The Good Daughter (The Good Daughter #1) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,63

started feeding strays, and the strays had multiplied and now there were squirrels and chipmunks and, to her horror, a possum the size of a small dog that shuffled onto the back deck every night, staring at her through the glass door, his beady red eyes flashing in the light from the television.

Charlie used her hands to scrape up the food. She cursed Ben for having the dog this week because Barkzilla, their greedy Jack Russell terrier, would’ve hoovered all of the kibble in seconds. Since she had skipped her chores this morning, there was more to do tonight. She added food and water to the appropriate bowls, used the pitchfork to shift the hay they’d laid down for bedding. She topped off the bird feeders. She washed down the deck. She used the outside broom to knock down some spiderwebs. She did everything she could to keep from going inside until, finally, it was too dark and too cold not to.

Ben’s empty key hook greeted her by the door. The empty barstool. The empty couch. The emptiness followed her upstairs into the bedroom, into the shower. Ben’s hair was not stuck to the soap, his toothbrush wasn’t by the sink, his razor wasn’t on her side of the counter.

Charlie’s toxic level of patheticness was so pronounced that by the time she slouched downstairs in her pajamas, even pouring a bowl of cereal felt like too much work.

She fell onto the couch. She didn’t want to read. She didn’t want to stare at the ceiling and moan. She did what she had avoided doing all day and turned on the television.

The channel was already tuned to CNN. A pretty blonde teenager was standing in front of the Pikeville Middle School. She held a candle in her hand because there was some kind of vigil going on. The banner underneath her face identified her as CANDICE BELMONT, NORTH GEORGIA.

The girl said, “Mrs. Alexander talked about her daughter all the time in class. Called her ‘the Baby’ because she was so sweet, like a little baby. You could really tell that she loved her.”

Charlie muted the sound. The media were milking the tragedy the same way she was milking her self-pity over Ben. As someone who had been on the inside of violence, who had lived with its aftermath, she felt sick whenever she saw these kinds of stories covered. The sharp graphics. The haunting music. The montages of grieving people. The stations were desperate to keep viewers watching, and the easiest way they’d found to achieve that goal was to report everything they heard and sort out the truth later.

The camera cut away from the blonde at the vigil to the handsome field reporter, his shirtsleeves rolled up three-quarters, the candlelight glowing softly in the background. Charlie studied his pantomimed grief as he tossed the story back to the studio. The news anchor behind the desk had the same solemn expression on his face as he continued reporting what was not the news. Charlie read the chyron crawling at the bottom of the screen, a quote from the Alexander family: UNCLE: KELLY RENE WILSON “A COLD-BLOODED MURDERER.”

Kelly had been promoted to three names now. Charlie supposed some producer in New York had decided that it sounded more menacing.

The scroll stopped. The anchor disappeared. Both were replaced by an illustration of a locker-lined hallway. The drawing was three-dimensional, but had an odd flatness, Charlie supposed to make it very clear that this was not real. A lawyer had apparently not been satisfied by the crudeness. The word “RE-ENACTMENT” flashed red in the upper-right corner of the screen.

The drawing became animated. A figure entered the hallway, moving stiffly, drawn in a blocky style. The figure’s long hair and dark clothing all pointed to Kelly Wilson.

Charlie unmuted the sound.

“… approximately six fifty-five, the alleged shooter, Kelly Rene Wilson, walked into the hallway.” The animated Kelly stopped in the middle of the screen. There was a gun in her hand, more like a nine-millimeter than a revolver. “Wilson was said to be standing in this location when Judith Pinkman opened the door to her classroom.”

Charlie moved to the edge of the couch.

A squared-off Mrs. Pinkman opened her door. For some reason, the animator had made her white-ish blonde hair silvery gray, styled it in a bun instead of down around her shoulders.

“Wilson saw Pinkman and fired two shots,” the anchor continued. The gun in Kelly’s hands showed two puffs of smoke. The bullets were indicated