The Good Daughter (The Good Daughter #1) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,110

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