Charlie said, “The really shitty thing is that I can’t even say that today was the worst day of my life.”
Lenore laughed this time, a husky, deep-throated acknowledgment that Charlie was right. She worked the gears and pulled back onto the highway. The going was smooth until she slowed for the turn onto Culpepper Road. Deep potholes gave way to gravel, which eventually turned into packed red clay. There was a subtle change in the temperature, maybe a few degrees, as they drove down the mountain. Charlie resisted the urge to shiver. Her trepidation felt like a thing she could hold in her hand. The hairs on the back of her neck rose up. She always felt this way when she came into the Holler. It wasn’t only the sense of not belonging, but the knowledge that the wrong turn, the wrong Culpepper, and physical danger would no longer be an abstract concept.
“Shit!” Lenore startled when a pack of dogs rushed a chain-link fence. Their frenzied barking sounded like a thousand hammers pounding against the car.
“Redneck alarm,” Charlie told her. You couldn’t step foot in the Holler without a hundred dogs howling your arrival. The deeper in you went, the more young white men you’d see standing on their front porches, one hand holding their cell phone and the other under their shirt rubbing their belly. These young men were capable of work, but they eschewed the labor-intensive jobs for which they were qualified. They smoked dope all day, played video games, stole when they needed money, beat their girlfriends when they wanted Oxy, sent their kids to pick up their disability checks at the post office, and let their glorious life choices form the backbone of Charlie’s legal practice.
She felt a flash of guilt for painting the entire Holler with the Culpepper brush. She knew that some good people lived here. They were hard-working, striving men and women whose only sin was to be poor, but Charlie could not help the knee-jerk reaction to the taint of proximity.
There had been six Culpepper girls of various ages who had made Charlie’s life a living hell when she went back to school. They were flea-bitten, nasty bitches with long painted fingernails and filthy mouths. They bullied Charlie. They stole her lunch money. They ripped up her textbooks. One of them had even left a pile of shit in her gym bag.
To this day, the family insisted that Charlie had lied about seeing Zachariah with the shotgun. They figured she was guided by some glorious scheme on Rusty’s part to lay claim to the meager life insurance policy and two-bedroom trailer that was up for grabs after Daniel had died and Zachariah was sent to prison. As if a man who had made it his life’s work to see justice done would trade his morality for a few pieces of silver.
The fact that Rusty had never sued the family for a penny did nothing to temper their wild conspiracy theories. They continued to firmly believe that Ken Coin planted the abundance of evidence found at the trailer and on Daniel’s person. That Coin murdered Daniel to kick-start his political career. That Coin’s brother, Keith, helped alter evidence at the state lab.
Still, it was Charlie who was on the receiving end of the majority of their rage. She had identified the brothers. The lies had not only started at her lips, but she continued to insist they were true. Thus the murder of one Culpepper brother and the death-row confinement of another rested squarely on her shoulders.
They weren’t entirely off the mark, at least not where Zachariah was concerned. Despite Rusty’s scathing disapproval, thirteen-year-old Charlie had stood in front of a packed courtroom and asked the judge to sentence Zachariah Culpepper to death. She would’ve done the same at Daniel’s trial if Ken Coin hadn’t robbed her of the pleasure.
“What is that racket?” Lenore asked.
Charlie heard the chopping sound of a helicopter overhead. She recognized the logo from one of the Atlanta news stations.
Lenore handed Charlie her phone. “Read me the directions.”
Charlie dialed in the passcode, which was her own birthday, and pulled up Rusty’s text. Her father had graduated from the University of Georgia law school and was one of the best known trial lawyers in the state, but he couldn’t spell for shit. “Left up here,” she told Lenore, pointing to a track marked by a white flagpole with a large Confederate flag. “Then right at this trailer.”
Charlie skimmed ahead, recognizing the route as one she had taken before. She had a client with a meth problem he financed by selling to other junkies with meth problems. He had tried to pay her in crystal once. Apparently, he lived two doors down from the Wilsons. She said, “Take a right up here, then another right at the bottom of the hill.”
“I stuck your fee agreement in your purse.”
Charlie felt her lips purse to ask why, but then she answered her own question. “Dad wants me to represent the Wilsons so it burns me as a witness against Kelly.”
Lenore looked at her, then looked at her again. “How did you miss that twenty minutes ago?”
