All of the air left Sam’s lungs.
She could not prevent her eyes from following the line of Charlie’s gaze. A gaudy black pickup truck with gold trim and spinning wheels took up the only two handicapped spaces in front of the police station. The word “Danny” was written in mirror gold script across the tinted back window. The cab was the extended kind that could accommodate four people. Two young women were leaning against the closed doors. They each held cigarettes between their stubby fingers. Red nail polish. Red lipstick. Dark eyeshadow. Heavy eyeliner. Bleach-blonde hair. Tight black pants. Tighter shirts. High heels. Sinister. Hateful. Aggressively ignorant.
Charlie said, “I can drop you behind the building.”
Sam wanted her to. If there was a list of reasons she had left Pikeville, the Culpeppers were at the top. “They still think we lied? That there was some grand conspiracy to frame them both?”
“Of course they do. They even set up a Facebook page.”
Sam had yet to disengage from life in Pikeville when Charlie was finishing high school. She had been provided with monthly updates about the treacherous Culpepper girls, their family’s firmly held belief that Daniel had been home the night of the attacks, that Zachariah was working in Alabama, and that the Quinn girls, one of them a liar, the other mentally incapacitated, had framed them because Zachariah owed Rusty twenty thousand dollars in legal bills.
Sam asked, “Are those the same girls from high school? They look too young.”
“Daughters or nieces, but they’re all the same.”
Sam shuddered just to be this near to them. “How can you stand to see them every day?”
“I don’t have to if it’s a good day.” Charlie offered again, “I’ll drop you around back.”
“No, I’m not going to let them intimidate me.” Sam folded her collapsible cane and shoved it into her purse. “They’re not going to see me with this damn thing, either.”
Charlie slowly drove the car into the parking lot. There were sheriff’s cruisers and crime scene vans and black unmarked Town Cars in most of the spaces. She had to drive to the back, which put them over a dozen yards from the building.
Charlie turned off the engine. She asked, “Can you make the walk?”
“Yes.”
Charlie didn’t move. “I don’t want to be a jerk—”
“Be a jerk.”
“If you fall in front of those bitches, they’ll laugh at you. They might try to do something worse, and I’ll have to kill them.”
“Use my cane if it comes to that. It’s metal.” Sam opened the door. She grabbed the armrest and heaved herself out.
Charlie walked around the car, but not to help. To join Sam. To walk shoulder to shoulder toward the Culpepper girls.
The wind picked up as they crossed the parking lot. Sam experienced a self-reflective moment of her own ludicrousness. She could almost hear spurs jangling as they crossed the asphalt. The Culpepper girls narrowed their eyes. Charlie lifted her chin. They could be in a western, or a John Hughes movie if John Hughes had ever written about aggrieved, almost middle-aged women.
The police station was housed in a squat, sixties-style government complex with narrow windows and a Jetsons-like roof that pointed to the mountains. Charlie had taken the last parking spot, which was the farthest away. To reach the sidewalk they would have to traverse a roughly forty-feet walk up a slight incline. There was no ramp to the elevated building, only three wide concrete stairs that led to another fifteen feet of boxwood-lined walkway, and then, eventually, the glass front doors.
Sam could handle the distance. She would need Charlie’s help to ascend the stairs. Or the metal railing might be enough. The trick would be to lean on it while appearing to rest her hand. She would have to swing her left leg first, then pull her right, and then hope that the right could hold her unassisted weight as she somehow managed to swing her leg again.
She ran her fingers through her hair.
She felt the ridge of hard skin above her ear.
Her pace quickened.
The wind shifted back. Sam could hear the Culpepper girls’ voices. The taller of the two flicked her cigarette in Charlie and Sam’s direction. She raised her voice as she told her companion, “Looks like the bitch finally got the shit beat outta her.”
“Both eyes. Means she had to be tole twice,” the other cackled. “Next time you’uns go out, maybe you can fetch Precious over there a bowl of ice cream.”
Sam felt the muscles in her right leg start to quiver. She looped her hand through Charlie’s arm as if they were taking a walk in the park. “I had forgotten the sociolect of the native Appalachians.”
