The Good Daughter (The Good Daughter #1) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,102

Even the great man you see before you is not infallible. I’d value your input as a colleague.”

His flattery only annoyed her. “Do mass shootings fall under the purview of intellectual property?” she asked. “Or have you forgotten the kind of law that I practice?”

Rusty winked at her. “The Portland district attorney’s office was a hotbed of patent infringement, was it?”

“Portland was a long time ago.”

“And now you’re too busy helping Bullshit, Incorporated, sue Bullshit, Limited, over some bullshit?”

“Everyone is entitled to their own bullshit.” Sam did not let him move her off the point. “I’m not the sort of lawyer Kelly Wilson needs. Not anymore. Actually, not ever. I could be of more service to the prosecution, because that’s the side on which I have always stood.”

“Prosecution, defense—what matters is understanding the beats of a courtroom, and you’ve got that in your blood.” Rusty pushed himself up again. He coughed into his hand. “Honey, I know you came all the way down here expecting to find me on my deathbed, and I promise you, on my life, that it’ll get to that point eventually, but for now, I’m gonna say something to you that I have never said to you in your forty-four beautiful years on this earth: I need you to do this for me.”

Sam shook her head, more out of frustration than disagreement. She did not want to be here. Her brain was exhausted. She could hear the sibilant slithering out of her mouth like a snake.

She said, “I’m going to leave.”

“Sure, but tomorrow,” Rusty said. “Baby, no one else is going to take care of Kelly Wilson. She’s alone in the world. Her parents don’t have the capacity to understand the trouble that she’s in. She cannot help herself. She cannot aid in her own defense, and no one cares. Not the police. Not the investigators. Not Ken Coin.” Rusty reached out to Sam. His nicotine-stained fingertips brushed the sleeve of her blouse. “They’re going to kill her. They are going to jam a needle in her arm, and they are going to end that eighteen-year-old girl’s life.”

Sam said, “Her life was over the minute she decided to take a loaded gun to school and murder two people.”

“Samantha, I do not disagree with you,” Rusty said. “But, please, will you just listen to the girl? Give her a chance to be heard. Be her voice. With me laid up like this, you’re the only person on earth I trust to serve as her counsel.”

Sam closed her eyes. Her head was throbbing. The sound of machines grated. The lights overhead were too intense.

“Talk to her,” Rusty begged. “I mean it when I say that I trust you to be her counsel. If you don’t agree with the not-guilty plea, then go into the arraignment and throw down a flag for diminished capacity. That, at least, we can all agree on.”

Charlie said, “That’s a false choice, Sam. Either way, he gets you in court.”

“Yes, Charlie, I am familiar with rhetological fallacies.” Sam’s stomach churned. She had not eaten in fifteen hours. She had not slept for longer than that. She was slurring her words—that is, when she could speak in complete sentences. She could not move without her cane. She felt angry, really angry, like she had not felt in years. And she was listening to Rusty as if he was her father rather than a man who would do anything, sacrifice anyone, for a client.

Even his family.

She picked up her purse from the floor.

Charlie asked, “Where are you going?”

“Home,” Sam said. “I need this shit like I need another hole in my head.”

Rusty’s bark of laughter followed her out the door.

9

Sam sat on a wooden bench in a large garden behind the hospital building. She took off her glasses. She closed her eyes. She tilted her face toward the sun. She breathed in the fresh air. The bench was in a walled-off area, a water fountain trickling by the gated entrance, a sign reading SERENITY GARDEN – ALL WELCOME mounted directly above another sign showing a cell phone with a red line through it.

Apparently, the second sign was enough to keep the garden empty. Sam alone sat in serenity. Or at least in an attempt to regain her serenity.

A mere thirty-six minutes had passed between Stanislav abandoning her at the front doors and Sam abandoning Rusty in his room. Another thirty minutes had passed since she had found the Serenity Garden. Sam had no qualms about interrupting