The Good Daughter (The Good Daughter #1) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,99

that the blood pressure cuff made as it inflated around Rusty’s arm.

He looked much like his photograph, absent any color in his face. The camera had never been able to capture the devil’s glint in his eyes, the dimples in his rubbery cheeks.

“Sammy-Sam!” he bellowed, hacking out a cough at the end. “Come here, gal. Lemme see you up close.”

Sam did not move closer. She felt her nose wrinkle. He reeked of cigarette smoke and Old Spice, two scents that had remained blissfully absent in her everyday life.

“Damn if you don’t look like your mama.” He gave a delighted laugh. “To what does your old pappy owe this pleasure?”

Charlie suddenly appeared on Sam’s right. She knew this was Sam’s blind side. There was no telling how long she had been there. She said, “Dad, we thought that you were going to die.”

“I remain a constant disappointment to the women in my life.” Rusty scratched his chin. Under the covers, his foot tapped out a silent beat. “I am happy to see that no fresh slings and arrows have been exchanged.”

“Not so you can see.” Charlie walked around to the other side of the bed. Her arms were crossed. She did not take his hand. “Are you okay?”

“Well.” Rusty seemed to think about it. “I was stabbed. Or, in the vernacular of the streets, cut.”

“The unkindest kind.”

“Thrice in the belly, once in the leg.”

“You don’t say.”

Sam tuned out their banter. She had always been a reluctant spectator of the Rusty and Charlie show. Her father, on the other hand, seemed to eat it up. He clearly still delighted in Charlie, a literal twinkle flashing in his eye when she engaged him.

Sam looked at her watch. She could not believe only sixteen minutes had passed since she had gotten out of the car. She raised her voice over the din, asking, “Rusty, what happened?”

“What do you mean what—” He looked at his stomach. Surgical drains hung from either side of his torso. He looked back at Sam, feigning shock. “‘Oh, I am slain!’”

For once, Charlie didn’t egg him on. “Daddy, Sam has a flight back this afternoon.”

Sam was startled by the reminder. Somehow, she had momentarily let herself forget that she could leave.

Charlie said, “Come on, Dad. Tell us what happened.”

“All right, all right.” Rusty let out a low groan as he tried to sit up in bed. Sam realized that this was the first sign her father had given that he had been wounded.

“Well—” He coughed, a wet rattle shaking inside his chest. He winced from the exertion, then coughed again, then winced again, then waited to make sure it had passed.

When he was finally able, he directed his words toward Charlie, his most receptive audience. “After you dropped me at ye olde homestead, I had a bite to eat, maybe a little to drink, and then I realized that I hadn’t checked the mail.”

Sam could not think of the last time she had received mail at her home. It seemed like a ritual from another century.

Rusty continued, “I put on my walkin’ shoes and headed out. Beautiful night, last night. Partly cloudy, chance of rain this morning. Oh—” he seemed to remember that morning had passed. “Did it rain?”

“Yes.” Charlie made a rolling motion with her hand, indicating he should speed up the story. “Did you see who did it?”

Rusty coughed again. “That is a complicated question with an equally complicated answer.”

Charlie waited. They both waited.

Rusty said, “All right, so, I walked to the mailbox to check my mail. Beautiful night. Moon high up in the sky. The driveway was giving off warmth saved up from the sun. Paints a picture, don’t it?”

Sam felt herself nodding along with Charlie, as if thirty years had not passed and they were both little girls listening to one of their father’s stories.

He seemed to relish the attention. Some color came back into his cheeks. “I came around the bend, and I heard something up above me, so I was looking up for that bird. Remember I told you about the hawk, Charlotte?”

Charlie nodded.

“Thought the old fella got himself a chipmunk again, but then—Shazam!” He clapped together his hands. “I feel this hot pain in my leg.”

Sam felt her cheeks redden. Like Charlie, she had jumped at the clap.

Rusty said, “I look down, and I have to twist around to see what’s wrong, and that’s when I spot it. There’s a big ol’ hunting knife sticking out of the back of my thigh.”

Sam put