The Good Daughter (The Good Daughter #1) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,176

head. She dropped the picture back on the file. “That’s not the photo he meant. Remember, he said there was a different one that he kept from us.” She started moving around papers again, checking behind manuscript boxes and bound depositions. She seemed distressed. The picture was obviously important on its own, but this was also one of the last things that Rusty had spoken to Sam about.

Charlie took off her shoes so she didn’t catch the heels on something and break her neck. The next year of her life was going to be wasted going through all of this shit. She might as well start now.

She hefted away some boxes from a shaky folding table. A row of unaccompanied red checkers spilled onto the floor. They managed to hit a pristine piece of bare hardwood. The sound was like jacks scattering.

She asked Sam, “Do you think he’d keep it in his filing cabinets?”

Sam looked wary. There were five wooden filing cabinets, all with heavy bar locks on them. “Can we find the keys in this mess?”

“He probably had them on him when they took him to the hospital.”

“Which means they’re in evidence.”

“And we don’t know anyone at the DA’s office who could help us because my husband apparently told them all to fuck off.” She thought of Kaylee Collins, and silently added, Maybe not all of them.

She asked Sam, “Dad was sure that you and I have never seen this picture before?”

“I told you this already. He said that he kept it to himself. That it captured the moment that he and Gamma fell in love.”

Charlie felt the poignancy of her father’s remark. His language had always been so annoyingly baroque that she had sometimes lost sight of the meaning. “He did love her,” she told Sam.

“I know,” she said. “I let myself forget that he lost her, too.”

Charlie looked out the window. She had cried enough to last the rest of her life.

Sam said, “I can’t leave without finding it.”

“He could’ve been making it up,” Charlie said. “You know how he loved to spin stories.”

“He wouldn’t lie about this.”

Charlie kept her mouth shut. She wasn’t so sure about that.

Ben asked, “Did you check the safe?” He was standing in the hall with a bunch of colored cables looped over his shoulders.

Charlie rubbed her eyes. “When did Dad get a safe?”

“When he figured out that you and Sam were reading everything he brought home.” He pushed away a pile of boxes with his foot, revealing a floor safe that came up to the middle of his thigh. “Do you know the combination?”

“I didn’t know he had a safe,” Charlie reminded him. “Why would I know the combination?”

Sam knelt down. She studied the dial. “It would be a set of numbers that are relevant to Dad.”

“What’s the price on a carton of Camels?”

“I’ve got an idea.” Sam spun the dial a few times. She stopped at the number two, then turned back to the number eight, then back to seventy-six.

Charlie’s birthday.

Sam tried the handle.

The safe did not open.

Charlie said, “Try your birthday.”

Sam spun the dial again, stopping at the correct numbers. She pulled on the handle. “Nope.”

“Gamma’s birthday,” Ben suggested.

Sam entered the numbers. No luck. She shook her head, as if she had figured out the obvious. “Rusty’s birthday.”

She worked the dial quickly, entering Rusty’s date of birth.

She tried the handle.

Again, nothing.

Sam looked at Ben. “Your birthday’s next.”

Charlie said, “Try 3-16-89.”

The day the Culpeppers had shown up at the kitchen door.

Sam let out a slow breath. She turned back around. She spun the dial right, then left, then right again. She rested her fingers on the handle. She looked up at Charlie. She tried the handle.

The safe opened.

Charlie knelt down behind Sam. The safe was packed tight, just like everything else in Rusty’s life. At first, all she smelled was musty old papers, but then there was something else, almost like a woman’s perfume.

Sam whispered, “I think that’s Mama’s soap.”

“Rose Petal Delight,” Charlie recalled. Gamma bought it at the drug store. Her only vanity.

“I think it’s coming from these.” Sam had to use both hands to extricate a stack of envelopes wedged against the top.

They were tied with a red ribbon.

Sam smelled the letters. She closed her eyes like a cat purring in the sun. Her smile was beatific. “It’s her.”

Charlie smelled the envelopes, too. She nodded. The scent was faint, but it was Gamma’s.

“Look.” Sam pointed to the address, which was made out to Rusty, care of the University