Charlie felt her heart flip. “Do you have cause?”
“If you’ve concealed evidence, or removed something from the house with the purposes of concealment, then—”
“That would be illegal,” Charlie said. “Like searching a school bus when it’s not specifically listed in your warrant and it’s not part of the curtilage.”
Isaac nodded once. “You would be correct, unless there was cause.”
Charlie snapped off the yellow glove. “I did remove this from the house, but not intentionally.”
“Thank you for being forthcoming.” Isaac turned to Ava. She had a script to follow. “Ma’am, you can stay outside, or you can leave, but you cannot go back into the house until we’ve released it. Do you understand?”
Ava shook her head.
Charlie said, “She understands.”
Isaac walked across the yard and joined the men inside the house. Plastic containers were stacked by the door. Evidence logs. Zip ties. Plastic bags. Ava stared through the bay window. The television was still on. The screen was so large that Charlie could read the scroll along the bottom: PIKEVILLE PD SOURCE: SCHOOL SECURITY FOOTAGE WILL NOT BE RELEASED.
Security cameras. Charlie had not noticed them this morning, but now she recalled a camera at the end of every hallway.
The murder spree had been captured on video.
Ava asked, “What are we going to do?”
Charlie suppressed her first answer: Watch your daughter get strapped to a gurney and executed.
She told Ava, “My father will explain everything back at his office.” She took the rolled-up warrant from the woman’s sweaty hand. “There has to be an arraignment within forty-eight hours. Kelly will likely be held at the county jail, but then they’ll transfer her somewhere else. There will be a lot of court appearances and plenty of opportunities to see her. None of this will happen quickly. Everything takes a long time.” Charlie scanned the search warrant, which was basically a love letter from the judge allowing the cops to do whatever the hell they wanted. She asked Ava, “Is this your address?”
Ava looked at the warrant. “Yes, ma’am, that’s the street number.”
Through the open front door, Charlie saw Isaac start yanking out drawers in the kitchen. Silverware clattered. Carpet was being stripped from the floor. None of them were being gentle. They lifted their feet high as they stomped around, checking for hollow sounds under the floorboards, poking at the stained tile in the ceiling.
Ava grabbed Charlie’s arm. “When will Kelly come home?”
“You’ll need to talk about that with my father.”
“I don’t see how we can afford any of this,” Ava said. “We ain’t got no money, if that’s why you’re here.”
Rusty had never been interested in money. “The state will pay for her defense. It won’t be much, but I can promise you, my father will work his heart out for your daughter.”
Ava blinked. She didn’t seem to follow. “She’s got chores to do.”
Charlie looked into the woman’s eyes. Her pupils were small, but that could be explained by the intense sunlight. “Are you on something?”
She looked down at her feet. “No, ma’am. There was a pebble but I kicked it away.”
Charlie waited for an inappropriate smile, but the woman was being serious. “Did you take some medication? Or maybe you smoked a joint to take the edge off?”
“Oh, no, ma’am. I’m a bus driver. I can’t take drugs. Children depend on me.”
Charlie looked into her eyes again, this time for any sign of reason. “Did my father explain what’s happening to Kelly?”
“He said he was working for her, but I don’t know.” She whispered, “My cousin says Rusty Quinn is a bad man, that he represents low-lifes and rapists and killers.”
Charlie’s mouth went dry. The woman did not seem to understand that Rusty Quinn was exactly the kind of man that her daughter needed.
“There’s Kelly.” Ava was looking at the television again.
Kelly Wilson’s face filled the screen. Someone had obviously leaked a school photo. Instead of the heavy Goth make-up and black clothes, Kelly was wearing one of her rainbow pony T-shirts from the closet.
The photo disappeared and was replaced with live footage of Rusty leaving the Derrick County Hospital. He scowled at the reporter who shoved a microphone in his face, but he had left by the front doors for a reason. Rusty made a visible show of reluctantly stopping for the interview. Charlie could tell by the way his mouth was moving that he was offering a cavalcade of southern-y sound bites that would be played on a virtual loop by the national stations. This was how these high-profile cases worked. Rusty had to get out in front of the talking heads, to paint Kelly Wilson as a troubled teenager facing the ultimate punishment rather than as a monster who had murdered a child and her school principal.
Ava whispered, “Is a revolver a weapon?”
Charlie felt her stomach drop. She led Ava away from the house and stood with her in the middle of the track. “Do you have a revolver?”
