They had met in law school. He had moved to Pikeville in order to be with her. They had planned on spending the rest of their lives together.
She said, “Kelly Wilson has a right to—”
Ben held up his hand to stop her. “You know that I agree with everything you’re going to say.”
Charlie sat back in the chair. She had to remind herself that neither she nor Ben had ever bought into Rusty and Ken Coin’s “us against them” mentality.
She said, “I want a written apology from Greg Brenner. A real apology, not some bullshit, ‘I’m sorry you feel that way’ excuse like I’m a hysterical woman and he wasn’t acting like a God damn Brownshirt.”
Ben nodded. “Done.”
Charlie reached for the form. She grabbed the pen. The words were a blur, but she had read enough witness statements to know where you were supposed to sign your name. She scrawled her signature near the bottom, then slid the form back toward Ben. “I’ll trust you to keep your side of the bargain. Fill in the statement however you want.”
Ben stared down at the form. His fingers hovered at the edge. He wasn’t looking at her signature, but at the bloody brown fingerprints she’d left on the white paper.
Charlie blinked to clear her eyes. This was the closest they had come to touching each other in nine months.
“Okay.” He closed the folder. He made to stand.
“It was just the two of them?” Charlie asked. “Mr. Pink and the little—”
“Yes.” He hesitated before sitting back down in the chair. “One of the janitors locked down the cafeteria. The assistant principal stopped the buses at the street.”
Charlie did not want to think about the damage that Kelly Wilson could have done if she had started firing the gun a few seconds after the bell instead of before.
Ben said, “They all have to be interviewed. The kids. Teachers. Staff.”
Charlie knew the city wasn’t capable of coordinating so many interviews, let alone putting together such a large case on its own. The Pikeville Police Department had seventeen full-time officers. Ben was one of six lawyers in the district attorney’s office.
She asked, “Is Ken going to ask for help?”
“They’re already here,” Ben said. “Everybody just showed up. Troopers. State police. Sheriff’s office. We didn’t even have to call them.”
“That’s good.”
“Yeah.” He picked at the corner of the folder with his fingers. His lips twitched the way they always did when he chewed at the tip of his tongue. It was an old habit that wouldn’t die. Charlie had once seen his mother reach across the dinner table and slap his hand to make him stop.
She asked, “You saw the bodies?”
He didn’t answer, but he didn’t have to. Charlie knew that Ben had seen the crime scene. She could tell by the somber tone in his voice, the slump in his shoulders. Pikeville had grown over the last two decades, but it was still a small town, the kind of place where heroin was a much larger concern than homicide.
Ben said, “You know it takes time, but I told them to move the bodies as soon as possible.”
Charlie looked up at the ceiling to keep the tears in her eyes. He had awakened her dozens of times from her worst nightmare: a day in the life, Charlie and Rusty going about their mundane chores inside the old farmhouse, cooking meals and doing laundry and washing dishes while Gamma’s body rotted against the cabinets because the police had forgotten to take her away.
It was probably the piece of tooth Charlie had found in the back of the cabinet, because what else had they missed?
Ben said, “Your car is parked behind your office. They locked down the school. It’ll probably be closed for the rest of the week. There’s already a news van up from Atlanta.”
“Is that where Dad is, combing his hair?”
They both smiled a little, because they both knew that her father loved nothing more than to see himself on television.
Ben said, “He told you to hang tight. When I called him. That’s what Rusty said—‘Tell that girl to hang tight.’”
Which meant that Rusty wasn’t going to ride to her rescue. That he assumed his tough daughter could handle herself in a room full of Keystone Kops while he rushed to Kelly Wilson’s house and got her parents to sign his fee agreement.
When people talked about how much they hated lawyers, it was Rusty who came to mind.
Ben said, “I can have one of the squad cars take you to your office.”
“I’m not getting in a car with any of those assholes.”
Ben ran his fingers through his hair. He needed a trim. His shirt was wrinkled. His suit was missing a button. She wanted to think he was falling apart without her, but the truth was that he was always disheveled and Charlie was more likely to tease him about looking like a hipster hobo than to take out a needle and thread.
She said, “Kelly Wilson was in their custody. She wasn’t resisting. The moment they cuffed her, they were responsible for her safety.”
“Greg’s daughter goes to that school.”
“So does Kelly.” Charlie leaned closer. “We’re not living in Abu Ghraib, okay? Kelly Wilson has a constitutional right to due process under the law. It’s up to a judge and jury to decide, not a bunch of vigilante cops with hard-ons to beat down a teenage girl.”
“I get it. We all get it.” Ben thought she was grandstanding for the great Oz behind the mirror. “‘A just society is a lawful society. You can’t be a good guy if you act like a bad guy.’”
He was quoting Rusty.
She said, “They were going to beat the shit out of her. Or worse.”
“So you volunteered yourself instead?”
Charlie felt a burning sensation in her hands. Without thinking, she was scratching at the dried blood, rolling it into tiny balls. Her fingernails were ten black crescents.
She looked up at her husband. “You said you took nine witness statements?”
Ben gave a single, reluctant nod. He knew why she was asking the question.
Eight cops. Mrs. Pinkman wasn’t there when Charlie’s nose was broken, which meant that the ninth statement had come from Huck, which meant that Ben had already talked to him.
She asked, “Do you know?” That was the only thing that mattered between them right now, whether or not Ben knew why she had been at the school this morning. Because if Ben knew, then everyone else knew, which meant that Charlie had yet again found another uniq
uely cruel way to humiliate her husband.
“Ben?” she asked.
He ran his fingers through his hair. He smoothed down his tie. He had so many tells that they could never play cards together, not even Go Fish.
“Babe, I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so, so sorry.”
There was a quick knock before the door opened. Charlie held out hope that it was her father, but an older black woman wearing a navy pantsuit and white blouse walked into the room. Her short black hair was tuffeted with white. She had a large, banged-up-looking purse on her arm that was almost as big as the one that Charlie carried to work. A laminated ID hung on a lanyard around her neck, but Charlie couldn’t read it.
The woman said, “I’m special agent in charge Delia Wofford with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. You’re Charlotte Quinn?” She reached out to shake Charlie’s hand, but changed her mind when she saw the dried blood. “Have you been photographed?”
Charlie nodded.
“For godsakes.” She opened her purse and pulled out a packet of Wet Wipes. “Use as many as you need. I can get more.”
Jonah was back with another chair. Delia pointed to the head of the table, indicating that’s where she wanted to sit. She asked Jonah, “Are you the jerk who wouldn’t let this woman clean herself up?”
Jonah didn’t know what to do with the question. He had probably never had to answer to any woman besides his mother, and that had been a long time ago.
“Close the door behind you.” Delia waved Jonah off as she sat down. “Ms. Quinn, we’ll get through this as quickly as possible. Do you mind if I record this?”
Charlie shook her head. “Knock yourself out.”
She tapped some buttons on her phone to activate the recorder, then unpacked her bag, tossing notepads and books and papers onto the table.
The concussion made it impossible for Charlie to read anything in front of her, so she opened up the pack of Wet Wipes and got to work. She scrubbed between her fingers first, dislodging specks of black that floated like ashes from a roaring fire. The blood had seared itself into the pores. Her hands looked like an old woman’s. She was suddenly overcome with exhaustion. She wanted to go home. She wanted a hot bath. She wanted to think about what had happened today, to examine all the pieces, then gather them up, put them in a box and place it high on a shelf so that she never had to deal with it again.