The Good Daughter (The Good Daughter #1) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,189

hallway. They’re on in the classroom. Absent a third light source, shadows would be cast backward from the door, not to the front.”

“Okay, yeah.” Ben started to nod. “I thought it was coming out of the open door, but it looks like it’s pointing in.”

“Correct,” Sam said. She had always been good at puzzles. This time, she had apparently figured out the solution before Charlie even understood there was a puzzle to be solved.

“I can’t see anything,” Charlie admitted. “Can’t you just tell me?”

Sam said, “I think it’s better if you both independently validate my suspicion.”

Charlie wanted to throw her out the window like a sack of bullshit. “Do you really think this is the time for the Socratic method?”

“Sherlock or Socrates. Pick one and stay with it.” Sam asked Ben, “Can you correct for color?”

“I think so.” Ben opened another program on his laptop, a purloined copy of Photoshop he’d used to insert Captain Kirk into their Christmas cards two years ago. “Let me see if I remember how to do this.”

Charlie crossed her arms, making sure Sam knew she was displeased, but Sam was watching Ben too closely to take notice.

There was more tapping, more tracking, and then the colors on the screen were saturated, almost too much. The blacks were up so far that gray spots bubbled through the midnight fields.

Charlie suggested, “Use the blue on the lockers as a color guide. They’re close to the same blue as Dad’s funeral suit.”

Ben opened the color chart. He clicked on random squares.

“That’s it,” Charlie said. “That’s the blue.”

“I can clean it up more.” He sharpened the pixels. Smoothed out the edges. Finally, he zoomed in as close as he could without distorting the image into nothing.

“Holy shit,” Charlie said. She finally got it.

Not a leg, but an arm.

Not one arm, but two.

One black. One red.

A sexual cannibal. A slash of red. A venomous bite.

They had not found Rusty’s unicorn.

They had found a black widow.

Charlie sat in Ben’s truck, hands sweaty on the wheel. She looked at the time on the radio: 5:06 PM. Rusty’s funeral would be winding down by now. The drunks at Shady Ray’s would be spent of their stories. The stragglers, the sightseers, the hypocrites, would be whispering gossip into their phones, posting snipey tributes on Facebook.

Rusty Quinn was a good lawyer, but—

Charlie filled in the blank with the things that only the people who really knew Rusty understood:

He had loved his daughters.

He had adored his wife.

He had tried to do the right thing.

He had found his mythical creature.

A harpy, Sam had said, referring to the half-woman, half-bird from Roman and Greek mythology.

Charlie was sticking with her spider analogy because it better fit the situation. Kelly Wilson had gotten caught up in a carefully spun web.

The heat in the truck was on, but Charlie felt herself shudder from the cold. She reached down for the keys. She turned off the engine. The truck shook as it came to a stop.

She angled the rear-view mirror to look at her face. Sam had helped her cover the bruises. She had done a good job. No one would guess that Charlie had been punched in the face two days ago.

Sam had almost punched her again.

She didn’t want Charlie to do this. Ben certainly did not.

Charlie was doing it anyway.

She smoothed out her funeral dress as she got out of the truck. She put on her heels, balancing against the steering wheel. She found her cell phone on the dash. She closed the door quietly, listening for the click of the latch.

She had parked away from the farmhouse, hiding the truck around a bend. Charlie walked carefully, avoiding the pocks in the red clay. The house came into view. Any similarities to the HP were slight. Colorful plants and evergreens filled the front yard. The clapboard was painted bright white, the trim a stark black. The roof looked new. An American flag hung from a swiveling bracket by the front door.

Charlie didn’t go to the front. She rounded the side of the house. She could see the old back porch, the floor freshly painted robin’s egg blue. The kitchen curtains were closed. Not yellow with red strawberries anymore, but white damask.

There were four steps up to the porch. Charlie stared at them, trying not to think of the steps at the HP, the way she had run up them two at a time all of those years ago, kicked off her shoes, peeled off her socks and found Gamma