The Good Daughter (The Good Daughter #1) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,48

different, and that’s never a good thing when you’re a kid.”

“You were Kelly’s teacher. Why didn’t you know that she was held back a grade?”

“I’ve got over a hundred twenty kids a year every year. I don’t look back at their files unless they give me a reason.”

“Being slow isn’t a reason?”

“A lot of my kids are slow. She was a solid C student. She never got in trouble.” Charlie could hear a tapping noise, a pen hitting the edge of a table. Huck said, “Look, Kelly’s a good kid. Not smart, but sweet. She follows whatever is in front of her. She doesn’t do things like today. That’s not her.”

“Were you intimate with her?”

“What the hell does—”

“Screwing. Fucking. You know what I mean.”

“Of course not.” He sounded disgusted. “She was one of my kids. Christ.”

“Was anyone else having sex with her?”

“No. I would’ve reported it.”

“Mr. Pinkman?”

“Don’t even—”

“Another student at school?”

“How should I—”

“What happened to the revolver?”

If she hadn’t been listening for it, she would’ve missed the slight catch in his breath.

And then he said, “What revolver?”

Charlie shook her head, silently berating herself for missing the obvious.

During her own interview with Delia Wofford, she had been too disoriented to put it together, but now Charlie could see that the woman had practically drawn her a picture. You didn’t see Mr. Huckabee hand the revolver to anyone? Did you see him put it anywhere on his person? On the ground?

Charlie asked Huck, “What did you do with it?”

He paused again because that’s what he did when he was lying. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Is that how you answered the two agents?”

“I told them what I told you. I don’t know. A lot was going on.”

Charlie could only shake her head at his stupidity. “Did Kelly say something to you in the hall?”

“Not that I heard.” He paused for the billionth time. “Like I said, a lot was happening.”

The guy had been shot and barely grimaced. Fear had not dampened his recall.

She asked, “Whose side are you on?”

“There’s no such thing as sides. There’s just doing the right thing.”

“I hate to blow apart your philosophy, Horatio, but if there’s a right thing then there’s a wrong thing, and as someone with a law degree, I can tell you that stealing the murder weapon from a double homicide, then lying about it to an FBI agent, can land you on the wrong side of a prison cell for a hell of a long time.”

He kept up the silent act for two seconds, then said, “I don’t know if we were in it, but there’s a blind spot in the security cameras.”

“Stop talking.”

“But, if—”

“Shut up,” Charlie warned him. “I’m a witness. I can’t be your lawyer. What you tell me isn’t privileged.”

“Charlotte, I—”

She ended the call before he could dig the hole he was standing in any deeper.

5

Predictably, Rusty’s old Mercedes was not parked in the lot when Lenore pulled into her space behind the building. Charlie had watched her father leave the hospital live on television. He had been half an hour from the office, roughly the same distance away as the Wilson house, so he must have taken a detour.

Lenore told Ava, “Rusty’s on his way,” a lie she told multiple clients multiple times a day.

Ava didn’t seem interested in Rusty’s whereabouts. Her mouth gaped open as the security gate rolled closed behind them. The enclosed space, with its array of security lights and cameras, metal bars on the windows and twelve-foot-high razor-wired perimeter fence, looked like the staging area inside a SuperMax prison.

Over the years, Rusty had continued to receive death threats because he continued to represent outlaw bikers, drug gangs, and child killers. Add to the list the union organizations, undocumented workers and abortion clinics, and he had managed to piss off almost everyone in the state. Charlie’s private theory was that most of the death threats came courtesy of the Culpeppers. Only a fraction came from the fine, upstanding citizens who believed Rusty Quinn served at the right hand of Satan.

There was no telling what they would do when word spread that Rusty was representing a school shooter.

Lenore parked her Mazda beside Charlie’s Subaru. She turned around and looked at Ava Wilson. “I’ll show you a place where you can freshen yourself.”

“Do you got a TV?” Ava asked.

Charlie said, “Maybe it’s best not to—”

“I wanna watch.”

Charlie couldn’t deny a grown woman TV privileges. She got out of the car and opened the door for Ava. The mother