Ava nodded. “Ely keeps it in the glove box of the car.”
“The car he drove to work today?”
She nodded again.
“Does he own the gun legally?”
“We don’t steal things, ma’am. We work for them.”
“I’m sorry, what I mean is, is your husband a convicted felon?”
“No, ma’am. He’s an honest man.”
“Do you know how many bullets the gun holds?”
“Six.” Ava sounded certain enough, but she added, “I think six. I seen it a million times, but I never paid attention to it. I’m sorry I can’t remember.”
“It’s all right.” Charlie had felt the same way when Delia Wofford was questioning her. How many shots did you hear? What was the sequence? Was Mr. Huckabee with you? What happened to the revolver?
Charlie had been right in the middle of it, but fear had dampened her recall.
She asked Ava, “When was the last time you saw the revolver?”
“I don’t—oh.” Ava’s phone was ringing from the front pocket of her pajamas. She pulled out a cheap flip phone, the kind that let you pre-pay for minutes. “I don’t know that number.”
Charlie knew the number. It belonged to her iPhone, which Huck apparently still had. “Get in the car,” she told Ava, motioning for Lenore to help. “Let me answer this.”
Ava gave Lenore a wary look. “I don’t know if—”
“Get in the car.” Charlie practically pushed the woman away. She answered the phone on the fifth ring. “Hello?”
“Mrs. Wilson, this is Mr. Huckabee, Kelly’s teacher from middle school.”
“How did you unlock my phone?”
Huck hesitated a good, long while. “You need a better password than 1-2-3-4.”
Charlie had heard the same thing from Ben on numerous occasions. She walked up the track for more privacy. “Why are you calling Ava Wilson?”
He hesitated a second time. “I taught Kelly for two years. I tutored her a few months when she moved up to the high school.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“I spent four hours answering questions from two assholes with the GBI and another hour answering questions at the hospital.”
“What assholes?”
“Atkins. Avery. Some ten-year-old with a cowlick and an older black chick kept tag-teaming me.”
“Shit,” Charlie mumbled. He probably meant Louis Avery, the FBI’s North Georgia field agent. “Did he give you his card?”
“I threw it away,” Huck said. “My arm’s fine, by the way. Bullet went straight through.”
“My nose is broken and I have a concussion,” Charlie told him. “Why were you calling Ava?”
His sigh said he was humoring her. “Because I care about my students. I wanted to help. To make sure she had a lawyer. That she was being looked after by someone who wasn
’t going to exploit her or get her into more trouble.” Huck abruptly dropped the bravado. “Kelly’s not smart, Charlotte. She’s not a murderer.”
“You don’t have to be smart to kill somebody. Actually, the opposite is usually true.” She turned back to look at the Wilson house. Captain Isaac was carrying out a plastic box full of Kelly’s clothes.
Charlie told Huck, “If you really want to help Kelly, stay away from any and all reporters, don’t go on camera, don’t let them get a good photo of you, don’t even talk to your friends about what happened, because they’ll go on camera or they’ll talk to reporters and you won’t be able to control what comes out of their mouths.”
“That’s good advice.” He let out a short breath and said, “Hey, I need to tell you that I’m sorry.”
“For?”
“B2. Ben Bernard. Your husband called you this morning. I almost answered.”
Charlie felt her cheeks flush.
He said, “I didn’t know until one of the cops told me. This was after I had talked to him, told him what we’d been up to, why you were at the school.”
Charlie put her head in her hand. She knew how certain types of men talked about women, especially the ones they screwed in their trucks outside of bars.
Huck said, “You could’ve warned me. It put us all in an even worse situation.”
“You apologize, but really, it’s my fault?” She couldn’t believe this guy. “When would I have told you? Before Greg Brenner knocked me out? Or after you deleted the video? Or how about when you lied in your witness statement about how my nose got broken, which is a felony, by the way—the lying to cover a cop’s ass, not the standing around with your thumb up your ass while a woman gets punched in the face. That’s perfectly legal.”
Huck pushed out another sigh. “You don’t know what it’s like running into something like that. People make mistakes.”
“I don’t know what it’s like?” Charlie felt shaken by a sudden fury. “I think I was there, Huck. I think I got there before you did, so I know exactly what it’s like to run into something like that, and not for nothing, but if you really grew up in Pikeville, then you know I’ve done it twice now, so fuck you with your ‘You don’t know what it’s like.’”