They had traveled extensively throughout their marriage, Anton taking jobs or Sam attending a conference with the sole purpose of being somewhere new. Dubai. Australia. Brazil. Singapore. Bora Bora. Every new country, every new foreign city that Sam set foot in, she thought of Gamma, the way her mother had urged Sam to leave, to see the world, to live anywhere but Pikeville.
That Sam had done this with a man whom she adored made each journey that much more rewarding.
Sam’s office phone rang.
She sat back in her chair. She glanced at the time. Her three o’clock call from Atlanta. She had lost herself in work again, skipping lunch, inexorably lost in a patent design for a narrow plated pintle hinge.
Laurens Van Loon was Dutch, living in Atlanta, and their in-house specialist on international patent law. He was calling about the UXH case, but like Sam, he was an enthusiastic traveler. Before they talked shop, he wanted to know all about the trip she had taken a few weeks ago, a ten-day tour through Italy and Ireland.
There had been a time in Sam’s life when she talked about foreign cities in terms of their culture, the architecture, the people, but money and the passage of time had made her more likely to talk about the hotels.
She told Laurens about her stay at the Merrion in Dublin, how the garden suite did not overlook a garden, but a rear alley. That the Aman on the Grand Canal was breathtaking, the service impeccable, the little courtyard where she drank her tea every morning one of the most tranquil spots in the city. In Florence there was the Westin Excelsior, which had a magnificent view of the Arno, but the noise from the roof-top bar had occasionally echoed down into her suite. In Rome, she told Laurens, she had stayed at the Cavalieri, for their baths and beautiful pools.
This last part was a lie.
Sam had booked a room at the Raffaello, because the budget hotel was the only place that she and Anton could afford during that first magical trip to Rome.
For Laurens’s benefit, Sam continued to prevaricate, recommending restaurants and museums from past journeys. She did not tell him that in Dublin, she had stood in the Long Room of the Old Library at Trinity College, looking up at the beautiful barrel-vaulted ceiling with tears in her eyes. Nor did Sam relay that in Florence, she had sat on one of the many benches inside the Galleria dell’Accademia, where Michelangelo’s David was displayed, and sobbed.
Rome had been filled with equal parts nostalgia and grief. The Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps, the Pantheon, the Colosseum, the Piazza Navona where Anton had proposed to her while they drank wine under the moonlight.
Sam had first seen all of these wonderful sites with her husband, and now that Anton was dead, she would never see them with the same pleasure again.
“Your trip sounds amazing,” Laurens said. “Ireland and Italy. So, that’s the ‘I’ countries, though I suppose you technically should have included India.”
“Iceland, Indonesia, Israel …” Sam smiled at his laughter. “I think we should probably stop discussing hotels and move onto the exciting world of sanitary napkin disposal.”
“Yes, of course,” Laurens said. “But may I ask you—I hope this is not intrusive?”
Sam braced herself for a question about Anton, because even a year later, people asked.
“This school shooting,” Laurens said.
Sam felt ashamed that she had forgotten about it. “Is this a bad time to speak?”
“No, no. Of course it’s terrible. But I saw this man on television. Russell Quinn, the attorney who is representing the suspect.”
Sam gripped the receiver so tightly that a tremor developed in her thumb. She had not connected the dots, but Rusty volunteering to defend someone who had shot and killed two people inside of a school should not have come as a surprise.
Laurens said, “I know that you’re from Georgia, so I wondered if there was a relation.” He added, “It seems this man is quite the liberal champion.”
Sam was at a loss for words. She finally managed, “It’s a common name.”
“It is?” Laurens was always eager to learn more about his adopted city.
“Yes. From before the Civil War.” Sam shook her head, because she could have come up with a better lie. All that she could do now was move on. “So, I heard from UXH’s in-house people that Nippon is about to have a shake-up in their corner suites.”
Laurens hesitated slightly before changing the conversation to work. Sam listened to him run down the rumors he had heard, but her attention strayed to her computer.
She opened the New York Times website. Lucy Alexander. The shooting had taken place at Pikeville Middle School.
Sam’s middle school.
She studied the child’s face, looking for a familiar shape of the eye, a curve of the lip, that might remind her of Peter Alexander, but she found nothing. Still, Pikeville was a very small town. The odds were strong that the girl was somehow related to Sam’s former beau.
She scanned down the article for details about the shooting. An eighteen-year-old girl had brought a weapon to school. She had started shooting right before the first bell. The gun was wrested away by an unnamed teacher, a highly decorated former Marine who now taught history to teenagers.
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Sam scrolled down to another photo, this one of the second victim.
Douglas Pinkman.
The phone slipped from Sam’s hand. She had to retrieve it from the floor. “I’m sorry,” she told Laurens, her voice somewhat unsteady. “Could we follow up on this tomorrow?”
Sam barely registered his consent. She could only stare at the photograph.
During her tenure at the school, Douglas Pinkman had coached both the football and track team. He had been Sam’s earliest champion, a man who believed that if she trained hard enough, pushed herself enough, she could win a scholarship to the college of her choice. Sam had known that her intellect could get her that and more, but she had been intrigued by the prospect of her body working at the same efficient levels as her mind. Running, too, was something that she really enjoyed. The open air. The sweat. The release of endorphins. The solitude.
And now, Sam was forced to use a cane on her bad days and Mr. Pinkman had been murdered outside his school office.
She scrolled down, searching for more details. Shot twice in the chest with hollow-point bullets. Pinkman’s death, anonymous sources reported, was instantaneous.
Sam clicked open the Huffington Post, knowing they would give more attention to the story than the Times. The entire front page was dedicated to the shooting. The banner read TRAGEDY IN NORTH GEORGIA. Photos of Lucy Alexander and Douglas Pinkman were placed side by side.
Sam skimmed the hyperlinks:
HERO MARINE PREFERS TO REMAIN ANONYMOUS
ATTORNEY FOR SUSPECT RELEASES STATEMENT
WHAT HAPPENED WHEN: A TIMELINE OF THE SHOOTING
PINKMAN WIFE WATCHED HUSBAND DIE
Sam did not want to see the attorney for the suspect. She clicked on the last link.
Her lips parted in surprise.
Mr. Pinkman had married Judith Heller.
What a strange world.
Sam had never met Miss Heller in person, but of course she knew the woman’s name. After Daniel Culpepper had shot Sam, after Zachariah had tried and failed to rape Charlie, Charlie had run to the Heller farm for help. While Miss Heller took care of her, the woman’s elderly father had sat on the front porch, armed to the teeth, in case one of the Culpeppers showed up before the police did.