The Good Daughter (The Good Daughter #1) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,183

that your parents had money. Back in 1989, no one else in Pikeville had that kind of wealth and especially that kind of reach. They traded your freedom for one million dollars. That would’ve been a lot back then. More than Culpepper would ever see in his abbreviated lifetime. He bargained away his dead brother for his unborn son.”

Mason looked up at her. He slowly nodded.

Sam asked, “What was my father’s part in this? Did he set up the deal between you and Culpepper?”

“No.”

“Then, what?” Sam demanded.

Mason rolled to his side. He pushed himself up. He sat with his back toward the door. The masking tape Rusty had used on the window made a sort of lightning bolt above his head. “I didn’t know about any of it.”

Ben glowered at Mason. “You’re gonna rot in hell for dragging Rusty into your bullshit.”

“It wasn’t Rusty. Not at first.” Mason winced as he touched his jaw. “My parents set up the arrangement. The night it happened, I walked home. Six miles. Zach took my shoes, my jeans, because they had his blood on them. I was half-naked, covered in blood, by the time I got home. I confessed to both of them. I wanted to go to the police. They wouldn’t let me. I found out later they sent a lawyer to talk to Zach.”

“Rusty,” Ben said.

“No, someone from Atlanta. I don’t know who.” Mason worked his jaw. The joint popped. “They left me out of it. I had no choice.”

Sam said, “You were a seventeen-year-old man. I’m certain you had a car. You could’ve gone to the police on your own, or waited until you turned eighteen.”

“I wanted to,” Mason insisted. “They locked me in my room. Four guys came. They drove me to a military academy up north. I joined the Marines as soon as I was old enough.” He wiped blood out of his eye. “I was in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia. I kept volunteering. I wanted to earn it, you know? I wanted to use my life to help other people. To redeem myself.”

Charlie bit her lip so hard that she felt the skin start to open. There was no redemption, no matter how many countries he had pinned on his stupid world map.

Mason said, “I put in my twenty years. I moved back home. I went to school. I thought it was important to give back here, in this town, to these people.”

“You bastard.” Ben stood up. His hands were still clenched. He walked down the hall. Charlie was afraid that he was going to continue out the back door, but he stopped at Mason’s iPhone. He slammed his heel into the glass, breaking it into tiny pieces.

Ben lifted his shoe. Glass clinked down from the sole. He said, “Daniel Culpepper was murdered because of you.”

“I know,” Mason said, but he was wrong.

Charlie was the one who unleashed Ken Coin on Daniel.

She told Mason, “He called you brother.”

Mason shook his head. “He called a lot of people brother. It’s just something guys do.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Ben said. “Neither one of them should have been here in the first place. Whatever happened after that is on them.”

“It is,” Mason agreed. “It’s on me. All of it’s on me.”

Sam asked, “How did your clothes and your gun end up at Daniel’s trailer?”

Again, Mason shook his head, but it wasn’t hard to come up with the answer. Ken Coin had planted the evidence. He had framed an innocent man and let a guilty one go free.

Mason said, “My mom told me about the arrangement after my dad died. I was stationed in Turkey, trying to do right by people. I came home for the funeral. She was worried something would happen and Zach would renege on his part of the deal.”

Sam said, “To be clear, the deal was that Zach would keep silent about Daniel’s innocence—and your guilt—in exchange for two thousand dollars a month to be paid by your parents to his son, Danny Culpepper?”

Mason nodded. “I didn’t know. Not until my mother told me. Eight years had gone by. Culpepper was still on death row. He kept getting out of his execution dates.”

Charlie clenched her jaw. Eight years after the murder. Eight years after Sam clawed out of her grave. Eight years after Charlie was ripped apart.

Sam had been starting her master’s at Northwestern. Charlie was applying to law school, praying that she could make a fresh start.

Sam asked, “How did my father get roped into this?”

“I went to