Charlie laughed. She placed her hand over Sam’s.
“What’s that?” the tall girl said. “What’d she call you?”
The glass doors banged open.
They all recoiled from the loud sound.
A menacing-looking young man stomped down the walkway. Not tall, but thickly muscled. Here was the jangling sound: the chain linking his wallet to his belt swung at his side. His wardrobe ticked all the stereotypical redneck boxes, from his sweat-stained ball cap to the ripped-off sleeves of his red-and-black flannel shirt to his torn, filthy blue jeans.
Danny Culpepper, Zachariah’s youngest son.
The spitting image of his father.
His boots made a heavy stomping sound as he jumped down the three stairs. His beady eyes homed in on Charlie. He made a gun sign with his hand and pretended to line her up in his sights.
Sam clenched her teeth. She tried not to relate the young man’s stocky build to Zachariah Culpepper’s. The hedonistic swagger. The way his thick lips smacked as he took a toothpick out of his mouth.
“Who we got here?” He stood in front of them, arms out to his sides, effectively blocking their way. “You got a familiar look about you, lady.”
Sam tightened her grip on Charlie’s arm. She would not show fear to this animal.
“I gotcha.” He snapped his fingers. “Seen your picture from my daddy’s trial, but your head was all swoll up with the bullet still in it.”
Sam dug her fingernails into Charlie’s arm. She begged her leg not to collapse out from under her, for her body not to shake, for her temper not to annihilate this disgusting man outside of the police station.
She said, “Get out of our way.”
He did not get out of their way. Instead, he started clapping his hands, stomping his foot. He sang, “Two Quinn gals standing in the lot. One got fucked, t’other got shot.”
The girls yapped with laughter.
Sam tried to walk around him, but Charlie grabbed onto her hand, effectively nailing them both in place. Charlie told him, “It’s hard to fuck a thirteen-year-old girl when your dick doesn’t work.”
The boy snorted. “Shit.”
“I’m sure your dad can get it up for his buddies in prison.”
The insult was obvious, but effective. Danny jammed his finger in Charlie’s face. “You think I won’t get my rifle and shoot off your ugly fucking head right here in
front of this police station?”
“Make sure you get close,” Sam said. “Culpeppers aren’t known for their aim.”
Silence cut a rift through the air.
Sam tapped her finger to the side of her head. “Lucky for me.”
Charlie gave a startled laugh. She kept laughing until Danny Culpepper brushed past her, his shoulder bumping Charlie’s.
“Fucking bitches.” He told the two girls, “Get the fuck in, you wanna ride home.”
Sam pulled at Charlie’s arm to get her moving. She was afraid that Charlie would not take the win, that she would say something vitriolic that brought Danny Culpepper back.
“Come on,” Sam whispered, tugging harder. “Enough.”
Only when Danny was behind the wheel of his truck did Charlie allow herself to be led away.
They walked arm-in-arm toward the stairs.
Sam had forgotten about the stairs.
She heard the rumble of Danny Culpepper’s diesel truck behind her. He kept racing the engine. Being run over would take less effort than mounting the stairs.
She told Charlie, “I don’t—”
“I’ve got you.” Charlie would not allow her to stop the forward motion. She slipped her arm under Sam’s bent elbow, offering a sort of shelf to lean on. “One, two—”
Sam swung her left leg, leaned into Charlie to move her right, then her left took over and she was up the stairs.
The show was wasted.
Tires screeched behind them. Smoke filled the air. The truck peeled off in a cacophonous blend of engine grumble and rap music.
Sam stopped to rest. The front door was another five feet away. She was almost breathless. “Why would they be here? Because of Dad?”
“If I were in charge of the investigation into who stabbed Dad, the first suspect I would pick up is Danny Culpepper.”
“But you don’t think the police brought him in for questioning?”
“I don’t think they’re seriously looking into it, either because they’ve got bigger fish to fry with this school shooting or they don’t care that somebody tried to kill Dad.” Charlie explained, “Generally, the police don’t let you drive yourself and your cousins to the station when you’re being questioned for attempted murder. They bust down your door and drag you in by your collar and do everything they can to scare the shit out of you so that you know you’re in trouble.”