The Good Daughter (The Good Daughter #1) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,106

Charlie would do for a client, and yet, her tone had an edge of deception.

Charlie said, “We were in his room when we heard gunfire, and then we heard a woman screaming for help, so I ran to help.”

“Who was the woman?”

“Miss Heller, if you can believe it. She was with the little girl by the time I got there. We watched her die. Lucy Alexander. I held her hand. It was cold. Not when I got there, but when she died. You know how quickly they turn cold.”

Sam did.

“So.” Charlie took a breath and held it for a moment. “Huck got the gun away from Kelly—a revolver. He talked her into giving it to him.”

For no reason, Sam felt the fine hairs on the back of her neck straighten. “Who’s Huck?”

“Mr. Huckabee. He was the teacher I was seeing. For the client. He taught Kelly—”

“Mason Huckabee?”

“I didn’t catch his first name. Why?”

Sam could feel a shaking sensation churn through her body. “What does he look like?”

Charlie shook her head, oblivious. “Does it matter?”

“He’s about your height, sandy brown hair, a little older than me, grew up in Pikeville?” Sam could tell from her sister’s expression that she was correct. “Oh, Charlie. Stay away from him. Don’t you know?”

“Know what?”

“Mason’s sister was Mary-Lynne Huckabee. She was raped by that guy—what was his name?” Sam tried to remember. “Somebody Mitchell from Bridge Gap. Kevin Mitchell?”

Charlie kept shaking her head. “Why does everyone know this but me?”

“He raped her, and she hanged herself in the barn, and Dad got him off.”

Charlie’s shocked expression revealed a sudden awareness. “He told me to call Dad. Huck, Mason, whatever he’s called. When Kelly was arrested, the police were being, well, the police. And Huck told me to call Dad to represent Kelly.”

“I guess Mason Huckabee knows what kind of lawyer Rusty is.”

Charlie looked visibly shaken. “I had forgotten about that case. His sister was in college.”

“She was home for summer break. She drove down to Bridge Gap with friends to see a movie. She went to the bathroom, and Kevin Mitchell attacked her.”

Charlie looked down at her hands. “I saw the pictures in Daddy’s files.”

Sam had seen them, too. “Did Mason recognize you? I mean, when you asked him for help with your juvenile offender?”

“We didn’t talk much.” Again, she gave a half-shrug. “A lot was going on. It happened really fast.”

“I’m sorry that you had to see that. The little girl. With Miss Heller there, it must have brought back memories.”

Charlie kept staring down at her hands, one thumb rubbing the joint of the other. “It was hard.”

“I’m glad you have Ben to lean on.” Sam waited for her to say something about Ben, to explain the awkward moment between them.

Charlie kept working the joint of her thumb. “That was funny, what you said to Dad, about another hole in your head.”

Sam studied her sister. Charlie was a master at skirting around a topic. “I’m not usually given to crude language, but it seemed to sum up the mood.”

“You sound so much like her. Look like her. Even stand like her.” Charlie’s voice got softer. “I felt this weird kind of thing in my chest when I saw you in the hall. For a split second, I thought you were Gamma.”

“I do that sometimes,” Sam admitted. “I’ll see myself in the mirror and—” There was a reason she did not often look in the mirror. “I’m her age now.”

“Oh, yeah. Happy birthday.”

“Thanks.”

Still, Charlie did not look up. She kept wringing her hands.

Their adult selves might very well be strangers, but there were certain things that age, no matter how cunning, could not wear away. The slope to Charlie’s shoulders. The softness in her voice. The quiver in her lip as she fought back emotion. Her nose had been broken. There were bruises under her eyes. The easiness she had shared with Ben had become noticeably discordant. She was plainly hiding something, perhaps a lot of somethings, but just as plainly she had her reasons.

Yesterday morning, Charlie had held a dying little girl, and before midnight, she had learned that her father might die—not for the first time, undoubtedly not the last time—but this time, this one time in particular, she had gotten Ben to email Sam.

Charlie had not asked Sam here to help make a decision that she had already made once before.

And Charlie had not reached out to Sam directly, because even as a child, she was always asking for things that she