“I don’t know,” Charlie said, but she did know. Because she was traumatized. Because she ached for her husband. Because she was such an idiot that again and again she expected her father to be the kind of person who worried about his daughter the way he worried about pimps and gangbangers and murderers. “I can’t do it. Any judge worth his salt would slap me so hard with a bar complaint I’d be in China before my license to practice was revoked.”
“You won’t have to chase chicken bones up and down the Holler once you settle your lawsuit.” She nodded to her phone. “You need to take some pictures of your face while the bruises are fresh.”
“I told Ben I’m not filing a lawsuit.”
Lenore’s foot slipped off the gas.
“All I want is a sincere apology. In writing.”
“An apology isn’t going to change anything.” They had reached the bottom of the hill. Lenore took a sharp right. Charlie didn’t have to wait long for the lecture that was brewing. “Assholes like Ken Coin preach about small government, but they end up spending twice as much on lawsuits as they would on training cops the right way in the first place.”
“I know.”
“The only way to make them change is to hit them in the pocketbook.”
Charlie wanted to stick her fingers into her ears. “I’m going to get this from Dad. I don’t need it from you. It’s here.”
Lenore hit the brakes. The car lurched. She backed up a few feet, then turned onto another dirt track. Weeds sprung up between the wheel grooves. They passed a yellow school bus parked under a weeping willow. The Mazda bumped over a ridge, then a cluster of small houses came into view. There were four in all, scattered around a wide oval. Charlie checked Rusty’s text again, and matched the number to the house on the far right. There was no driveway, only the edge of the track. The house was made of painted chipboard. A large bay window blistered out in the front like a ripe pimple. Cinder blocks served as front steps.
Lenore said, “Ava Wilson drives a bus. She was at the school this morning when they locked down the building.”
“Did someone tell her that Kelly was the shooter?”
“She didn’t find out until Rusty called her cell.”
Charlie was glad Rusty hadn’t stuck her with making that phone call. “Is the father in the picture?”
“Ely Wilson. He works day labor down in Ellijay, one of those guys who waits outside the lumber yard every morning for somebody to put him to work.”
“Have the police located him?”
“Not that we know of. The family only has one cell phone, and the wife has it.”
Charlie stared at the sad-looking house. “So she’s in there alone.”
“Not for long.” Lenore looked up as another helicopter hovered into view. This one was painted in the distinctive blue and silver stripes of the Georgia State Patrol. “They’ll pop a Google map on the warrant and be here in half an hour.”
“I’ll be quick.” Charlie went to get out of the car, but Lenore stopped her.
“Here.” Lenore pulled Charlie’s purse from the back seat. “Ben gave me this when he brought back your car.”
Charlie wrapped her hand around the strap, wondering if she was holding the bag the same way Ben had. “That’s something, right?”
“It is.”
Charlie got out of the car and walked toward the house. She rummaged around in her purse for some breath mints. She had to settle for a handful of furry Tic Tacs stuck like lice into the seams of the front pocket.
She had learned the hard way that Holler people generally answered the door with some kind of weapon in their hands, so instead of traversing the cinder block front steps, she walked to the bay window. There were no curtains. Three pots of geraniums were underneath. There was a glass ashtray resting on the soil, but it was empty.
Inside, Charlie could see a petite, dark-haired woman sitting on the couch, transfixed by the image on the television. Everyone in the Holler had a giant, flat-screen TV that had apparently fallen off the same truck. Ava Wilson had the news on. The sound was up so high that the reporter’s voice was audible from outside.
“… new details coming in from our Atlanta affiliate …”
Charlie went to the front door and knocked, three sharp raps.
She waited. She listened. She knocked a second time. Then a third.
“Hello?” she called.
Finally, the television was muted. She heard the shuffling of feet. A lock clicking back. A chain sliding. Another lock opening. The extra security was a joke considering a thief could punch his hand through the flimsy wall.
Ava Wilson blinked at the stranger outside her door. She was as small as her daughter, with the same almost childlike quality. She was wearing light blue pajamas with cartoon elephants on the pants. Her eyes were bloodshot. She was younger than Charlie, but shoots of gray ran through her dark brown hair.
“I’m Charlie Quinn,” she told the woman. “My father, Rusty Quinn, is your daughter’s attorney. He asked me to pick you up and take you to his office.”