had only now begun to set.
Sam pointed to the Coke. “Can I have some?”
Charlie unscrewed the cap. She set the bottle on top of Sam’s overturned notes. “Are you going to tell Dad about Huck and the gun?”
“Why does it matter to you?”
Charlie did the half-shrug thing.
Sam asked, “What’s going on between you and Ben?”
“Undetermined.”
Sam washed down the peanut butter with a mouthful of Coke. Now would be the time to tell Charlie about Anton. To explain that she knew how marriages worked, understood the petty grievances that could build up. She should tell Charlie that it didn’t matter. That if you loved someone, you should do everything you could to make it work because the person you adored more than anyone else in the world could complain of a sore throat one day and be dead the next.
Instead, she told her sister, “You need to make things right with Ben.”
“I wonder,” Charlie said, “how often you would speak if you eradicated the words ‘you need’ from your vocabulary.”
Sam was too tired to argue a losing point. She took another bite of sandwich. She chewed slowly. “I was looking for the picture of Gamma.”
“It’s on his desk at home.”
That fixed it. Sam was not going to the farmhouse.
“There’s this.” Charlie used her thumb and two fingers to edge a paperback out from under a file box, Jenga-style, without toppling the papers on top.
She handed the book to Sam.
Sam read the title aloud. “‘Weather Prediction by Numerical Process.’” The book appeared ancient but well-read. Sam thumbed through the pages. Pencil markings highlighted paragraphs. The text appeared to be as advertised; a guide to predicting the weather based on a specific algorithm that incorporated barometric pressure, temperature and humidity. “Whose calculus is this?”
“I was thirteen,” Charlie said.
“You weren’t a moron.” Sam corrected one of the equations. “At least, I didn’t think you were.”
“It was Gamma’s.”
Sam’s pen stopped.
“She ordered the book before she died. It came a month after,” Charlie said. “There’s an old weather tower behind the farm.”
“Is there really?” Sam had almost drowned in the stream underneath the tower because she was too weak to lift her head from the water.
“Anyway,” Charlie said. “Rusty and I were going to fix up the instruments on the weather tower to surprise Gamma. We thought she’d get a kick out of tracking the data. NOAA calls it being a citizen scientist. There are thousands of people around the country who track for them, but computers take care of the reporting now. I guess the book proves she was one step ahead of us. As usual.”
Sam flipped through the charts and arcane algorithms. “You know that this is physically unrealistic. The atmosphere has a delicate dynamical balance between the fields of mass and motion.”
“Yes, Samantha, everyone knows that.” Charlie explained, “Dad and I worked on the calculations together. We’d get the data from the weather equipment every morning, then plug it into the algorithm and predict the weather for the next day. Or at least, we tried to. It made us feel closer to her.”
“She would’ve liked that.”
“She would’ve been furious that I couldn’t do the calculus.”
Sam shrugged, because it was true.
She slowly paged through the book, not really paying attention to the words. She thought of Charlie when she was little, the way she would work at the kitchen table with her head bent, tongue between her lips, as she did her homework. She always hummed when she did her math. She whistled when she did art projects. Sometimes, she sang aloud lines that she read in books, but only if she thought she was alone. Sam would often hear her low, operatic warbling through the thin wall dividing their rooms. “‘Be worthy, love, and love will come!’” or “‘As God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again!’”
What had happened to that humming, whistling, singing Charlie?
Gamma’s death, Sam’s injury, had understandably quelled some of that joy, but Sam had seen that gleeful spark in Charlie when they were together that last time in New York. She was making jokes, teasing Ben, humming and singing and generally entertaining herself with her own noise. Her behavior back then reminded Sam of the way she would sometimes find Fosco alone in a room, purring to himself for his own pleasure.
So who was this profoundly unhappy woman that her sister had turned into?
Charlie was picking at the string on her pants again. She sniffed. She touched her fingers to her nose. “Jesus Christ. I’m bleeding again.” She continued sniffing to no avail. “Do you have any tissue?”
Kelly Wilson had depleted Sam’s supply. She looked around Rusty’s office. She opened the desk drawers.
Charlie sniffed again. “Dad’s not going to have Kleenex.”
Sam found a roll of toilet paper in the bottom drawer. She handed it to Charlie, saying, “You should get your nose set before it’s too late. Weren’t you in a hospital all night?”
Charlie dabbed at the blood. “It really hurts.”
“Are you going to tell me who hit you?”
Charlie looked up from examining the bloody toilet paper. “In the scheme of things, it’s not a big deal, but somehow, it’s grown into this thing and I really don’t want to tell you.”
“Fair enough.” Sam glanced down into the drawer. There was an empty wire frame for files. Rusty had thrown a stack of letters on top of a dog-eared copy of a three-year-old volume of Georgia Court Rules and Procedures. Sam was about to close the drawer when she saw the return address on one of the envelopes.
Handwritten.
Angry, precise letters.
GEORGIA DIAGNOSTIC
& CLASSIFICATION PRISON
PO BOX 3877
JACKSON, GA 30233
Sam froze.
The Georgia D&C.
Death-row inmates were housed at the facility.
“What’s wrong?” Charlie asked. “Did you find something dead?”
Sam could not see the name above the address. Another envelope obscured the inmate’s personal information, except for one half of the first letter.
Sam could see a curved line, possibly part of an O, possibly a hastily written I, or perhaps the edge of a capital letter C.
The rest of the name was covered by a bulk mailer advertising Christmas wreaths.
“Please don’t tell me it’s porn.” Charlie walked around the desk. She stared down into the drawer.
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.”