The Good Daughter (The Good Daughter #1) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,51

waited until the door was closed to finish her whore’s bath. She studied her face in the mirror as she cleaned herself. She was looking worse by the hour. There were two bruises, one under each eye, that made her look like a domestic violence victim. The bridge of her nose was dark red and had a bump on top of the other bump from the last time her nose had been broken.

She told her reflection, “You’re going to stop being an idiot.”

Her reflection looked as dubious as Lenore.

Charlie went back to her office. She dumped her purse on the floor to find her keys. Then she had to figure out how to shove everything back in. Then she realized that Lenore had already unlocked the door because Lenore was always two steps ahead of her. Charlie dropped her purse on the couch beside the door. She turned on the lights. Her desk. Her computer. Her chair. It felt good to be among familiar things. The office wasn’t her home, but she spent more time here, especially since Ben had moved out, so it was the next best thing.

She crammed down one of the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches Lenore had left on the desk. She skimmed her inbox on the computer and answered the emails asking if she was okay. Charlie should’ve listened to her voicemail, called her clients, and checked with the court to see when her hearings would be rescheduled, but she was too jittery to concentrate.

Huck had all but admitted to taking the murder weapon from the scene.

Why?

Actually, the better question was how?

A revolver was not a small thing, and considering it was the murder weapon, the police would have been searching for it almost immediately. How did Huck sneak it out of the building? In his pants? Did he slip it into an unwitting paramedic’s bag? Charlie supposed the Pikeville police had given Huck a wide berth. You didn’t frisk an innocent civilian you’d accidentally shot. Huck had also erased the video that Charlie had taken, proving he was firmly on their side—inasmuch as Mr. Huckleberry believed in sides.

But agents Delia Wofford and Louis Avery had no such loyalty to Mr. Huckabee. No wonder they had drilled him for four hours while the bullet wound in his arm slowly seeped. They probably suspected he’d taken the weapon, just like they suspected the local cops were idiots for letting him walk out the door without doing a thorough search.

Lying to an FBI agent carried up to five years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine. Add on top of that the destruction of evidence, lying to hinder an investigation and the possibility of Huck being charged as an accomplice after the fact to double homicide, and he would never work in a school, or probably anywhere else, ever again.

All of which made things tricky for Charlie. Unless she wanted to destroy the man’s life, she would need to find a way to tell her father about the gun without implicating Huck. She knew what Rusty would do if he smelled blood. Huck was the kind of handsome, clean-cut do-gooder that juries ate up with a spoon. His war record, his benevolent choice of profession, wouldn’t matter if he testified from the stand in an orange prison jumpsuit.

She looked at the clock over the couch: 2:16 PM.

This day was like a fucking never-ending sphere.

Charlie opened a new Word document on her computer. She should type out everything she remembered and give it to Rusty. He had likely heard Kelly Wilson’s story by now. Charlie could at least tell him what the prosecution had heard.

Her hands hovered over the keyboard, but she didn’t type. She watched the blinking cursor. She didn’t know where to start. Obviously, from the beginning, but the beginning was the hard part.

Charlie’s daily routine was normally set in granite. She got up at five. She fed the various animals. She went for a run. She showered. She ate breakfast. She went to work. She went home. With Ben gone, her nights were filled with reading case files, watching mindless TV, and clock-watching for a non-demeaning time to go to bed.

Today hadn’t been like that, and Rusty would need to know the reason why.

The least Charlie could do was find out Huck’s first name.

She opened the browser on her computer. She searched for “Pikeville Middle School faculty.”

The little rainbow wheel started spinning. Eventually, the screen showed the message: WEBSITE NOT RESPONDING.

She tried to get around