The Good Daughter (The Good Daughter #1) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,120

ma’am. She was sitting there across from Mrs. Pinkman looking at her hands.”

“Are you sure she didn’t hurt anybody?” Sam made her voice firm. “This is very important, Kelly. You need to tell me if the woman in the Devils shirt hurt anyone.”

“Well.” Kelly studied Sam’s face, looking for cues. “I don’t know if she did, on account of I was sitting.”

Very slowly, Sam began to nod again. “I think you saw the Devils woman hurt someone, even though you were sitting down. The evidence shows that you saw her, Kelly. There’s no point in lying.”

Kelly’s uncertainty returned. “I don’t mean to lie to you. I know you’re trying to help me.”

Sam made her voice firm. “Then admit the truth. You saw the woman in the Devils shirt hurt someone.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Kelly nodded, too. “Now that I think on it, maybe she hurt somebody.”

“Did she hurt you?”

Kelly hesitated. She searched Sam’s expression for guidance. “Maybe?”

“I can’t use ‘maybe’ to help you, Kelly.” Sam tried again, declaring, “You saw the woman in the blue Devils shirt hurt someone else who was in the hallway.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Kelly seemed more sure of herself now. She kept nodding her head, as if the motion informed her thinking. “That’s what I saw.”

Sam asked, “Did the Devils woman hurt Mrs. Pinkman?” She leaned forward. “Because Mrs. Pinkman was right there, Kelly. You told me as much not a few seconds ago. Do you think the Devils woman could have hurt Mrs. Pinkman?”

“I think so.” Kelly continued to nod, because that was part of the pattern. She denied the statement, then she allowed that the statement might be true, then she accepted the statement as fact. All that Sam had to do was speak authoritatively, tell the girl the answer, nod a few times, then wait for the lie to be regurgitated back to her.

Sam said, “According to eye witnesses, Kelly, you saw exactly what the Devils woman did.”

“Okay,” Kelly said. “That’s what I seen happen. That she hurt her.”

“How did the Devils woman hurt Mrs. Pinkman?” Sam waved her hands in the air, trying to think of examples. “Did she kick her? Did she punch her?”

“She slapped her with her hand.”

Sam looked at the hand she had waved in the air, certain the motion had put the idea in Kelly’s head. “You’re sure you saw the Devils woman slap Mrs. Pinkman?”

“Yes, ma’am, it happened like you said. She slapped her across the face, and I could hear the noise all the way to where I was sitting in the hall.”

Sam realized the enormity of the lie. Without thinking, she had implicated her own sister in assault. “So, what you’re saying is that you saw with your own eyes when the Devils woman slapped Mrs. Pinkman across the face?”

Kelly continued to nod. There were tears in her eyes. She clearly wanted to please Sam, as if pleasing her would somehow unlock the secret to getting her out of this living night-mare.

Kelly whispered, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right.” Sam didn’t push her further, because the exercise had proven her point. Given the right kind of leading question, the right tone, Kelly Wilson probably would have said Charlie murdered Judith Pinkman with her own hands.

The girl was so suggestible, she could have been hypnotized.

Sam checked her phone. Ninety seconds remained, plus the one-minute buffer. “Did the police talk to you yesterday before Mr. Rusty did?”

“Yes, ma’am. They talked to me at the hospital.”

“Did they read you your Miranda rights before they spoke with you?” Sam could tell she did not understand. “Did they say, ‘You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to counsel’. Did they say any of that to you?”

“No, ma’am, not in the hospital, because I would’a remembered that from the TV.”

Sam leaned across the table again. “Kelly, this is very important. Did you say anything to the police before you talked to my father?”

“This one older fella, he kept talking to me. He rode with me in the ambulance to the hospital, and then he stayed in my room to make sure I was okay.”

Sam doubted the man was concerned about her well-being. “Did you answer any of his questions? Did he interrogate you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Were you handcuffed when he talked to you?”

“I ain’t sure. In the ambulance, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Well, no, not then. Not that I remember.”

“Do you remember exactly when you were handcuffed?”

“It was at some point.”

Sam wanted to throw her pen across the room. “Kelly, it’s very important that you try