The Good Daughter (The Good Daughter #1) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,118

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