The Good Daughter (The Good Daughter #1) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,35

You couldn’t see what had happened, that the car had hit her in the back. That she had bled to death, but inside. Not like the girl today. Not like what I saw at the school.”

There were tears in his eyes. Each word out of his mouth broke another piece of Charlie’s heart. She had to clench her fists to keep from reaching out to him.

Ben said, “Murder is murder. I can deal with that. Dealers. Gangbangers. Even domestic violence. But a kid? A little girl?” He kept shaking his head. “She didn’t look like she was sleeping, did she?”

“No.”

“She looked like she had been murdered. Like someone had fired a gun at her throat and the bullet ripped it open and she died a horrible, violent death.”

Charlie looked up into the sun because she didn’t want to see Lucy Alexander dying all over again.

Ben said, “The guy’s a war hero. Did you know that?”

He was talking about Huck.

“He saved a platoon or something, but he won’t talk about it because he’s like fucking Batman or something.” Ben pushed himself away from the wall, away from Charlie. “And this morning, he took a bullet in his arm. To save a murderer, whom he kept from getting murdered. And then he stood up for the guy who almost killed him. He lied in a sworn statement to keep another guy out of trouble. He’s so fucking handsome, right?” Ben was angry now, but his voice was low, shrunken by the humiliation that came courtesy of his bitch wife. “A guy like that, you see him walking down the street, you don’t know whether you want to fuck him or have a beer with him.”

Charlie looked down at the ground. They knew she had done both.

“Lenore’s here.”

Rusty’s secretary had pulled up to the gate in her red Mazda.

Charlie said, “Ben, I’m sorry. It was a mistake. An awful, awful mistake.”

“Did you let him on top?”

“Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous.”

Lenore tapped the horn. She rolled down her window and waved. Charlie waved back, her hand splayed, trying to let Lenore know that she needed a minute.

“Ben—”

It was too late. Ben was already pulling the door closed behind him.

4

Charlie sniffed her sunglasses as she walked toward Lenore’s car. She knew she was acting like a foolish girl in a teen romance, but she wanted to smell Ben. What she got instead was a whiff of her own sweat tinged with vomit.

Lenore leaned across the car to push open the door. “You put those on your nose, sweetheart, not in front of it.”

Charlie couldn’t put anything on her nose. She tossed the cheap glasses onto the dashboard as she got in. “Did Daddy send you?”

“Ben texted me, but, listen, your dad wants us to fetch the Wilsons and bring them back to the office. Coin’s trying to execute a search warrant. I brought your court clothes to change into.”

Charlie had started shaking her head as soon as she heard the words “your dad wants.” She asked, “Where’s Rusty?”

“At the hospital with the Wilson girl.”

Charlie huffed a laugh. Ben had really honed his deception skills. “How long before Dad figured out she wasn’t being held at the station?”

“Over an hour.”

Charlie put on her seat belt. “I was thinking how much Coin loves to play his games.” She had no doubt the district attorney had put Kelly Wilson in the back of an ambulance for the trip to the hospital. By maintaining the illusion that she wasn’t in police custody, he could argue that any statement she made absent counsel was voluntary. “She’s eighteen years old.”

“Rusty told me. The girl was practically catatonic at the hospital. He barely got her mama’s phone number out of her.”

“That’s how she was when I saw her. Almost in a fugue state.” Charlie hoped Kelly Wilson snapped out of it soon. At the moment, she was Rusty’s most vital source of information. Until he received the discovery materials from Ken Coin—witness lists, police statements, investigators’ notes, forensics—her father would be flying blind.

Lenore put her hand on the gear. “Where am I taking you?”

Charlie pictured herself at home, standing under a hot shower, surrounding herself with pillows in bed. And then she remembered that Ben wouldn’t be there and said, “I guess to the Wilsons.”

“They live on the backside of the Holler.” Lenore put the car in gear. She made a wide U-turn and drove up the street. “There’s no street address. Your dad sent me country directions—take a left at